The Decaying Dream of America: I Assemble Corpses and Confront Madness

On the outskirts of Emerald Dream City, the night, like a tattered rag soaked in rust, pressed heavily over the abandoned military base.

The air was filled with the damp smell of earth, a musty odor from the mixture of decaying plants and weathered concrete.

A faint, metallic rusty smell permeates the air, a trace of the steel frame peeling away over time, an eternal accompaniment to the abandoned industrial area.

Arthur Morgan lowered his body, and the two teammates behind him and Lena Kaplan also bent down, blending into a cluster of vines and bushes taller than a person, which were dyed dark green by the night.

As night fell, the distant outline of the base became completely blurred, leaving only towering watchtowers and twisted steel skeletons, sketching indistinct silhouettes in the darkness.

The image was of an abandoned giant, decaying on the wasteland, still bearing its former majesty.

The wind whistled through the holes in the broken buildings, making long, mournful sounds that rose and fell, echoing across the empty fields.

Arthur felt that the sound was not just the howling of the wind, but the whispers of the ghosts of this wasteland, carrying unspeakable, long-standing resentment.

They were about 500 meters away from the nearest tall iron gate, which was even more rusty than they remembered, like a huge tombstone long forgotten by the world, teetering on the verge of collapse, yet exuding a solemn aura that kept people at a distance.

Next to the gateposts, some faded warning signs can still be seen. The illegible symbols on them have been eroded by rain and moss, but the outline of "No Entry" is still faintly discernible, revealing a sense of vigilance from an old era.

Arthur knew that these old prohibitions were just a facade; the real vigilance was the invisible yet pervasive alertness that filled the air at this moment.

His heartbeat remained steady and disciplined, almost in sync with the sound of the wind and the breathing of his teammates.

He took a deep breath of the cold night wind, the biting chill temporarily suppressing the weariness that permeated his heart.

The improved tactical equipment clung tightly to his body, which, while causing a slight sense of constraint, also gave him the confidence to confront the unknown.

The equipment included reinforced bulletproof vests, noise-canceling boots, and miniature headphones that could filter out ambient noise.

He is no longer the energetic young detective he was twenty years ago, trying to fight against the darkness within the system using the rules.

The weariness on his face was completely swallowed by the night, leaving only his weathered eyes, which were sharper than ever before, like the eyes of a night owl, vigilantly scanning every inch of the surrounding land and every swaying blade of grass.

Arthur gripped the handle of his revolver tightly, his fingertips able to feel the cool metallic texture—the weight of an old companion, and the most direct source of his confidence in fighting this insane world.

He had seen far too many abandoned military bases like this.

They are the dumping grounds used by the "American Dream" company to dispose of "out-of-place" things, and also the breeding ground for madness beneath the city.

The Finch Labs chose this location as a secret base, which suited the arrogance and secrecy that elite scientists typically require.

Lina Kaplan, the young female team member responsible for technical support, who was standing next to him, was currently operating the modified terminal on her wrist.

The faint blue light emitted from the terminal screen cast flickering shadows on her focused face.

Lina's brows were tightly furrowed, and each light tap of her finger was precise and cautious.

On the terminal screen, real-time data transmitted by Isabella Rossi via an encrypted line was displayed, and the blueprint for the outer defenses of Finch Labs was slowly unfolding in the air in a three-dimensional holographic form.

It's like a miniature fortress made of code and dots of light, gleaming with a cold, eerie light in the darkness.

To Arthur, each flashing dot of light represented a potentially deadly threat: it could be an infrared laser array, a biometric access control system, or a trigger bomb.

It could even be a perceptual trap invisible to the naked eye, caused by some kind of "reality distortion".

Lena's fingers slid precisely, marking the team's route on the holographic map and avoiding the numerous potential dangers.

"Thermal imaging feedback shows that the western patrol team has just completed a shift change and will not return within 35 minutes." Isabella's voice came through the miniature earpiece, calm and professional, with a sense of detachment from the scene.

Her voice rang in Arthur's ears, as if from another world, yet it was their only clear guide in this unknown region.

