"We are not heroes, just sacrifices meant to nourish the beasts in the sea of data!"

Hugo referred to the rogue AI as "dragons."

He stared blankly at the corpse of the Internet Surveillance agent, rolling up his sleeve to reveal some sort of religious symbol.

John remembered that he was listed as non-religious in the records.

Hugo must have sought some spiritual support after feigning death, seemingly evading something.

"Get back in the car!"

He picked up a bunch of blood-stained parts, grabbed a suitcase, bumped John's shoulder, and dashed back to the armored vehicle.

[Mission Objective Updated]

[Escape from Internet Surveillance agents. (Not Achieved)]

Two bullets grazed the top of the truck.

John instinctively crouched down, feeling something sweep over his head.

He ran back to the armored vehicle, activating the scan while looking back.

Under the gray sky, two red data streams appeared, seemingly some kind of stealth drones.

Boom!

John slammed the driver's seat door shut.

The tires screeched on the sand.

A clear metallic collision sound came from the surrounding, indicating bullets hitting the armor.

The Jurassic Armored Vehicle's panel showed turbulence.

The engine showed signs of stalling.

John cursed through gritted teeth.

Oulos immediately pulled out a data cable, plugged it into the console, and put on the sunglasses hanging on the rearview mirror.

The data flow began to stabilize.

John pulled out a revolver, resting his arm on the driver's seat, backing down a slope.

The shadow of the yellow dirt blocked the car body.

He turned to switch to automatic gear, drifting around during the slide, covering a few hundred meters back on the road, while the spot they just left exploded.

Hugo braced the driver's seat with his foot, clutched the rear handrail, and exclaimed.

"You can see Internet Surveillance devices?"

"Huh?"

John shouted in response, brow furrowed, constantly observing the road conditions with the naked eye.

The armored vehicle twisted on the wide road.

Hugo suddenly realized—the driver was making evasive maneuvers based on intuition.

He swore in French, which wasn't caught by the translation plugin, but it should have been a compliment to John's driving skills.

The drones flew over again.

In the state of the ocular scan, John could see red data flooding the console; in a few minutes, all passengers would be drowned by the Internet Surveillance's remote attack.

"Stabilize the vehicle,"

Oulos suddenly said.

Her sunglasses were filled with shallow garbled text, her brow furrowed, and the data port's flashing light was blinking rapidly.

Buzz buzz buzz...

A lightweight hovercar appeared in the rearview mirror.

The gray-black body was like a bat crawling with prosthetic limbs, with Internet Surveillance logos on the sliding wings on either side.

It appeared from the air and maintained stability, with the high temperature from the vector engine distorting the desolate landscape.

John had only seen such stealth flying devices on the news.

Da-da-da-da.

Dense bullets grazed the armor.

The accuracy was constantly increasing, from shooting randomly to targeting the window, even aiming at the people seated inside through the steel plate.

"John!"

Oulos shouted again.

"If that guy in the back is useless, pull out your gun and kill him, then throw the body out to distract the Internet Surveillance."

She was threatening.

Hugo's voice came through gritted teeth.

His hands raced across the terminal disguised as a briefcase, connecting the blood-stained devices with several data cables.

"I'm in!"

Hugo responded loudly.

John saw him collapse like a corpse through the rearview mirror.

Sizzle sizzle.

He shifted his gaze around the steering wheel, seeing the previously flickering radar return to normal.

Red data streams quickly receded.

John observed the coordinates on the navigation map and saw—the hovercar spewing gunfire became an exclamation mark, and then its side wing exploded, flipping several times in the air before crashing.

He breathed a sigh of relief, then immediately clenched his teeth.

Ahead was a checkpoint at the end of the road:

A red no-entry sign flashed on the LCD screen, with two spherical scanners hovering in the air. Once marked by them, escaping with driving skills was almost impossible.

"Don't slow down,"

Oulos reminded.

Her shirt was soaked, short hairs stuck to her neck, and even uttering a word made her breathe heavily, seemingly engaged in dangerous combat in cyberspace.

[User Login: Oulos[Host]]

A prompt flashed on the console.

The map system indicated to pass through the right side of the barriers, radar marked dense red dots.

Oulos was communicating with John in this way.

He understood, flooring the gas pedal, seeing the rising roadblocks stutter at an irrecoverable distance, then the rightmost ones losing hydraulic support and retracting.

John felt a bit numb while passing through.

His limited visibility always made him feel something scraped the chassis, and if the height had been a few centimeters off just now, it could have been a fatal crash.

Whu—

The spherical detectors caught up.

Two black sedans drifted into a corner, trailing them, as more red data streams shot towards the armored vehicle from all sides.

Municipal cameras, roadside probes, traffic scanners...

The whole world was the eyes of Internet Surveillance.

Chains crisscrossed through the air on the suburban highway.

The armored vehicle seemed to have an invisible protective shell.

Buzz buzz.

John slightly lowered his head.

His gaze crossed the sweating Oulos, seeing a hovercar approaching in the sky over the industrial zone from the passenger window.

The municipal broadcast began to announce.

The scope of road control extended from the suburbs to the city center.

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