When he infiltrated Base Miller, as it was called back then, Jake had help from a guy named Johnny, who assisted him in escaping the base undetected. Without Johnny's help, Jake would have had no chance of getting out unnoticed.

Before he left, Johnny told him about his girlfriend, Samantha, and asked for Jake's help in rescuing her from the Los Demonios main base, where she had been sent as punishment for sabotaging various machines at Base Miller.

Both Jake and Johnny were nearly certain that it was too late to save Samantha and that she was likely dead or worse by that point. Still, Johnny held onto a flicker of hope that she might still be alive, even though he knew the chances were slim to none.

And then Johnny sacrificed himself to keep Jake's infiltration of Base Miller a secret. Jake always remembered the promise he made to Johnny. While he intended to honor it, he didn't truly believe he would find Samantha alive when he infiltrated the main base.

But now he realized he couldn't have been more wrong.

Not only had Samantha managed to survive long enough for him to find her, but she had also escaped from Los Demonios, set up a hideout deep underground, and even formed a resistance group that successfully launched ambushes against their former captors in the mines.

Jake had just used Mind Reader on the woman, so he knew she was the same Samantha Johnny had told him about, instead of being someone with the same name. He wasn't sure whether he should tell her about Johnny, though.

Being the bearer of bad news didn't bother him, as, unlike humans, he rarely experienced any feelings or emotions. However, he worried about how the news of her boyfriend's death might affect her.

Would her spirits drop? Would she still maintain her fighting spirit? What if she became reckless in the upcoming fight, showing no regard for her own life?

If she got killed in battle, it would mean he failed to fulfill the promise he made to Johnny. In the end, though, he concluded that she had a right to know what had happened to her boyfriend.

"I have some bad news for you," he said.

"What news?" she asked, clearly surprised.

"About Johnny."

Samantha instantly tensed, while Marcel, who stood nearby and heard Jake's words, looked puzzled. He glanced at Samantha in confusion and asked, "Who's Johnny?"

Apparently, the leader of the resistance fighters had never mentioned her boyfriend to them. Ignoring Marcel's question, she stepped closer to Jake, looking him intently in the eye.

"You... you know Johnny?" she asked hesitantly, already predicting she wasn't going to like what Jake had to tell her.

"Yeah, I knew him."

Samantha closed her eyes for a moment. After steeling herself, she opened them and asked, "So what happened? Did something… happen to him? Is he—"

Her question trailed off.

"Yes," Jake replied. His mechanical voice, coming from the device, sounded cold and indifferent, which was something he hadn't minded before, but now it made him uncomfortable. "Johnny is dead."

Samantha took a deep breath and turned her gaze away from Jake, but not before he caught a glimpse of glistening tears welling in the corners of her eyes. After a moment, still avoiding his gaze, she asked, "How did it happen?"

Jake gave her a brief rundown of how he met Johnny and the circumstances of his death. He also shared how Johnny had asked him to find Samantha and help her escape from the main base.

After he finished talking, he waited for her reaction, but she didn't reply right away. For a few seconds, she stayed silent, her gaze cast downward.

Marcel stepped closer to her and placed his big palm on her shoulder.

"Are you alright, Sam?" he asked in a surprisingly gentle voice. Jake found it odd coming from such a large and intimidating-looking guy, especially considering how aggressively he had behaved toward him earlier.

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Samantha nodded slightly but remained silent for a few more seconds.

Looking a bit out of place, Marcel didn't know what else to say, so he simply took a step back to give Samantha the space she needed to deal with her grief.

When she finally looked up at Jake again, her eyes were dry, and they carried a steel-hard expression.

"You mentioned you destroyed all the secondary bases, yes?" she asked.

"That's right."

"Including Base Miller, I assume."

Jake nodded.

"But what about Miller himself?" she pressed. "Did you kill him, too?"

There was a hopeful edge to her voice, though Jake wasn't sure whether she hoped he had killed the bandit leader or if she wanted him to have escaped so she could track him down and kill him herself.

"I killed him," Jake answered, remembering how Miller, clad in a mech suit, had been with his men waiting for him at the entrance to the dungeon, having set up an ambush to attack him as soon as he left.

A look of disappointment flashed across Samantha's face.

"Good," she said after a pause. "Though I can't help but wish I could've killed the bastard myself. He was one ruthless son of a bitch."

"They all are," Marcel said, spitting on the ground either to express his disdain for Los Demonios or because simply mentioning the bandit organization left a foul taste in his mouth. "They all deserve to die. Horribly."

Samantha was silent for a second, then she asked, her voice laced with hope, "Did you make it quick? Or did he suffer before death? At least a little bit?"

Jake recalled how he killed Miller and told her the truth, "He died in just a few seconds."

Samantha's face took on a disappointed expression. However, Jake then added, "But while those few seconds passed quickly for me, the way Miller was dying, those moments must have felt like an eternity for him. He died a very painful death."

A small smile appeared on Samantha's lips. "Good. That bastard deserved a painful death. Not just for Johnny but for all the evil deeds he'd committed."

Jake decided to clarify something. "I said I destroyed all the secondary bases, including the one Miller had been in charge of, but that's not entirely accurate."

Samantha tilted her head slightly to the side.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I left two bases standing, including Miller's," he explained. "So Base Miller is now called Base Catalina."

Looks of confusion crossed Samantha's and Marcel's faces.

"I don't get it," she said. "Why would you do that? And who is Catalina?"

Jake said, "Catalina is one of you. Her teammates were all killed by Los Demonios, but she fought so valiantly against the bandits that Skullface wanted to enlist her in his ranks. Naturally, she refused his offer to join, so she was captured and held captive at Miller's base.

There, she made friends with some other captured survivors. Then one day, her best friend, with whom she had planned to rebel against Los Demonios one day, was tortured to death right in front of her.

After that, she was told that while she'd been at the base, she'd constantly been watched, and now all the people she'd befriended were going to be brutally killed just like the previous one unless she joined the organization. So she had no choice but to comply."

"Geez," Marcel said, spitting to the ground once again. "Those fucking assholes."

Jake continued, "However, while she became a member of Los Demonios, she bided her time, patiently waiting for the right moment to rebel. She gradually rose in the ranks, and eventually, around the time I killed Miller, she was promoted to the leader of the base he'd once been in charge of. I learned all of this when I came to destroy her base.

So her base has become a safe haven for ordinary survivors who have never been part of Los Demonios. There's also another base I didn't destroy. Its leader was Ryder, but now a friend of Samantha, Melissa, is in charge of it.

After I help you break out of this place, you are welcome to stay at either Catalina's or Melissa's base. Both are essentially fortresses, and you'd want to spend your nights there instead of hiding in random places around the city, as you did before.

The city has undergone an upgrade, and all the mutants are now much more powerful and constantly roaming the streets looking for humans, which they hadn't done before the upgrade. So simply holding up in a random spot is no longer safe. Staying at those fortresses is your best chance to avoid being attacked at night by mutants."

All the resistance fighters formed a semicircle around Jake, listening with eager attention.

None of them was aware of the changes that had taken place in the city during their absence, so they listened with great interest. Some of them looked at him with sparkling eyes, the mere thought of finally escaping the underground tunnels and returning to the city filling them with excitement.

After Jake finished speaking, a silence enveloped the group as they processed the information he had just shared.

Nearly a full minute passed before Samantha broke the silence and asked, "So what's your plan of attack, Jake?"

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