Surrounded

As soon as the two ascended the stairs and entered the hallway, Maya spun around and struck Adam with her fist straight at the chest. He grunted quietly but didn't back down.

"You fucking liar!" she hissed enraged. "You had this ability all along, didn't you? And you just had us fight those beasts over and over again, and risk our lives! For what?!

There was palpable tension in the air. Adam felt it with his sixth sense. It wasn't just emotions though. Energy circled around them, the same energy that Adam had felt before when he had peered deep inside his mind and body.

Hair-thin streams of white mist slowly coagulated in the air, invisible to the naked eye but clearly perceived by his mystical senses. Adam let his emotions loose, and anger, fear, and doubt arose in his soul and surfaced on his face.

They added up to the tension and made the energy around the two rise even more. The power it projected into Adam's mind was intoxicating but he didn't let it overwhelm him. If he wanted to keep Maya's trust had to win this scuffle with his reasoning, not his strength.

"For your own sake!" He already had an answer to her accusation. He knew that he would have to expose his skills sooner or later, however, he didn't anticipate it to happen only a day after he met the group. Nevertheless, he prepared a justified, and partially true, explanation for his actions.

"You were a bunch of terrified cowards, hiding in the darkness and too scared to do anything when I found you in that town hall! Look at you now, look at the others! We left that place only a few hours ago and you've already changed."

Maya looked at him stupefied. She hadn't expected such an outburst, especially since in her mind it was Adam who had been the one in the wrong.

"You all gained strength and confidence. You are turning into warriors, predators! If I killed every Tainted that we came across you'd stay the same and just depend on me for your survival."

"You could have helped us!" she retorted, albeit less aggressively than before.

"I was ready to help!" he yelled. Once again, Adam had a counterargument ready. "I would have intervened the moment I saw that your lives were at risk. I didn't have to do it though! You did great on your own!"

"Besides, you should know that there using a skill is not without a price."

Maya stopped shouting for a while at this point. She turned away from Adam and began pacing around the hallway. Finally, she returned and looked Adam in the eyes.

"I guess that what you say is reasonable. It doesn't make you right though. You didn't have the right to make this choice for us, to force this change upon us." She calmed down slightly although still gazed at him with anger. "And you should have told me. At least when I shared my skill with you."

It dawned on him that this was a real reason for Maya's anger. She was pissed off because he hadn't shown her the same trust that she had for him. There was only one answer available to this.

"I'm sorry for that. I wasn't sure what to do. This whole situation isn't exactly normal." He just had to admit that he was wrong.

"Nothing is normal right now," Maya responded, anger finally vanishing from her eyes.

The tension that built up around them began to recede slowly, and the white mist vanished into the surroundings. The fight was over, at least for now. There were still secrets that Adam wasn't going to share with the group after all.

"Should tell the rest of the group? I think they should know about this," Maya asked, her voice filled with doubt.

"Not yet," Adam answered confidently. "We shouldn't disclose your skill either."

"So we just lie to them?" Her eyes once again narrowed.

"Yeah, we don't have another choice. As I said, the rest can't just depend on us to fight for the whole group. They have to get strong, and they have to fight and kill to achieve this." He was sure to convince her, as Maya herself had surely understood already that she could not survive alone.

"Okay, I guess we'll do it your way for now," she confirmed Adam's conjecture immediately. "But from now on I want to be a part of such decisions."

"Sure, no more secrets," he lied through his teeth. "Shall we get back to the rest?"

"No, we should check the hotel first. There really might be some survivors here." As she said that, Maya began checking the rooms on their floor one by one.

The two scouted the hotel floor by floor and finally stopped before one of the conference rooms located on the highest, sixth floor. The door wouldn't budge, most likely barricaded from behind.

Maya put her ear to it and spoke gently. "Is someone there? We are survivors, just like you. Please open the door."

"Are you not a monster?" A weak voice replied to her plea. Adam checked the other room with Bloodsense and saw thirty clusters of blood. All of them were very dim, barely alive. It seemed that whoever was hiding there, didn't have much time left.

"We are not," she assured the speaker. "We are the same as you."

Maya backed away from the door while the two heard the sound of moving furniture. The door clicked and opened slowly. They saw a tall young man standing on the other side, looking at them vigilantly.

Adam noticed that he looked very tired, exhausted even. He had dark circles under his eyes and his lips were parched. He trembled when he saw a bottle of water sticking out from Adam's backpack. It looked like he wanted nothing else than to grab it and run away with it.

Before the man took any action though, he noticed Maya's uniform and their weapons. He backed off and allowed them to enter the spacious room. There were mattresses spread out all over it, probably taken from the rooms downstairs.

Most of the survivors were adults, but there were also some children. All of them looked weak and malnourished. They laid or sat on the mattresses listlessly, not an ounce of strength left in their bodies.

"We have to help them," Maya whispered to him aghast.

"We will," he whispered back. In his mind though, Adam wasn't sure if they should. These people were too weak to be of any help in the next few days. He wasn't sure if even leveling all of them up could remedy the state they were in. They would only slow them down.

"I'm going to go back for the rest of our group," he said loudly. "We have some food and water with us that we can share."

As he was on his way down, Adam finally could check his Status Window. He stopped on the fourth floor and concentrated on it.

---------------------

[STATUS WINDOW]

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[RACE - HUMAN (AWAKENED)

[LEVEL - 7]

----------------------

[ATTRIBUTES]----------[AFFINITIES]

[Strength: 15]----------[Strength: B]

[Dexterity: 14]----------[Dexterity: B]

[Constitution: 16]------[Constitution: A]

[Perception: 17]--------[Perception: S]

[Mind: 31]--------------[Mana: SSS]

----------------------

[LEGACIES]

[Blood (Greater)]

----------------------

[SKILLS]

[Blood Manipulation - Intermediate (Low)]

[Bloodsense - Basic]

----------------------

As he had thought, it had changed much since he had last checked it. He didn't have enough information to fully understand the scope of chagnes though. He understood that his skill leveled up because of his feat during their escape from the horde.

He didn't know what it meant exactly though, and his concentration was soon interrupted by one of the members of his group running up the stairs.

"We have a problem!" she shouted to Adam as soon as she saw him. "Come with me quickly!"

He followed the woman down the staircase and onto the first floor. The group was crowded around the stairs, looking down varily, their weapons at the ready.

"What happened?" Adam asked as soon as he reachem them.

"The Tainted," one of the survivors replied. "A large group appeared around the hotel not long after you and Maya began searching the building. Since then, more and more of them gathered around. We barricaded the entrance and began looking for you."

"Shit!" Adam cursed loudly. They couldn't get trapped here. They couldn't waste time waiting for the horde to pass. He ran up to one of the rooms and barged in. Looking through one of the broken windows, Adam saw a mass of bodies on the outside.

"Shit!" he cursed again, and stormed out of the room. "Follow me!" he ordered the group. "There are other survivors on the sixth floor. They need your help!"

The group reached the top floor and Adam waved his hand in the direction of the conference room. The rest of the group followed his signal. He didn't stop there though. He quickly reached the roof and the observation deck located there.

Adam ran around the roof, checking the area surrounding the building. The Tainted were all around it. They were surrounded.