1.12 AM

The girl settled herself down beside Veronica, shuffling around uncomfortably. The blood that was all around her stained the backseat, but I didn't mind. I wasn't gonna call her out for dirtying my car when her entire family had just perished before her eyes. She was only around the age that I had lost my dad, I assumed, although the difference was that her entire family had died all at one moment.

She lay her head against the car door on her side, her eyes staring blankly into space as I could see from the rear-view mirror. She seemed as if she was looking out, but it wasn't likely that she was focusing on anything physical at all. I was pretty sure that she was still trying to take in everything that had just happened to her earlier on.

However, it wasn't going to be good for her to just stay quiet the whole ride. She didn't even speak a word to us when she followed us into the car. Thus, I thought that it would be better for me to start off with some polar questions, which I thought would be easy for her to simply nod or shake her head to.

"You injured or something kid?" I asked out of concern to begin with, wondering if she had been attacked physically just as the rest of her family had been.

She simply shook her head, a simple response that I was expecting. "Alright," I acknowledged. "Let any of us know if you feel sick or if you're hurt, okay?"

She followed with subtly nodding her head, another easy thing for her to do. I didn't want to stir up her mind after what she had just gone through, so I tried to keep the conversation as lo-fi and one way as possible, while still maintaining some sort of communication.

I looked up at the rear-view mirror whenever possible, angling it such that I could look at the reflection of the girl. I had to focus on the road, but for short moments, I would stare at her while speaking her to be as accommodating as possible. "So... what's your name?" I questioned, attempting to move on to a much more interactive conversation as we went on.

She remained silent for a few moments. However, she eventually opened up, moving her lips to answer my casual query. "T-Tara," she mumbled softly, almost as if it was under her breath. However, it was still audible enough for me to make out.

"Tara, am I right?" I clarified. "That's a beautiful name. You from around here?"

The girl cleared her throat multiple times, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. I wasn't exactly sure what was happening, but I assumed that it was some sort of reflex action as a response to all the trauma she had gone through. Despite this, she still answered the question after a while. "No," she muttered.

"Didn't think so," I said. "You've got an interesting accent. Sounds like that of Hong Kong, but different in a way."

The girl went silent afterwards. I realised that it wasn't exactly appropriate for me to be mentioning the way she spoke, seeing how the only way I could tell was to listen intently to the only time when she spoke in full sentences—when she was calling out for help earlier on. And I was sure that she wouldn't have wanted us to recall that moment. No one would want that to happen.

"So... where are we supposed to go now?" Veronica asked.

"Well... I don't know..." I sighed, looking at her using the rear-view mirror. She was gripping onto the left hand of the girl, Tara. I shifted my focus back onto the road, letting the two of them have some peace in the backseat for a moment.

Meanwhile, I wondered where else we could head for. I was about to bring up the idea of going to another apartment of ours, but I stopped when I realised that it was a bad idea. Seeing how Jennifer's house was easily broken into by the unsparing alien beings, I figured it would be the same for anyone else's.

At that point of time, we had only two choices. The first was to find someone who had a safely guarded bunker to hide in. The thing was that we didn't know anyone who did, though. Thus, the only other option was to get out of Chicago. "I think the best option now is to leave the city for good," I opined.

Instead of getting a positive response with much agreement however, everyone in the car remained silent. The only reaction I got was from Jennifer, who was shaking her head as she scrolled through her phone. I turned to her, raising my eyebrow as she looked up at me. "Why the head shake?" I questioned, curious.

"Turn on the radio," she instructed, tapping on the radio button lightly such that it wouldn't switch on its own. Instead, she waited for me to do so instead. Hence, I pressed the button, switching to one of the presets. An automated voice spoke in place of the usual radio DJ. The voice spoke monotonously, signalling to me that a message was being broadcasted instead of some normal radio programme.

As I turned up the radio volume, the announcement became hearable. The voice spoke, "This is a repeat broadcast. The Department of Defence has responded to the ongoing "G-23" attack in Chicago. Under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of Defence, a lockdown has been put in place to contain the alien creatures within the city. All highways and roads out of the city will be blocked. The US Military is currently working on exterminating the unidentified "G-23" subjects. Citizens in Chicago are recommended to seek shelter in stable buildings or structures, but—." I cut the broadcast short by turning the radio off.

I leaned forward, resting my hands against the steering wheel. The wheel shook a little under the pressure of my body weight, but stabilised after I exhaled. I shut my eyes for a moment, trying to relax just for a short while. I then got back upright, peeling my eyes back open as I turned to Veronica. "This has gotta be a joke," I stated in disbelief, putting up a sarcastic smile.

Jennifer shook her head, however, bringing up her phone to reveal what she had been looking at for the past few minutes. On her screen was a news article with the headline: Chicago Placed on Lockdown. Everything written on the page was in accord with the announcement on radio, detailing the DoD's plans to use Chicagoans as bait to contain the creatures within the city while the military eradicates the unwelcome alien guests.

