~ Chapter 19: Self-Devouring Horde ~

[Kardian’s point of view]

We packed our bags and made our plans for reaching Resonance High safely. Instead of just rushing there, which, if we desired, we could have done so in maybe an hour or two, we decided to take a more scenic route so that Xerya could adjust to moving Nataly’s body.

From the very first moment when she got up, it was clear that the AI had a few problems and found it difficult to send all the right signals to her muscles. It was a trial and error, but she seemed to be learning quite fast. I didn’t let her fight for even a single second, although, Xerya expressed her intent to do so claiming that the Nano-Z wouldn’t be able to detect her as a human either way.

While that was true and the fact that she too was the result of a modified version of the Zombolik Virus meant that she was, in a way, a distant relative of theirs, this didn’t exclude the self-defense mechanism that all the Nano-Z had in them. When attacked, it didn’t matter who and why they did it, those things would retaliate with extreme ferocity.

Every time I got caught attacking another Nano-Z, I was met with the same response, while if I remained calm and peaceful towards them, I could even walk among them without a problem. For now, I still didn’t know how these things were able to identify others like them, but my guess was that they created a new nano-tech device in them which acted as a sensor of some sorts, sending out a signal to all nearby Nano-Z.

But if this was the case, then why haven’t the military done something similar? Or maybe they did but they have yet to reach this place? If they kept on attacking every Nano-Z they encountered, they were certain to enrage them before they could test out the effectiveness of such a device.

We didn’t travel too far during the day, and for the most part, Nataly remained quiet, while Xerya was getting used to her body while traversing the terrain, climbing over cars, jumping over holes, crouching, stretching, that sort of stuff.

Eventually, we decided to spend the night at a nearby Refiller Station. I was quite certain that the owners weren’t going to complain about us, considering the fact that they were just a bunch of Nano-Z bumping their heads on the glass window. A total of six of them were within that place, and I took them out stealthy by using my Retractable Blade. Their cores were used as part of Xerya’s meal.

“Why aren’t we staying at the ground floor?” Nataly asked when she saw me making my way to the rooftop.

“You’ll see.” I told her with a smile and then continued to make the preparations for the night, including a small barricade at the doors and windows to keep the Rabid Nano-Z from getting in.

Unlike the regular survivors, our camouflage kept us relatively safe even at night, when there was a higher chance of randomly attacking us than during the day. From what I have witnessed so far, some of them did attack their fellow Nano-Z right away while the others needed a push to do so, a trigger. That could be anything from a mere bump or an actual attack from another Nano-Z. If you tossed a rock at one of them, rather than going after the one who tossed the rock, they would more than likely start to attack each other right away. From this point of view, it was far easier to get rid of them during the night than during the day.

“Wait! Don’t touch... that.” Nataly said, although a bit too late.

The creaking of a pipe was heard followed by the sound of flowing water. When I turned around, I saw Xerya drenched from head to toe, with her clothes sticking close to her body, making her give off a strong erotic vibe. I blushed immediately and turned around before I could even see why she ended up like this.

“W-What happened?” I asked while keeping my back at her.

“A water pipe broke.” Xerya replied.

“Broke? You mean you busted it...” Nataly complained and then noticed me “Why are you standing there like that?”

“Erm... No reason, your body is wet and... erm... your clothes are wet.” I said stumbling in my words.

“So? It’s not like you didn’t see me naked before, right? I doubt Xerya was able to change into these clothes on her own and... wait, are you blushing?” she asked.

“NO!” I retorted, but like a shy kid, I didn’t turn around.

“Clothes are wet; therefore, they need to be change. I will change them.” Xerya decided and then I could hear the sound of clothes rustling.

“Hey, Kardian, turn around for a bit. Don’t worry, she’s dressed.” Nataly said with a strange tone in her voice, it sounded almost like a cheer.

“Is that so, alright, then...” when I turned around, Xerya was in no way or manner changed. “YOU TOLD ME SHE WAS DRESSED!” I retorted.