"Stealth along the third perimeter wall line. Watch out for the acoustic sensor at the bottom; it's showing as abnormally active on the blueprint. The signal interference is still being assessed," Isabella's voice continued, each word conveying the necessary information precisely.

Although her voice remained as calm as ever, Arthur could still detect a subtle tension in it, like a tightrope walker who calculated every step with perfect precision, yet remained on edge.

This tension quietly reached Arthur's heart, reminding him that even with detailed intelligence and superior technology, they were still facing an unimaginably powerful adversary.

He lowered his voice and gave hand signals to the team members behind him, instructing them to follow his route, with each step precise down to the tip of their toes on the moss, avoiding any noise.

The team members responded silently; they were all handpicked by Arthur, seasoned veterans skilled in nighttime stealth.

Like ghosts blending into the night, they crawled forward, carefully crouching behind the bushes, their heartbeats seemingly merging with the deathly silence of the night, each heartbeat like a drumbeat on a battlefield.

Dozens of meters away, a dilapidated cement wall riddled with bullet holes stood out, covered with thick vines that trembled slightly in the night wind.

A few rusty steel bars peeked out from the cracks in the wall, reflecting a faint light under the dim starlight—evidence that this base had once been ravaged by artillery fire.

Arthur once arrested several drug dealers here, and also disposed of several dismembered "Gundam" remains here.

Everything here demonstrates the cheapness of life and the utter collapse of rules.

Every step they took teetered on the edge of life and death, and the ground beneath them seemed to have become soft and unsettling because it had buried so many souls.

They knew that this infiltration was the first blow to the stability maintainers' defense system, a challenge to the company that controlled the "American Dream".

Finch Laboratory is an important part of it; breaching it would be tantamount to cutting a hole in the enemy's heart.

Success or failure will determine Lin Zheng's fate, as well as their own future.

Arthur felt his palms sweating slightly; it wasn't from nervousness, but rather his body's instinctive warning of danger.

He lowered his voice and used the fewest words possible to give his team members a final tactical confirmation: "Route confirmed, infiltration. Lina, report on the real-time jamming situation."

Lena didn't answer immediately. She stared intently at the terminal screen on her wrist. The data stream on the screen refreshed rapidly like an electric current, and she tried to find even the slightest abnormality.

In a secret safe house a few hundred meters away, Ava Sterling sat in front of a holographic map, her expression focused and devoid of any superfluous emotion.

A huge holographic projection floated in front of her, a detailed three-dimensional model of the Finch Laboratory, from the core facilities deep underground to every wall and watchtower on the surface, all clearly visible.

With a light tap of her slender fingertips, she precisely marked all the known physics and subtle sensory traps surrounding Finch's laboratory, ensuring that Arthur's team could find the best entry point.

Ava ran her fingers over an area marked "Pressure Fluctuation Zone," which represented an invisible trap that could be triggered by mental fluctuations, far more difficult to avoid than infrared and biometrics.

The data provided by Isabella was more detailed than she had expected, which greatly increased the success rate of the operation.

This confirms that her investment in Isabella was correct, although the spy's true intentions remain shrouded in mystery.

Every tiny movement, every data update, reveals that they are already at the forefront of a silent war—a contest of information and confrontation.

She recalled details Isabella had mentioned in her previous report about the internal divisions within the Department of Reality Stability regarding the Utopian Project, and Theodore Sterling's subtle suspicions about Professor Finch.

These internal cracks are the key to their ability to penetrate this seemingly airtight system.

Ava's gaze finally settled on the lower right corner of the Finch Lab model, an inconspicuous corner.

It was marked by a red dot, with the note: "Abandoned maintenance passage, unrecorded, depth unknown, possibly leading to the third basement level."

This passage is the only part of the blueprint that is not fully monitored by the company's system, and it is also the only "live-up door".

"Arthur, you're heading south." Ava's voice, transmitted directly to Arthur's miniature earpiece via encrypted communication, was calm and unquestionable.

