It's A Wonderful Life

Once they had eaten breakfast, and Ira had changed into another pair of clothes — at the behest of Silas who had seemed oddly concerned about it — they finally left the apartment and ventured out into the safety zone.

Now that he wasn't in a tank, he had a much better view of the buildings that they passed by while walking on the road. Silas was leading the way at a slow pace, giving Ira plenty of time to sightsee.

The military base was most certainly surrounded by strong walls, and there were even quarantine efforts around the place, so they could let in civilians.

Pretty soon they would have to start turning people away, though.

It had been a long time since he had been in an apocalypse world, as those never appeared in the Tutorial Mode, but he had seen videos by other Systems and their Hosts. In these videos, the Host always decided to set up a base, and then they let everyone who wanted to come in. Some of them at least had quarantine measures, but oddly, most of them didn't.

If the zombies — or whatever monsters their world had — didn't kill them, then overpopulation would.

Simply put, they let in too many people.

In short order, it led to food shortage, a drop in general hygiene and an abundance of homeless people. Soon after that, they started starving — because the Hosts couldn't stomach the idea of sending people out to their deaths. Then came diseases because of worsened hygiene and then people started killing each other inside, leading to general chaos until the base either changed ownership and became a dictatorship, or until the base fell.

Regardless, the Hosts were responsible for a lot of deaths, and that fact never seemed to sink in with them. They thought that just because they had good intentions, it absolved them of any guilt.

Apparently, they had never been informed that reality didn't work like that.

Well, whatever. He didn't actually care.

Soon, they entered through another door, and then Ira was face to face with Amanda, the only competent soldier in the base.

"Ira!" She smirked at him. "I trust everything went well?"

Ira frowned. "With what?"

She rose an eyerbrow. "Your friend. Did you manage to find him?"

"Oh." Ira nodded and smiled just the slightest bit. Pointing at Silas, he said, "Yes. That's him, right there."

"Doctor Cornelius? That's lucky." she hummed.

"Why?"

"Because the doctor is a genius. The brass has high hopes he'll be able to manufacture a cure or vaccine for the Z-Virus, so he'll never lose his place or benefits here. If he cares for you, your safety is essentially guaranteed." Amanda sighed when she saw his disinterested look. "Suffice it to say, he has weight with the brass. He can get practically anything."

She gave him an exasperated look, "You don't need any more weapons."

Ira acted like he didn't hear her, in a very m.a.t.u.r.e and a.d.u.l.t way. She smiled at him as if they were sharing a secret.

She patted him on his shoulder and said, "Well, it was nice seeing you before we head out."

Ira frowned, "Where are you going?"

"Another base has called for reinforcements, so our squad is being sent in case anybody important needs a rescue. You don't have to worry, there are other people from other bases going too, they will be actually entering the base to help. We're just the backup." Amanda grinned at him.

Ira hummed and just when he was about to say something, Silas came back and put his hand on Ira's back.

Silas asked, "Everything okay?"

For some reason he sounded suspicious. Ira rose an amused eyebrow and answered, "It's fine. Amanda is just informing me she's got a mission."

Silas glared at Amanda. "Is that so?"

Silas glared harder, hard enough that if he had magic, Amanda would be on fire right now. Ira kept in the laughter that wanted to escape at this overt show of human emotions through sheer force of will.

"Well!" Amanda chirped, sounding dangerously happy. "We'll be back before you know it, so I trust everything will be fine when we return? Hmm?"

Silas didn't respond, he just steered Ira away. As they moved away, Ira waved a little to Amanda, as a thank you for the entertainment.

She waved to him too.

"How do you know her?" Silas asked as they walked away through another door, leaving Amanda and her entertainment behind them.

"She gave me a ride here."

Silas gave him a weird look. "Is that all?"

"Mhm."

Silas gave him another weird look, before he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's fine. I assume she would kill me if anything were to happen to you. That makes her... acceptable, I suppose. How long have you know each other?"

"You have no idea, do you?" Silas sounded amused, so Ira gathered that it wasn't a bad thing.

Ira just shrugged again.

They entered another room, a meeting room. There was a large oval table in the center with around twenty chairs. Multiple people were sitting in the chairs, and when they entered, they all turned around.

An old, balding man rose up and said, "Doctor Cornelius! We've been waiting for you! Where have you been? The meeting started over half-an-hour ago!"

"Oh, lay off him, would you!" an older, middle-aged woman sneered.

The bald man scoffed and demanded, "Have you found a cure yet?"

