Apocalyptic Survivor

Sitting on a black bed inside a dark room, Erika was holding a red book. It was torn and worn, but none of its contents seemed to be lost. Its size was small, just barely 10 centimeters, it was not thick either.

But that was the catch, it was so small, so thin, yet the information it contained was tremendous. It felt like looking upon an unending archive, an infinite book.

Opening the book, the pages seemed to multiply, from a measly 50 pages to 100 and as Erika kept flipping through, the number quickly shot through the roof.

500.

1000.

2000.

4000...

Yet, when she closed it, it would return to what it was before, a thin small red book. Erika had not read the contents of the book yet, but was now immersed in the book's limits.

Did it actually have an infinite amount of pages? Not questioning the creation of the book, Erika began flipping through it. It kept multiplying, just like before, however this time, she did not stop.

Until finally, after an hour of flipping through the book and counting, the book finally stopped at the last page.

'146,577,805 pages?...'

That number was huge and definitely not random, but Erika wasn't so sure as to what it symbolysed. Then, she finally took a look at the contents of the book.

"This is..."

The contents of the book were simple. And she knew exactly, what the meaning of the number was.

Day 243 Year 401034

I stood amidst an unending grey landscape.

5 hours of fighting was too tiring for me.

Then I saw Erika, what was she doing out here?

...

She definitely remembered this, it was this noon when Jean fought against a swarm of Crab-III afterall.

'Wait, did he really...'

She had to check, 400000 years was how long they had been in this hell hole. And if her math was right, it would mean Jean had documented each and every day of it.

Day 52 Year 328569

I was sent to investigate the Mariana Trench.

They said there was massive tremors somewhere.

But I didn't want to go underwater, so I observed from land.

...

'The giant Zirtue.'

Erika went back even further, to the very beginnings of the book. She was furious at Jean for hiding such a thing from her but now, she just wanted to explore how much Jean had written down.

And to her disbelief, each and every day was documented. Not in full detail, but the information contained was indeed factual. And then, when she reached the first page, she realised that it was not the same as the others.

'Day 0 Year 0? What?'

This page was more detailed than the rest, way more actually. The others only described the events by one sentence maximum, but this one was more elaborate. She then read a random part of Day 0.

The world was ecstatic, news of Russia giving up its quest of world domination made waves all across the world. The GLF had agreed to a peace treaty with Russia.

But, just as the world thought that their lives would be peaceful again, they were wrong, dead wrong.

"We give humanity one chance to submit."

Strange jellyfi-

'Huh?'

Erika was confused, very confused, the whole book was correct, and only the first page had errors? She didn't believe that but 'jellyfish' wasn't a Zirtue that she had known of, or remembered.

"Wait."

The sound of glass breaking could be heard. As if signaling that Erika had escaped the mind control. She had finally remembered everything. There weren't just three categories of Zirtues, there was one more, one that was higher than Crab.

Erika had always felt that something was missing when she looked at the categories. But her thoughts ended there as cold sweat ran down her body.

'Shit, misinformation is going to kill them. How do I even contact them.'

Then as if remembering something, she immediately ran out out the room with the notebook and headed towards a certain direction.

'Argh fuck, that Jean wrote this so he must remember, right? Fuck it, there was still one way to inform them of this.'

Stopping right in front of a door that had massive arrows pointing to it, Erika knocked.

***

It had been 3 days since Jean and the others embarked on this journey. And now, it was finally coming to an end.

"Distance?"

"2.7 kilometers away."

They were now awfully close, they now just needed one final push and the job here was done.

"See? Sir Jean, what did I tell you? This went incredibly well."

Jean remained silent, they were now very close to a grade V combined with the fact that the Wanderers could be nearby, Jean couldn't let his guard down.

Xander saw this and immediately copied. Aceso was really silent already so there was no need to worry.

Thereafter a bit of walking, they finally arrived. Well, at the vicinity of where Andre could be, there wasn't an exact coordinate so they had to make due with this.

They searched every nook and cranny, from Mount Ararat to even the Kaçkar mountains. They didn't find any traces of him. Two hours passed and they decided to go deeper into Turkey.

It was when they checked Mount Hasan that they finally found something, torn pieces of fabric. Jean had a bad feeling about this already. Picking up the fabric revealed a piece of paper and on it wrote:

50.283611, 57.229722

'So it's Aktobe, huh?'

Jean knew, though he didn't want to say it out loud, the Wanderers took Andre. With that, this effectively turned an escort mission to a rescue mission.

He also knew that this was their plan, lure Jean into their hideout. But he couldn't just leave Andre in the palms of those people. Before that, he had to make preparations, in the middle of nowhere.

Jean let out a sign as he looked at the other two behind him.

"The Wanderers took him.".