Special Operator 3, Yarn Loretz; Shock Trooper 2, Amadeus Io.

They exited the armored van. As soon as the scouts appeared, the van left. A little unsure about how to cooperate with the scouts, the two soldiers saluted.

"SO3 Loretz, Yarn, reporting." "TS2 Io, Amadeus, reporting."

"Pleasure to meet you all," James greeted. Two revolvers stuck out of his left side, while there was a sheathed knife on his right. He also carried a short spear, a Diliman-pattern steel-core one, about 1.5 meters in length. He had a light backpack, carrying rations for a few days and some extra tools.

Acknowledging his greeting, the pair put their hands down.

In truth, Cain called for both of them and told them "You will liaise with Diliman's scouts to recover parts for the Contract Terminal from the 17th. Ask Lt. Coronel for the details."

Then when they came to Coronel, they were just told, "You are to meet with the scouts tomorrow at 0600 and cooperate with them to bring Terminal parts back from the 17th. Do not expect resupply for the duration of the mission. Report daily."

The two were given a string of coordinates, labeled "17AC Command Post", and a note saying "Avoid the locals". These were apparently sent by the 17th about a month ago, and they hadn't been responding to radio queries ever since. There had apparently been an attempt to send a more detailed document from their side, but the connection was interrupted, and whatever was transferred was too fragmented to meaningfully piece together.

This could've been a mission to find out what happened to the 17th, but their primary objective was to repair the Contract Terminal. Their unit couldn't spare manpower for much else.

Back to the present, James introduced the two soldiers to the others.

"You should be familiar with these two. This is Aurelia and Karlson. The new one is Tristan."

The scouts nodded as they were named, though Tristan kept his head low. All in all, there were only six people going on this mission. Karlson had his shotgun once again, and a backpack about as big as James'. Aurelia carried handguns and a large backpack, about three times the size of her peers', entirely unbothered. Like James, she carried a steel-core spear. Tristan just had a handgun and a machete, carrying a heavy pack just a size smaller than Aurelia's.

As for why Tristan was here, James thought he was being useless just staying in jail. The guy didn't have any cards to play, or motivation to play at all. Since Aurelia was here, he should remain as tame a baggage carrier as any.

"Permission to speak, sir," Loretz said, facing James with a straight back.

"What is it?"

"Yes sir, the sister unit at our destination has gone MIA. Even with Ma'am Aurelia's combat power, I doubt that only the six of us would be able to accomplish the mission."

James also had reservations about this mission. The worst-case scenario was that that entire Bio-Police unit had been wiped out. In such a case, they were attempting to wrest away resources from whoever or whatever had the power to defeat an entire Bio-Police unit, and they'd be forced to make some tricky maneuvers.

Coronel also sent him a bunch of other details, but they did little to affect the initial strategy.

"No, yeah, I also talked to Coronel about that," James replied, "Lucky for us, we have about three, maybe four weeks for the mission, so we'll take it nice and slow and properly stake out the place."

The answer was a bit unsettlingly vague, but they had correspondingly little choice.

"Another thing, sir."

James eyed him, prompting him to continue.

"I understand that our unit liaises with you as a spokesperson for Diliman. Why did you come personally?"

"Huh, you don't know? Mendosa is representing Diliman now."

"However, Lieutenant Coronel holds you in high regard, still. In that case—"

"According to the sparse information that Coronel provided, as well as what I personally know, there should be a survivor concentration in Pasig City, possibly one much larger than Diliman, and I'd like to think that they must have created some sort of order there. I'm the only person with half the cardio to run away from danger, and all the mindfulness to spot small details about a society that anyone else would miss, which makes me the best person to decide whether they'll be a danger in the future or not."

To determine if Pasig City hosted a potential ally or a potential threat—such a reason disarmed Loretz from asking any further.

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They finally started travelling. They would stop over at a hideout in Madaluyong City first.

James asked Io and Loretz to allow splitting the group into two teams: Io, Tristan, and Karlson; and Loretz, Aurelia, and himself.

"What for?" Loretz asked.

"When we're traveling through gridded streets, we try to keep one team back to hold down a junction while the other team moves forward. When it's clear, the rear team moves forward to the next junction. Guarantees a path of retreat and all."

They adopted this formation to safely navigate labyrinthine urban territory.

Metro Manila was a conurbation of 16 cities, with travel being facilitated by several arterial highways; a series of circumferential and radial roads, all centered around or originating from the namesake City of Manila.

Theoretically, this would have made automotive transit nice and systematic.

However, anything that wasn't already right next to that artery network—majority of Metro Manila—was a complete shitshow maze with little consideration for urban planning.

The most direct route from Diliman to Pasig City was Circumferential Road 5, or more commonly called "C-5", which would lead them south from Diliman, skirting against the western edge of Pasig City. Though more or less a straight shot, this was horrible territory for the scouts to travel along.

