Pew. Pew. Pew. Pew. Pew. Five silenced shots echoed faintly from the ceiling. The five Red Blood Raiders dropped one by one dead to the ground, their bodies slamming into the dusty mall floor with sickening thud. Raven moved on. As her eyes moved over their corpses, while her drones returned to hover quietly above her like obedient cats. Alara stepped forward on instinct, her red eyes fixated on the fallen men in front of her, but Raven extended a hand to stop her as she said.
"No, Alara. You can't eat this trash," Raven said firmly. "They are filthy. Stick to your zombie core diet."
Raven reached into her system space and pulled out a fresh core, pressing it into Alara's cold hand. To Raven's surprise, Alara didn't wait for instructions. She lifted the core and placed it into her mouth without hesitation, swallowing it like she understood what it was and how to use it. Alara no longer looked deathtly pale like a corpse. She now looked like a little pale goth girl, like one you would see in a coffee shop, with red contact lenses and an aversion to sunlight.
Something was changing in Alara.
Not just physically but intellectually shr is beginning to show signs of basic cognitive intelligence.
Raven's mind went over the implications. Alara is not just regenerating she is evolving. Slowly. Differently into a new direction. Not like the mindless hordes that clawed at glass and howled at people. Not like the Silencer Zombies she had studied in her first life, those elite infiltrator zombies capable of mimicking human emotions and speech in order to pass as human until they slit your throat in the middle of the night in the base. No, Alara is unique she is evolving into a new type of zombie Raven has not seen before. But what Alara will become Raven could not be sure yet.
Crouching beside the Red Blood Raider corpses, Raven began prying ammunition and weapons from the still-warm hands of the Raiders. Their gear is junk rusted, unmaintained, poorly made junk, but that does not mean it is useless.
"Subpar ammunition rounds make great proximity bombs and shrapnel," she said.
All the ammunition and weapons were absorbed into her system space. She envisioned her next tool: a mobile landmine launcher mounted to her backpack. Something she could control mentally. Deploy on command. Turn a battlefield into a meat grinder both from the ground and the walls. She already has the air covered by her drones.
And now that her drones didn't need to be stored physically, her backpack had the room to make things go boom.
With that project already taking shape in her mind, Raven stood and turned back to Alara, who was already finished with her core and was simply watching Raven with wide, unblinking red eyes.
"Alara," Raven said, her tone gentle but firm, "I have to go wipe out an army of bad guys. You stay home in Sanctuary. Relax under the sun until I get back."
A mental command followed her words, and Alara vanished into Sanctuary with no protest. Raven made sure the simple command was clear: Sit. Sunbathe. Wait.
With her girlfriend safely put away, Raven adjusted the straps of her now-lighter backpack and glanced around the quiet corridor of the mall. The blood on the floor hadn't even dried yet. Her drones rotated slowly overhead, scanning the shadows.
She now had a location.
The old New York Public Library.
Adam Carter's stronghold.
The idea of walking into his den didn't faze her. It thrilled her.
Raven's eyes narrowed. She moved forward to wipe out the Red Blood Raiders outpost in this mall and make it a bit safer for Momma Jean and her girls.
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