Ulyanov wore his full face helmet all the time except when he was back in the base. The helmet was part of his signature appearance. He wore the helmet not to look cool, or use it as armour. He wore it to keep himself alive, and cover up his horrifying face.

A man with a face even a mother could not love sat behind a desk and fiddled with his equipment. His face was hardly human; large patches of skin were gone, and metal grew within his exposed muscles and bones. Electronic circuits connected to one of his eyeb.a.l.l.s, preventing it from dropping off. A metal tube with a valve was fixed where his nose once was. From it, another tube connected it to a cylinder next to the desk. What was left of his teeth was just a row of metal.

Under the helmet, Ulyanov's true, hidden face was that of a cyborg—a combination of man and machine. It was so strange and terrifying that even Hao Ren was shocked despite having seen many strange things before.

"You are..." Hao Ren could not hide his surprise. "What happened to you?"

"Sixty-five years ago, I worked near the sea of Nano studying whether the Nanomachine Swarm could be used to develop s.p.a.ce colonies," the remaining muscles on Ulyanov's face twitching with the flexible metal, seemingly smiling at Hao Ren. But the smile was even more terrible than Y'zaks was. "I didn't manage to escape when the Masters computer hung. One third of my body melted."

While saying, Ulyanov opened his coat slightly, revealing a transparent chest plate underneath. Malformed internal and artificial organs slowly pulsating in a pale pink solution, as if a cyborg walking out from a horror movie.

"I am one of the few survivors of the disaster. May the longest living one too," said Ulyanov, pointing to the bed next to him to motion Hao Ren to sit down. "Ahh, you probably won't be interested about this. You find me for something?"

Hao Ren had just recovered from shock. He as suddenly lost for words. He sat down on the bed nervously and then said, "I just want to ask... Who should I inform if I need to leave the base?"

"Leave the base?" Ulyanov's voice puzzled. "Where are you going?"

"Just take a stroll, and check out my new home," Hao Ren shrugged. "And I can't keep bothering you all the time. I'm not planning to join any group. I'll leave when the time comes."

"I know Nolan's character. She probably wouldn't mind if you stayed here because she couldn't have cared less," Ulyanov said with a coa.r.s.e voice, which was not coming out from his mouth but a resonance tube in his throat. His vocal cords had become part of the Nanomachine Swarm decades ago. Now, machine had replaced more than half of his physiological functions. "I understand your circ.u.mstances. I can go out with you if you don't mind; it's my downtime, and furthermore, this place isn't that safe."

"No, no, I don't want to bother you. I was a soldier. I can take care of myself," Hao Ren waved his hand frantically. "I'm here to find out what else I need to do in order to leave the base. After all, this is a military base."

Ulyanov laughed silently. "Relax. Grey Fox doesn't have so many rules, because Nolan is the only rule here. As long as you don't get into trouble with her, no one will bother you."

Hao Ren nodded slightly. Ulyanov took something from his pocket and tossed it to Hao Ren. "Take it. Even if you were not one of us, the Grey Fox ident.i.ty would save you a lot of trouble. You need to have 'military background' to be deemed a human; those without an ident.i.ty are just 'slags' from the factory."

Hao Ren caught the metal plate from Ulyanov. It was a dog tag laser-etched with an insignia of the Grey Fox mercenary regiment. In the chaos of Black Street, a strict set of rule divided and governed people by hierarchy. The leaders and cadres from Zero City were first-cla.s.s humans. Soldiers and brokers of military background were 'citizens'. Those without an ident.i.ty and combat ability were labourers; they were slugs, whose laborious job the Nanomachine Swarm could not replace, working in the filthy factories, and suffering from respiratory and other pollution-related diseases. They relied on coa.r.s.e food and anaesthetic that Nanomachine Swarm produced to keep them living their short life.

Without a military guarantee, visitors who came to Black Street would be sent to the factories in three days. Those who could come out in one piece were rarer than hen's teeth. Even if they could escape this, surviving in the slums of Black Street was no better than the 'slugs' in the factories.

This was the human society after the collapse of civilisation.

Hao Ren had learned a thing or two about Black Street from the internet. He knew about the rules and environment, so he knew that the dog tag was actually a gift from Nolan. To an outsider, this was an extremely valuable item. He carefully kept the dog tag in his pocket and then looked at Ulyanov curiously. "Are other mercenary groups just as amiable as you are?"

"Other?" Ulyanov laughed, his course voice sounding like a broken old bellows. "You either join them or be thrown into the factories. Most mercenary groups are also human traffickers. You should be grateful that you have met Nolan. She is the toughest and most unruly mercenary here. She set the rules herself; she is the rule. Anyone who get her approval, that person would be safe in Black Street; people respect her."

Nolan's face flashed across Hao Ren's mind; the grey-haired, emotionless mercenary girl, whose eyes had cast an indelible impression in Hao Ren. Whenever he thought of her, he thought of the indescribable alienation and vicissitudes in her eyes, as if a detached person who saw through the world looking at life like an unconcerned spectator. Goose b.u.mps would rose from his back every time he thought of these details. He believed that he had seen in Nolan's eyes something that did not belong to her theoretically. "Nolan...how old is she?"

"Seventeen, at most eighteen," Ulyanov said as he looked at Hao Ren's eyes. "Don't ask any more. That is all I know. The warlords in this place fear Nolan; they fear her age. It was said that she a.s.sa.s.sinated two mercenary heads, barehanded, in the cruellest way when she was thirteen. Perhaps you might think you saved her from Khiton, but in fact Nolan has more than one hundred ways to kill all the ambushers she met today."

Hao Ren was stunned. "Is she a superwoman?"

"Some say she is actually a 'third-generation Evolved' but disguising as first generation. Some say she was actually a soldier created before the Far East Alliance fell. You can search for War Men's Plan', it was as real as it could get," Ulyanov shook his head, put the adjusted breath filter back into the helmet, removed the breathing tube from his nose and put on the helmet again. "But I suggest that you better don't believe it and don't ask Nolan to ask it too. Though she is usually very good-tempered, you don't want to anger her because she is unbeatable. Ahh… It feels so good to have the helmet back on my face again."

After putting on his helmet, Ulyanov connected several wires extending from his jacket to his helmet. He then pulled up the alloy zip on his coat, covering himself up from head to toe becoming a biker-like weird soldier. His helmet provided him with a breathing a.s.sistance and continuously released electrical signals to ensure that his severely damaged brain could continue to function. He had a layer of armour beneath his coat that released another signal to suppress the Nanomachine Swarm remnants to prevent those lethal little things from completely cut off his spine. These devices and the artificial organs in the body together formed a strangely deformed body that had prolonged his life for sixty-five years. As long as his brain lived, the body would continue to live longer than any human being could.

Sixty-five years ago, he lost one-third of his body. Sixty-five years later, eighty percent of his body had been renewed and transformed. This level of transformation was unique even in the second generation Evolved. It was difficult to say whether Ulyanov was still a human or a cyborg. But one thing was certain was that this old soldier was still alive until this day.

Why did he insist on living to this day?

Hao Ren looked at Ulyanov's not so burly body. He knew that this disfigured veteran soldier certainly had more stories. But, he had not the opportunity to get to know more. He thanked Ulyanov for telling him so many things today before he left.