The next day Kev woke up, and did his recent - bridge related - morning routine. Judge him if you want but he skipped leg day. One low-tier recovery pill and low-tier healing pill later and he was ready to start the day. The shield went on his back and he walked out the door and to the deck.

He started running, still warmed up from the morning workout. Time passed as it had the last, what felt like months. Kev slaughtered the morankai in his path, pinged out for his mom, Katie too every once in a while, and for golden morankai or black orbs. After a quick lunch, and some more running he saw something on the horizon. People. He was a little taken aback. Kevin hadn’t seen anyone since Cameron way back in his cluster. Kev, if you wanted to be particular about it, had never seen anyone in his six days.

On the one hand, Kev was a little worried about new people. He’d spent most of the last 13 and change months with the same 74 people, and meeting new people had always been a little stressful to him. On the other hand, even as a doppelgãnger, it was likely that Kev was well above average for strength on the layer.

As Kev approached them he got a good estimate of the number of people. It looked like this bridge crossing party was about twenty people strong. Kev was a little surprised, Cameron made it sound like he intended to bring practically the whole group, potentially hundreds of people. Why was this group so small? Did their cluster not have as many people? Maybe they were more fractured, Kevin had always thought Cameron did a great job unifying the cluster, maybe this group didn’t have that.

As he drew nearer, they noticed him in return. Immediately they went on high alert. Kev warred with himself, on the one hand he didn’t want to provoke them by gearing up for a fight right in front of them, on the other hand … they had guns and Kev wasn’t bullet proof. Kev decided on a bit of a compromise.

He tapped his armor ring. Futuristic looking body armor appeared on his body, a mix between conventional body armor used by any strong military, and motorcycle armor, with full vambraces and greaves. The helmet that came with the armor looked like a military style helmet, with a face covering that covered most of Kev’s lower face. They might find it intimidating that he was lifting a 100 lbs weapon like someone else might lift a 6 oz walking stick, so Kev stored it. Armored but unarmed.

Kev was a little impressed with how the group of twenty prepared itself. They were taking him seriously as a threat, but not being over eager to attack him. Kev had to remind himself that these people had never seen the ship bridge before either, they likely didn’t know what things were on it any more than he had when he set out on the other bridge. They lined up behind various bits of cover

“Hold people, Hold.” Kev decided to start the conversation. On top of giving him some control of the conversation, it also went a long way to show them that he was less hostile and also not some new horror they had to be worried about.

“Who are you? What are you doing here.” One of the better geared men yelled. As always, Kev could understand the man despite him speaking in what Kev guessed was mandarin.

“I’m Kevin,” Kev said. “Who are you?”

“We are asking the questions.” The man yelled back. Kev had to prevent himself from rolling his eyes. “What are you doing here?” The man yelled again.

“I’m crossing the bridge.” Kev said. “Just as you are crossing the bridge.”

“Why?” yelled another.

“There’s nothing but skyscrapers and monsters there.” Said a third, a woman unless Kev missed his guess.

“My mother is there.” Kev said simply.

“Your mother is dead then.” The first man said.

“Why do you think so?” Kev said rather than reveal any ability he had right away.

The man got a far off look in his eyes, the tension of the situation had passed but the group hadn’t put their weapons down.

“Please. I’m not bulletproof, put your weapons down and we can talk for a while. I can tell you what is on the other side of this bridge and you can tell me why you think my mother is dead.” Kev said as calmly as he could manage.

A moment passed where it felt like the whole group might keep their weapons trained on him out of spite alone, but after a moment the first man who spoke dropped his weapon. The rest of the group followed his lead and soon Kev was standing in front of a group of people that looked like they were pretending at being a militia.

They had guns, some of them had a dagger or large knife, one or two even had a sword but they were clearly underequipped. This must have been a slog. Kevin had gone all the way down one bridge, across a city for two days, and unless Kev missed his guess, he had gone more than halfway through another bridge and these people were just now less than half way. If they had left the same day as Kevin had, then they would have been at this for maybe 10 days? Less if they didn’t leave right away.

Kev supposed it sort of made sense. A bigger group would attract more morankai attention, meaning more fighting as you crossed the ship bridge, slowing everything down. The transition from one shipt to the next was a constant bottleneck making it impossible for a group to swiftly transition from one bridge to the next unless you didn’t wait on your group at all, which would be a terrible idea given how much attention you were guaranteed to get.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Come to think of it, crossing a several hundreds or miles long ship bridge would have been impressive in only two weeks. Doing it in less than five full days would be impressive beyond belief. Unless a group this size brought overwhelming force that could deal with abnormal morankai relatively quickly, the whole thing would get bogged down.

Kev approached the group. “Let's try that again.” Kev said as he reached out his hand to the man who had led the group. “I’m Kevin.”

