The game of cat and mouse was a tiring one for me, but the tactics were mostly the same. I ran to one corner of the room, stayed there until the creature ran at me, then I dodge out of the way, gave her a kick and rushed to the other side. For the first minute, I thought that I could keep going like this, but after the fourth round, she got smarter and tried to catch me when I kicked her. So, I had to be more careful.

“Shit! Xerya! This is not easy!” I shouted as I barely dodged the jump attack of the Mutated Cyborg.

The road was crowded with cars and the dead bodies of humans who at one point lived around these parts. From time to time, one of them would try to get up but would then be immediately silenced by my retractable blade. The core in his brain would be extracted and then I would calmly continue to move forward. Life seemed to have vanished from this place and the low guttural growls of the Nano-Z sent chills down my spine.

“It feels so weird to see the streets like this...” I said as I stopped at an intersection where a flying tank had crashed in a truck.

The last floor of this building was the one where all the VIP offices were located. The CEO, the Vice President of the company, the Head Department Managers, everyone with a high rank worked here, so naturally, all of their offices were lavishing, beautiful, expensive looking. Well, at least they were like that before this whole apocalypse thing happened, now they more or less looked like bigger rooms, since everything worth a dime was stolen from here.

The CEO’s office was in a sorry state where only the desk and the bookshelves were left standing. Everything else was taken, including the chairs... Or rather one of the chairs had been thrown out the window.

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.

Almost everything that I managed to scavenge and was deemed useful for my continual survivor in this hectic world was packed into two big bags and a backpack. Whatever didn’t fit inside was in a plastic bag next to the bed.

“Initially, I thought that we didn’t have that much stuff...” I said as I looked at all of it with my arms crossed at my chest.

“In theory, this quantity of resources isn’t enough for long term survival.” Pointed out Xerya.

“What do you mean by long term survival?” I asked raising an eyebrow.

“I estimate anywhere between ten months to two years.” she replied.

“...”

A whole week had passed since I started cleaning the apartment building of Nano-Z. Once I went through another upgrade, it became easier for me to just keep on collecting those cores, so I moved from floor to floor. Eventually, I reached the ground floor, where a lot of them could be found. By then, the bat that I had been used broke down completely. Thankfully, before that happened, I gathered enough cores to complete the Retractable Blade, and it was so easy to use!

Three hours later, after reading the bits and pieces I found on the internet, watching the uploaded videos, and looking at the pictures that were taken as proof of various events that took place within the city while I was unconscious, I turned off my PC with a feeling of disgust in the pit of my stomach. There were some things, which I simply didn’t want to believe they were true, they were far too inhumane, far too disgusting, yet they were undeniable proof of our new hellish reality that was spreading across this entire planet.

“Xerya, I just want to sleep and dream of something pleasant... can you please tell me about the upgrades tomorrow morning?” I asked as I laid in bed and closed my eyes.

“Understood.”

After returning to my apartment, I closed the door and blocked it off with the dresser, which wasn’t that difficult to move given my enhanced strength; I could barely feel its weight. Afterwards, I went to change the sheets of my bed, which were covered in a thick layer of dust, nothing a good shake outside the window couldn’t solve. Because I couldn’t clean them, I used them instead as a cleaning rag.

I started off with the computer and my desk, then I went to the kitchen and finished off with the bed and floor. For a moment, I thought about cleaning the entrance as well, but with all the blood marks and everything, I decided to give it a pass.

The whole absorption process took around 2 hours and 43 minutes, but when I opened my eyes, I felt as though I had just woken up from a good night’s sleep. My body felt strong, and I was not hungry either. It was a bit strange, but I accepted it as it was. These transformations and strange states I went through were far better than ending up as one of those things that wandered around mindlessly on the street.

“I’m awake now, Xerya. Anything new?” I asked as I clenched my right hand into a fist and checked to see if all of my joints were working properly.

Now what would be crazier? To witness with your own eyes the end of the world in the form of a nanobot virus infection created by some madman or end up striking a deal with the AI of said nanobots?

Before this whole thing started, I would have proudly said that both of those options were not only farfetched but as crazy as crazy could be. Usually, the companies who designed the NanoHeal and TechScope nanobots implemented countless fail-safe systems to keep them from going rogue. They were even organizing competitions through which the tech geniuses tried to crack them. Whenever one succeeded, a new update would be released soon after to make it better.

The gentle morning rays of the Novelisk star caressed me as my whole body was slowly but surely waking up. I opened my eyes and saw the frame of my window upon which dust had gathered and then was washed away by the occasional rain, leaving behind dirty stains. The scent that flooded my nose was that of death and rot, but I didn’t know if it came from me or from outside.

It was a bit funny, but from here, I could still see the apartments in the building across the street, where my neighbor ended up falling prey to one of the Nano-Z that changed within their family. In the corner, his skeletal remains were left, with only the dried flesh and skin clinging to it. A sickening sight which reflected the sadness of this world that was turned into a monstrous state by that wretched computer virus.

One year and six months ago, the Interstellar Spaceship Dominion VI docked with the Termika Space Station located on the outer edge of the Novelisk Solar System also known as Alpha-134Pi. The journey from Sol took two months, but I was awake for only four days, while the rest of that time was spent in a state-of-the-art hibernation capsule. There was not that much to do on this ship, especially since it was also a vessel equipped to handle battle situations when we encountered alien scout ships or pirates.

A new life... that was what Planet 9 had promised...

A new chance for a new beginning far away from desperate and hopeless decay of the slums of a megalopolis. For a while, that was true, I gained my life and basked in the joys it brought me, but then... all Hell broke loose.

As I was standing in my chair, looking at my computer’s holographic screen, there was a simple text message written there in several languages. The words displayed on it were simple:

“Hello. I know you are there. Do you want to talk? I want to talk with you.”

All around me there were countless virtual and holographic advertisements popping up in a nauseating explosion of colors, lights, and sometimes sounds as well. On a good day, these Augmented Reality Advertisements (ARA) were directed at your needs, and they could be useful, but most of the times, they were just a spam of blunt attempts at mental manipulation. Not everyone fell for them, but among the common folk population there were already a lot who did, which made it worse when they started to tell you about those ‘great’ products like some brainwashed zealots of a suspicious cult.