Chapter 1
In our third year of surviving the wasteland, my companions and I finally realized it was all a reality show.
The elites and billionaires on the outside had built a massive dome, tossing us into this irradiated hellhole to be tortured. They broadcasted it globally, watching us drink toxic wastewater and eat mutated meat, treating us like monkeys in a zoo.
The mole in our team knelt in the mud, sobbing, begging me to understand that it was all a script—that as long as I played along, I could live.
Without a second thought, I swung my blade. Right in front of ten million VIP viewers, I chopped off his leg.
"Crappy script," I sneered, kicking aside the severed limbs and blood on the floor. Gripping my machete, I walked toward the real world beyond the heavy gates.
To those who used our lives for entertainment: I'm coming for yours.
Chapter 1
My name is Arthur.
It’s been exactly three years since our entire community was inexplicably transported to this wasteland world.
Out of the hundred-plus neighbors who crossed over with our block of row houses, only the five of us in this shack are still breathing. The rest were claimed by radiation, starvation, and mutant beast attacks over the past three years.
As a former ordinary man of modern society, I had to force myself to swallow irradiated dead rat meat just to survive. I had to force myself to become more bloodthirsty than the native wastelanders.
This is "Black Iron Town," the largest survivor settlement within a hundred-mile radius.
Outside is a wasteland crawling with wandering raiders who would stab each other in the back for half a moldy cracker.
Our shack sat on the very edge of the settlement.
Cobbled together from scrap tin sheets and greasy tarps, the soundproofing was utterly non-existent. We could clearly hear the wet, squelching sounds of streetwalkers taking clients in the alley outside, accompanied by the sharp cracking of slave traders' whips on prisoners of war.
"Arthur, water..." In the corner, Elena curled up in agony, her neck completely covered in the red patches of radiation sickness.
Once a bright college student in our old community, she had been tortured by this world into a mere skeleton of her former self.
Without looking up, I pushed the last half-canteen of filtered mud-water toward her, my hands mechanically sharpening my tactical knife.
"Luke has been out for three days," Marcus pushed up his broken glasses, held together by duct tape, and lowered his voice. "The Mayor—the 'Butcher'—has his hyenas watching the town entrance every single day. If Luke comes back empty-handed and can't even pay the head tax, he’ll definitely be thrown into the mutant dog pen."
"Shut your damn mouth. We’ve survived this long together; Luke won’t die easily," Gail snapped, aggressively racking the bolt of his makeshift scrap-shotgun.
Right at that moment—Bang!
The rickety wooden door of our shack was violently smashed open.
A thick stench of blood poured into the room.
Luke collapsed into the dirt like a torn sack. The entire left side of his body had been ripped open by some sharp weapon, the gash so deep that bone was visible.
"Ran into wandering raiders?!" Gail scrambled to block the door.
"No..." Luke desperately clutched at my combat boot. His bloodshot eyes were filled with absolute shock. "Arthur... south of Death Canyon, the outer layer of rock got stripped away by the storm... It revealed a door underneath!"
"A pre-war underground bunker?! Are there supplies inside?!" Marcus's eyes instantly lit up. That was the most valuable treasure in the wasteland.
"No... I don't know what it is." Luke's voice trembled. "It’s pure titanium! Not a single spot of rust, smooth as the surface of water. When I got close, a rectangular piece of black glass on it seemed to catch the light, and right next to it... there was something like a camera lens..."
Dead silence.
Gail and Elena froze, while my pupils slightly contracted.
In a wasteland that couldn't even manufacture a basic screw, unrusted titanium and glass?
"What’s in there? A pre-war high-tech armory that still has power?" Gail gulped.
"I don't know! That lens was looking at me, it felt... it felt like someone was watching me!" Luke clutched his head, on the verge of a breakdown. "Arthur, what if it's not ruins in there? What if there was no nuclear war outside, and someone is just watching us?!"
"Enough, Luke. You're hallucinating from the radiation," Marcus sharply cut him off, analyzing the situation with chilling rationality. "This is the cruel wasteland. We’ve lost over a hundred of our people just to survive until today. Who would be watching us?
"That has to be an exceptionally well-maintained, high-tier pre-war vault. The anti-radiation meds in there might be enough to save Elena's life!"
CRASH——!!!
Before Marcus could finish, the door to our shack was violently kicked into wooden splinters.
Five heavily scarred wasteland raiders barged in, assault rifles raised.
Leading them was Ironfang, a captain under the Mayor's command.
"Having a nice chat, huh?" Ironfang sneered, scanning the room before his greedy eyes locked onto Luke. "Arthur, my boys told me a one-armed brother of yours ran all the way back from Death Canyon, sneaking around. The Mayor gave the word. Heard you rats found an unlooted pre-war ruin? Hand over the coordinates, and I'll spare your lives!"
Seeing the signature greedy gleam of a wasteland hyena on Ironfang's face, I narrowed my eyes slightly.
Were they just conveniently tipped off and wanted to steal the ruins? Or... was this group sent by a higher power to silence us, to cover up the existence of that door?
Before that mystery could be fully unraveled, I knew only one thing: if we handed over the coordinates or let them take us, we were dead.
"Ironfang." I slowly raised my hands in a posture of surrender, though my eyes were icy cold. "You want the coordinates, right?"
"Smart boy..." Ironfang chuckled, taking a step forward.
The very instant he let his guard down, my raised right hand struck like a venomous snake, seizing the barrel of his submachine gun and violently jerking it upward!
Rat-tat-tat-tat! A burst of bullets fired harmlessly into the ceiling.
In that exact same second, my left hand drew the tactical knife. A blur of silver flashed, directly piercing Ironfang's throat!
I fluidly wrenched the gun from his dying grip. Muzzle flashes illuminated the cramped shack as three precise bursts of fire shredded the necks of two other raiders.
Gail roared, leaping at the final man, wresting his machete away and hacking him to death.
Less than four seconds.
The Mayor's squad had been reduced to corpses.
"Arthur! Are you insane?!" Marcus shrieked, his face deathly pale. "You killed Ironfang! The Mayor's army of thousands will skin us alive!"
"Then we leave before they surround us!"
I stripped the ammo off Ironfang’s body, hauled Luke up from the floor, and snarled at the remaining three, "Whether it’s high-tech gear in there, or some mastermind pulling the strings, that door is our only way out of here alive!"
In the distance, the chaotic, blaring horns of Black Iron Town's raiders assembling were already echoing through the night.
I cast one look toward Death Canyon, which gaped like an abyss in the night wind, and racked the bolt of my gun. "Move! We're going to that door!"---
