~ Chapter 32: We all have a choice to make

[Kardian’s point of view]

The Resonance High School was quiet after the bloody battle in the Atrium. It was as if none of the survivors wanted to even so much as dare to peek out of their hiding holes and look at us. As my gaze fell down on the bodies of the dead, I realized that there was no way for there to be any innocents left in this place. Each and every one of them had gotten a taste for human meat, they ate their fellow students or teachers, they were no different than the monsters walking outside of this place, hunting for survivors.

Nataly didn’t go chasing after the ones who fled from the scene, she stayed behind and began to check the bodies for supplies.

“They have no credit cards on them!” she grumbled in frustration as she kicked one of the bodies in the side.

“They resorted to cannibalism, so it’s clear that they didn’t bother to find a store where the drones still worked.” I shook my head.

“Up until now, we didn’t bother going to the store either. We found enough supplies on the way to not be bothered by it.” Nataly shrugged as she walked over to me. “But, leaving that aside, are you ok?” she asked with a worried expression on her face.

“I... I don’t know.” I shook my head.

“Let’s get out of here and find a place to camp out and talk about it.” she suggested, and I nodded.

“Should I take back control over the body?” Xerya asked.

“I think Nataly proved herself to us, Xerya.” I told her as I started moving towards the entrance.

“I don’t mind having Xerya take my body out for a spin now and then, but I would appreciate it if she left the fighting to me. As we just saw, I’m better at this than her!” she declared with a big grin on her face.

“I cannot deny this statement.” Xerya replied.

The moment I left Resonance High, I stopped and took a look back at the entrance. The barricaded doors now felt as though they were rejecting me and my shattered values as a teacher, or maybe those wide doors which once welcomed hundreds of students every day were now declaring that this place had long lost its purpose. I couldn’t tell which of the two it was, but I certainly didn’t feel happy about either of them.

The journey here felt like a loss to me...

“Let’s go.” I said as I let out a sigh and then walked towards the gate.

At this moment, Nataly asked something strange.

“Hey, Xerya, if there’s a loud sound, will that attract the nearby horde?”

“Affirmative.” the AI replied.

“Will the horde target us?” she asked.

“As long as we don’t attack the horde, then no.”

“Good!” she said with a big smile on her face before pulling the gun from between her breasts and aimed it at the High School.

BANG! 

The shot echoed all around us, loud like a cannon fire. Then came the sound of glass shattering and falling to the ground.

When I looked back, I saw someone up there at the second floor, two people I didn’t recognize, but they were staring daggers at us.

“Nataly, what just happened?” I asked her a bit unsure as I furrowed my brow.

“They were trying to snipe us from behind. While this little trinket is harmless against a reinforced soldier on the battlefield, it’s just right to disable weapons or to pluck out the optics of the enemy.” she explained with a simple smile as she holstered the gun at her hip.

“We should move from here. The horde has been alerted.” Xerya announced.

“What will happen to them?” I asked as I looked at the glaring people back there.

“Fate will happen.” Nataly shrugged and then walked over to the gates, she jumped over them with ease.

If I wanted to do something, there was nothing I could do against the incoming horde. Sure, maybe we could have played a game of tag with them for a while, but when nighttime came, we would have been faced with the horror known as Rabid Mode.

“Fate... yeah, you can call it that. If they didn’t try to snipe us, she wouldn’t have shot to defend us.” I said and then followed after her.

We both ran away from there but stopped when we reached a safe distance. I jumped up on one of the streetlamps and watched what happened.

The horde arrived at the gates and smashed right through the barricade. Although the initial horde that we saw in the distance only had around 74 Nano-Z, by the time they reached the school gates, there were hundreds of them. Just as Xerya suspected, pulled in by the loud noise, they got out of every building, from every bush or buss that could hide them and joined the horde. They then ran into the schoolyard and stopped there for a moment, lurking around until the scent of the dead humans pulled them in. The only reason why they reacted to it was because fresh blood triggered the nanobots inside them to look for a new host to infect, so they mindlessly rushed towards it. With the barricade at the front entrance, the survivors gained a few moments of relief, but then they made their next big mistake.

BANG! BANG! BANG! 

