The scene was the same as the day we came here, there were collapsed buildings surrounding us, rubbles everywhere and no people unless you count those peeking through the windows.
Dante wasn’t coming so I had to depend on my eyesight for my decisions, every corner I would look for any form of danger.
“So where are we going?”
Hayley was curious and looked around the city.
It’s not like she was in high spirits but at least she seemed better than the last days.
“When we were in high school there was a store that had everything for watersports in the west of the commercial district”.
“I know that store, you showed it to me when we were dating back then”.
“Yeah…worst date ever”
She smiled when she remembered that
“It wasn’t that bad, are we going through the main avenue?”.
“I prefer to take a detour, at least two groups are in the center of the city and I don’t know if they are going to be hostile to us”.
“You mean towards me?”
She made a wry smile.
“It can also be toward both of us, now let’s move, I want to come back before nighttime”.
Thanks to Hayley, most of the animals that were in the streets just ran away when they noticed that we were near.
Most of Hayley’s time is used in controlling her power, right now she can change the intensity almost effortlessly.
She still is not able to erase it for complete, and its probably impossible but changing the intensity just in some parts allows her better effects. That way she can eliminate the aura from leaking from some parts of her body.
She has been trying to do it mainly for her head, so she doesn’t need the goggles.
The aura still leaks through her breathing though, but she is able to leave her eyes uncovered with some effort.
After she gains full control over it we will see the battle applications of her abilities, but right now if we unleash her in a battle G and Hope performance would drop.
The scene while we were moving just turned more and more depressing. As we planned we went around the city center. It took us about one and a half hours to arrive at the place I wanted.
In all the way to the store, we didn’t encounter any troubles.
The only event was that I killed a mouse with the revolver, but It wasn’t even a ranked beast since It didn’t run away when he saw Hayley I thought it could be dangerous.
It was scared and instead of running away it was paralyzed.
When we arrived at our goal we found the store was already raided, and the door was opened.
We arrived at the store, apparently, for most of the people, the diving suits weren’t something that was useful, that part of the store was left almost untouched.
The ultrathin diving suits were in the highlighted section as the most expensive diving suits in the store, also those were the ones with the most recent technology.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Complete isolation between the body and the environment, comfort like nothing before, and protection from the water low temperature. And from what I heard they were able to fulfill those promises.
Also, is so thin that it adapts to the body like a second skin. It was perfect for Hayley.
She started to look around, she saw also some older versions but, in the end, she came back to the newest.
In the meantime, I was looking around for anything I thought could be useful eventually.
I got an underwater respirator and a dive knife that no one wanted.
I was thinking about getting one of those diving suits too. You never know when they would be useful, and they take almost no space on the backpack.
“Spence, what do you think?”
Remember when I said it was like a second skin?
It’s completely true, Hayley was wearing one but it looked more like if someone painted a blue pattern on her skin. I was mesmerized while looking at her body.
“Can it handle my aura?”
I came back to reality. That was completely unexpected.
“There is no leakage anywhere in your body”.
“Great!”.
She put on her clothes over the diving suit, I remembered the trust achievement and understood why her defenses were so low around me.
I also picked a few ones for the rest of us.
I got a dark green for me, a black one for G, and purple for Hope.
I’m not sure about Rose size so I found 2 for her, dark red, and beige.
Hayley took three for her, she picked two dark blue suits and white one, it made sense for her to get more than one since she will be using them always.
All of them included a cap, gloves, and socks, the only part exposed was your face. She wasn’t using the cap right now.
We put everything but the knife in the backpack.
I put the diving knife on my belt and we left again. I don’t think we have too much time to come back.
We spent more time than I thought in the store so we are tight on time. We got to the first corner and I peek to be sure there was no danger like I was doing before.
“Spence?” she put her hand on my back to call my attention.
I could tell that she was afraid by something, I turned around and saw that an alligator was turning 1 block away and coming toward us.
Without thinking too much I took her hand and started running. We needed a place to hide.
The alligator had a weird metallic color on him, so I think that maybe his skin became even tougher than before.
If what I think is true, even my grenades are not going to do much damage to him unless I put one inside his mouth.
And I’m not going to try that.
We run two blocks without stopping but the alligator was coming closer. We were running toward the center of the city. Two blocks away I could see a blockade on the road I turn in an alley and helped Hayley climb the emergency stairs. When the alligator turned to enter the alley, I was on the stairs too.
It was good that I got so many points before coming here.
Both of us were breathing fast and looked down at the alligator. we waited for a while, but the alligator was still under us.
“Any idea?”.
“I don’t think that shooting him or throwing him a grenade would work”
“Maybe we can go up and try to use another exit”.
“Let’s go, at least we can stay there for a while and maybe the alligator leaves”
We arrived at the roof, but this building was smaller than the others, so jumping to another was out of question. From the roof, I could see that alligator was still waiting for us.
If we try to leave either from the emergency stairs of the front door the alligator will chase after us.
We waited for about an hour for him to leave but it was like he knew that his prey was here.
“It’s getting late”. There was at most 1 hours of sun left.
“What are we going to do?”.
My brain was working on ideas. I could work as a bait to let Hayley escape, but we are so far away from home that leaving her to roam around the city alone was not an option.
I remembered the blockade, maybe if we arrive there we can jump over it and the alligator will not be able to follow us.
But something tells me that it was made by someone, and just jumping over it wasn’t a good idea. If they hear a shooting would they send someone to check?
I had four bullets left on my revolver five on the rifle.
“Let me try something”.
I went down the emergency stairs when the alligator noticed me he went right under me once again, stalking me.
This time I aimed with my rifle.
I shot once trying to aim for his eye.
The shot hit the alligator’s body but the bullet was deflected by its scales, I was right and the bullets were useless.
I tried a second shot but even if I got closer to my objective it was deflected too.
I waited a couple of seconds, took out my revolver and shot twice. After that, I went back to the roof with Hayley and looked in the direction of the blockade.
Just as I thought, a minute later, five people with weapons were moving like a special forces team in our direction.
When they were one block away the alligator sensed them and started to run towards them.
“Let’s go”