“Technically, Eve’s dress is a style among certain folk.” Nataly giggled.

“Why are you enjoying this?! Aren’t you ashamed that another man is seeing your body?” I asked while I turned around once again.

“No. I’m proud of my body even if for now Xerya doesn’t let me drive it. Besides, it’s not like I’m a virgin who is ashamed by something of this degree. If I was, it would have been hell on the battlefield!” she laughed.

“This isn’t the... well, technically we can call this a battlefield of sorts, but that’s not the point... and how did you know that I’m a virgin?!” I retorted while still keeping my back to her.

“Because you act all embarrassed when looking at the body of a naked woman and seeing how you turned beat red, I’m guessing you liked what you saw... Wait, Xerya, that’s not the way you put panties on, the other way... Yes, that’s right. Now, one leg at a time. Good, girl!” she said.

“Ugh...” I groaned, but I couldn’t rebuke her.

“You know, Kardian, don’t take this the wrong way, but sometimes it’s refreshing to see that cute and embarrassed side of a man, but take it too far and you might hurt my feelings. Because, you know...” Nataly’s voice turned into a purr “sometimes women want to be seen to rile up that lewd side of ours...”

I gulped and replied “I’ll keep that in mind... I doubt I’ll forget it too.”

“Your behavior upon seeing this body naked now is different from when you first saw it. What has changed?” Xerya asked out of curiosity.

“He just became more conscious of it, that’s it.” Nataly replied and if I could see her, she was without a doubt smirking.

“I do not understand.” she said.

“Erm, it’s difficult to explain...”

I decided to avoid getting dragged into this conversation by moving to the other side of the station. The shelves were completely empty here, and the robot that was working the station seemed to have been destroyed, his parts were scattered everywhere. This meant that the pumps outside could only be operated manually.

Jumping over the counter, I saw that there was nothing of use to take from here. Whoever destroyed the robot also stole everything of worth from this place. It was a rather weird move to do considering that the survivors might one day need these Refiller Stations, then again, this might have also been the exact reason why they did it in the first place? Crippling most of the station would result in a more controlled network for the camps who held interest in them.

“There’s no specific raider mark here though...” I said as I looked around.

The back door to this place was broken in, and two bodies were next to it, both belonging to Nano-Z. The survivors probably tried to use this place to hide but then they got inside, or maybe they used this place to trap them in? I couldn’t figure it out and a long time since then seemed to have passed. These corpses were old and stinky. I dragged them out and then blocked the entrance with one of the shelves. We didn’t need the back room anyway.

After the bottom floor was barricaded, I fixed up the pipe before Xerya got into another accident that would have certainly given me a nosebleed. I couldn’t help it, Nataly definitely hit a bunch of checkmarks on my list. As for her age, I honestly wasn’t bothered by it... Her body looked young enough to be considered in her thirties, so seriously, it didn’t matter if her brain was from 80 years ago.

Or maybe I was just one of the weird dudes who didn’t mind it and this sort of thing was in fact rather weird for most people.

Well, most people now were a bunch of mumbling grumbling Nano-Z... I highly doubted that their opinion mattered as much.

With nighttime approaching fast, we moved to the rooftop, where we barricaded ourselves carefully. in theory, no Rabid Nano-Z was supposed to get close to us, so we could rest with ease, but we could never be too careful. It wasn’t a problem if a small group attacked us, but if a horde happened to pass by, then we would end up in trouble, no doubt about it.

While I was thinking about this, Nataly asked me “Although you are quite powerful for a normal human, you still seem to be very careful with where you camp. I would have expected you to be a bit more relaxed.”

“I wish I could be, but just because I’m a little stronger than the average Joe doesn’t meant that I can hold off against a horde of those things.” I replied.

“Yeah, I can understand this, but why are there so few of them?”

Looking back at Nataly and then over at one of the big buildings next to us, I replied “A lot of them are hidden inside those places, waiting for the moment when some unsuspecting survivor walks in and frees them from their room.”

