18 Awakening

They waited patiently until Ace left and was out of sight to sneak into the locker room.

When the trio entered the locker room, their eyes locked onto the mountain of food and water in the corner and the other equally large mountain of wet towels in another corner lined up with a bunch of trash cans. These two sights were so overwhelming, they missed the beautiful female wrapped like a burrito in towels lying peacefully against the wall.

Their eyes shined at the large quantity of food in the locker room. If they could keep it all to themselves, they could survive in the airport for a month if not longer. Running over to the trash cans, they each dragged one over to the mountain of food and began to move as much as they could into the trash cans.

After quickly finishing the task, Rin got bored and began to look around at what else was in the room.

"Heh~ Light, look there's a pretty lady here!" Rin squatted down in front of Aida and reached a finger out to poke her face.

BOOMM. The moment Rin's finger made contact with Aida's skin, he was blown back by a mysterious force and hit the wall, falling unconscious.

"Rin!!" Yukio ran over to where Rin fell, crying.

Light calmly walked in front of the twins while carefully observing Aida. He was ready to grab the twins and run at any time. "Yukio, how is Rin?"

"Brother won't wake up." Yukio responded while crying. "Light, what do we do?"

Before Light could respond, an aura of death swept across the room and the lights began to flicker, locking the trio in place. It felt like the grim reaper was visiting them.

Gritting his teeth at the force pushing down on him, Light forced himself to move and cover the twins in hopes to somehow shield them from this sudden pressure. He bit into his lips till it bled, sweat dripped off his back.

Just when he thought he couldn't tolerate it anymore, the pressure suddenly went away. The change was too sudden and Light wasn't prepared for it, he collapsed. Light hadn't lost consciousness, but was so tired he couldn't move a muscle. 'It was definitely a mistake to come into this locker room, I just hope the twins will be okay.' He thought as he laid on the ground.

On the other side of the room, Aida had just awakened. She felt incredibly refreshed with strength coursing through her body.

Earlier, she felt the presence of a few strangers in the room but they didn't feel malicious. One of them actually had the gall to touch her but was somehow pushed away by a mysterious force. At that time, she wanted to wake up from her coma but needed a little while longer. While these strangers did not appear to be hostile, she had learned not to take anything at face value. Unable to move her body, she chose to do the next best thing to protect herself - she let loose her aura.

The strength of the aura was a coagulation of all her previous experiences, particularly the pain. It came as a surprise to her how much her aura had grown. She didn't actually intend to injure the trio, she just wanted to shock them into running away so she could recover safely. She could feel a lot of changes in her body that she wanted to explore, but first she had to deal with the situation at hand.

Using her hand to support her, she tried to get up but stumbled. Looking down, she realized there were endless layers of towels wrapped around her.

"..."

What the heck?! Was she a mummy or something? Why would anyone be so cruel as to do this to her?

If Ace were to hear this, he would surely be devastated. He had tried his best the past couple days to take care of her.

Ripping the towels off, she walked over to another room to change her clothes. She knew the trio would not be able to escape so she took her time changing before coming back out. Two of them were unconscious, and the last one was staring at her with pitiful eyes.

Seeing her approach, Yukio begged, "Pretty sister, please don't hurt us. We are sorry for trying to steal your food and water. We didn't get anything, so please just let us go."

Aida heard "pretty sister" and her eyes lit up. She was 25 this year, but never in her life had she heard anyone "sincerely" call her pretty before. (This is because she was so cold and anti-social that no one ever got a chance to!)

What a naive kid. Directly admitting that he was stealing her food made her want to tease him. "What are you going to give me in return for me letting the three of you go?"

The despair in Yukio's eyes increased. "I don't have any money."

Rolling her eyes, "Kid, money is useless in an apocalypse. Do you have any food or water? That's the new commodity in this world."

Yukio's eyes shone brightly as he realized there was still hope, "Yeah Big Sis! We have food! We have food! Wait here!"

Then he ran off, seeming to go bring her the food they had collected in the past couple days. Shaking her head, she laughed as he foolishly ran off, leaving her with two hostages. He was a cute kid.

After he ran off, Aida started looking for Xiao Ai. The first place she looked was down at her wrist. The watch wasn't there any more. Then she searched around for the servers, but those seemed to have disappeared as well.

She began to panic, the pressure in the air was rising at an unprecedented speed as her eyes began to turn red. The lights in the room began to flicker rapidly again.

Light, who was only half conscious, was unprepared for the pressure and directly fainted.