If all they had to worry about were zombies, it would have been at least slightly advantageous, considering that they could just use binoculars and check if the next 300 or so meters were safe. However, this didn't outweigh the disadvantages.

First, James believed that Pasig City was occupied by a large number of survivors. This would also mean that they would start encountering survivors at its outskirts, and there was little to say that they wouldn't be sniped at by some professional bandits or the like.

Second, much of C-5 was stretches of walled-off road, which is to say that one could only go forwards or backwards in those places; high walls on either side, about 30 meters high, partitioned the busy urban highway from gated communities on the other side. With such unscalable heights, they couldn't assure themselves of a decent escape route in case two hordes closed on them from both ends at the same time.

For that latter reason, the scouts generally preferred to deal with navigating an urban shitshow maze, with plenty of hiding spots and potential escape routes, rather than taking the 1% risk of being surrounded on what should've been a casual stroll.

By the afternoon, they arrived in one of the Scout Group's hideouts in Mandaluyong City. The city itself was generally filled with mid- and high-rises, with more high-rises to the south than north.

The hideout they were in was an apartment on the 10th floor of a mid-rise occupying the corner at an intersection. It was a two-room corner apartment with minimal furnishings for five people. They would have to walk the hallways, but it was possible to view Manila City to the west. From the apartment itself, they had a view of the rest of Mandaluyong City to the south, and parts of Pasig City to the east. They couldn't see past the high-rises to the south, but much of Pasig City was as clear as day. It might even be possible to look for possible survivor movements from here—though, the scouts had never had the resources nor impetus to carry out such a stakeout, which would waste too much time by just idling away, cooped up in an apartment.

Well, anyway, at least one of the destroyed bridges was in view.

Pasig City itself was was separated from the rest of Metro Manila by the namesake Pasig River to its south and Marikina River to its west. Hence, bridges were the only access points. They weren't impressive bridges, but even a 10-meter river crossing wasn't a joke to fall into, so what could they do to against a 50-meter gap at the narrowest?

From the Mandaluyong side, there should have been five bridges they could've used to cross into Pasig City. At least two of them were destroyed.

James and Karlson had already been here a few times, incidentally taking the time to survey parts of the area. They weren't able to confirm the status of the three other bridges, however.

Night had fallen.

"Huh, that's handy," Aurelia remarked. James was zooming in and out of a map on his smartphone. The screen was dimmed to the dimmest possible level in an effort to get it to last just a day longer, and James was angrily squinting at it, copying down fine details from a picture of a hand-inked map.

"You'd better believe I took my sweet time perfectly copying every major detail from whatever I downloaded from GMaps before they all expired. Why couldn't they have made it not expire, huh?!"

After James finished cursing certain corporations for enforcing user dependency on proprietary systems, he also finished sketching out the general layout of the border between Mandaluyong and Pasig.

They were currently close to the northernmost bridge, which they could see out the window. That bridge was part of Radial Road 5, or R-5, which intersected with C-5 just before the destroyed bridge. As part of the artery network, it was six lanes wide, which made it little wonder why it would be so thoroughly destroyed to hold off the onslaught of the Outbreak.

James and Karlson previously confirmed that the next bridge south of that was also destroyed. It was just a two-lane bridge, but a bridge, nonetheless.

All the other bridges past that, they hadn't seen yet. There should be a four-lane one, and the rest should only have two lanes.

"We don't have a choice," James said, "Either we take high ground and luckily we'll see those bridges, or we go on foot and visit them one by one."

"Risky…" Karlson muttered. The guy seemed to steel himself for the inevitable.

"Hey, Loretz," Io whispered, leaning into Loretz who was standing beside him. Amadeus' armor made him look more imposing, but the two otherwise had the same stature.

"What is it?"

"Can't we use a Micro?"

"Some of the briges look too far away. The Micro's got a max range of a kilometer at best."

"Then… Can't we just send it a kilometer straight up? The camera's not that piss-poor, can't it?"

Loretz paused, a bit taken aback by the no-nonsense suggestion. It might just work.

"Excuse me, all."

Just as the room went silent on ideas, he announced this, and everyone looked to him.

"We have a very-short-range reconnaisance drone. If we send it straight up, we might be able to see the other bridges."

Karlson and Aurelia looked to James.

"…Let's do that, then?" he replied, "It doesn't happen to have night vision, does it?"

"It does, sir, but I can't guarantee the image quality."

"Fine, fine, we'll do it in the morning."

James leaned back from his seat, covering his eyes in thought, before continuing:

"We'll stake out the closest intact bridge. If there's just piles of rocks—it might be faster to cross on a boat or something."

James and Karlson shivered at the thought of being so close to the water again. Getting dragged along by the current wasn't fun the first time around.

Having six members, but only furnishings for five people, Aurelia and James ended up sharing a blanket, leaving Tristan to feel just a little bit lonely.