Chapter 11

The path I’m taking isn’t long, but all I know it’s wherever I’m going there’ll be danger. New things, scary, terrifying new things. Concepts I won’t understand. Things to learn, things to understand. I approach silence. Silence of my mind. I don’t like silence, but the only thing I need to think of is getting places and surviving. 

I hear footsteps. I turn around on my heel, knife is and as I prepare to stab what’s creeping up on me but then I see who it is– it’s Vesper. I stop my swing right before I hit him. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He smirks, then says proudly, “I followed you.”

I look at him with a look of utter dismay. He then smiles at me. “I know you told me to stay but I want to help you, especially after you saved me because I think I’m still in debt.”
I throw the knife I was holding at a NeuroSick then kill it, taking the knife out of its skull.
“Go home.”
He sighs. “Well, Maria got mad at me when she found out about Ashley. Then said to me, ‘if I liked you so much, I should go find you..’”
I stare at him, before facepalming. I want to scream. I want to tell him to march his ass back to the camp but I don’t. “Fine, but if you die, I am not responsible.”
He nods at me, smiling. I just told him that if he dies, I’m not accountable and he’s acting like I just blessed him…

I won’t let him die. He won’t. I turn to stare at him. A beep from my visor stops my flow, I double tap the side the visor flickers to life, displaying a notification. It has words written. ‘緊急警報’ I click on it. It reads, ‘座標: 35.37 N、136.62 E からの緊急通信。音声メモを追加しました’ There’s an emergency. I frantically enter the coordinates from the distress signal into my tracker system. It leads to a long abandoned research facility. It doesn’t state what it’s called. The site seems to be a severe contamination with the NeuroSick. Meaning we should avoid the place at all costs. But if someone is in trouble… I can’t just─ but it’s dangerous, and it won’t be just my life I’m risking…
“Liora─?”
His voice snaps me out of my stupor. He stares at me.
“You good… you’ve been staring at your visor for ages…”
I nod. Before taking a deep breath and then I click a button on the side of my visor and it projects a message against a wall.
“My visor got an alert.”
He looks at me then back at the projection. “What are we going to do— we should help them.”
I nod. That’s what I thought but I don’t know. “It would be dangerous, and I’m not comfortable putting you in danger.”
He looks at me again, a determined expression crossing his face. “I’ll look after myself but I want to help!”
I stare at his face, his dumb, determined face. But then I give in and let out an exasperated sigh of resignation. 

I look at him again. He smiles. “Fine… we’ll go see what it is.”
I click the button again, the projection disappears and my visor over my eyes flicks back on. I then set a course for the laboratory. I nod at him before I start walking. “It’s gonna be a long walk, you know?”
He smirks. “Good exercise then.”
I laugh a little. “Mhm…”
He looks back at me before he then grabs a dented, scratched, black water bottle and takes a gulp from it.
“There seems to be a short cut through the Tokyo subways.”
He nods again. I then stare at the ground and then I grab my blaster again, I flick a small switch and it starts humming. I walk towards a stairway leading down. “Be on guard, we don’t know what’s down here.”
He tilts his head before grabbing a pistol from his pocket and cocking it. We share a glance before
creeping
  down
the
    stairs…