~ Chapter 10: Symbol Camp ~

[Kardian’s point of view]

According to what I read on the internet, the Symbol Camp was located within an office building that had been cleared of Nano-Z. They were apparently successful in repurposing some of the equipment and tools they found there and even guided others on how to do it. This gave them a few like points from me, but this also meant that they could be seen as some naive prey by those who didn’t really harbor the best intention for them.

Thinking that the people in this world were trying to gather together and struggle through this moment that could easily lead all of us to death, well, that was asking for too much.

The human being, at its core, was a creature of instinct that either struggled to live in a pack or roamed the wastes as a lone wolf. They followed what the pack leader said, and these individuals were usually either psychopaths who wanted to control everyone around them and force them to do their bidding or they were fake saints and kings who made you believe they were doing it for the better of the community but who were actually just trying to feed their humongous ego.

Well, maybe I was wrong about this way of thinking, but so far, I couldn’t say that I ever saw someone who was the exception that proved the rule.

While thinking about this, I reached the body of a teenage girl. She was probably around 16 or maybe younger. There was an expression of horror frozen on her face, and a trail of blood trickling down her cheek, down to her chin, then on her bare chest. A bullet to the head ended her life, but this was not as sad and upsetting as the fact that she was clearly raped before being killed.

As I looked down on her modest figure, now ravaged by the lustful desires of an animal then forced to leave the world of the living by the hateful act of another, I noticed the small, bloodstained Student ID next to her. I didn’t need to pick it up to check what high school she belonged to, that R symbol belonged to Resonance High. I closed my eyes and looked away as my fists clenched into fists.

“Did you know her?” Xerya asked me.

“No, but...” I opened my eyes and looked back at this young lady.

Her short cut dark hair, her dark green eyes that would never see the light of day again, her entire being was meant to rot away and turn to dust. She was not the only teenager of this world who died before her time, but meeting them like this, seeing what became of them and just imaging what might have happened in their last moments, I couldn’t help but feel a deep sadness in my heart combined with the desire to beat the crap out of the monster who did this to her.

After I took a deep breath in and then let it out slowly to calm down, I looked back at her and then closed her eyes, praying that she would find rest in the afterworld. I took out one of my spare sheets and then covered her in it. I couldn’t bury her, and at the very least, she wouldn’t be stared of the immodest gazes of those who passed by.

“She was too young...” I said as I looked back for one last time at her and then turned around.

“I find her age to be irrelevant. At this point in time, I estimate that more than 80% of all the population of this planet has already turned. They are certainly of various ages since the virus doesn’t spare anyone who uses NanoHeal and TechScope.” she explained.

“That’s... Yeah, maybe, but I can’t just deny seeing her. Maybe I won’t act the same way for the next one or maybe I will... I don’t know, it’s a human thing.” I shook my head.

Xerya didn’t reply.

It didn’t take long before I reached the Bermuda Building, the place where the Symbol Camp was supposed to be located, but over here, the amount of dead Nano-Z and human bodies was roughly the same. Right in front of the building, three soldiers had been killed execution style, and now their bodies were left to rot in the sun. When I got closer to them, I could see the insignia of the United Planets of Sol on their blood splattered uniforms. They belonged to an Infantry Division and appeared to be no older than 30 years. It was quite common to see older soldiers on the colonies and the younger ones among those on the front line. This place was where those who wished to take a break from the war or planned to retire requested to be transferred to.

Looking back around this makeshift courtyard with cars that were piled up to form a barrier against the Nano-Z, I realized that the bodies scattered around this place did not belong to those monsters but to the survivors.

“They were killed by bullets and knives...”

“Indeed. None of them had turned.” Xerya told me.

“Do you detect any Nano-Z inside this building?” I asked her as I looked back at the Bermuda Building, which had most of its windows broken and three bodies hanging on the frames, painting the walls with a trail of red blood.

“Negative.” came her answer.

“Let’s go inside then...” I said and then walked over to the entrance.

The door was hanging on the hinges, it couldn’t even close anymore. There was a woman lying in the middle of the room, completely naked and with her guts spilled all around her. The shock and terror on her face, the dried-up tears, they told me that she was still alive when they butchered her like this. Then up on the wall, I saw the signs of 6Ryzers... an R overlapped with an X.

There were several other bodies lying around here, two of them had their right hands cut off and died because of excessive bleeding. It was torture what they went through, but they weren’t the only ones. It seemed as though all the survivors in this place had met with a similar fate. Everywhere I looked, I saw someone who was killed in a different way, but the more I moved through this abandoned building, the more it seemed as though they were trying to make a statement with this. The symbol of the 6Ryzers accompanied every unfortunate victim in this place, whether they were young or old.

“Speaking of which, I don’t see any children... did they spare them or capture them?” I wondered.

“Young minds are the easiest to compel in order to join your cause while the feeble are left to die because they were not strong enough to defend themselves.” Xerya told me.

