Gadriel: Inspection report for City 14, Mike Shapiro recording. I have completed my survey of City 14 as requested. While rumors abound of the unusual properties of the city, the only truly unique part is a section of the city known as the ‘Infested Zone.’ Surrounded by a wall within the city’s own perimeter walls and watched over by Overlook teams, this wall is home to the unique Necrotics City 14 is infamous for. According to interviews with the teams guarding the wall, the section used to be home to an organized crime family that pre-dated the Combine Occupation. Now, however, the sector is a ghost town, populated only by the Necrotics created from the Administrator’s genetic modification project. According to their reports, a year after City 14 had been established, and the crime family was fighting against the Overlook occupation force, disrupting construction efforts and conducting raids on Combine transports in an attempt to get the Administrator replaced. Said Administrator attempted to track them down, but the crime syndicate was ruthless, and the highest-ranked officers never stayed in the same place for long. Eventually, Administrator 14 performed a trap on the Syndicate. Waiting until the Syndicate’s officers moved into their pre-planned zone, the Administrator scheduled a convoy of weapons transports carrying pulse munitions through the center of the zone at night, heavily guarded by Overlook Strike Teams. That night, when the convoy was ambushed, the trap was sprung. While the Strike Teams fought against the entire Syndicate, Civil Protection worked alongside the city’s Engineering core to erect a wall using pre-made pieces, walling off the entire zone in a matter of hours. With that done, the Administrator shelled the zone with their modified Biotics while the soldiers retreated within the transports, barricading themselves within. Soon enough, the entire zone had been thoroughly infested. The soldiers, however, were safely evacuated by Dropship, having lasted the night safely in their armored transports filled with spare munitions. Ever since, the Infested Zone has served as a warning to the fate of those who defy the Administrator. Nowadays, the Zone is officially off-limits, and guarded round-the-clock by Overlook personnel. According to the soldiers stationed there, the Zone’s population seems to be increasing, though how this is occurring is beyond them. I spoke to the Administrator about this, and they informed me that it is not uncommon for Resistance cells or criminal outfits to attempt and set up safe houses within the Zone, only to be overwhelmed and infested by the Necrotics. According to the Administrator, “What they don’t realize is that unlike your average Necrotic, a SymBiotic is still human. Blind, hard-of-hearing, and guided by an alien Symbiote which drives them solely to breed, but human nonetheless. That means they can open doors, or climb ladders, or whatever else someone who’s used to fighting Necrotics would think of to keep their base safe in an Infected Zone. Plus, if someone manages to successfully establish a base that isn’t found and overrun by SymBiotics, I can just shell the place with more canisters to speed the process up. We can even capture Resistance officers like this, because nothing’s stopping us from hunting down the resulting SymBiotic, removing the Symbiote, and throwing our new captive in a cell for questioning.” When asked about the possibility of the creatures breeding out of control, Administrator 14 laughed, before asking “That’s the trick, isn’t it? The Symbiotes are designed to turn the hosts into sex symbols and drive them absolutely mad with lust, but because they’re a Bio-Weapon, not a plague, they also sterilize their hosts. Ironic, isn’t it? It’s one of the main reasons why we can keep the Zone contained so easily. The only way for them to replenish their numbers is for me to fire off a Canister barrage, and the only way to get more victims is either preying on Civil Protection teams being sent in for training purposes, which provokes an armed response to recover them, or by capturing teenagers who try and sneak into the Zone and find a quick fling, unaware that the SymBiotics will keep going until their victim passes out from exhaustion, then will then carry them back to a hive for infestation. We do allow that to happen from time to time, because the family usually begs us to retrieve them, and then we do so, and refuse any reward they offer. This apparent altruism buys us incredible goodwill and loyalty from the populous, who believe us to be far more benevolent and caring then we actually are. They are starting to take these missions for granted, however, as during one recent incident, we retrieved a woman who had deliberately submit to a Symbiote in order to heal her legs, which were lame from a childhood injury, and planned for her family to ask us to retrieve her. …Yes, Symbiotes heal their hosts of wounds, how else would they remain unscarred while blind in an abandoned Zone? No, the Symbiote cannot heal itself, that sounds like the kind of oversight that turns a Bio-Weapon into a plague, which if you’ll recall, was one of the strict prohibitions of the project.” To conclude this report, while City 14’s Infested Zone may seem like a dangerous hazard to the city, only kept in check by the wall around it, in truth it functions as a combination training ground, Anticitizen lure, and public relations booster. While I cannot recommend other cities follow this example to the letter, there is no denying the effects it has on the city around it.
-Inspector Shapiro
-Inspector Shapiro
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