I followed the tiger woman through the darkness. I must say that her eyes no longer gave off fire and she no longer released that outrageous aura. Was she naked? No. Somehow, she had appeared with clothes included. I admit I was disappointed. Wasn't this the typical encounter with the masculine-looking girl who behaves primitively showing her parts? I mean, sometimes one needs luck to be on your side.
In any case, there I was following her without protest.
"Where are we going?" I asked her.
"In ERGO there are many green zones," she explained, while illuminating the floor with the flashlight.
"I hadn't asked you... Where are we now?"
"What are you talking about, master?" the woman stopped, trying to remember the way.
"I was in my apartment, but now I find myself in a dark place."
"Ah! That's because you were unconscious for about 6 hours. Did you think I could heal you just like that?"
"Six hours," I analyzed… "But you still haven't told me why we are here."
"Do you mean the darkness? Don't worry. This sometimes happens. The world darkens at certain moments."
"It darkens? But it looks like midnight! Does the sun go out?"
"You could say so... No one has been able to explain it yet."
The tiger woman remembered the route and we continued. Definitely this was already crazy. It couldn't be the same world where my mother had given birth to me.
"I give up," I said, sighing. "Tell me, what is a green zone?"
"Again with your questions... You'll see."
We kept walking for a while until we almost accidentally ran into some very tall metal doors. The tiger woman raised the flashlight and even then the beam of light did not reach to illuminate the ceiling.
"The elevator," I said, recognizing it at once.
"Yes. But there's something strange. Last time it was open."
"Have you been here before?"
"Twice," she said, and then fell silent.
"What's wrong?"
She ignored my question and cautiously approached the elevator. With her slender hands, she felt the material while frowning.
"A bad sign?"
"We'd better get out of here."
But it was too late. I can't understand why things always went so badly for me in life. Was I an enemy of luck? Usually, when something was certain, it was enough that I intervened for it to no longer be so. If the zone was green, it turned gray as soon as I entered it.
"Run!" the tiger woman shouted. Too late.
The elevator doors creaked as usual and sang with that ridiculous little noise I knew by heart. Tin-tin-tan. They opened.
The elevator light illuminated the room and blinded me for a moment, like when someone points a flashlight directly at your face. The tiger woman grabbed my arm. I recognized the doors of the other apartments and the one I occupied: it was totally destroyed. On the floor there was a yellowish dust that not even the toughest detective would have guessed the origin of.
Then something intervened. Something very, very large. The shadow grew over the floor and remained there. I couldn't help it. Attracted by curiosity—the one that torments you when you're about to discover a new event—I turned my gaze toward the elevator.
I was about to lose my composure, if not for the iron grip of the skinwalker. How were we going to fight that? Next to it, the spider was a miserable little bug. This monster was colossal. It measured around two meters, like an NBA player, except that, from our perspective, its height was not less than two hundred meters.
"Shit!" —the tiger woman shouted.
I continued admiring the creature. Fearful. And fascinated. Human eyes, crocodile skin. Metal reinforcement on the calves. A sword. A shield. Dinosaur tail. A specimen with all the letters. Maybe not imaginative enough, but with some style and nerve. As a designer, I would have come up with a more original structure.
"What are you doing, idiot? Run!"
My legs failed me. I was one of those whose limbs began to tremble in life-or-death situations.
"Menu!" the skinwalker shouted "Turret 1190."
Space liquefied and a firearm protruded from there. The tiger woman wielded it with one hand like a baseball bat, as if its good kilos didn't weigh.Would that creature see us so small? I noticed it was totally paralyzed.
"What's wrong with it?"
"Keep running!"
[WARNING: YOU HAVE ENTERED WASTELAND ZONE] [FINE: 150 FRAGMENTS]
[NO-REWARD MISSION: DEFEAT THE USURER]
[TIME: INDEFINITE]
[GOODLUCK!!!]
I looked at the hologram as if it were a soup of intestines. They had robbed me of the fragments!
"What?" I exclaimed. "How are we going to defeat that thing?"
"Over here!" she shouted to me.
There was luckily a mop bucket in a corner, next to the water meters. We hid there hoping the Lizard Man wouldn't find us. Fortunately, he didn't seem like the type of monster who goes out of his way to chase his prey.
"What do we do?" I asked, desperate.
"Let me think!"
"Can't you cut the air like you did in the apartment? Transform back into tiger."
"No. My Vitale levels are at 40%."
I got irritated.
"Was it necessary to open a hole in the wall to finish off a spider no bigger than a tennis ball?"
"And I saved his life, don't forget! That consumed almost all my vitale."
I swallowed the words. I examined the monster.
"You know we must confront it. It doesn't even bother to chase us."
"No. What happens is that it's full."
"What?"
"Look at its jaws."
Indeed, a thin stream of crimson blood trickled from there. The tiger woman prepared the machine gun. Like my metal rivets, it emitted a faint glow.
"What are you going to do with that?" in her hands, the weapon looked intimidating, but it didn't seem ideal for fighting such a beast.
"I'll kill it, what else could I do?"
"What if we wait for you to recover your vitale?"
"Are you crazy? Vitale can't be recovered by resting. The only way to do it is by sheltering in green zones or by making a sacrifice. Tell me, are you willing to make the sacrifice?"
All that sounded like advanced mathematics to me. I preferred to be quiet and analyze the situation. Surely there was a way out of this. But which one?
"And what about running down the stairs?"
"I hope you're not serious. Have you seen our size?"
I accepted her retaliation. I kept racking my brains, but nothing occurred to me. I noticed that the tiger woman was getting more and more impatient. Her predatory instincts perhaps pushed her to take unnecessary and unproductive risks.
Suddenly, we both felt a presence. The tiger woman stood in front of me.
"Who's there?"
"There is another way," said the voice.
From the north side of the mop bucket, three people emerged. I recognized Brango among them.