146 Arriving at the Border

After they all left, Aida sat down on the tatami mat and opened her own laptop. She began to strategize and map out their plan to get past the barrier separating the infected cities from human civilization. At the moment, the government had placed a complete ban of anything coming past the wall be it humans, animals or even objects.

Oddly, since the apocalypse happened, there had been no sightings of any animals in the outbreak zones. It's almost as if they all disappeared overnight. Aida and the others had been travelling on relatively empty paths with very few infected or even cars on the roads. Even then, they never saw any animals. The closest they ever got to an animal were the Variants who mutated to have animal characteristics. Even when they had to acquire meat for their meals, it would be from the meat freezers across the city. This was quite a mystery. It was impossible for the animals to have all just disappeared so suddenly.

It would be interesting to stop by a zoo if they had some time to see if any of the animals were still there. If they had somehow successfully mutated by the virus the way humans had been, the animals would surely overtake the Variant population in no time.

Aida shook her head as if to get rid of these thoughts. Now wasn't the time for her to be distracted by interesting hypotheticals. The truth would surely come to light sooner or later. As bases begin to run low on meat and they are forced to go out and explore more of the post-outbreak scene, discoveries would surely be made and reported.

Her primary objective was to find a way to sneak into the city and find the whereabouts of her former master and other people from the organization. Nothing else mattered at the moment.

Everyone took turns driving. As they got closer to City M, the number of bandits on the road increased as well. The reaction varied depending on the driver. Ace treated everything like a game and would step on the gas and try to hit them. Light would use them as practice targets for his more offensive empathic abilities since he couldn't attack his own group nor could Reapers without a consciousness be impacted by the attack.

Since then, another week had passed with everyone hard at work. They finally reached the border of City M.

The day before, Rin and Yukio had successfully broken through to level 2 per Aida's expectations. This was great news as it meant that they now had 5 level 2 in the group. They were possibly the most powerful group of Variants (and Reapers) in the world. Most likely, people were just discovering the usage of gems.

Each day, the twins followed Aida's instructions and purposely exhausted their powers before recovering with gems. Both of them were able to feel the increased absorption of the gems using this method. They understood that this method could only be used when they had people they trusted around them who could make sure they stayed safe even when they were in an extremely weakened state.

That night, Light had prepared a huge ice cream cake for the twins to celebrate their upgrade. They all cheered at the sight. Rose's eyes widened as she saw the cake, she had seen her classmates brag about having cakes before but she had never had one before. Tentatively taking a bite, her eyes grew even bigger in surprise. It was so tasty! She slowly ate the cake, savoring the taste.

Light chuckled and placed a second piece on her plate, saying, "Normally you shouldn't have so much sugar but we can make an exception for tonight. I'll make it again for you on your birthday."

Rose looked up towards Light with wonderment and expectation before quickly realizing her actions and lowering her head shyly.

Light purposely made a huge cake that was double the size of an ordinary ice cream cake so everyone could have as much as they wanted. Everyone took a giant slice of the cake. Even Little White tried a little bite out of curiosity, only to cock his head to the side in confusion. He wasn't able to taste anything at all.

Feeling refreshed the next morning, everyone observed City M's border from afar. They all had a pair of binoculars. The border stretched far beyond their sight in every direction. Ace had already briefed them on the conditions of the city's security. The cameras had few to no blind spots and the wall spanned the entire area with no gaps. They wouldn't have any opportunities to find a weak link in the wall.

The terrain was extremely flat so Aida could see the entire expanse of the security. The city could be seen in the horizon, almost 20 km out. There were many layers of security in addition to the open plain that made an ambush impossible.

In between, there was barbed wire on the ground, followed by a fence, a solid wall that was being worked on by humans. A number of snipers were watching between the gaps and guards were walking the perimeter. Ace also told them that there was a missile defense system that the government ordered to be installed on every border wall in order to guard against Variants, Reapers and Enraged alike.

They also received information from their human captive. Since their last ambush, Aida had kept the government representative alive. Instead of interrogating him, she allowed him to drown in sorrow and fear for the past couple weeks. This made it significantly easier for Light with his new powers to destabilize his emotions and draw the necessary information from him.

The government representative named Ernie had absolutely no defense against their interrogation techniques after having been held captive for so long. He shared details about the armed guards and how they operate. He, in particular, was the right hand man of a powerful general within the army.

Ernie explained that he had volunteered himself to run this mission and then go to City A to resolve the personal grudge that the general had against the person who killed his son. They soon found out that the general's son was the bearded man from the War Faction [1] back at the airport who Aida killed.

Aida shook her head when she heard this. Life was truly full of coincidences. Who knew the general would find who killed his son on the first try. Too bad the men he sent were too weak.

[1] The bearded man from the War Faction came from Chapter 26. He was one of the men who chose to deliberately harass Aida.