“Ambro” the man said as he shook his hand.

“Forgive me for saying so Ambro but your group seems underequipped.” Kev said, glancing at the other members of the group.

“Yes, I agree.” Ambo said. “We were hoping the bridges would be clear of the monsters.”

“Nope.” Kev said. “Actually, you are lucky, there are more here.”

“We noticed that, How does that make us lucky?” the woman who spoke earlier said.

“Because I took care of a bunch of them already. Not all of them, the way isn’t clear, but it is more clear. Do you know what an Abnormal Morankai is?” Kevin asked.

“Yes,” said Ambro.

“The bridges have a pack of them around the middle, or at least the two bridges I’ve crossed have.” Kev said.

“Fuck.” whispered a man in the back.

Ambro looked at him sharply before facing Kev again. “Are you saying you killed a pack of abnormal monsters at the center of this bridge by yourself?”

Another person spoke up, Kev wasn’t sure who. “Around the middle? Does that mean we are halfway across this bridge?”

Kev looked about where he heard the voice from. “Yes, you’ll probably make the halfway point today if you rush a little. You should make better time, but also yes. I was able to kill the pack, as well as a particularly large one.”

“How do you know they won’t come back? Sometimes they come back.” the woman said again.

Kev looked at her. “Hi, I’m Kev.”

She looked back at him perplexed for a moment, “Uh I’m Jill.”

“Hi Jill. I know this place doesn’t lend itself to trusting folks but you are going to have to trust me. I soloed a pack of 8 of these creatures, I know what I’m doing. That group won’t come back. The others, the normals, they might. The faster you move the more you can take advantage of me clearing a path.”

Jill looked a little uncertain but nodded.

“Now,” Kev said. “Why do you think my mother is dead?”

“Why do you think she’s alive, this place is hell.” Another person hollered from the back.

“I have a tracking ability that allows me to find people I am very familiar with.” Kev said. “I can feel her. She is on the other side of this bridge.”

“What is her name?” Ambro asked.

“Alicia.” Kev said.

“I don’t know that name.” Ambro said. He looked around and everyone shrugged their shoulders. “Almost 100 of us came through in that first wave, Kevin. Of that, less than 50 survived until the second wave showed up.” Ambro got a far off look in his eyes like he was remembering a horror. “Then the second wave showed up, the first week was bad, a bunch of them died, not sure how many. We lost a few more first wavers too.” Ambro’s voice choked and some of his people became so still it looked like they weren’t breathing. “The second week, one of the second wavers got in a fight with a first waver named Viraj and Viraj killed him. In retaliation some of the other white men ambushed Viraj and killed him. That’s when we found out that people were worth points. The infighting lasted weeks, I don’t know how many people died but we,” Ambro nodded to the people with him, “we ran and isolated ourselves. The bridge showed up. The white gang took hold of the bridge, but we killed them two days after it showed up and left that city.”

Kev sat for a while digesting what was going on. The difference between his cluster with a strong leader and their cluster with its infighting, petty bigotry and foolishness. He was doubly glad for Cameron’s strength of character.

“My mother is alive, and I will find her.” Kev said. “You should go, hurry down this bridge. At the end of the bridge is another city, it's too big to put into words, dozens of times larger than the city I came from.” Kev started walking past the group. “Get to the end and go west. Stay toward the perimeter and, if you are lucky, you’ll find my group - The Godfather Organization. The head of the group is Cameron. He is a great leader. We have several people who can solo abnormals and Cameron can help make you stronger.”

Kev tapped his armor ring and the armor vanished. “Thank you for clearing the way for me.” Kev said, “I hope that the way is clear enough for you. Go quick and good luck.” Kev stored his shield and started running.

Kevin had been something of a runner when he was younger. He did a few half marathons with one of his best friends Gwen before he joined the military. He did a few 5Ks while he was in the military too, and had a few pretty good times well under 20 minutes. Kev knew how to pace himself, he knew what it felt like to have a good pace that you could maintain for a long time. For the first time since coming to the First layer, with a bridge that was cleared of most of its morankai by a band of refugees, in the light of an evening sun, Kev found out what a body thirteen times stronger and better endured than a normal human could do.

Kev, though loathed to spend the points, bought himself the Advanced Mask Kevin had so he could continue running in the dark. He barely saw any morankai and was required to kill even less. In most cases he simply pulled out his buckler, infused it with shield energy and bashed the creature over the edge of the ship. There was a certain humor in this too as they rarely died immediately. So Kev would randomly get a points notification, sometimes an hour or two after throwing the creature overboard.

Kev’s time was nothing short of insane, and without having to stop and fight, or even slow down very much at any given point, it was not that great a surprise that Kev saw the few lights of the skyscrapers while the sun was still hours from rising.