“But I remember that almost all the cities on this planet had been filled up with citizens... The population per settlement on this planet ranged between several hundred thousands to several millions. If most humans were either turned into those things or somehow managed to survive, then why did the streets feel so empty like those of a ghost town?” she pointed out.

I opened my mouth, at first wanting to contradict her, but I found her arguments to be sound.

“That... I don’t know.” I replied in the end.

“The Nano-Z, after a few days will gather in hordes and move around from place to place. This is a subroutine in their programming that prevents them from stagnating in the same place. The direction in which the horde will move, however, follows a randomizing algorithm that in theory should never give out the same result twice. The advantage a horde has over a single Nano-Z is that if any of the members of the said horde detects a potential prey or enemy, the others will be alerted as well and then they will all begin to chase that same target.” Xerya explained.

“In other words, it’s bad.” I said as I looked at her.

“Precisely.” Xerya nodded.

“I’m going to go ahead and make something to eat... We, erm... have noodles and some packed sandwiches. Nataly, what do you want?” I asked her.

“Do I even need to eat?” she wondered.

“What a weird thing to say...” I narrowed my eyes at her.

“Indeed, this body’s energy recycling system is far better than yours, Kardian.” Xerya added.

“Body energy recycling system?” I asked raising an eyebrow.

“This body does not need to urinate and defecate as often as yours does.” she replied while Nataly remained quiet.

“Alright... that was a weird Trivia moment, but I’ll just ignore it.” I decided on the spot and then pulled out two sandwiches from my bag and handed one to Xerya.

“If you stab that sandwich in my eye, I’ll be mad.” Nataly warned Xerya.

“I am not that inapt at controlling this body. Besides, you can’t do anything to me even if you are mad.” she retorted.

“I hate it that you’re right.”  Nataly grumbled.

It was sort of weird to see her arguing with herself like that.

After we had our meal, I walked over to the ledge and stayed there as a watch guard for the time being while Xerya began to absorb some of the nanocores in both my and Nataly’s body.

While we waited like this, I asked her about the upgrades she was doing to my body and her progress on them. When I thought back at the fight I had with Nataly’s mutated version, I realized that I still had room for improvement by leaps and bounds, but although Xerya could be considered quite advanced for an AI, she still had her limitations. She required a lot of nanocores to progress with even one of them, and this was because she needed the processing power rather than the material they provided. In theory, if she developed a better weapon, she could just recycle the now weaker weapon into it.

One thing she mentioned was that what she was doing wasn’t anything groundbreaking according to her data. Similar weapons and implants existed out there, however, getting her nanobots to act out as the pieces that formed them was something else entirely that mostly relied on a trial-and-error process. Even when she finished my Retractable Blade, although it appeared to be working perfectly, there were countless problems with it ranging from the speed at which the nanobots gathered to the shape and form of the parts they became. Creating the edge was especially difficult since it needed the nanobots to ‘hold together’, a concept that didn’t really exist in their original programming.

There were a lot of tiny details that made everything work, and the more complex the system was, the more problems could pop up at a moment’s notice. In the end, I had to consider myself lucky that the Retractable Blade even worked at all and didn’t turn up as a weird club or some sort of flower sword.

While I was chatting with Xerya about those upgrades, I didn’t even notice when it got dark. At one point, however, she stopped talking for a moment and then said:

“I have detected a small horde approaching us.”

“What? A horde? How small are we talking here?” I asked her as I got off the ledge and hid behind it.

Xerya approached us with Nataly’s body and peeked over the edge.

“I am detecting twelve Nano-Z moving as a group.”

“That’s not big, but if they go Rabid and attack this place, they could really put a dent in it.” I said.

“Saw them. 10 o’clock.” Nataly said, and I turned my head to the left.

There, from among the broken cars, twelve Nano-Z were walking towards us, one slow step at a time. As long as we didn’t catch their attention, they would just pass by us without a problem. Then, if needed be, I could take them down tomorrow once their Rabid Mode was turned off. I still didn’t feel at ease about fighting them when they were in that dangerous state.

