Rei continued to trek along the worn, dust-covered concrete ground, his hope entirely vanished as he descended into utter despair.

He walked purposelessly, not expecting to find anything useful. His brother was gone forever. He’d never see Marc again. He was utterly lost, and it seemed like the whole world was against him. It was only a matter of time before the Exterminators got him as well. He continued to walk, a mixed blur of pained emotions clouding his mind as his eyes stung with tears, his body ached, his chest hurt. Everything good about his life was now gone. He was now left on his own to deal with just the bad aspects.

From Rei’s position the city was a barely visible blur, and the concrete ground had turned into sandy dust. Rei noticed a small black object in the distance, in the direction of the city. He squinted his eyes and moved a little closer to get a better view.

The bag.

His misery temporarily evaporating, Rei raced over to the bag, ignoring the pain in his joints. He had mostly recovered from the shot at this point. Finding the bag gave him a little bit of hope. There was lots of stuff in there that could help him. Once he had reached his destination, Rei rummaged through the black bag. Everything was there. He pulled out the compass. The crack in the glass had grown. Rei’s mind wandered off, trying to come up with a solution for how it happened. Probably from the bag being thrown against the ground. The instrument worked just fine, though, so it didn’t matter.

He then got out the tablet, loading up the tracking app. No Exterminators within the entirety of his extensive 500-mile radius of immediate connections. He had been unconscious for at least a couple of hours, he realized, knowing that the car the Exterminator was in couldn’t average much higher than 200 miles an hour. Rei expanded his connection, his device taking a moment to sync to the worldwide network as he waited impatiently.

The app displayed a red dot, rapidly moving north. Rei hovered his finger over the symbol, and the app zoomed into the red dot, showing an average speed of 153 miles per hour with the image of a compass pointing north next to the figure.

Rei now knew what he was going to do. He was going to survive, and find Marc no matter what. It was the least he could do after running away.

“But why didn’t Marc run?” he thought to himself in annoyance. “We both probably would’ve been safe then…” 

He pushed the thoughts out, leaving them to languish in the back of his mind as he packed the tablet back into the bag, gripping the compass securely in his left hand. Rei picked up the bag and looped his free hand through the strap and held the compass before himself in his palm.

He quickly turned north based on the compass’s instructions, proceeding to travel north. That feeling of uncertainty was mostly gone now, now that Rei knew what he had to do. At least now he had somewhat of a plan.

After walking for a couple minutes Rei took a break to pull out the tablet again, this time to see how far away the Exterminator was.

564 miles. The car had stopped moving, at least.

“Maybe a couple months of travel, assuming they don’t get too much farther than that,” Rei thought to himself. He hoped he’d be able to find Marc. He tapped on the red dot again, instructing the software to keep track of the specific Exterminator who had confronted them. Now he wouldn’t be able to lose Marc’s position, as long as he stayed with the guy. He just hoped he’d be able to find Marc this way.

Rei wondered what happened once someone was captured alive by the Exterminators. He was pretty sure he had heard from Marc that they would be forced into the NET system, and get the brain technology implanted when unconscious. More reason than enough to evade capture at all costs. The grim reality that his brother might not be alive confronted Rei once more, but he tried to ignore it again. If there was a chance of getting his brother back, he’d take it, no matter how small the chance. Marc had always stuck by him, so he felt indebted to do the same.

He pushed a strand of wavy black hair, sticky with sweat, from his eyes. The journey wasn’t going to be pleasant, but he didn’t have much of a choice. He looked at the tablet screen at the map of his location. Further up north, where he was heading was Mentrin: the city they had been living in before the new law on Exterminators had interrupted their pleasant stay. The Exterminator he was tracking was all the way up in Entrel City. Entrel was densely populated unlike most of the other cities Marc and Rei had spent their time in. It was also full of Exterminators.

Rei sighed. This whole half-baked plan to find his brother was riskier than he would have liked, but it was better than the alternative of spending the rest of his life hiding alone, probably regretting not taking action when he could.

Hiding from society. All alone. If there was a small possibility he wouldn’t have to live through that, he’d do anything to make it a reality.

Or he could always join the NET system. He wouldn’t need to hide that way. He’d be accepted by society, not having to live in constant danger.

“No,” he harshly reprimanded himself at the idea. There was a reason he wasn’t part of the awful system, and he shouldn’t intend to join it. He had been protected from becoming one of the NET people his entire life; to willingly become part of the system would just be dumb.

