“Anya. Come to the hangar bay. The suit arrived.” Anya heard the familiar voice calling her.

  She touched the controls to stop the stream. She looked down at the screen filled up with a beautiful sunset she'd just experienced. In the top right corner, Ryan frowned from his video feed square.

  “Anya, are you there? Are communications busted again?” Ryan asked again and disappeared from the camera’s field of view followed by the loud clanking of the mechanical keyboard. Anya leaned forward and tapped the Respond prompt flashing below Ryan’s square. His video call feed filled the whole screen.

  “I’m here. I’ll be there soon,” Anya responded. Ryan appeared again, smiled, gave her the thumbs up, and dropped the call.

  Anya looked again at the last frame of the recording she'd just watched. There wasn't much information on what transpired on Earth after the exodus to the space stations. Scavenger parties sent on the surface recovered some bits and pieces, documents, video recordings, and a few memory echoes of dead scientists, but as their primary assignment was resource collection, collecting historical records of humanity's prolonged death had been ignored.

  The most valuable thing ever recovered was the AI mind technology from the sealed AI-controlled building located in what once was Silicone Valley. Anya read the mission report from the database. The building was falling apart when Ryan's team arrived. The gaping holes in the ground floor walls meant someone probably raided it for supplies. That meant the Earthbound survivors were armed and possibly dangerous, and this experience convinced the space stations to start arming their scavenger teams. There were no recorded incidents until now, but Earthlings probably wouldn't have any problems robbing them of their fancy environmental suits and equipment. Better to be safe than sorry, Anya thought while leaving her room.

  ***

  "Beauty, isn't it," Ryan said, and smiled at Anya as she entered the hangar bay. The suit was almost entirely black, aside from the occasional golden shimmer caused by the new photoelectric panels nested under the protective layer of semi-transparent ceramics. The back was open, revealing the insides padded generously with memory foam. The gravity in the hangar bay was low, so Anya pushed herself from the wall towards the suit, then grabbed one of the straps that anchored the suit to the floor to stop her momentum.

  "Yes, it is quite visually appealing. Is this the first one you designed without Teresa's input?" Anya asked and regretted her question after seeing Ryan's face losing its joyfulness.

  "Yes, but you helped a lot with photoelectric panels integration, so in a way, maybe no," he responded, then smiled one of his fake smiles.

  "Did you modify it like we talked about?" she asked to break the tension.

  "Yes, I'm about to do so. I knew adding extra memory ports on the mainboard would be useful someday," he responded and waved at her with the small cubic memory module.

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  "How many echoes can that memory module hold?" Anya asked as Ryan struggled to connect the module to the awkwardly placed memory port.

  "Two. Maybe three if we trimmed one before copying it, " Ryan responded after he dove out of the suit and continued before Anya got the chance to scold him, " And I know mind echoes can become corrupted after being trimmed. I am aware that was what happened to Nicolas' mind echo, but we're operating on limited resources here. And the trip to Earth is hard to book nowadays, so cutting some corners is a must." he finished and dove back inside the suit, still struggling to connect the memory module.

  "Are you afraid of the survivors on Earth? I watched a few of the VI series recordings, and I think they're dangerous. The group that attacked the Neural Dawn research building was probably former military personnel. They killed everyone and destroyed everything, took what they needed, and left. It was sad to see that side of the humans." Anya asked and looked at Ryan, who was busy adjusting the suit's internal operating system to accept the new memory module properly.

  "I can't say I blame them. It's probably hell down there. Humans are wired to fight for their survival. Compassion is a luxury you can rarely afford when you're starving in a place where simply breathing in unfiltered air can mean your death. They also didn't know the VI series were sentient AIs, so it wouldn't feel like killing a person to them." Ryan responded while frowning at the screen.

  "So it's kill or be killed, the oldest law in human history. It's sad, but I understand it." Anya responded, then pushed herself gently towards the weapons locker on the wall behind the suit.

  "Grab one of the assault rifles for me too, and a handgun, two clips of ammo too." Anya heard Ryan's voice behind her, followed by motors closing the suit shut. She opened the weapons locker and gently ran her fingers over the newest model of AK-79 feeling every grove on the surface of the cold metal.

  Kill or be killed, as it always had been.

  ***

  "We can't land close to the echo storage facility because everything is overgrown, and we would've known that if someone didn't forget to go through the satellite images as we agreed." Anya protested as she piloted over the thick network of trees that were reclaiming the streets of Tokyo.

  "Yeah, my bad, I was distracted by my new awesome environment suit. Damn, it looks even nicer in daylight." Ryan responded while looking at his arm bathed in sunlight entering the dropship through the open rear doors. He didn't seem at all bothered by their current predicament.

  "Land on that bridge," Ryan said, then closed the rear hatch. He slid into the copilot seat and strapped in. Anya looked at him and tried to make the angriest face her synthetic muscles were capable of.

  "Can you do it? Please? What do you want me to say?" he asked her, and his voice sounded even more annoying when distorted by the suit's speakers.

  "I can land on it, but are we sure an eighty-year-old unmaintained bridge can support the weight of the frigging dropship weighing 70 000 kilos?" Anya responded while pointing her finger through the dropship window at the nearly collapsed Rainbow Bridge.

  "Look, across the bridge, there's a clearing. Can you land there?" Ryan asked and tapped the area on the map on the dropship's screen.

  "Maybe, it looks like the flood washed away the shipping containers, so we might be able to squeeze in."

  "Whoa, that much," Ryan exclaimed while going through the data air sensors picked up.

  "The Black virus concentration is almost double what we measured in Silicon Valley. We might not have as much time as we hoped. I don't think my suit's filters can handle this much Black virus for long. The same would apply for any of the bunkers and the sealed buildings. I don't think there are any survivors here." he finished and looked at Anya, his eyes gave off a defeated vibe. Tokyo also never had a VI series to tend to the dead. They were most likely about to walk into the city of the dead.

  "We have to hurry then," Anya said as she unstrapped from the pilot seat following the safe landing.