They opened fire with the few guns they had in their possession. Of course, this attracted even more Nano-Z from around the area, who joined the horde. It didn’t take long before the barricade fell alongside whatever means they employed to block the windows. The Nano-Z rushed in like a group of starved hounds.

I can’t imagine what’s happening inside right now or how many of them will survive this day, but one thing is certain... Resonance High School is no more. I thought and then I jumped off the streetlamp. 

 ”All good?” Nataly asked as she was poking a Nano-Z in the cheek.

The thing groaned and looked around, but since it didn’t see her as an enemy, it didn’t attack.

“Yeah. We should head back to those two now.” I told her.

“Sure.” she nodded and then killed the Nano-Z.

After pulling out the nanocore, she dumped it in her backpack for Xerya to consume later on.

We made our way back through the empty streets until we reached the same spot we camped out at the other night. Here, we barricaded the stairs going up to the first two floors and then went up to clear the Nano-Z on the remaining floors. By the time it was dark outside and the howls of the rabid ones echoed throughout the night, we had already set up camp and were having our meal. We ate two cans of meat, some bread, and two cups of instant noodles. It wasn’t anything extravagant or rich like caviar or Planet 3 bovine meat, but it was more than enough for the two of us.

Once we finished our meal, we made our beds from a couple of clean blankets and a pair of mattresses we found in the empty apartments. We made ourselves comfortable.

The first to break the silence was Nataly: “Alright, tell me everything that’s on your mind. I know today wasn’t easy, so don’t leave out the details. Grandma Nataly will listen to all of your troubles!” she giggled.

“Grandma Nataly?” I asked raising an eyebrow.

“Technically, I’m over 80 now, but who’s countin’?” she shrugged.

“Sigh... well, I still don’t know if what I did today was either good or bad. I mean... the people we killed, they were once my students, and...” I closed my eyes as I took a deep breath in, trying to calm down the anxiety in me “It didn’t feel... wrong. When I killed them, it didn’t feel wrong?” I said.

“You told me back there that you didn’t want to fail again, that you want to save both the villainous and the just... as a teacher, right?” she asked.

“Yes.” I nodded.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Kardian, but while that’s an admirable way of thinking from a moral point of view, in reality, it is nothing more than a naive way of looking at someone that doesn’t take into account the will of that respective individual.” she said.

“What do you mean? Are you saying that I’m both right and wrong at the same time?” I asked.

“If this was a fictional world, yes, you would be right. You would be applauded and congratulated for your way of thinking and decisive actions, you would be seen as a hero by some, however, it’s not the teacher’s job to make choices for them only to guide them, and I think this is what you find so hard to understand and accept at the same time.” she told me in a kind and gentle tone of voice.

“But, I didn’t make choices for them, or at least... I think I didn’t.” I told her.

“Let me tell you a story, maybe it will help you understand what I mean.”

“Please do.”

“Before I was recruited in the mercenary group Hungry Lions, I used to live on the streets in the slum of Chicago. You know it now as the Wrecked City or New Chicago. Back then, it wasn’t easy to live there, but there were a lot of people like you, who tried their best to help the unlucky ones like me to get off the street and into a proper school and college. Back then, I didn’t understand those people, I didn’t understand why they wanted to change us or deny our existence because that was how I perceived their acts.” she then looked at me.

“You’re saying that for some, it might have come out like that?” I asked.

She nodded.

“The slums are tough with the kids because they see the heroes in the ones who survive and not the ones who resist the temptation. For them, it’s cool to take drugs or get a weapon because it makes them feel closer to their idols or their father figures even if those guys are nothing more than lowlife criminals and gangsters who would rather sell them all for a quick buck than to help them out in a time of need. Just like those kids back at Resonance High, the strong ruled over the weak and nobody, I mean nobody wants to be the weak.” she let out a sigh as she looked up at the sky.

“You were part of the strong?” I asked.

“No, I was part of the weak... Initially, I had a mom and dad like everyone else, but we were poor. One day, there was a shootout, and my parents were caught right in the middle of it. Overnight, I became an orphan. Our house was rented, and of course I couldn’t pay the rent. It was an easy thing to kick a kid like me out on the streets. So, I tried my best to survive... I stole, I rummaged through garbage cans, I even fought other kids and took their bread away. If I could do something to survive, I did it. Thankfully, it never came down to me becoming a prostitute, that would have been a one-way trip to hell for me.” she giggled.

