15 Redemption

"No..." Mark begged as he backed up fearfully, "No Aida, I was forced to do it by him! I mean what was I supposed to do in this situation?"

"So much for me needing a man huh? Turns out you're the one who needed a man to protect you. Are you the top or the bottom in the relationship?" Sneered Aida, clearly still vengeful for his comment at dinner.

"Too bad, but your man is dead and infected. Prepare yourself for what's coming."

Ripping the bloodied cloth from Blondy's body, she stuffed it into Mark's mouth. Mark's eyes widened, this was his greatest fear. He was being turned into an infected.

After stuffing his mouth, she grinned sinisterly. She took great satisfaction in seeing the fear written all over Mark's face.

Slowly taking out her mini-blades, she explained, "Unfortunately, I don't have a dagger or sword on me right now, so we're going to have to do this nice~ and slow."

Using her mini-blade, she chopped off each of Mark's fingers one by one. Mark screamed in pain, but wasn't able to vocalize it as the bloody cloth was in his mouth. After dismembering his fingers, she moved onto toes, then arms and legs.

Soon both people were covered in blood. Mark was left only with his body. All this time, all he wanted to do was faint, but was unable to due to his infected life force being stronger than average. The fever also wasn't bad enough to burn his brain and cause him to faint either.

Aida was satisfied with the infected blood. This saved her the effort from having to waste water to wake him up.

Aida smiled happily as she looked at her piece of work. "Okay, playtime's over. Goodbye."

She threw two mini-blades, one that pierced his head and the other that pierced his neck. Mark, the nuisance that she always had to deal with at work, was finally dead.

While tempted to leave Mark alive to suffer, she knew not to make the rooky mistake that other protagonists in novels made. Leaving an enemy alive was akin to waiting for them to stab you in the back in the near future. While she loved torture, she would make sure to do a clean job.

"You can come out now."

Aida was referring to Ace who had been hiding behind a giant pillar this entire time. She was simultaneously pleased and annoyed to find that he followed her here. On one hand, she was pleasantly surprised by his selflessness time and again. On the other hand, she didn't like that he was giving her hope about the humanity in people which she had long given up on.

Ace popped his head out and trotted over with all the baggage. He looked somewhat silly holding three big bags on his small body. Breathing heavily, he arrived before Aida and immediately took out a handkerchief to clean her hands.

Aida just stood there, watching Ace clean her hands meticulously. Eventually, he gave up as there was too much blood and just pulled her along to find a shower.

Before leaving, they made sure to take everything they stole with her (except the underwear). Turns out Blondy had been stealing from the police armory as well. They had a total of 3 guns and several backpacks full of bullets.

They found the location of the employee locker room using the airport map and headed over. On the way, Aida gave Ace a quick tutorial on how to use a gun. "You need to unlock the safety before shooting. After that, all you need to do is point and shoot. Make sure to keep your arm steady and prepare for the recoil. Also, don't put your hand directly behind the back of the gun unless you want to lose your hand."

After feeling somewhat assured that he wouldn't actually hurt himself with the weapon, she passed a gun over to him.

As they arrived at the locker rooms, Aida directly went to shower as Ace volunteered to go find clothes for her. He wasn't too sure what kind of clothes worked best for her, so he grabbed everything in sight.

15 minutes later, she was clean again and in fresh clothes. She felt a slight pain in her heart, but dismissed it.

"Ace, we probably won't be able to stay here for much longer. The government will probably leave everyone here to die. The only people who have a chance of being rescued are the scientist and CDC representatives since they have critical information on the virus."

"At this point, we only have two choices. One is to ally ourselves with the scientists and try to catch a ride with them. The other choice is to steal a plane and hope that the government won't shoot us down as we attempt to pass the border."

"Which of the two do you...THUD" Aida's voice drifted off as she fainted and fell onto the ground.

Ace looked up as Aida's voice trailed and realized she had fallen to the ground. Her face was flushed and she was burning up. Her eyebrows were tightly knit together as though she was in extreme pain.

Looking at the symptoms, Ace immediately realized that Aida had gotten infected. It must have happened when Blondy spit on her.