Novel Bin Chapter 23 - Negotiation
\'What is he planning to do?\'
Viktor\'s brain ran at full speed. Ideally speaking, it would be best for him to answer as casually as he could to avoid having his true feelings found out.
His plan had always been to live safely in the bunker for as long as possible. Although the threat of those zombies and monsters seemed to be over, they were now facing an even bigger threat.
Humans.
These unknown people already knew where he lived, and added with how that traitor Petroski was out there somewhere in the wild, his future in the bunker was pretty much gone. Nothing good would come out if he chose to stay here.
On the other hand, even though the situation outside appeared to be such a big threat at first, with the alien technology mentioned and the Djinn on his side, not only would his chance of survival be quite high, but he might even be able to open up new opportunities.
Hence, his decision to leave the bunker was final.
The main problem was, how would such a decision be taken by these six overpowered people?
Would it be possible for him to employ these people? Most likely not... Although he had a lot of things they might want in the bunker, these people were more than capable of taking anything they wanted here by force. They could even do it right now if they really wanted.
Can he trust them to do the duty of a soldier and lead them to safety?
Not at all. Viktor did not have the slightest amount of trust toward these people.
At the end of the day, the safest answer was to get away from these people, ideally without any violence.
With a little more than 50 minutes until his stats finally return to normal, Viktor could only resort to one last thing; negotiation.
Not wanting to find out what would happen if he delayed answering the captain\'s question, Viktor quickly said, "Captain, as the owner of this bunker, may I please have a private word with you?"
Viktor\'s words were received badly by his friends and the other residents, but he could not care less. His attention was fully on the captain, and to his surprise, the captain\'s serious expression was replaced by amusement.
"All right, show the way," Captain Andrei agreed to his request and called the vice captain\'s name. Following the captain\'s call, Anton put down his cutlery, chugged the rest of his drink, and stood up.
The captain\'s action of involving his second-in-command to join the discussion told Viktor valuable information about the squad\'s condition. This meant that their squad was not as solid as he initially thought.
The captain sat behind the table while Anton stood on the side.
"All right, what is it that you want to talk about?" the captain began speaking with both of his hands on the table.
Viktor quickly started the conversation with some lies.
"Captain, to tell you the truth, we have been eating our way to our supplies, so we don\'t have much left anymore. Because of that, I want to ask for your help. Can you please guide us to the nearest city?"
The captain paused for a moment before responding, "Oh, that\'s not good. How many supplies do you have left?"
"About 3 to 4 months\' worth of supplies," Viktor gave a rough estimate.
In truth, even though they had used about 80% of the supplies in the last two years, with enough rationing, they should still have enough for at least another year. However, Viktor\'s starting sentence allowed him to express his intention as well as lower the other party\'s greed for his supplies at the same time.
The captain\'s response to his words also gave away their intention.
\'They really are after the supplies here after all.\'
Seeing the captain\'s thinking expression, Viktor quickly added, "Captain, if those people were to know about how much we have left, I\'m afraid there will be anarchy… Before that happens, I would rather trust all those supplies to you... in exchange for protection to the nearest safety."
With those words, Viktor lower the tension between them by giving what the other party wanted. Even though these supplies were precious, he did not want to die for things that he could not even bring all out.
Captain Andrei, however, did not seem convinced. He turned to look at the vice captain and asked, "What do you think, Anton? Should we agree?"
Hearing this, Viktor was a little relieved. After all, he did the best he could to entertain Anton during the feast.
He was convinced that the guy would help him.
However, the words that came from Anton\'s mouth defied his expectation.
"Captain, why should we burden ourselves with such a request? Just kill them all and take everything they have, that would be much easier."
As the vice captain said those words, his eyes were clearly looking down on Viktor.
"F*ck." Once again, Viktor was betrayed by his intuition. These humans were just hard to predict!
Viktor quickly looked at the captain hoping he would disagree, but his hope was shattered once again as Andrei nodded his head in agreement with Anton. It seemed that Anton\'s position in the team was more important than he thought.
The captain and the vice captain calmly talked with each other about how they would go about with the plan. The captain would rather not kill anyone, but Anton preferred there to be no witnesses.
The situation suddenly turned from bad to worse. If he did not say anything, he would, without a doubt, die.
<Troubled, are you now? You really attract trouble easily.>
Viktor felt like cursing at the Djinn right now, but having seen talking by himself would not do him any good. He was about to negotiate more with the two when the vice captain suddenly turned toward him.
"Let\'s start by killing this one first!" Anton said, swiftly arriving next to him with a knife on his neck.
Seeing the knife\'s tip so close to him, Viktor could only think to use the last idea he had in his mind.
Viktor suddenly chuckled.
"Hahahaha… you dare? Are you courting death? Do you know who this bunker belongs to? The Romanovs… and I am Viktor Romanov!"