Chapter 3 — I Built an Empire in the Wasteland

Bạt Phong stood in front of the control panel, the flashlight shaking in his sweaty palms. The flashing red text TEST STATE — STABLE kept repeating on the small screen, like a mechanical heartbeat that had never stopped for the past seven years. He looked around the control panel, trying to figure out if there was a way to open the transparent cylinder without harming the girl inside.

There were dozens of buttons and levers, most of which had lost their letters or were so blurred that they cannot be read. Bạt Phong used to be quite good at natural subjects when he was in school, but seven years of living as a scrap picker had eroded most of that knowledge, leaving only basic intuition about machines. He noticed a lever with an open lock symbol, different from the rest of the levers, which had warning triangle symbols.

He hesitated. If this were a life support system, a wrong swipe could kill the girl instantly. But if he didn't do anything, she would probably slowly die in that capsule when the last backup energy source ran out, maybe in just a few days or months. Bạt Phong took a deep breath, then pulled the lever down.

A slight hissing sound rang out, steam began to escape from the bottom of the cylinder. The flashing light on the control panel changed from red to yellow, then a machine-synthesized voice rang out hoarsely, the sound distorted because of old components:

"Warning. Prototype awakening procedure was manually activated. No Black Eagle personnel authentication code. Unauthorized access recorded."

Bạt Phong was startled and took a step back when he heard the words "Black Eagle" ring out from the old speaker. He had never heard of this name, but the way it was said in a cold, robotic voice made him feel a shiver run down his spine. This was not simply an abandoned civilian bunker. This was some organized, purposeful facility, and the girl in the cylinder was not here by chance.

The cylinder glass layer begins to become more opaque due to dense condensation, then slowly becomes transparent again when the exhaust system is complete. Bạt Phong pressed his face close to the glass, seeing the girl's face inside more clearly. She was young, probably just over twenty years old, her skin was pale because she hadn't seen natural light for a long time, but her facial features still exuded elegance. Her eyes were closed, her eyelids shaking slightly as if she was trying to open them but wasn't strong enough.

A "click" sound rang out, the cylinder compartment automatically opened the lid from top to bottom. The girl began to fall forward, and Bạt Phong instinctively rushed forward to catch her before she collapsed to the floor. Her body felt light, almost weightless, the wires and IV tubes automatically separated from her skin as the cylinder completed the procedure, leaving behind a few small red marks where the needles had been.

"Hey, wake up." Bạt Phong gently shook her body, his voice trembling with excitement and worry. "Can you hear me?"

The girl didn't react immediately, her weak but steady breathing exuded a fragile warmth on his wrist. Bạt Phong looked around the room, found a folded insulating blanket in a nearby wall cabinet, and quickly put it on her body to keep warm. He carried her out of the cylinder, placing her gently on a cushioned bench in the corner of the room, perhaps originally used for employees to rest while on duty.

It took nearly ten minutes for the girl to start showing signs of being more alert. Her fingers slightly curled, then her eyelids slowly opened, revealing her pale brown pupils, opaque as if they were not used to the light, even if it was just a weak flashlight. She looked at Bac Phong for a long time, her eyes were empty, without any readable emotions.

"Who... here..." Her voice was hoarse and broken, as if it hadn't been used for a long time. She tried to lift her head but immediately fell back down from exhaustion.

"Don't try, just lie still." Bạt Phong supported her shoulder, his voice softened. "I'm Tô Bạt Phong. I found this place by accident. You've been in that compartment for an unknown amount of time."

The girl blinked, trying to focus her gaze on Bạt Phong's face, as if trying to find something familiar in her memory but couldn't. "I... don't remember..." she muttered, her voice shaking. "Who am I..."

Bạt Phong was stunned. He didn't expect the situation to be this bad — the girl couldn't even remember her name. He looked around the room, trying to find any clues that could help identify her. His eyes stopped at a small plastic card attached to the wall of the cylinder. It was dusty but a few faintly printed words could still be read.

He walked over and brushed the dust off the card. The text appears: TEST SAMPLE 07 — WISH. Y. N. Below is a long code of unclear meaning, and a smaller note: RADIOACTIVE IMMUNE Serum — THIRD GENERATION.