Her words were true, in a way, but I didn’t like it. That point of view was one that saw the strong as having the right to dominate over the weak ones. It was a barbaric way of thinking that was most common in the dark history of mankind.

“Indeed, the young are the easiest to teach. What is being taught to them could easily corrupt them into becoming individuals marked by wickedness, but it could also nurture them into becoming pillars for the future of society. As for the idea that the weak individuals must die because they are not strong enough, I don’t wholeheartedly agree with it. True, in a fair battle, the strong will always come on top, but sometimes, being good at fighting doesn’t mean that you will always win. A warrior, no matter how strong his muscles are, he would never be able to defeat the plague that a doctor could easily cure with his medicine. He would never be able to build the majestic structures that create this artificial forest we call a city, and also impressive constructs like yourself. Xerya, the nanobots you use, the programming that you run on, they were made not by warriors but by those you call weak, by engineers and programmers.” I explained to her.

“...”

She didn’t reply, so I continued to look around this building, to see if there were any supplies the raiders may have missed. I doubted that I could find anything, but it was still worth a try. There were many rooms in these buildings, and the vast majority of them had been rearranged as either temporary residences or some sort of crafting lab. There were no tools or equipment from what I could see. The raiders took everything that wasn’t bolted to the ground or a corpse.

There was a library at the second floor, but all the paperback books were taken from here. With the interstellar web out of commission and the internet running on fumes, paperback books would end up as not only a natural resource that could be traded for goods but also a precious source of information for both the current and future generation. As for why, even in this time and age, we used something like this, well, this was because in every generation there were those who preferred to use them as a source of entertainment or learning rather than a TechScope projection with an e-book plastered on it. Books were essentially a physical stimulus, a choice entertainment. If you didn’t like reading like this, nobody pressured you into liking it.

“They even took the storage devices...” I said as I looked in the corner where the QSD (Quantum Slim Drive) were located.

Just one of those things was enough to help us restart human civilization from scratch. It was a good thing that there were so many of them all over the city, however, with the right programming tools, they could be retrofitted as video storage drives or something else. In general, they were at the core of our current storage tech. Even the nanobots had a Nano QSD, otherwise it was impossible to fit such an advance AI like Xerya on them. In the past, however, they weren’t that advanced and for the most part they relied on the wireless connection with a server or had a very limited capacity. The first version of nanobots couldn’t even create a neural network with one another.

“This symbol is everywhere...” I remarked as I approached the wall but stopped when I saw the body behind the counter. “She’s dead.”

At the very least, she didn’t seem to have suffered like the others. She was done by a quick bullet to the head.

After leaving the library, I continued to look around the camp until I reached the rooftop. Up there, not even the laundry lines were left. Everything was taken.

“How did they transport all of that stuff?” I wondered as I leaned on the ledge.

There were Nano-Z in the nearby buildings and even a few stumbling on the rooftops. This was probably a good place to look out for roaming hordes or to do some target practice. Looking over the ledge, I saw the body of a man who appeared to have fallen from here. His death was instant, but not far from him were a few other bodies as well. Those were corpses of Nano-Z, or so I thought. They appeared to be quite damaged, with ripped off arms and torn bodies, completely different from what you would see on someone killed by a fellow human.

“Every building is filled with them... Just how in the world did this virus spread so much?” I wondered.

“The stalled activation state followed by the incentive to kill non-infected target hosts is what may have caused the rapid spread. A weak military and security force could have also led to this outcome. From what I understand, this world doesn’t have an Automatic Law Enforcement system yet.” Xerya replied.

The ALE was something a lot of folks from Earth and older colonies hated at this point. This task force was represented by a gigantic number of drones that filled the streets of the city and immediately reacted when a civilian broke the law. In the slum, they tended to be a bit more lenient because when dealing with criminals, the effective income and lifestyle of the individual was taken into consideration. If you were rich, they wouldn’t be too rough on you. If you were dirt poor, they would sometimes turn a blind eye or stop from chasing you for too long. Normal folks, the backbone of society, were the main target of the ALE. We received both the roughness of the machines and their mercy. It was a 50-50 chance on what you would get that day.

I could remember even now how someone who ran over some dude was merely given a warning and then not even five minutes later, a teenager who was spraying graffiti was grabbed and slammed on the floor with enough force to break a bone. The main concern about them was the fact that they weren’t True AI but rather a Basic AI which acted only upon a given set of parameters. In order to make so many of them, they had to dumb them down. There were a few models that were more intelligent than the others, but they were assigned as partners to detectives and other important people like that.

“The absence of ALE has such an impact?” I asked, finding it hard to believe that those tin buckets could have caused a difference. 

“Affirmative. The ALE would act upon them immediately without needing to feel afraid of getting scratched or bitten. If lethal force was approved, then the chances of the Zombolik spreading so far would have fallen to a mere 34%.” she replied.