"What are we supposed to do now?" I enquired, releasing my grip of the steering wheel as I dropped my hands onto my lap.

"Well," Jennifer went on, "I'm pretty resourceful. You probably don't know it yet, but you're about to." She then switched to another tab on her browser. She scrolled through a list of rescue services and their hotlines, before stopping at one that she pointed at. Coincidentally, right below it was Valour. "There's the organisation you mentioned that you worked at too. Valour, right? I'm pretty sure they don't offer rescue services in this kind of situation, though, do they?"

Well, they actually do, I thought in my mind. To her, however, it probably looked as if I was simply staring vacantly at the phone screen. At that time, I wasn't even uttering a single word in response. However, I snapped back to reality, redundantly answering her rhetorical question. "Nah, I don't think so," I lied, concealing my knowledge behind by forced smile.

"Just as expected," she replied. "Anyway, here's the one I was looking out for. This place called 'RISE'. It's a temporary refugee camp set up in the basement levels of the Sears Tower. I think it's a pretty good shot for us," she then pointed out.

"You should give them a call first while I drive us there," I suggested, as I sped the car up. I continued driving towards downtown, where the camp was at anyway.

"Alright," she said as she tapped on her phone screen multiple times. She pressed on the hotline button, causing the phone to instantaneously dial the camp's number. She switched to speaker mode, allowing all of us in the car to listen in to the call. The dial tone rang for a few seconds, before someone picked up.

"Hello, this is the Refugees of Illinois & Society of Empathy. How can I help you?" a female worker who I assumed to be some sort of dispatch officer on the other end of the line responded.

"Hey, I was wondering if you all provide some kind of recue services or something?" Veronica inquired.

"My apologies, but we are currently only providing rescue services for emergencies. We have been dispatching our scouts out to every call, and many of them aren't returning. Hence, we'll only be reserving rescue services to those in imminent danger now," the dispatcher revealed.

"No, it's okay," Jennifer shook it off. "We just want to know if we can enter your camp freely without any restrictions."

"Then you're in luck," the dispatcher answered somewhat gleefully. "But not for long. We'll be accepting all groups of people for now, but we foresee that at the rate that we're accepting refugees, we'll have to limit the number of people we're allowing to come in soon. So, please come as soon as possible."

"Got it, thank you very much," Jennifer said gratefully as she tapped the hang-up button. She then switched her phone off, putting it into purse as she looked back up. She turned to me, going, "I hope that answered your question."

"It did. Thanks," I nodded.

I continued driving towards the Loop, heading for the Sears Tower. On the way, we encountered more chaos than we had ever seen before. Even though we were rather disconnected from everything, I could still feel the attachment to the events going on outside.

There were more store lootings, accompanied by violent shootings of innocent people. Sometimes they were interrupted by bloodthirsty aliens, who would attack both the strong and the weak. They were mindless and emotionless creatures after all.

There were hoards of aliens running down the streets. There were definitely much more than we had seen back at Jennifer's apartment, or at the Dunkin' Donuts outlet earlier on. Some of them even spotted us, heading for us as they picked up the pace. However, I simply just stepped on the gas pedal and sped off, avoiding them.

Not to mention, there were buildings here and there going ablaze. Downtown was the brightest I had ever seen, because I had never witnessed it being one collective inferno ever. Glass shards, concrete shavings, pieces of paper and even people fell out of the burning buildings as they burned to the ground. Ash floated in the air, as the unpleasant scent of smoke wafted through the choking night breeze.

Some street lights had fallen over, blocking the road and obstructing my route. When that happened, I would either drive to the side and squeeze my way through or take a detour to another street if the entire road was barricaded. Trash cans and snapped branches from uprooted trees rolled down the lanes on the roads.

Every now and then, we would come across a pile of bodies strewn on the sidewalk or even the roads. It was pretty much expected, as downtown was the epicentre of the attack. Even so, it was quite unnerving to stare at them. After the aliens' sudden attack on Enrique, we were all sure that we would never get used to watching innocent people die, or seeing their bodies left behind by the rampaging creatures afterwards.

Riding down South Wacker Drive, I watched as we approached the Sears Tower. There were no signs of any lifeforms present at the time—no humans, no animals, and not even aliens. There was a larger pileup of bodies there than we had ever seen that night, but in terms of living beings, there were none in sight.

I drove us over to the drop-off point, parallel parking my car. I turned the engine off, consequently switching the headlights off. As a result, the street plunged into much darkness, the only light coming from the flicking lighting of the buildings around. I grabbed my rifle, arming myself to be prepared for another unprecedented attack by some of the alien beings, before pulling my car door open and getting out. The rest followed along, as Veronica helped Tara out of the vehicle.

We walked towards the building entrance, while I kept on the lookout for any alien beings around. As we entered the revolving door, it began spinning, detecting us. We moved along with the door as it rotated, heading into tower. Before long, we were in the eerily empty lobby of Chicago's second tallest building.

