Hunter of Immortals

Chapter 382: Overturning the Case

Chapter 382: Overturning the Case

Darvaza Prison... Gates of hell... Inter-faction riot...

Any news stories related to the aforementioned terms were sure to be hot topics of interest for the general public, and the media was deliberately highlighting the graphic and gory scenes left behind in the aftermath of the prison riot to further invoke a visceral reaction from the citizens of Sandrise City.

Sex and violence had always been the hottest selling topics, and that was something that had remained true throughout history.

From the moment that the Darvaza Prison incident was exposed by the media, the story immediately swept through the entirety of Sandrise City like wildfire, generating a tremendous amount of attention.

Initially, everyone was more so focused on the news story itself, but it didn't take long before some rabble-rousers restored all of the images that had been censored by the news outlets reporting on the story. As a result, it was revealed to the general public just how brutal and gruesome the prison riot had been.

In the restored images, there were even many reporters depicted, throwing up or falling unconscious at the scene.

On the day of the riot, the entire third area of Darvaza Prison had been transformed into hell on earth, with dismembered limbs, eyeballs, intracranial fluids, and blood splattered all over the walls and the ground.

Many young people were spreading these pieces of media far and wide, and there was even a "dare" element involved, with people from all walks of life suppressing their visceral reactions to the images and footage in order to satisfy their curiosity and prove their courage.

Following the initial reaction of shock and disgust, a question arose in the minds of many: how had Darvaza Prison been plunged into such an extreme degree of chaos?

Inter-faction riots in prisons were a common sight. Even in normal prisons, it wasn't all that rare to see brawls, or even the occasional homicide, taking place, let alone in a prison like Darvaza Prison.

Prisons had always been cut-throat and unruly places, ever since the inception of the institution.

However, during the past century, particularly in the past few decades in which large strides had been made in AI technology, large-scale riots resulting in excessive loss of life had become exceedingly rare.

After all, with machines overseeing all of the prisons, human inmates were forced to conform and obey the rules.

No matter how adept a fighter an inmate was, there was no way they could oppose Mechguard units with their bodies of flesh and blood.

Hence, most of the homicides that had taken place in prisons in the past few decades had resulted from assassinations or small-scale riots. As soon as Mechguard units or wardens arrived on the scene, the riot would quickly be quelled, so large-scale riots rarely ever happened in the prison system in this day and age.

The only situation in which a large-scale riot like this could possibly arise would be if the Mechguard units were absent, or there was a power outage.

Soon, everyone was beginning to consider the very real possibility that there had been foul play involved in the incident, and many of the news outlets controlled by the northern congress were also leading people to question the nature of the power outage that had taken place on the day of the riot.

Most of the machines in Darvaza Prison were mechanical arms, and these mechanical arms were capable of performing all types of tasks, such as cooking, transporting objects, and subduing inmates when required.

Due to the special nature of prison establishments, there was always a backup power supply, which meant that even in cases of emergency power outages, the prison would never be in a state of power outage for very long.

What were the chances of two regularly maintained power supplies failing together at the exact same time?

This soon became a question on everyone's mind, and through some research, it was found that the chances of a power supply suddenly failing were around 0.3%, which meant that a power outage would occur roughly once every year on average.

As for backup power supplies, they were rarely required and were maintained alongside the main power supplies, so the probability of them spontaneously failing were even lower.

Hence, it was found that the chances of both power supplies experiencing spontaneous failure at once were lower than 0.001%.

Could this really have been just a coincidence?

Perhaps one could argue that this was the case, but what was revealed next was even more suspicious.

Even in the case of a power outage, all of the humanoid Mechguard units ran on battery power, so they would've been able to easily quell the unrest. However, on the day of the riot, not only had all of the Mechguard units been directed away from the third area, the wardens just so happened to be switching shifts, and the incident wasn't immediately reported to anyone on the outside.

With all of these signs coming together, it was clear that there was a major conspiracy afoot.

Now that it had been all but confirmed that this was a conspiracy, the next logical question would be to ask exactly who this conspiracy was targeting.

Darvaza Prison was filled with the most heinous criminals, all of whom were serving sentences in excess of 100 years without the possibility of parole, so there was no chance that they would've ever seen the light of day.

Hence, there wasn't much point in going out of one's way to target any of the inmates, considering they were just going to rot in prison anyway.

Hence, everyone was left feeling quite perplexed, unable to understand what this conspiracy was all about. Right as it seemed as if the trail were about to run cold, Shivani suddenly released another bombshell story to her massive number of fans on her independent news program.

"Cannibal or Victim?"

Just the title alone was enough to tell everyone what the news story was going to be about.

Everyone was aware that Shivani had a collaborative partner.

With the constant influx of new content, no news story was able to remain in the public consciousness for very long on the internet, but the story concerning the heroic police officer that had been exposed as a cannibal had only been recently released, so it was still a relatively fresh and relevant topic.

Most importantly, prior to being exposed as a cannibal, the police officer in question, Adam, had been an extremely renowned internet celebrity for quite some time.

The Shadow City incident, the southern congress falsified footage controversy, and the subsequent news stories that Shivani had released in collaboration with Adam had all propelled him on a meteoric rise to superstardom.

In particular, after becoming a special psychic police officer, Adam had captured many demented killers who had been hiding in plain sight, posing as normal, everyday members of the general public, and through these stories, Adam had always been able to maintain his relevance.

Hence, when it was exposed that he was a cannibal, the story had instantly sparked widespread heated debate on the internet, with most people falling into one of two camps.

Some proclaimed that Adam had to be a heinous criminal himself to understand the minds of other twisted criminals, while others refused to believe that Adam would be the type of person to do something like this.

In this recent news story released by Shivani, it was revealed that Adam had been carrying out an investigation in a cannibal club.

Throughout this entire process, Adam had strictly followed proper protocol as a special psychic police officer, and the new footage released by Shivani alongside the story debunked all of the pieces of evidence used to incriminate Adam, making it clear that he was simply investigating the club, rather than attending the event as a member of the club.

This was another bombshell that had been dropped very close to the prison riot news story, and people soon began connecting the dots.

Given the precedent set by the southern congress falsified footage controversy, this wasn't the first time that Adam had been framed, and public opinion was quickly turned as everyone came to the conclusion that Adam had been framed once again.

Furthermore, not only had the southern congress thrown him into prison, they had even tried to kill him so that he wouldn't be able to overturn the case!