Chapter 7: The Silence of the Hunted
The night of the "Spectral Hunt" was long. Even inside the steel-and-concrete fortress of the vault, Klaus did not sleep. The sounds from outside were enough to keep anyone awake. They weren't the desperate gunshots or the screams of panic from previous days—it was something far worse.
It was silence.
A silence broken only by the sharp, electronic hiss of the Specters, a sound that seemed to tear through the very fabric of darkness. It was occasionally followed by a short, muffled scream or a sudden burst of gunfire that stopped almost instantly. The kills were clean, efficient. The hunt wasn't a massacre; it was a harvest.
Through the Thermal Vision Goggles [RARE], Klaus watched it all like a distant god. The Specters' heat signatures were a blinding bluish-white, moving with a supernatural fluidity that defied physics. He saw them gliding through streets, scaling walls effortlessly, their forms contorting to pass through broken windows. They were the perfection of mechanical death.
He saw an orange heat signature—a recruit—trying to hide inside a burning car, relying on the metal to mask his heat. It was useless. A Specter simply passed through the vehicle like a ghost, and the orange signature vanished in the blink of an eye, without a sound.
Another recruit, better equipped, tried to resist in a second-floor apartment. Klaus saw multiple bluish-white signatures converging on the location. There was a brief exchange of fire—the hot tracers of the recruit's bullets streaking the darkness on his visor—and then, silence. The Specters dispersed, leaving behind only the thermal void of death.
It was terrifying. Humiliating. Klaus felt a chill down his spine that not even the ballistic vest could block. Without the goggles, without this shelter, he would have been just another heat signature snuffed out in the night. His confidence, built on the weight of his inventory, was shaken by the brutal efficiency of these hunters.
He spent hours observing, learning. Specters were drawn to movement and heat. They completely ignored ordinary Bots, whose internal heat was likely minimal or different. They seemed to struggle seeing through dense, cold materials, like the massive concrete of the vault. His own refuge, by sheer luck or unconscious planning, was the best defense possible.
Around what should have been dawn, the event ended. A System message flashed on his HUD.
>> EVENT 'SPECTRAL HUNT' COMPLETED. <<
>> SPECTER UNITS BEING DEACTIVATED. <<
>> REMAINING SURVIVORS: 89. <<
Eighty-nine. Out of 347. The number hit like a punch to the stomach. Necropolis-7 was being culled at a terrifying speed.
When the first ray of artificial sunlight filtered through a crack in the vault door, Klaus felt as if he were emerging from a nightmare. His hand was sore from holding the pistol, his eyes burned from constant surveillance through the thermal lenses. The goggles' battery was at 34%. He carefully stored them in his inventory, feeling their importance more than ever.
Leaving the bank was like entering a new, dark world. The street seemed emptier, quieter. Fewer signs of recent conflict—fewer bodies, fewer bullet marks—but an aura of terror lingered in the air. Those who survived the night were no longer just lucky; they were the most cautious, the best-equipped, or the deadliest.
His inventory was full, but his priorities had shifted. The "Spectral Hunt" had shown that defensive and informational items were just as valuable as offensive ones. He needed more things like the goggles. He needed vision.
Consulting the map, he saw that the safe zone had shrunk drastically, now centered around a high-tech laboratory complex. The center of Necropolis-7. Where the most valuable prizes—and the deadliest dangers—would be.
His journey that day would be different. Less indiscriminate looting, more strategic movement. He would use the goggles to scan buildings from a distance, avoiding not only threats but also other survivors. The negotiation in the arsenal had been a success, but the next one could be a bullet to the back of the head.
As he moved stealthily through the rubble, a new determination grew within him. The night event had not broken him; it had refined him. He was no longer just a Collector. He was a Survivor. And a survivor knows that the greatest treasure is not what is carried in the inventory, but the next dawn lived to see.
Day 4 awaited him, bringing with it the final and deadliest secrets of Necropolis-7. The tutorial was ending, and the real game was about to begin.