“They stopped...” Nataly pointed out.

The twelve were in the middle of the road when they came to a halt. Then they turned their heads left and right fast as if they were scanning for something only to stop and stand still for another minute. Far away from us, the growls of the Rabid Nano-Z became louder and as if triggered by them, these twelve also turned Rabid. Their eyes started to glow red, and their movements became more savage and uncontrollable. 

Then, without even the smallest warning, they started to attack each other and rip each other apart. The scene was gruesome and disgusting. It lasted for only a few minutes, but when it ended, only two Nano-Z remained, and they howled at each other.

“Those two appears to have achieved the condition for evolving. In two or three days time, they will become Mutated Nano-Z.” Xerya told us.

“Wait, those things are going to be like Nataly?!” I retorted in surprise and because I slightly raised my voice, I alerted them.

They looked our way for a moment, but they didn’t seem to have spotted us. We remained silent and hid behind the ledge until the two decided to move and rushed off deeper into the city instead of snooping around this place.

“Their signals are weak now. They are gone.” Xerya told me.

“Great... but what do you mean those two are going to mutate?” I asked her.

“To specify, they will become more intelligent and act differently in a horde. They won’t be able to communicate with us, if this is your concern, however, they will display a more careful and calculated behavior pattern than the regular Nano-Z. I do wish to point out that Nataly’s case was a very special and unique one. The chances of meeting another infected cyborg with a similar brain cage as hers and equivalent conditions of evolution for her nanobots is highly improbable.” she explained and after I heard her, I let out a sigh of relief.

“Pardon me saying this, but this Zombolik Virus sounds more like some sort of program with specific directives rather than a... well, virus.” Nataly remarked.

“That is in fact correct. The Zombolik Virus is in fact a forceful update of the programs that the regular nanobots within a human’s system have. The program takes over the nanobot and reconfigures it entirely, but in order for this to happen, the nanobots need to be in close proximity with one another, thus, it is impossible to get infected while you keep your range from any part of their bodies that might contain it.” Xerya explained.

“Yeah, and what we witnessed is just a mode of the Nano-Z. We call it the Rabid Mode, and it activates only when nighttime comes. It’s not triggered by light but by their internal clocks. Their eyes grow red, they nanobots move faster in their bodies and they begin to attack each other. Once they gathered enough nanocores, they evolve into... a more advanced Nano-Z.” I told her.

“That’s awfully specific... It definitely doesn’t sound like just anyone could have done this.”

“This was most definitely the work of a madman.” I said as I shook my head.

“Or a brilliant scientist... but the only one who would fit the bill as far as I know is Doctor Xardavian Eukalt, the same guy who rebuilt my body, but why would he do something like this?” she wondered.

“Unfortunately, no information regarding my creator exists within my files...” Xerya said with a bit of sadness in the tone of her voice.

“It can’t be helped... Although, usually, the madmen who are responsible for such a genocide either rejoice in the havoc their action caused or prefer to go completely incognito and pretend like they don’t know anything about it.”

“It sounds like the creator could be of the latter. But, if you say that this Doctor Xardavian Eukalt might have the knowledge to pull something like this off, maybe he also has the knowledge to make a cure for it?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but if he does, then the military is already working on one. That guy is an exclusive contractor for the Army. His name is not that well known because most of his projects are top secret, so until a General or someone of a higher rank gives his approval, he can’t reap the benefits of his work.” Nataly explained.

“That means... we can’t meet the guy. Well, even if we met him, we would have wound up on some operating table as his prime experiments.” I trembled at the very thought of it.

“Most likely.” Nataly confirmed.

“I do not wish to wind up on an operating table, so I suggest we do not entertain the idea of meeting up with this suspicious doctor.” Xerya declared.

“I agree with her.”

“Me too... That doc was a freak.” Nataly added.