The light fixtures hanging above us pulsed intermittently. Ceiling panels had crashed down to the ground, pinning some corpses down. Sheets of paper from the information counter were lying all over the countertop and the floor around it. Cracked walls sprayed with blood stood out the most in the pretty ruined building lobby.

However, something else especially caught my attention. I glanced over at a sheet of paper that was unnaturally taped to the information counter. I gestured to the rest of the group to follow me over to check it out. As I got close to it, I noticed that it simply had some letters and numbers on it, printed in a large, bold font.

Staring at it, I found that it stated "SE#2, -3". It seemed like some sort of code language or coordinates that we had to decode. However, I had no idea what to refer to to uncover it. Not to mention, I was perplexed by the unusualness of a random code appearing in a dilapidated lobby. On the other hand, this wasn't so much of a mystery to Veronica.

"It's referring to one of the stairwells," she stated. "C'mon. I'll show y'all the way," she added as she directed us. As she began trudging off, we started moving as well, running to catch up to her.

"How'd you even figure that out?" I questioned, surprised by the extremely short amount of time she took to decode the sign.

"I participated in SkyRise Chicago back in 2035. The annual climbing of the Sears Tower, y'know? I killed my knees in the process. Told myself I would never do it again," Veronica explained.

"That's five damn years ago. And you still remember things that people wouldn't normally observe in the first place?" I questioned, even more astonished about Veronica's abilities.

"Well, I have a pretty photographic memory. Not to mention, I'm highly observant too," she boasted pridefully, sweeping her hair to the side.

Just then, we we were interrupted by Jennifer clearing her throat. She stared at us with her eyes wide open, accompanied by an exaggerated grin. "Can we focus on getting to the camp instead of standing here in front of this stairway door? We look kinda stupid if you guys haven't realised already," she chided.

"The camp is literally just three floors down. What's the rush? And it's not like there are any aliens nearby," Veronica protested, folding her arms unhappily.

Unfortunately, as soon as she made her presumptive remark, a loud shriek resounded around the lobby. All four of us turned towards the origin of the sound—the entrance. A solo alien was clearly visible in the distance, as it mutually spotted us.

However, as soon as it called out vociferously once more, another pair of aliens joined it, forming a trio of predators that were locked onto us. With a final coordinated scream, they got on their limbs, sprinting towards us. "Speak of the devil," I chuckled nervously before turning back to the stairway abruptly and grabbing onto the door handle to push the door open.

"Ah shit, here we go again," Jennifer lamented as she followed behind me into the stairwell, her left hand still grabbing onto Tara's right. "Veronica just had to jinx it."

"Stop blaming me for everything, Jen," Veronica argued back as she entered the stairwell last, pushing the door shut.

We rushed down the flights of stairs hurriedly, as the aliens' shrieks got closer. At that moment, my rifle wasn't of much use as it was pretty much impossible to shoot at the aliens in such a confined space. Not to forget, if I missed, the bullets could ricochet off the metal railings and unexpectedly hit any of us. Thus, our best bet was to move as quickly as possible, and out of the stairwell as soon as possible.

Just as we reached the foot of the stairway, we heard the aliens beating against the door at the ground floor. The sounds of their violent banging reverberated throughout the stairway, greatly frightening us as we were forced to retreat to the corridors in front of us.

However, it wasn't quite as easy to decide on where to go to as we had anticipated. There were multiple directions that we could head to. It was almost as if we were in a maze. Fortunately, I managed to spot something that could help us—a blinking red light. The pulse was some sort of pattern that repeated after long intervals.

It didn't take long for me to realise that it was morse code. Just as I figured this out, though, a loud bang reached my ears, coming from above the stairway. We all turned, before getting jump-scared by a dented and disfigured door violently crashing onto the ground in the middle of the stairwell, where were no stairs.

"They're here! We have to go now!" I alerted everyone in the group. I pointed towards the corridor with the red light at the other end of it as everyone followed my directions.

"Any reason why we're heading in this direction?" Jennifer queried.

"The red light. The pulsing says 'this way' in morse code," I explained, elaborating on how I figured out where to go.

As we got closer to the camp, we could make out four figures standing at what seemed to be the entrance of it. They were heavily armed with machine guns, even more powerful than the automatic rifle I had. They were also fully geared up with tactical vests and helmets, leading me to believe that they were some sort of soldiers, just as I was in Valour.

The signalled to us to pick up the pace, moving their hands rapidly. I turned behind for a moment to check on the location of the aliens behind us. What I found was that they were alarmingly close to us. However, this only slowed me down, which one of the soldiers noticed.

"Don't look back!" he warned, getting my attention back as I turned back forward. "Just move quickly!"

Within a few seconds we had reached the entrance, which had its two pairs of doors wide open. Some volunteers led us into the camp, while the soldiers held their guns up once all of us had entered. The soldiers pushed the outers doors inwards, closing them, while volunteers inside sealed the outer doors shut while others led us away from the entrance. They instructed us to cover our ears, which we complied with and proceeded to do. I already knew what to expect, and it soon came.

The muffled sounds of heavy gunfire.