“34%? That low?” I asked surprised.

“Yes. ALE doesn’t need food or sleep; they can act 24/7.” she pointed out.

I had to agree with her, a machine could run for as long as it had power and a proper maintenance. On the other hand, humans and even guard dogs were forced to sleep and eat. They had times when they could perform their best and others when they were below their average potentials. Almost every single company back on Earth decided to use ALE security instead of hiring veteran soldiers or mercenaries. The downside with all of that tech was that they also faced the risk of having it hacked and then being used against them. 

After leaving the rooftop, I walked around the room, trying to see if there was anything I had missed. This was how I reached the conference room at the 6th floor. The doors were locked with a chain tied to the handles, but I didn’t need this to know that there was something off with this place. There was dried blood on the floor that leaked from within the room.

“What happened here?” I wondered.

I pulled the chains off the handle and dropped them on the floor with a rattling sound. When I opened the doors, the stench of death washed over me, forcing me to cover my mouth and hold back the gag reflex. I even looked away, but when I forced myself to look back at the room, I was horrified by what I saw inside. There was blood and guts everywhere, countless human beings that had been ripped to shreds or tortured in some unmentionable way. I couldn’t stand there anymore and simply fled from there.

“You are reacting quite violently to something that is not that different from what you saw back at your apartment.” Xerya told me.

“I-It’s different... Those were human beings...” I said as I held my mouth, my stomach was turning, threatening to empty its contents any moment now.

“Nano-Z could be considered human beings as well, although mildly altered. Also, your gag reflex can be fixed, I will not allow you to foolishly empty your stomach like this. It would be a wasted source of energy.” she said.

“Thanks? But... I can’t consider the Nano-Z to be human beings... they...” I stopped in my track and thought about what I just wanted to say.

They are monsters? But... if what Xerya told me is true, then... I thought.

“If you don’t consider the Nano-Z to be human beings, does this mean you have relinquished your identity as a human being as well? You are, after all, one of those altered humans, a Nano-Z.”

“I’M NOT A NANO-Z!” I shouted back at her.

“Negative. You are conscious, that’s the only difference between you and them, but fundamentally, your nanobots have been infected with the Zombolik virus and then your body was altered in a similar fashion.” she explained in a calm tone of voice, but I felt like I was boiling just listening to her.

“I’m NOT a Nano-Z!” I wanted to shout and yell at her, but that would just be foolish.

“I do not understand why you are so angry. Was it anything wrong with what I said?” she asked me.

“No... YES...” I stopped and looked down.

What the hell am I doing? I wondered.

“Please explain. What was wrong with my explanation?” she asked.

I closed my eyes for a moment and then took a deep breath in, trying to relax and let go of that anger. It did me no good to get mad at the AI that was controlling the nanobots inside me. While I was certain she wouldn’t do anything to sabotage me just because I yelled at her, I didn’t see any gain in it either. So, it was better overall to just calm down...

“Xerya...” I said as I opened my eyes “The fact that I’m conscious and those things aren’t is the most important part of all this... Human being are conscious and act on their own will, the Nano-Z are wondering around completely forgot everything about the lives they once had. They are no different than the robots in the factory.” I explained.

“...”

“The fact that we are having this conversation now is also proof enough for me that you are far more different than all those lumbering undead out there as well. You communicate with me, they don’t.”

“Technically, they too could advance one day to the point of being able to express words and communicate in a similar manner.”

“But are they doing it now?” I asked her.

“No.” she replied.

“Then they are not like us. They are not humans either... The humans they once were died when the nanobots in them went crazy. For me... the humans are those who are either still alive or have died before being turned.” I told her.

“Understood. I will remember this.”

“Thank you...” I told her and then let out a sigh. “Let’s get out of here.” I shook my head and got up.

I walked away from the conference room and honestly hoped I would never get to see something like that anytime too soon. It was absolutely mortifying, an image I simply wanted to erase from my mind, however, when I saw the symbol of the 6Ryzers on the walls smeared in blood, I initially felt hate and a strong sense of repulsion for them, but a thought pulled me out.

Did they really do all of this? I wondered and then looked back towards the entrance to that bloody room.

“Hey, Xerya... can you detect if there’s any video or recording or something that can tell us what happened here?” I asked her.

“Scanning.” she replied and then I turned around.

While walking down to the 3rd floor, Xerya gave me the scan results.

“All of the recording data seems to have been erased or the cameras themselves have been disabled. The only working station seems to be in the CEO’s office on the last floor.”

“Oh, wow... I didn’t know you could actually do that!” I told her since I really didn’t think she could gain access to nearby technology like that.

“The TechScope has a functionality that permits the nanobots to link up with nearby technology. I simply used a modified version of this feature.” she replied.

“I see, well, let’s go to the CEO’s office, then!”