12 Entry and Testing

The three young people approached the city quickly with their car, but as it was already night, they decided to wait for the dawn to look for supplies and gasoline. The group stopped the car a few kilometers before the city and left the road to stand on the shoulder. Tomorrow, Lucas would be responsible for the food, Ruby for the gasoline, and Acelino for the water.

As soon as dawn broke, the three ate their breakfast. Lucas ate his canned food that he prepared in the bunker, the cousins ​​ate some cookies and snacks. After the meal, they left for the city.

The small team could not see the name of the city. Generally, about 1 or 2 kilometers before each city or municipality, there was a very large sign indicating the name of the city to its visitors. However, even when they arrived in this city, the three found no mention of the name.

As they got closer and closer to the city, they noticed her state. Though it hadn't been long since the power beam, the city was devastated, the first buildings at the entrance showing signs of massacre everywhere. There was blood wherever they looked, the city was literally painted red.

Most of the houses were completely destroyed. There were cars, motorcycles and bicycles on the street, bodies dismembered near these vehicles. It was a disgusting scene and to make matters worse, the smell began to invade the car, even with the windows closed. It was the most reeking, rotten smell they had ever smelled. Besides the smell there were also screams, even though they were far away and weak to hear clearly, they were still bizarre. The mixture of ghastly senses gave the group a traumatic experience.

Most of those bodies had already begun the putrefaction process. Both the look and smell of the city would make any normal person vomit. Lucas, Ruby and Acelino, who were in the car, wore ugly expressions and all had their hands on their noses to stop themselves from sniffing the air around them.

"Let's stop here." Acelino said and waved to pull the car off the road.

The three left and Lucas regretted not having taken a mask from the bunker, even though he had seen many of them.

"What a fucking smell, that fucking noise! This fucking city!" Acelino doesn't control his tongue.

"Calm down Ace, let's focus on the goal. Lucas, look for food. We are at the entrance to the city, which borders another state, so there must be many restaurants and snack bars. It's going to be easy. We'll be back here in 4 hours." Said the girl, she acted much more like a leader than Acelino.

Lucas turned and went in search of food, leaving his cousins ​​behind. His face wore an expression of disgust, however, that wasn't the real feeling he had right now. Ever since he got to town, his body hasn't stopped trying to suck up all that liquid.

He tried with all his strength to prevent this from happening, as he didn't want Acelino and Ruby to see him absorb blood. He didn't have their trust, so there was no reason to trust them either. It would be better to hide for now.

He walked for a few meters until he turned a corner, missing his companions. It was only now that he relaxed and automatically all that red liquid that had been spilling on the street began to converge towards him. However, he didn't just want to get food, he wanted to know the limits of his mutation!

When the liquid was starting to enter his body, he concentrated and tried to test one of his theories created while traveling in the car. He then changed direction.

Normally, when he absorbed it, the liquid flowed towards his back, arms and chest, but now it moved towards his hand. Lucas' concentration was at its height, he tried to gather it in his palm in order to broaden his understanding.

The surrounding red liquid began to pool in his hand and soon had a circular area of ​​approximately 10 centimeters, at which point Lucas forcibly stopped the flow of blood just as before. The bloody sphere was not perfectly round, there were liquid fluctuations on its surface. It revolved around its own axis.

He had never seen anything like it, at least not for real. However, now with his hand, he felt like a creator. Of course, he just felt like one, but he didn't believe he was. Just as someone who is learning to drive, manages to get his first goal correctly, would feel extremely satisfied, he also felt delighted.

He tried to control the blood to shape-shift, concentrated on forming a knife. The orb trembled more intensely and began to flatten out, but unfortunately it did not form a knife. The sphere turned into a flat cylinder, and however hard he concentrated, he couldn't keep tuning.

'Why won't it go? What if he—" The young man started to think, but quickly stopped and focused again on the cylinder.

Now, instead of attracting the blood, his goal was to reduce its volume inside the cylinder. He realized that the process was more difficult than its counterpoint, but he still managed to get 50% of the red liquid out of the cylinder in the end.

After this procedure, Lucas tried again to condense that liquid on a knife. The cylinder began to shrink, became thinner and its circumference increased. At that point, the liquid was thin enough for him to try now to mold it into a knife.

The young man concentrated on shaping the liquid into the shape of a knife. First he tried to form a rectangle, then he thinned one end. However, halfway through the attempt, he felt his head ache, consequently losing control of the blood, which broke free of his grip and flowed towards his body again.

The headache continued for a few seconds before stopping. He then realized that he still didn't have enough training and/or ability to control his abilities. So he tried another approach. Lucas picked up his smallest knife and pooled the blood in his palm again.

He repeated the process of molding the blood sphere until it turned into a rectangle. Shortly thereafter, he began to feel a slight heaviness in his head, indicating a limit to his ability. Wasting no time, he brought the knife closer to the liquid that completely enveloped her.

Unbelievably, the process was smoother than he'd expected, apparently condensing the blood was much more difficult than manipulating it. The red liquid enveloped the knife easily, its structure was volatile and had small ripples on its surface as well as on the sphere.

Concentrating even more, young Lucas tried to sharpen the side of the blood layer where the knife blade was forged. The liquid followed his orders and refined to form a larger sheet of blood surrounding the knife. It was definitely a beautiful sight, he committed it firmly to his memory.

'How beautiful! This opens up a lot of possibilities for me!'

…

On a roof on the verge of collapsing, a couple were staring at a young man across the street. They were technically very close and made no effort to hide from their target.

"He looks very innocent to me." said the woman

"I still don't trust him." replied the man

"We don't need to trust now." Answered the woman and soon after that, they withdrew and went in the opposite direction of the boy.