"Adjust your orientation to five degrees west of northwest, and move towards the abandoned watchtower three hundred meters to your right front of your current location," she instructed precisely, her gaze sweeping across the real-time location on the holographic map.

Without hesitation, Arthur gestured to his team members, silently changing direction.

The mud underfoot was slippery, mixed with some gravel, so you had to be extra careful with every step to avoid making a sound.

They bypassed a pile of abandoned military equipment wreckage, which had long been corroded beyond recognition, leaving only twisted steel skeletons that presented a grotesque shape in the moonlight.

Those cold steel pieces, once powerful weapons of war, now lie silently on the wasteland like works of art made of death.

"Right below the watchtower, there is an entrance hidden by thick vines," Ava's voice broke the silence once more.

"That was the only 'trapdoor,' an underground maintenance passage. Our initial assessment is that it might lead directly to the lower levels of the Finch Laboratory."

Arthur's eyes were fixed on the area covered by vines, the green curtain trembling slightly in the night breeze, like a breathing monster.

This is similar to the secret entrances he discovered when he was struggling in the lower classes.

Those crucial passageways that have been forgotten by society are often hidden in the most inconspicuous corners.

When they reached the base of the watchtower, the smell of decay became even stronger, as if time had eroded everything here, leaving behind only the most primal decay.

He parted the tangled vines, the thick stems and leaves rustling under his fingertips.

Beneath the vines, a rusty iron plate suddenly appeared before our eyes. It was half-covered by thick weeds and soil, and its edges had completely blended into the soil, making it almost impossible to recognize its original shape.

There was a noticeable gap in the center of the iron plate, which seemed to be the joint of some kind of gate or hatch, and the edges were also badly corroded.

He touched the metal plate with his fingertips, and the icy touch instantly penetrated his gloves and reached his nerve endings, as if he were touching a metallic corpse.

A musty, stale smell, mixed with some indescribable moldy odor, wafted towards him and filled his nostrils.

It was the deathly stillness accumulated from the long-term closure and lack of sunlight in the underground space, and also a manifestation of some kind of ominous premonition.

The modified terminal on Lina's wrist suddenly emitted a short, sharp beep, a sound that seemed to tear through the night or a desperate wail on the verge of collapse.

The normally flowing data stream on the screen was instantly replaced by a string of meaningless numbers. Those numbers were changing rapidly, without any logic, twisting and intertwining, as if they came from some disordered dimension.

These were not error codes, but rather a strange set of symbols that Arthur had never seen before, wriggling on the screen like living things.

Immediately afterwards, the terminal display returned to normal, and the data stream continued to flow steadily, as if nothing had ever happened.

However, Lina's face suddenly turned pale, and her pupils contracted slightly. Clearly, she had also seen the string of numbers and was shocked by the strange phenomenon within them.

Arthur also caught the anomaly of that moment; the mysterious string of numbers lingered in his mind, triggering the most primal alarm bells deep within him.

He looked at Lina, whose eyes were filled with fear, but it was quickly replaced by professional composure. She tried to recalibrate the terminal, but to no avail.

He knew this was neither a coincidence nor a simple equipment malfunction.

Beneath this so-called "abandoned" iron plate, it seems, lies a mechanical heart, throbbing continuously deep underground with a faint and muffled resonance.

The resonance was not a physical impact, but a kind of invisible and intangible tremor that made the soil beneath one's feet tremble slightly.

This resonance was so subtle yet so real that it made Arthur's heart clench suddenly.

This "abandoned" passageway seemed far more "alive" than they had imagined, and it concealed some deeper secret that did not belong to this era.

The faint sounds emanating from beneath the iron plate, and the rapidly disappearing, meaningless string of numbers on Lina's terminal screen, silently testified that they had just touched upon something far beyond the security boundaries of Finch Labs, reaching into an existence that was even more ancient and terrifying beneath this land.

Arthur looked up. The military base under the cover of night rustled in the wind. The sound was no longer the whisper of ghosts, but the soft breathing of some enormous being in its sleep. And they were standing on the throat of this behemoth.