"Go, go, go!" Xun Zhihao screamed as he directed his men into the tunnel. Hundreds of soldiers rushed through the entrance every minute, their weapons ready as they advanced into what appeared to be an abandoned mine. The appearance alone was suspicious because there were almost no abandoned man-made structures remaining outside the major cities after the world had reset itself during the expansion. An abandoned mine in such a remote location was therefore not something Xun could simply dismiss as an old structure.
Then again, Xun thought as he watched another group of soldiers disappear into the tunnel, the location itself was incredibly remote. He briefly looked toward the mountainous terrain surrounding them before turning his attention back toward the operation. The world had changed in ways that people had still not fully understood, and humanity was slowly discovering that the land itself had once again become mysterious. It was no longer true that only the ocean contained places humans had not thoroughly explored.
The latest statistics estimated that humanity had explored only around twenty percent of Earth's surface. That number would have sounded absurd to people living before the expansion, because by 2099 humanity had explored almost the entirety of the accessible surface of the planet. There had been a few exceptions, such as portions of the Arctic and other extremely hostile environments, but for the most part, humanity had mapped, surveyed, photographed, and visited almost everywhere. Now, vast portions of the newly expanded world remained unknown.
Xun finally stepped through the mine entrance and immediately noticed something strange. Despite the intensity of the fighting, there were almost no bodies anywhere along the tunnel. There were certainly wounded soldiers, with some receiving treatment after swords had managed to slip beneath their armor or arrows had found unlucky gaps in their protection. Yet there were no corpses lying around, even in areas where the fighting had clearly been intense.
For a moment, Xun wondered whether something had gone wrong. Then he remembered what happened to corrupted humans when they died. Their bodies disappeared into smoke, just like the corrupted creatures that had been reclaimed by the System, and even the blood they left behind would eventually disappear with them. The lack of bodies therefore did not mean that his soldiers were failing to kill their opponents. If anything, it meant they were fighting the correct targets.
"Hey, did you find something?" Xun asked as he approached his deputy captain. The man was standing to one side of the tunnel while reading several documents that had been recovered from inside the facility. His expression was extremely serious, with his face twisted into the sort of expression someone might make after eating something particularly sour. Xun immediately knew that whatever was written on those papers was not something pleasant.
The deputy captain looked up but did not immediately answer. He simply held the papers slightly higher, his eyes moving between the documents and the dark tunnel ahead. There was something deeply unsettling about the information they had recovered, and even a soldier accustomed to dangerous situations seemed disturbed by it. Xun reached out for the papers, already wondering what kind of organization they had stumbled upon.
Meanwhile, the situation inside the United States Capitol was continuing to deteriorate. The Senate floor remained in an uproar after the death of Senator Luke, while journalists and politicians struggled to understand what had happened and what they should do next. Amid the chaos, an incredibly flustered camera operator and interviewer were being led away from the Senate chamber by several masked men. Neither of them had any idea where they were being taken.
"Please tell me what you want," Anders Shaw asked nervously. He was visibly shivering as he stood in front of a senator's office whose door had been locked moments earlier. Anders worked for a group of YouTubers who operated their own independent news outlet and had wanted their own video feed inside Washington. He had thought the job would involve filming politicians, asking questions, and occasionally reporting on something interesting, but he was beginning to regret accepting it.
His cameraman did not look any happier. He was carrying the camera using a specialized harness that allowed him to move quickly without losing control of the recording equipment. Despite the chaos surrounding them, the camera was still recording everything, which meant that Anders knew their viewers were seeing exactly what was happening. The fact that thousands or even millions of people might be watching did absolutely nothing to make him feel safer.
"Nothing complicated," one of the masked men replied. His voice was filled with barely restrained anger. "Just use your eyes and show all of your viewers what kind of monsters they have elected." Anders swallowed nervously as he looked toward the senator's office. The masked man's choice of words did not exactly reassure him about what he was about to see.
"What is that?" Anders asked when the office door suddenly opened. Instead of revealing an ordinary office, the doorway exposed a massive gap in the wall that seemed to descend into darkness. There should not have been anything like that beneath the senator's office, and Anders immediately realized that he had stumbled upon something that had been deliberately hidden. The sight alone made his stomach tighten.
"Don't ask questions," the masked man ordered. "Just follow us." He pointed toward the entrance before adding, "And this is the senator who owns this office." Anders looked toward the name displayed on the office and immediately recognized it. Charles Armstrong, Speaker of the House and one of the most powerful politicians in the country, had apparently possessed a secret passage hidden beneath his office.
The realization spread through the journalists like electricity. Their cameraman adjusted his equipment while Anders stared at the opening, trying to understand what kind of place could be hidden beneath the Capitol. There was no opportunity to ask further questions because the masked men had already started moving. Anders reluctantly followed, knowing that refusing would probably be a very bad idea.
By this point, the major news channels had switched to Anders's video feed. Their viewership had been dropping rapidly the longer they remained focused on the Senate floor, and there was little else they could show their audiences. Every other available camera angle either showed chaos or repeated footage of Luke's death, while Anders was now providing something completely new. Even the news organizations that desperately wanted to stop the broadcast had no practical way to do so.
"And be prepared," one of the masked men warned as they descended the stairs. "If you have a weak stomach, it gets pretty graphic." Anders wanted to ask what he meant, but the question died in his throat when the smell reached him. He immediately recognized it as the smell of blood, something he had become familiar with after fighting in the front lines in the trail. He had never expected to encounter that smell beneath the United States Capitol.
