Back on Earth and even here on Planet 9, I made a mistake, a terrible mistake that for as long as I would live, I did not want to repeat again. I had to step out of my fairy tale ideal and jump right into the real world outside, where my naïve wishes only ended up hurting me and those who cared about me.

As soon as I woke up, I went to the bathroom and took a shower. Water and electricity were still running in this place. A good sign which told us that the underground infrastructure of pipes, cables, and maintenance systems was still up and running.

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.

When we stepped into the Atrium, it felt empty, devoid of all life, but Xerya’s scans that appeared on my retina showed that there were human lifeforms all around us. For the sake of keeping up appearances, we pretended not to see and not to know.

“This place looks empty.” Nataly played along as she gave a kick to a cardboard box near the fountain in the middle.

“This is unexpected... We were told that this was a camp of survivors, right?” I asked her, pretending to be a fool.

The world went to Hell... and with it... so did human laws and decency.

When the outbreak started, we were all just a bunch of senior year High School students. Our main worry was to get back home, drop off our stuff and then head out to play. I was thinking about getting my first cyber implant and even a flyer. My dad promised me one, but that day, when we left home, we never expected even in a million years that for some of us it would be the last time we would see our families alive and well.

The whole school was a mess. The windows at the ground floor were barricaded with school desks and other pieces of furniture, most likely nailed or glued to the walls with something. There were traces of blood all over the place: on the walls, on the windows, on the ground and even on the trees that were planted in the courtyard.

Despite all of this, I could still remember like it was yesterday the peaceful times when everyone looked forward to their promising future on this planet. During class time, the neighborhood cat sometimes came around and napped near the gate. During breaks, the students were laughing innocently in their own little groups gathered around the benches. On the other side, in the grass, there was always a group of kids playing ball, while not far from them, near the big tall tree, the robot enthusiasts could usually be found discussing ideas and plans focused around their hobby. Up on the rooftop was usually a place where those in the third years would always gather to eat lunch.

The closer we got to the High School, the fewer Nano-Z we encountered on our way. There were many signs of survivors roaming around, barricaded windows and doors, unique symbols that only they understood, camping site remains and even signs of fierce battles. Nataly found it interesting that the survivors were already developing their own codes to talk to one another and recalled that the same thing happened on Planet 6 during the terrible blackout periods. On the other hand, Xerya didn’t see the use in these strange methods of communicating when the internet was still up and running. She considered that simple pings and tags on a local map was enough for every survivor to know what they were up against when visiting this area.

The Resonance High School was located at about 3.4 kilometers from where we found Zuiza and Yumino. The road there was clogged up with cars and busses that were tipped over or left abandoned after the outbreak picked up the pace. The shops and apartment buildings were broken into and teeming with Nano-Z, however, the overall numbers were far too small in comparison to what should have been in this area.

“There are just three of them in that shop... and four over there.” Nataly noticed.

“Yeah... And if you count the ones on the street from here to the next intersection, there are less than 20...” I said.

After listening to their story, I wanted to have a private talk with Nataly and Xerya. Both Yumino and Zuiza were currently in a terrible shape, and I could not even begin to imagine what the two must have gone through during all of these weeks, especially when you consider the fact that they were forced to trade away the life of their former classmate as a slave to be eaten away like a roasted pig on a Christmas morning.

It was terrible and disturbing on so many levels.

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.