Silas pushed up his glasses and sat down on a chair at the end of the table. Ira sat down next to him.

"No." Silas deadpanned, without any use of tact. "I have found neither a cure nor a vaccine."

The old man puffed up like a furious cat. "Then-!"

"Why not?" the most annoying man in the room demanded.

Silas gave him an exasperated look. "They're dead, sir."

The man fell back down on his chair, all of his air suddenly gone. There was really no answer to that.

The only woman in the room cleared her throat and said, "Whatever you need to get your vaccine working, just let us know. We'll make sure you get it."

Silas nodded in acknowledgement. "I'll get you a list."

Then he rose up, becuase apparently that was all he wanted out of this meeting. Before they could leave, though, the woman asked, "And who's this young man with you?"

"This is Ira. He's my husband."

Ira's body spun around in the blink of an eye and he stared with wide eyes at Silas. That was... actually a pretty good cover. If they thought they were married, npbody would protest him living with Silas, or get any romantic ideas. After all, even if it was only an experiment, Ira didn't share.

He wasn't an idiot like those morons who followed his Hosts around.

Silas gripped his hand and squeezed it. No more words were said and they left the meeting room without any trouble.

Ira followe along as Silas lead him back out the building, still holding his hand, wihtout any resistance. They walked across concrete roads, around tanks lining the streets in case they needed to evacuate in a hurry. They were already loaded with emergency rations that could last years.

They wouldn't taste good. But they would last.

Not to mention all of the barrels of clean water.

There were also trucks, big ones, sitting here and there. They were full the the brim with even more food, and Ira kind of wanted to sit in the driver's seat, just to find out what it was like.

How high up was it?

Silas had to drag him away from them, as ihe had stopped to stare at them, blocking the road. Some peaople were giving him mean looks, which they immediately ceased as soon as they caught sight of Silas. It was hilarious, how their expressions would go from furious and on the verge of screaming at him, to polite and smiling pleasantly.

As Silas steered him even further away from his home, Ira took the opportunity to look into his Host's actions. It was recording automatically, whether he checked in on her or not, but he thought that it was probably about time.

He zoomed in on her.

Yeah, no, he did not want to see that.

Gross. Ugh. Blegh. He was going to throw up. Disgusting.

Who had s.e.x in the middle of a forest, not two meters from a dead corpse?!

He was never going to unsee that, was he? Thank the heavens that he was a System, as soon as he got back to his home, he could delete these images from his mind, no problem. Still, though, he kind of wanted to pour bleach into his head, and on his eyes, and scrub them raw.

"Are you okay?" Silas asked, giving him a look of concern.

Ira nodded, trying to look as if he wasn't dying of horror. Silas gave him an odd look, as if he didn't quite believe him, but thankfully he didn't press the issue. Ira did not want to talk about it. He never wanted to think about it again.

Disgusting!

He was two seconds away from retching, and so brought out another old recording of a past Host, watching their death with morbid amus.e.m.e.nt to take his mind off of the abomination that he had just witnessed.

If his Host didn't die in this world, he would kill her himself.

That was a promise.

Finally, they started walking again. Silas lead the waym and they entered a door that rose up out of the ground. Soon, they were underground, in a bas.e.m.e.nt of some sort, cut off from the rest of the world. With his hearing set to the human standard in this world (he wanted to give the zombies a better chance of surprising him) he couldn't hear anything from outside of it.

There was a low buzzing throughout the whole structure, which he assumed was some sort of generator. Ira stared around with intrigued eyes, curious to see where Silas had lead him.

Soon, they stopped in front of a heavy metal door. Silas put in a code and it read both his fingerprints and his eyeballs before it opened.

"Follow me," he said and entered when the door opened. "and I'll add you to the lock. You'll be able to come and go as you please."

Ira nodded in understanding and entered after him.

It was a lab.

Correction, it was a lab, the kind of lab belonging to a mad scientist in a comic book. In amus.e.m.e.nt, Ira rose an eyebrow and walked further in.

There were wats, dozens of them, spread out over a large area. They were filled with a green fluid, and in them, people floated, dead and in medically induced comas. Silas walked amongst them like he was used to it, checking screens as if what he was doing was perfectly normal.

"Hey, Silas." Ira leaned against a wat, the upper half of a human floating within. "What was that vaccine for, exactly?"

To his credit, Silas didn't protest against the use of the old name. But then again, he would probably always be Silas to Ira.

The other man answered easily, "A vaccine for the Z-Virus."