As they arrived at the small town, Aida found a nice spot to park the RV. Aida and Xiao Ai got down and efficiently cleared the area of Enraged and Reapers. Everyone else including Yukio had fallen unconscious due to exhaustion. They had been through a lot both physically and mentally. The brain forced them all to sleep in order to recover faster. Only Aida and Xiao Ai had been forced to push their mental limits hundreds of times and were able to continue operating like normal.
This quiet and peaceful town matched the mood within the RV as well. Aida and Xiao Ai got to work. Aida got off and went to the nearest store to obtain buckets of ice to create an ice bath for Light. Rose was still recovering so they had to maintain his body temperature in the normal way.
Before Yukio fell asleep, he had helped Light take an antipyretic medicine and moved him into the bathtub. All the ice in the RV had been up and melted by the time they reached the small town.
After Aida returned with the ice, she helped drain the water and dumped more ice into the bathtub. Then she passed him more of her blood as she absorbed more gems to sustain her own strength. She was more moderate with sharing blood as she also had to maintain a certain amount of energy for any unexpected situation.
Xiao Ai was in charge of surveillance. She cleverly installed cameras around the RV that included image processing to detect any kind of movement nearby. She also hacked into all the cameras around the area to keep track of the surroundings as well.
When Aida heard this, she smacked herself on the head. How could she forget that the government was probably able to access those same cameras as well and were probably making use of them to track what was happening to make sure they didn't get ambushed.
She quickly tasked Xiao Ai with deleting any images of them from every city's camera they had ever passed. While it was too late for them to thoroughly cover up their tracks, it was still possible to make the task of finding them extremely challenging. By deleting the online versions of the videos, it would be inaccessible to their enemies unless they were able to obtain the original cameras.
Xiao Ai was extremely excited to do this task. Hacking was one of her favorite pastimes. She giggled happily and said, "Bad guys! Watch out!! Xiao Ai is coming for you."
***
On the other side in a secure underground military base, there was a dark room full of people sitting before computer screens. They were a special task force in charge of monitoring all activities in the infected zones and reporting any sort of anomalies. The team was formerly known as the NSA (National Security Agency). Everyone in this room had the highest security clearance and were sworn to secrecy.
It was the evening so most people in the room were preparing to head home for the night. Due to the hidden dangers, very few Variants would choose to go outside. Therefore, these analysts were also allowed to leave for the day as well.
Only a handful of analysts were required to stay for the night on the off chance that any incident happened. Most of the time, they simply sat there and played games throughout the evening and then changed shifts.
The group of 5 people were busy playing the board game, Pandemic. They all chuckled at the irony of this choice in game. It was very symbolic of their perspective towards this outbreak. Being holed up in a room all day then heading home to sleep, and then repeating this process all day had made them disillusioned by this entire outbreak. It felt a lot more like a movie than something real to them.
They had long become numb to the shocking superpowers that different people demonstrated. Their task was to record each person and their suspected powers. They would then add these people to a database for Variants and then move onto looking for more.
As they were very close to saving themselves from this Pandemic, they didn't notice as the video screens slowly changed from the original view of the streets to an image with a black background and a white chinese meat bun at the center of the screen. Below the bun said the words, "Leave Us Alone or Pay."
The analysts continued their game for a long time. One of them was killed during the game and flopped back into his seat, he casually looked towards the screens and immediately jumped up in shock, screaming, "Sh*t!! We're so dead!!"
The others laughed when they heard this and responded, "Not yet, we still have some hope of winning this game."
"No no, look!" The man pointed to the screens and they all rolled their eyes and looked over, not expecting to see anything.
To their shock, over half the screens had already been changed to the image of a steamed bun and many more were being converted. All of them went into action immediately. They had a set protocol to handle situations like this.
One of them hit a big red button while holding a phone to call their superiors while the others ran over to the computers and attempted to slow the spread of the virus. Unfortunately, the virus was too strong and they weren't able to defend against it.
The man on the phone finally placed the phone down and called out, "Shut it down!"
They quickly pulled the plug and all the screens went dark. The five of them flopped down, drenched in sweat.
One of them looked up and asked, "So what happens now?"
The leader paused and said, "All operations are stopped for now. Go home and act like nothing happened. Maybe start looking for a new job."
***
Xiao Ai, who had just finished sending out the virus to every camera in the area, bounced around and said, "Hehe! Take that! Hmph now you have to listen to my rules!"
Aside from erasing all video evidence of themselves, she even added a virus to every video camera in the city to ensure that anyone who tried to access the videos aside from herself would have to pay a huge price.