"Congratulations... Yên Nhi." Bạt Phong read each word out loud, even though he wasn't sure he guessed correctly, trying to combine the abbreviations into a reasonable name. He turned back to look at the girl. "Is your name Chúc Yên Nhi?"

The girl - Yên Nhi - frowned slightly, her hazy eyes as if trying to search in a dark and dilapidated memory area just like Tàn Đô above ground. "Yên Nhi..." she repeated the name, her voice still weak but something trembled slightly, as if those two syllables had just touched a string somewhere deep in her mind. "That sounds... familiar..."

"Okay, take your time," Bạt Phong spoke gently, even though his heart was filled with hundreds of worries. He looked back at the plastic card, rereading the words "radiation immunity serum", a concept he had never heard of before but immediately understood its terrible importance in a world where radiation is a silent enemy that kills thousands of people every year.

If this girl really has something in her body that makes her immune to radiation, she is not only a human being in need of help, but also the key to a different future for this Phế Thổ region. But at the same time, that also means that there will be others — possibly the same organization called "Black Eagle" that the machine voice just mentioned — willing to do anything to find her.

Bạt Phong looked around the room again, the flashlight flashing across the control panels, the turned off screens, and the uniformed skeleton he had passed in the security control room above. Suddenly he realized he was in the middle of a much bigger story than he could have imagined when he walked down the spiral staircase this morning.

"I don't know exactly what happened to you," Bạt Phong said, his voice low, "but I won't leave you here alone anymore. I'll take you out."

Yên Nhi looked at him for a long time, her dull eyes gradually regaining some lively light, although still full of confusion and fear. She nodded slightly, a small movement but enough for Bạt Phong to understand that she had accepted to trust him, even though neither of them knew much about each other.

He helped her stand up, letting her lean on his shoulder because her legs were still too weak to stand on her own. Before leaving the room, Bạt Phong's eyes stopped at the row of metal cabinets mounted on the wall behind the control panel, where he caught a glimpse of strange armor and several unusually shaped metal items neatly stacked inside. I don't have time to research thoroughly right now, but I know I will come back here again, not just once.

Before leaving the room completely, Bạt Phong stopped for a moment, took the flashlight and scanned again around the row of metal cabinets. There was a separate smaller chest under the main control panel, locked with a rusty combination lock, unlike the random arrangement of the other items. He tried pulling the lid of the chest but it didn't budge, perhaps the electronic locking mechanism was still working thanks to the backup power source. He had to put aside his intention to learn more, telling himself he would return to this place when Yên Nhi was more stable and he had enough time and necessary tools. At this moment, getting her out of the darkness was more important than whatever treasure might be hidden in that locked chest.

He guided Yên Nhi step by step through the security control room, deliberately blocking her view from the remains still in military uniform lying in the corner of the wall. She walked unsteadily, her legs shaking like those of a child learning to walk, occasionally having to stop and lean against the wall to catch her breath. Each time, Bạt Phong patiently waited, not showing signs of impatience even though in his heart he was also afraid that there might be some danger lurking behind, maybe an automatic trap had not been activated, maybe some warning system had silently sent a signal to the outside as soon as he pulled the lever to open the cylinder compartment.

"Are you in pain anywhere?" He asked when the two stopped to rest in the middle of the spiral staircase, Yên Nhi's breathing was still rapid.

"It's not painful... just... heavy," she replied, her voice a little clearer than when she first woke up. "It was as if I had slept for a very long time, so long that my body had forgotten how to move." Bạt Phong nodded, didn't say anything more, just gently helped her continue. He didn't know how to explain what she had just gone through, about the long seven years that he himself couldn't fully imagine its meaning to a person who had been kept in a semi-conscious state for that long.

The two people slowly walked out of the circular room, up the spiral staircase, towards the sealed cellar door that Bạt Phong had opened a few hours ago. The pale light of Phế Thổ streamed in through the tunnel door as they approached, and for the first time in seven years, Chúc Yên Nhi saw the sky — even though it was just a gray sky covered with radioactive dust, it was still something more precious to her than anything she could remember.

She stood silently in the doorway for a long time, raising her face to catch that pale light, her eyes filled with tears even though she didn't understand why she was so moved by a gray sky with nothing beautiful. Bạt Phong stood next to him, waiting quietly, without urging. For him, this is just the beginning of a journey that neither of them can predict where it will lead.