Apocalyptic Rebirth: With a repairman system space, she rises again.-Chapter 551: Peter’s quest for answers.

The night in Crosstown was a fever that wouldn’t break. The heat didn’t just sit in the air; it owned it like a thick, suffocating pressure that made every breath feel like inhaling steam. It was the kind of heat that turned the town’s lights into a blurry, shimmering haze.

Residents could hardly sleep in the uncomfortable heat. Most loitered on the streets, searching for damp pieces of earth on which to sleep or sit.

Worse than the heat--or comparable to it in bad terms were the mutated mosquitoes which ravaged the town. They were as big as sparrows and moved in swarms, like dense clouds. Their buzzing was constant and maddening, drowning out 80% of other sounds. Their bites left behind swollen welts that festered as if they injected small stones beneath the skin.

It was because of them that the air in the town was ripe with the scent of blood and metal. They would have killed many if not Peter Strauss and the mutated herb he had discovered which could help. Once applied to the body, one could be safe for a few days.

But the herb was scarce! Only those with resources could afford it. The residents were restless, and so was their leader.

Inside the master suite of Peter’s bunker, Moon Raine felt like she was being cooked alive from the inside out. Sweat beaded on her forehead, trickling down her neck and staining the silk of her short dress. She stood by the window fanning herself aggressively, but there was no breeze, only the stagnant, metallic scent of the sprawling town.

She felt sick. It wasn’t just the temperature; it was the realization that her world was melting away.

Her first mistake was Cassius. She had watched him for weeks now, playing the part of the devoted mother to a man who had supposedly lost his memories. But the way he dismissed and looked at her made the hair on her arms stand up. When he spoke of Sunshine and their activities together, his descriptions weren’t the hazy fragments of a fractured brain; they were vivid, colorful, and sharp.

He remembers way too much, she always thought as her breath hitched. He’s playing me. Worse than that, his eyes_ once expressionless_ felt like two cold daggers pressing against her throat. It was as if he was just waiting for the right moment to squeeze the life out of her.

"Moon! The baby is crying again! Give him a bath!"

The shrill voice of Denise pierced through the door, followed by the faint, high-pitched wail of Glenna Green’s newborn. Moon squeezed her eyes shut. She was tired. She was Peter’s wife, a woman of status, and yet she had been reduced to a glorified nanny. Denise took pleasure in it, finding every opportunity to humiliate her, and now with Glenna’s child added to the mix, Moon felt like a servant in a place where she was supposed to be the queen.

She had tried to complain to Peter. Twice. Both times, he had barely looked up from his books. These days, he was a ghost. He returned in the dead of night, his clothes stained with blood, smelling of iron and gun powder. When she asked where he had been, he simply said ’hunting.’

"I need to talk to Charmaine," she whispered to the empty room.

Charmaine was the only one who listened. He was the one person she could manipulate into making her life easier, they needed to come up with another escape route. It was time to ditch Crosstown; the place was a dead end. But he had been missing for two weeks. When she asked Peter about her people, his face had turned into a mask of stone. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"They left," Peter had said, his voice dropping to a dangerous register. "And I don’t want to hear you mention those people again."

The way he said "those people" had made Moon’s blood run cold. Something had happened to them, of that, she was sure.

Moon began to pace the room. She thought back to the last time she had seen Charmaine. He had told her to watch her back. Since then, she was whispering lies to Peter often, feeding him a fake premonitions to stop him from using violence against her.

But deep down she knew that someday the ruse would run out. She needed to be as far away from Crosstown when that happened. But the place was now a cage, and Peter held the keys.

While Moon tried to figure out how to run, the reality of her fears was playing out in a part of the bunker she had never been to. It was a room that smelled of damp earth and old metal. A single, naked light bulb swung from the ceiling, casting long, jerky shadows across the room that was half full of crying people that Charmaine was trying to keep calm. There were corpses in the far end corner. In the center, tied to a metal chair, was Jared. He was pale, his shirt soaked through with blood trailed from a jagged bullet wound in his side.

Peter stood in front of him, looking as calm as a man checking the weather. He was slowly cleaning the barrel of his revolver with a silk cloth.

"I’m going to ask you one more time, Jared," Peter said, his voice conversational, almost kind. "And I want you to really think about the answer. Why are people looking for my wife?"

Jared coughed, spraying a fine mist of blood onto the floor. "I told you... Mr. Strauss, please... we don’t even know what you are talking about."

Peter stopped cleaning the gun. He looked at Jared with an expression of profound disappointment. "How is that possible? You came here with her so you must know."

"We’re telling the truth!" Charmaine, slumped in the corner, whimpered.

Peter turned his gaze to the man in the corner, then back to Jared. He sighed, a sound of genuine weariness. "Okay, then tell me this...can she really see the future? Because she has not really seen anything useful if you ask me."

"She told us about the frost stones before they came." Emmet said.

Peter tilted his head and winced. "She also told me about the scorching sun but that is not really anything." He paused. "So, tell me why people are coming here in search of Moon!"

"Please..." Jared whispered, his head sagging. "Ask those people. We picked her up along the way. We don’t even know where she was coming from."

Peter smirked. It wasn’t a happy expression; it was the look of a predator who had already won. He raised the revolver in a sudden, fluid motion. The silk cloth fluttered to the floor like a dying bird.

"You think I haven’t checked, you must think I am a fool." Peter said.

BANG!

The sound was deafening in the small room. Jared’s body jolted and then went limp, his head rolling to the side. Emmet in the corner shrieked, scrambling back against the wall, his eyes wide with horror as he watched soldiers add Jared’s body to the pile of corpses.

Peter didn’t even flinch. He didn’t look disgusted by the brain matter on his boots. He simply began to reload the empty chamber, his fingers steady.

"Now," Peter said, turning his cold, empty eyes to another person. "Let’s try this again. Give me the truth, or you’ll be joining your friend."