Renee and her brother quietly trailed their way back into his room, staying cautious of monsters. Luckily, they were able to reach his room within the top floor without running into any monsters on the way, and Cyrus quickly locked the door once they were safely in.
Throwing the metal stick on his bed, he reached his drawer and brushed aside his clothes. Once they were out of the way, a secured compartment came into sight, drawing Renee closer till she was standing by her brother's side.
When he fixed the passcodes in, all kinds of guns were organized in his compartment, including a designated place for ammunition.
"You have all these stored in your room?" Renee couldn't stop her hands from picking one of the guns, awed by the sight. The plasma guns gleamed with a unique design that blended well with its functionality, and her interested gaze returned to the rest of them.
"I call that the nightshade viper." Cyrus's gaze rested on the gun she was holding, "it's a prototype we recently launched at the company. We designed it as a team to see if we could create a gun that could penetrate even the most solid steels, or armors. It was a big failure unfortunately, we wanted to ship it off to another country but I smuggled some of it, hoping I can work on it in my own time. Weird how the creation I considered unfortunate is the only thing saving our lives."
Renee felt the weight of the gun in her hand and curiously inquired, "Did your company manage to ship them?"
"No, not yet, the shipping was supposed to happen next week."
"Then that's good news for us. We should make plans to go to the company and get them." She raised her head to meet her brother's inquisitive gaze. "The ones here won't sustain us for long, we have to gather every necessary item, and getting those new prototypes of yours is one of them."
"So we're stealing them?"
"No, we're just taking them and not returning them back."
"That's still stealing, but in an elaborative term." Cyrus pointed out, but Renee answered with a 'who cares' kind of shrug.
Turning her back on Cyrus to avoid his judging stare, the system hologram materialized in front of her. Clicking on the cube-shaped icon, she secured five of her brother's plasma guns into the vault. All she had to do was touch which item she wanted, and that item would magically go into the designated vault meant for weapons.
Exiting her brother's room after getting her share of the weapons, she went to her own room to pick whatever item she needed.
She took her clothes, her money, her underwear, her slippers, her blanket, her tampons, all her apothecary tools. She had no intention of leaving everything behind – except her bed, cause there's no way it would fit the vault.
Shockingly, the system's vault refused to settle for some of the things she considered a necessity, like her books, toothbrush, toothpaste, and her palm-sized mirror. Knowing she would need them eventually, she took her backpack from the wall where she hung it and stuffed them inside.
When she was done organizing her vault, her gaze was drawn to the sun that was beginning to rise above the blue sky, but it was an eerie orange, different, and more ominous than the sun she would wake up to on a normal day.
She couldn't bring herself to go anywhere near her window, the view outside was already terrifying in her head, so she sat on her bed, admiring her room that was now half-empty. She could still remember her excitement when she got a big room to stay in, and a big comfy bed, and her room was her favorite place in the entire house.
She subconsciously hugged the beautiful portrait of her parents to her chest, gazing absentmindedly into space, and wondering why they left her when they promised to stick by her side for eternities. She shook her head, refusing to recollect the tragedy that had struck her in one night, but for some unknown reason, she wanted to keep pushing on.
Wallowing in self-pity won't save her, and if she needed answers, she was going to have to stay alive in order to get them.
She needed to know what was happening, and if there's any capable way of fixing it.
Glancing at the vacant space on her bed, her gaze settled on a white handkerchief, and the penetrating golden-eyes of that stranger flashed through her vision, recollecting how they mesmerized her at first sight.
Was he still alive? She wondered to herself.
Grabbing hold of the handkerchief, Renee kept it folded at the pocket side of her bag.
She rose from the bed and changed out of her pajamas. Taking the clothes she had spread on her study chair, she wore the durable pair of black cargo pants, a fitted moisture-wicking long-sleeved shirt and legs laced with a pair of ankle-high boots.
She stood in the mirror, adjusting her neck-length hair, but then, who would see her anyway. A utility belt equipped with pouches for essentials like ammunition and flashlight completed her ensemble. With her gun hoisted by her side, and her backpack hanging on one shoulder, Renee took a deep breath and said a goodbye to her room before going downstairs to meet her brother.
She headed to the kitchen and caught sight of him typing something on his mini-laptop. Just like her, he wore a dark ensemble; dark tactical pants, a moisture-wicking shirt with a leather jacket, then topping his appearance with sturdy combat boots. A utility belt hugged his waist, and his gun was crossed against his shoulder.
Renee knew she had a very handsome brother, but most of the time he looks more like an annoying old gremlin. She couldn't count the number of women who had stalked him since high-school till date. Hence, she was equally stalked by the same women who wanted personal information about him, or bribed her to help them hook up with him.
To cut the long story short, she earned lots of cash.
"Little brat." Cyrus looked up from his laptop when she entered the kitchen.
"Hungry?"
"I'll save them for later." Going up to the fridge, she stored most of the food items into her system vault, separating the perishable foods from the non-perishable ones. The raw meats would definitely come in handy, even if she can't eat them, and the eggs, she assumed their smell would come in handy too.
Most of the perishable foods would be needed, not to eat, but probably for defense.
"It's a lot quieter today." Renee stopped what she was doing and whispered to her brother, finding the silence within the neighborhood suspicious, and he nodded at her observation.
"Yeah, I checked through the cams, they don't seem to be out much during the day." Cyrus folded his arms. "They are still out there, but lesser in number. They've probably vacated the neighborhood for other places, I don't know, but it's a good guess."
He rose from his seat and peered out through the curtains in the living room, "if they remain this scanty, it'll be easier to take them out. They are attracted to noise, they'll come running back if they hear even the faintest sounds, so we have to tread carefully."
"Aren't we going to use the car?" Renee reminded him, and Cyrus closed the curtain at that thought.
"We'll be much safer if we're in the car, so the noise won't matter. We should be more concerned about the main city, because that's where the tech company is located."
Renee had the urge to change her mind concerning all of this. The main city of duskwood had the most bustling streets with a high number of human populations. More humans include more monsters, and a cloud of uncertainty threatened to make her change her mind.
She clutched the water bottle in her hand and took a deep breath, then she said, "more exp points for us then. We have to level up according to our stats if we want to become powerful, and that's what we'll do along the way.
"While we do that, let's not forget we aren't cats with nine lives." He turned around to look at his sister, and she could see he was already having second thoughts about their mission. "Maybe I should go by myself and get them. You'll stay here and wait for me–"
"No." Came her blunt response, "we're doing this together. We'll be fine." She uttered with certainty, giving him a pat on his shoulder.
"Shall we?" She asked, and despite the odds, her brother decided to complement his charming looks with dark glasses. Even at a time like this, he's worried about his fashion sense?
"Are you serious right now?"
"There's a deep saying that looks kill. Now cover me." With his plasma gun ready in his hand, bullets efficiently loaded, Renee carefully reached for the door handle and was about to open it.
[System alert]
[Monster detected: Warning! Hostile entities detected. Monsters presence imminent]