After the cooldown for the system ended, I asked Zero to check out the banks. While she did that, I returned to Earth, packed more supplies, spending the rest of my savings, and even took a nap.
Apparently, day and night were reversed between Earth and the apocalyptic world. When I first went there, it was night on Earth.
Once everything was done, I went back to the apocalyptic world and found Zero waiting for me. A can of cola was enough to make her forget the question she wanted to ask.
We simply slept.
The next morning, Zero dragged me outside before I was even fully awake. And by "dragged," I mean she literally pulled me off the makeshift bedroll by my ankle while I was mid-dream about eating a cheeseburger.
"Rise and shine, sugar boy."
"It's barely dawn," I groaned, rubbing my eyes. The gray sky outside didn't help. In this world, dawn looked exactly like dusk, which looked exactly like every other hour of the day.
Perpetual overcast. Very depressing. Zero out of ten on my weather app.
"Exactly. It's the best time to train. Fewer zombies wander during low-light hours as their senses dull when it's dim." She tossed me a canteen of water. "Drink up, then move your ass."
I caught it, barely, because my reflexes at six in the morning were somehow worse than my F-rating suggested. She led me out of the building and into the open street.
The air hit me differently today. Yesterday, I was too busy being chased and kidnapped to notice, but now, standing still, I could feel it.
A faint heaviness in my lungs, like breathing through a thin cloth. The radiation. My bracelet hummed softly on my wrist, the biofield doing its thing, but Zero said the filter only reduced exposure. It didn't eliminate it.
"Your body needs to adapt to this atmosphere," she explained, stretching her arms above her head that made her sweater ride up just enough to be distracting.
I looked at her. If she was my sugar mommy, then I have these rights.
"The air here has trace amounts of mutagen particles from the original outbreak. Low concentration, harmless in small doses, but over time they interact with human DNA."
"Interact how?"
"They enhance it gradually. Every human who survived here evolved at the genetic level over generations. Faster reflexes, denser muscle fibers, heightened senses." She looked at me. "You don't have any of that, dear. You're a blank slate."
"You keep finding new ways to call me weak and I admire the creativity." My lips twitched at her words.
"It's a talent," she grinned and reached into a pouch on her harness. She pulled out a small vial filled with a glowing blue liquid. It looked like someone had liquified a glow stick and added ambition.
"What is that?" I asked, immediately suspicious.
"Gene primer. Synthetic version of what the atmosphere does naturally, but concentrated." She held it up between two fingers. "One injection kickstarts the evolutionary process. Your cells begin rewriting themselves to accept the mutagen in the air. It's how newcomers used to catch up back when there were still newcomers."
"Side effects?"
"Pain." She said it so casually. "Your muscles will ache for a few days as the fibers restructure. Oh yes, it's previous prototypes were the reason for zombies."
"Wonderful." I rolled up my sleeve. "Hit me."
She raised an eyebrow. "No hesitation?"
"I'm walking around with an F-rating in a world where the dead bench press cars. I don't have the luxury of hesitation."
Something flickered in her eyes. Respect, maybe or amusement at my stupidity. With Zero, the line between those two was very thin.
She pressed the vial against my upper arm and clicked the top. A sharp sting pierced through the skin, followed by a cold sensation that spread through my veins like ice water. I hissed through my teeth.
"That's the easy part," she said, pocketing the empty vial. "Now comes the fun part."
"If you say training, I'm going to—"
"Training."
"I hate you."
"No you don't~" She winked.
She was right. I didn't. Damnation.
The training was, as he predicted, brutal.
Zero started me on basic combat drills. Footwork, weight distribution, how to hold the metal pipe without leaving my entire torso exposed like a buffet sign for zombies.
Did she only have a pipe as weapon?
"Wider stance," she corrected, tapping my foot with hers. "You're top-heavy. One solid hit and you'll fold like wet cardboard."
"I prefer the term 'aerodynamically unstable.'"
"I prefer the term 'dead' if you don't fix it."
She circled me like a predator evaluating prey which, honestly, wasn't far from the truth. Every time I made a mistake, she exploited it. A light shove here, a tap on the ribs there. Never hard enough to hurt, but precise enough to make me feel every gap in my defense.
"You're thinking too much," she said after I missed a swing at the air for the seventh time.
"I'm a writer. Thinking too much is literally my job description."
"Then think smarter, not longer." She stepped inside my guard so fast I didn't even see her move and flicked my forehead. "A zombie won't wait for you to compose a paragraph about its weak points, darling."
I rubbed my forehead and glared at her. She just smiled, that infuriating, gorgeous smile.
But despite all the teasing, she was a good teacher. Patient when it mattered, precise with her corrections. She showed me how to aim for joints, how to use momentum instead of brute force, and how to keep moving so I was never a stationary target.
I wondered if she was in army before.
"Your strength will come," she said during a water break, sitting on a collapsed pillar beside me. "The primer is already working. By tomorrow, you'll feel the difference. In a week, your stats will start climbing."
"And until then?" I asked.
"Until then, you survive on this." She tapped the side of my head. "That brain of yours. It's your best weapon right now, so use it."
'My brain, huh? The same brain that decided to enter a zombie apocalypse with a backpack full of instant noodles instead of weapons. Yeah, real weapon of mass destruction.'