He’d just have to endure the journey until he hopefully found Marc. And if he didn’t… he’d just have to tough it out alone from there on out. At least he would have tried and confirmed whatever actually happened for himself.

He continued walking, the heat started to get to him. Rei grew tired and searched through his bag for water. He found a gray metal thermos and gauged the amount of fluid in it. It was half-full. The bottle was rather large, so it probably contained enough water to last for a couple days if Rei didn’t drink too much. He was pretty sure there would be a water source in at least one of the cities he would be going through on his journey. He would be reaching Mentrin soon; he remembered that there should be some useful resources there.

He drank a couple sips of water, sighing with an air of satisfaction. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was until now. Rei sealed the thermos lid back on and put it back into the bag, continuing his northward hike.

After around fifteen minutes of the tiring walk, Rei could see the faint image of Mentrin City far in the distance;  the gray blur of its tall buildings somewhat visible. He then froze, remembering the Exterminators: the reason he and Marc had left Mentrin in the first place. He needed to be extremely careful in case any of them were there.

He recognized the city easily, as he had only been gone for several days. He looked around uneasily as he neared the place, wary of any dangers that could come at him at any second. Rei wondered whether he should go around the city or cross through and look for resources on the way. After a short mental debate he eventually decided on searching the city; getting those resources was important. Besides, he’d have to travel a lot less as a side benefit.

He cautiously stepped onto the first sections of concrete that weren’t completely covered in a sand-like layer of dust, the change in terrain making the walk a little less strenuous.

He continued walking through the shaded parts of the city, where he could quickly hide if an Exterminator were to come around. Rei discreetly looked around for water, deciding to search a restaurant or building of some sort. Some of them probably still had functioning water, as the infrastructure in that area was relatively new.

He entered a dark building to hunt for water. The front had only consisted of a wall coated in chipped white paint as well as a grayed wooden door, so he wasn’t sure what the purpose of the place had been. He easily opened the door and stepped inside, realizing it had probably been a restaurant. The building was filled with sets of old tables and chairs, eaten by time, and had a large counter at the back of the room.

Another smaller wooden door stood at the far right corner of the restaurant, hopefully containing the useful resources Rei seeked. Finding water was his first priority right now. Any food the place had had probably been stale for a long while at this point, if the condition of the building was anything to judge by.

Rei strolled to the end of the room and grasped the door handle, the cold steel slightly stinging the palm of his hand. He pushed it downwards and pulled, the door silently swinging ajar. He cautiously peered inside, not knowing what to expect. What if, by some slim chance, there was someone in there?

The room was devoid of other people; it was safe to go inside. Rei carefully walked into the room, noticing an old rusted metal sink to his left.

Bingo. Now he just had to hope it worked.

He made his way to the sink, grasping the rusty knob to start the faucet, the metal scratching against his hand as he twisted the handle. Sure enough, water began to flow from the tap.

“Great, still works,” he thought to himself, a relieved smile spreading across his face as he quickly turned the tap back off. Now to test the water quality. Rei swung his bag over his shoulder and pulled a small plastic bag from the front zip. He opened it up and gingerly took out a small plastic container. He switched the tap back on and let a bit of water fall into the container before turning it back off. He pulled out four paper strips, dipping them one by one into the water sample, and taking each one out after around fifteen seconds. Germ tests came out yellowish green, lead green, pH green and nitrates slightly yellow. In short, the water was safe to drink.

Rei stuffed the water testing strips into the plastic container and decided to store it back in the ziploc bag, not knowing what else to do with the used water testing kit. He was now glad Marc had bought the kits as well as a bunch of other random resources; at the time he thought they’d never actually need to use them. Of course, now he knew otherwise.

He then got out the metal thermos, filling it to the brim with water from the sink and sealing it shut after finishing up the water he had had already. He’d been thirsty for a while now, but had been trying to limit the amount of water he drank, just in case he couldn’t find a place to refill in time.

Rei tried to find another container to store water, but ultimately found none. The best thing he could think of was using a sealable nutrient cube packet, but all of them were already filled with the food-like substance. Trying to fill one with water would just lead to more problems in fitting his resources.

Rei eventually settled for the amount of water he had, packing everything into the black bag before zipping it shut. He put the bag on his back again, heading to the door to exit the room. He looked around once more before leaving the back area of the restaurant.

He swung the door shut behind him. And then he saw them.

Two people armed with shock guns. Exterminators. In the restaurant, barely ten feet away from Rei, their gazes fixated on him.

“We’ve found our guy,” he heard one of them say to the other.

Rei gulped.