We left the lair of the Mutated Nano-Z and then headed straight back to our base. The two teenagers remained quiet while they were following us and took quick glances at me and Xerya. They were dirty and skinny, showing signs of malnourishment and weakness. Although they once were the stars of the tennis club, they were now far from that image of a role model athlete student, which was, honestly, unexpected given how in this chaotic age, physical prowess increased your chances of survival.

The day began like any other. We woke up early in the morning and after doing a couple of stretching exercises, we went to the bathroom to clean up. Afterwards, we returned to the kitchen and ate a small breakfast. With a full stomach, we went down and checked on the barricades we setup the day before. Only the one at the entrance on the lower floor was breached, allowing a couple of Nano-Z to make their way inside. We killed them off and then walked outside, where we were met with a couple more.

By now, it was clear that every night, the Nano-Z who turned rabid would move from place to place, hunting for prey, while during the day, they would revert to their less dangerous idle mode.

This neighborhood had a good amount of Nano-Z which we could hunt down and harvest for their nanocores. During this time, Xerya developed a Retractable Blade for Nataly’s body as well as reinforced my muscle and bone structure. While I believed that my senses could use an upgrade, both her and Nataly were against the idea by stating that such changes should take place at an almost unnoticeable level and not right away so that I could avoid sensory confusion. A state in which I would not be able to properly use my senses or adapt to various intensities of stimuli as a direct result of my brain not knowing yet how to properly work within those parameters, resulting in either pain from overstimulation or the inability to properly register a stimulus at all.

It was late in the evening when we finished killing all the Nano-Z in the apartment building. Before it got dark and the ones outside became rabid, I created a barricade on the stairs two floors down using some of the furniture in the nearby apartments. Xerya brought it over and I stacked it up, thus cutting down on the time that it would have taken me if I went about it alone. Afterwards, we went up to the rooftop to setup our camp.

“Back when I was on Planet 6, I would have loved to have the time and opportunity to wear all of these clothes... Like any other woman, I wanted to experience how it was like to dress up and go out to have a good time either alone or with friends. Unfortunately, time doesn’t wait for anyone, and now, I’m old enough to be considered a grandma by some... Partying and having fun shouldn’t be on my mind.” Nataly said as she looked one last time at the bag she left behind.

“When looking at you, I wouldn’t really consider you to be that old... maybe thirty at best.” I told her with a shrug.

Not long after our small chat in the dark, both me and Nataly went to bed while Xerya kept watch with the help of her sensors. If any Nano-Z got too close for her liking, she would wake me up right away to go deal with it. Luckily for me, it didn’t happen, so I was able to get a good night’s sleep.

When I woke up the following day, I saw Xerya practicing basic movements with Nataly’s body. The awkward thing about this situation was the fact that Nataly herself was still sleeping, and you could see this on her face, but her body was moving around as if awake.

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.

Nataly took the reveal of this apocalyptic world much better than I thought, but maybe her experiences on Planet 6 played a big role in this. From what she said, it didn’t seem as though she had any family or friends on this world, which meant that she wasn’t in a hurry of heading out to search for someone... similar to me, in a way.

Still, we couldn’t know for sure if what she spoke was the truth or just a very good lie. Even if she didn’t have anyone on this planet, this didn’t mean she didn’t desire to return to Earth to her daughter, but that in itself could have been impossible. After all, the law probably wouldn’t take kindly of Xerya’s existence, who was, for now, a crucial element in our survival.

When you are born and raised in the slums of the Wrecked City or as the people called it after the big Cleanup, Chicago or New Chicago, you get to learn a few tricks to survive even in the harshest conditions. My mind was forged among the alleys and the wrecks of abandoned buildings and vehicles, among street rats, beggars, and gangsters. This was why when it came for me to make a choice, I didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger, disconnecting my Brain Cage from my body before the infection reached my brain.

Xerya managed to successfully connect the Brain Cage to the artificial spine through those connectors she mentioned, but Nataly here did not have full control of her body just yet, only the head, or rather just the mouth and her facial nerves.

“Before I begin to answer your question, Miss Nataly, I want to know what is the last thing that you remember?” I asked as I took a seat in front of her, cross-legged.

That night, before going to bed, I looked through my gathered resources and organized them better. I had two big bags of food, one of various supplies, and another of tools that might come in handy for a survivor. There were a bunch of duplicates as well, and I was even lucky enough to find several electronic repair kits. As for the Universal Credit Cards, I had enough of them to be considered a rich boy! Unfortunately, I couldn’t just transfer the amount stored on them into my own Personal Account. I needed a bank and some living employees for that, and this wasn’t exactly legal either.

“Conquering at 100%. Servant Host Body has been acquired. Beginning Self-Healing process. Beginning body schematic analysis. Purging unusable nanobots.” Xerya announced a few minutes after the whole process began.

It took longer than expected to get the final 10% done, and the reason for this, according to her, was because of the complications that appeared during the software reinstalling process on the captured nanobots. Depending on the situation, she had to either do a clean reinstall after a complete format the drives or modify and reconfigure the existing programs. If it was the first, then all the data that was stored in the nanobots was essentially lost, but it wasn’t as if there was something significant to gather from those reprogrammed either.

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.