The deeper they went, the stronger the smell became. Anders tried to focus on keeping his breathing steady, but his body was already reacting before his mind fully understood what was happening. His cameraman remained behind him, continuing to record despite the obvious discomfort. Neither man wanted to see what was waiting below, but neither had any choice.
Eventually, Anders stepped down the final stair.
What he saw nearly broke him.
Rows upon rows of cells stretched across the underground chamber, each one containing the remains of people who had clearly been imprisoned there for a long time. Some of the corpses had dried out until they resembled mummies, while others had been left to rot where they had fallen. The sheer number of bodies made it impossible to believe that this had been an isolated incident, and the conditions inside the cells suggested that countless people had suffered before meeting their end. Then Anders noticed the newest corpses, including more than a hundred women and children who had only recently died, their bodies still chained inside the cells.
These latest victims looked as though they had been exhausted beyond anything a human being should have to endure. Their bodies were painfully thin, their faces drained of color, and their limbs lay motionless against the cold floors. Yet there was something about their final expressions that made Anders pause, because not all of them appeared to have died in terror. Several seemed to have passed away with a faint trace of relief on their faces, as though the end had finally brought them something they had been denied for far too long.
Then Anders noticed the masked men moving among the cells.
As they approached the newest corpses, he began to understand the strange expressions frozen on their faces. These people had not been grateful because someone had finally arrived to rescue them while they were still alive. They had been grateful because their suffering had finally ended, and death had released them from the nightmare in which they had been trapped. Even in their final moments, they had apparently understood that they would never have to endure another day in that place.
That realization made the scene even more horrifying for Anders.
He had expected to find evidence of cruelty, but he had not expected to find people whose only remaining hope had been the end of their own suffering. The thought that these women and children might have welcomed death as their only escape was almost impossible for him to comprehend. He stared at their lifeless faces, trying to reconcile the faint peace in their expressions with the terrible circumstances that had brought them there.
He could not take it anymore.
Anders vomited where he stood, his body finally rejecting what his eyes had been forced to witness. His cameraman followed only moments later, barely managing to turn his head before becoming sick himself. Fortunately, the camera feed remained relatively steady because the cameraman was using a harness that kept the equipment secured against his body. The audience watching at home therefore received an incredibly clear view of the underground chamber.
It was not much better for the people watching.
The footage was being broadcast with such clarity that many viewers felt as though they were standing inside the chamber themselves. Some people desperately wished that television technology was less advanced because they could see details that previous generations would have been unable to perceive. People who had been eating dinner suddenly found themselves staring at images of corpses, chained prisoners, and an underground facility hidden beneath the capital. For many viewers, this was their first truly direct encounter with the reality of corrupted humans.
And now it was no longer only people living in cities with electricity who could see it. Gaia had decided that this was an opportunity too important to waste, so every human group containing more than fifty people was shown a screen displaying the broadcast. Villages, settlements, military camps, isolated communities, and other groups scattered throughout the world suddenly received access to the same footage. Gaia wanted humanity to see what corrupted humans were capable of doing rather than hearing about them through rumors and secondhand reports.
She had watched people across the world begin discussing human rights for corrupted humans, and she found the very idea both ridiculous and, unfortunately, understandable. Most humans had never personally encountered corrupted people or seen what they were capable of doing. Their only real experience had been the crisis in Europe three years earlier, when a secret realm had erupted and the world had watched the disaster unfold. Outside of that event, most knowledge about corrupted humans came from news reports, stories from soldiers, or rumors passed between communities.
That lack of direct experience made humanity vulnerable.
People could not easily understand something they had never personally encountered, and corrupted humans had therefore benefited from the distance between themselves and the rest of humanity. Gaia knew that some people would still defend them after seeing the footage, but she also knew that many others would finally understand why the military and the Church treated corrupted humans as such a severe threat. The images now being shown were not propaganda or a rumor. They were real people, real prisoners, and real evidence of what the Void's followers had been doing.
"Ha, you think this is bad?" the masked man said, his voice filled with anger. He looked toward Anders as the journalist struggled to recover from what he had seen. "You haven't seen anything yet." The man paused before continuing, "Why else do you think we are so angry about the people you elected?"
Anders slowly raised his head.
"No," the masked man continued, his voice becoming colder. "The real reason we are angry is this." He walked toward another door and motioned for the journalists to follow him. Anders hesitated, but the camera continued recording as they moved deeper into the underground facility. Whatever awaited them beyond that door was apparently something the masked men believed the entire world needed to see.
The door opened.
Beyond it was the enormous pit the assassins had discovered earlier, roughly five meters across and filled almost completely with bones. The bottom could not even be seen beneath the countless remains piled inside, and the sheer quantity made it impossible to determine how many people had died there. Anders stared down into the pit with horror while his cameraman slowly adjusted the camera to capture the entire thing. The world watching the broadcast finally understood that the horrors inside the Capitol went far beyond the cells they had already seen.
"Now I want you to stay here and show the world what happened," the masked man ordered. His voice shook with anger as he continued explaining what they wanted the journalists to record. "Have your cameraman film your officers removing every bone individually, then show the world how deep this pit really is." He looked down into the darkness for another moment before turning away.
The masked man clearly did not want to remain there any longer.
He walked back toward the exit without waiting for Anders to respond. Anders remained beside the pit, still visibly shaken, while his cameraman continued recording the evidence that had been hidden beneath the Capitol.