Malfunctioning Utopia

Chapter 71: The Rescue

“Help me! I’m Hilda!”

When Sun Jack saw the message, he froze. The exhaustion and boredom on his face vanished in an instant, replaced by a racing heartbeat. Was he excited? Afraid? He couldn’t tell.

His hands trembled as he took several deep breaths to steady himself. Pulling a cable from the external system, he plugged it into the computer. “Who are you? How did you find me?”

“I’m Hilda. You know who I am! We’re at this location. Hurry! Bring weapons—quickly! He’ll move us soon!” Along with the urgent message came a set of coordinates, pointing to the Warton Industrial Zone.

“Is this a trap?” That was the first thought that crossed Sun Jack’s mind.

But he stood up immediately, opened a loan platform, and maxed out his account on weapons and ammunition.

If it was real, he’d stage a rescue. If it was a trap, he’d crush it. Either way, he had to go. What if it was real?

Seeing a swarm of drones fly into the room, Tapai silently opened his armor panels and began loading grenades one by one.

AA, munching on the last bites of her Ke-style cuisine, quickly loaded bullets into her drum magazine. “Boss, use my ‘Rum Bullets.’ I’ve added hydrogen sulfide to the shrapnel.”

“AA, didn’t you say you could make a nuke with just the right materials?” Sun Jack suddenly asked, glancing at her.

“Uh… yeah,” she replied hesitantly.

“Good. Turn my reactor into a nuke! If this is a trap and someone’s using Hilda to mess with me, I’ll blow them to hell!”

The urgency in Hilda’s messages spurred Sun Jack to act without delay. Once everything was ready, he headed for the coordinates at top speed.

About a kilometer from the location, he forced himself to rein in his excitement and approach cautiously.

As his current location matched the coordinates, he found himself in front of an operational factory.

Driverless trucks moved in and out, being loaded with boxes of nutrient paste by automated robotic arms. Everything operated with cold precision, like clockwork. ȓἁ𐌽ỗВƐṩ

“Surveillance cameras,” Sun Jack noted, spotting a rounded lens in the upper-left corner. With a brief glare from his cybernetic eye, the camera drooped. “Let’s move!”

The trio advanced cautiously, passing through automated workshops that revealed the process of converting scraps and plastic waste into nutrient paste.

Suddenly, Tapai pulled them into a side workshop. “I’m picking up fundamental radar signals—something’s coming.”

Moments later, they saw a strange robot with a screen-like head approaching. It was carrying a bundle of objects.

As it drew closer, Sun Jack noticed the robot’s screen displayed a floating ghostly cartoon image—a sign it was controlled by an auxiliary AI.

He also saw what the robot was carrying: gray brains and severed limbs.

In horror, Sun Jack watched the robot dump the macabre cargo onto a conveyor belt in the raw materials workshop, where they were processed into nutrient paste packets.

“What a clever way to dispose of evidence,” Tapai remarked through their team channel. “Turn the bodies into something everyone eats. No one would ever find the remains.”

The realization hit Sun Jack like a punch to the gut. He felt a wave of nausea and barely managed to suppress the urge to vomit.

As the robot turned to leave, Sun Jack whispered, “Follow it! Let’s see where it goes.”

“Not too close—it’s got sensitive radar,” Tapai warned.

They trailed the robot carefully, making their way deeper into the factory. Soon, they arrived at an elevator.

The robot stepped inside, and as the trio cautiously approached, a distorted, static-filled voice whispered in Sun Jack’s ear:

“Set… mines… mimetic… both sides…”

Sun Jack froze, his heart pounding once more. “Hilda? Is that you?”

But the voice disappeared as suddenly as it had come, leaving no trace. If not for his system’s access log, Sun Jack would’ve thought he was hallucinating.

“Activate recording mode,” he commanded the system, motioning for AA and Tapai to stop.

Using his cybernetic eye, he scanned the walls and saw several camouflaged mines gradually reveal themselves.

“There really are mimetic mines. Hilda wasn’t lying,” Sun Jack muttered.

“Wow, Boss! These are valuable! They’d cost a fortune to buy,” AA said, rushing over to dismantle one for use as a weapon.

Once the mines were cleared, the elevator doors reopened. Tapai entered first to scout ahead. After a minute, his signal confirmed the area was temporarily safe, allowing Sun Jack and AA to join him.

The elevator descended, the temperature dropping steadily. Soon, their breaths turned into white puffs, reminding Sun Jack of unpleasant memories from the past.

“Hilda, are you there? Can you hear me? Where are you?” Sun Jack called out on every system channel, but no response came.

With a “ding,” the elevator doors slid open to reveal a dimly lit corridor. Flickering lights cast eerie shadows, accompanied by a constant, faint buzzing sound.

“This must’ve been a repurposed fallout shelter. The rooms up ahead have AI robots working inside—all running on that idiotic auxiliary ghost AI,” Tapai reported as he stepped out first.

Cautiously, Sun Jack approached one of the doors. Peering inside, he saw a robot extracting a corpse from a freezer, placing it on a table, and expertly disassembling the skull with surgical tools. The adjacent wall was lined with boxes filled with brains, stacked a meter high.

“Why would Hilda be in a place like this? This feels connected to Xiao Ting% somehow,” Sun Jack thought, a growing sense of unease gnawing at him.

Pushing forward, he reached the machine room at the end of the hallway. What he saw there made his scalp tingle with horror.

A wall of human brains floated in fluorescent nutrient gel, forming a grotesque, living monument.

“What the hell is this place?” Sun Jack muttered, his voice tinged with dread.

“Is this some kind of… brain fetish?” Tapai suggested, drawing from prior experiences.

“Get down!” A sudden voice exploded in Sun Jack’s mind.

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