“It must have been tough...” I said as I remembered the kids back on Earth who lived in the slums of Bucharest.

“It wasn’t tough... it was terrifying. The bread I ate was as hard as rocks but trying to sleep at night without knowing when someone would come to steal your money or take your food, when rats roamed around and could always rush in to bite you and infect you with some sort of disease, that was the worst part. Then there was the hunger, the thirst, and the feeling of dirty clothes sticking to your skin, itching everywhere. It was terrible.” she shuddered as she remembered that.

“Well, some of the survivors are probably living in no different circumstances than you did back then...” I said as I scratched my head.

“Maybe even worse, at least none of us were forced to eat each other.” she let out a sigh and then continued “Back when I was still on the streets, there were people like you who tried to lure me away from the slums. There were kind-hearted folk who lured me in like they would a stray animal, and there were those who promised me riches if I joined the nightlife. For a kid, all of those things were irresistible, but then...” she looked at me “the gangs approached me.”

I gulped.

“You probably told those kids of yours the same things those nice folks told me... that if I come with them, I’ll have the chance for a better life, I’ll be able to have a happy life far away from the horrors of the slum. It was something I wanted, all of us wanted, but the gangs offered something that I understood better...” she told me.

“What?”

“They gave me that life on a silver platter. It wasn’t a chance or a possibility for them, it was a direct path at full speed towards the life with sparkling colors that I had always dreamed off. It was a chance to meet my heroes, the cool guys and girls I saw from the corner of the street, the tough guys who laughed in the face of the police or big bosses who could drive in all the fancy flyers and have all the cool stuff. They owned the streets from the pavement on the ground to the lights on top of the tallest buildings. It was normal and natural for the slum kids to want to reach up there. It was all we knew; it was all we wanted.” she said with a soft smile.

“You went with the gangs because they gave you what you wanted...” I said as I remembered how the kids back in the slums looked at me when I told them of what they could do once they left the slums.

They were looking at me with eyes of sympathy as if... I didn’t understand them... as if I couldn’t understand them, and maybe that was the case.

“Yes, but you see... Back then, I had a choice to make.” she told me as she looked at me.

“A choice?” I raised an eyebrow “There were more gangs who wanted you?”

“That too, but my choice was a simple one. My first option was to stay on the streets, to live on like any other street rat. My second option was to go with the nice people who offered me a way out of the slums. My third option... was to go with the gangs.” she closed her eyes and then said “No matter the reasons they gave me, no matter the dreams they promised to fulfill, that choice, in the end, was mine and mine alone... I made the choice to go with the gangs, nobody else.” she then opened her eyes and looked at me. “I was given again the next choice when I joined the Hungry Lion mercenary troop, but my point is, that in the end, no matter who we are and what we do, we always have a choice. Your choice right now is simple as well: you can choose to continue to hope for the people to be what they aren’t or you can choose to see them as they are and judge them by their deeds right now... because sometimes, saving the just means killing the villainous.”

I didn’t know how to reply to her words of wisdom, but I knew she was right. Of course, she was right, I was blinded by my own stupidity and foolishly believed that I could save everyone. As a teacher, I wanted to see the good in everyone, and there was but... Nataly was right, I gave them the choice to make a new life for themselves, but... they chose something else. No matter if their parents forced them, no matter if the gangs came to them, it wasn’t as if they had no way out, they chose not to have one. They went out there on the streets with a weapon in their hands in the hope of proving themselves to the ones they saw as heroes in their minds... They pulled the trigger and were killed in the end for it. My role ended when I laid out the other option for them. If they came to me, good, but if they didn’t, it was also good, because they made their own choice.

Nataly was right, I can’t force them, but I still tried to make them choose, and I felt terrible when they didn’t listen to what I thought was the right choice. I felt sad and hopeless when I saw that they gave up on the option I laid out for them because I didn’t believe that they were strong and smart enough to make their own choices.

“I was wrong... I was so wrong...” I said as I placed a hand over my eyes and let my tears fall.

She didn’t say anything else, and I simply wept there like the sad and pathetic little man that I was.