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Chapter 38: One down

"She\'s not gonna make it." Luna whispered far enough from her wounded companion to prevent her from listening to her grim sentence.

"How do you know? Huh!? Are you a doctor now?" Sam asked in a disbelieving tone.

"Doctor? Not really, but because of my career path I\'m well versed in human anatomy. Her rib cage is cracked and has a punctured lung, not even an ascended like her can survive something wounds like that without treatment." Luna replied expressionless as usual, only now instead of annoying it felt reassuring in a strange way.

"Can you do it? Can you treat her?" Uriel asked.

"I could, but I\'d need a knife and a small tube to drain the blood from her lungs. If it was a regular human, or even an evolved, i wouldn\'t have any confidence in my skills but since she\'s an ascended she might survive, but even if she does she won\'t be able to move freely which means we would have to stay in here until she recovers."

"I have a pocket knife!" Uriel showed Luna his swiss army knife with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. Despite being old, the knife was spotless after being stored inside his trait. "Will this work?"

Luna took the pocket knife on her hands and examined it, it was a bit too broad but the length was perfect. Finding a tube that fitted their needs wasn\'t a difficult task, but a clean one was impossible and they had to settle with the less dirty one they could get. Still, anything was better than letting Medusa die without even trying to save her.

Every painful and whistling breath Medusa took made her condition even worse as blood filled her lungs. It was truly a horrible way to die.

"You guys go look for Atomic now, there\'s nothing you can do to help here." Luna shoved them outside the room.

"But we can help!" Sam tried to argue.

"No, you can\'t." Luna shook her head. "Besides, if Medusa survives she would kill herself if she knew you guys saw her naked."

Sam hesitated for a few seconds, but then left the place along with Uriel who was already busy searching for the missing student.

With Sam\'s help they covered the whole floor within a minute finding no clues, not even battle traces.

Going downstairs using the mechanical staircase turned out to be a mistake because it hadn\'t received any maintenance in years, but they were to avoid falling down by stepping on the metallic side that supported the steps. Walking in an abandoned place in a lost city was a daring challenge, it was filled with all sorts of dangers made even worse by the fact that both of them were covered in bruises and gashing wounds. The only silver lining was that now the skinwalker was dead they were finally able to use their cellphones light their way and send a message to Miss Dragonfang. She still hadn\'t replied, but just knowing that she would be notified as soon as she got the chance to look at her cellphone gave them some measure of peace.

Sam didn\'t really need any light to move around, but it made him feel safer, especially knowing that as soon as a cryptid made its appearance they would know because of their field of disruption.

The next floor was an open space with several shops, most of them were closed with metal curtains or bars, but others were open and completely empty. They didn\'t have the time, the energy or the intention to scavenge, but just the loot from one of the stores could turn their lives for the better.

Uriel really wished to rummage through the piles of random objects in hopes of finding something he could store in his museum, but he was too worried about his companions to do something as selfish as that.

"I think I found him." Sam pointed towards what seemed to be a store, its metallic curtain was busted open leaving a hole in it.

"Is he alright?" Uriel asked without much hope. His companion replied by shaking his head confirming Uriel\'s thoughts.

They headed towards the store and Sam pointed his cellphone light towards Atomic\'s corpse, or what was left of it. Only the upper half of his body remained untouched, his legs and part of his torso were nowhere to be seen hinting that the skinwalker probably ate them.

"This is horrible, I\'m never going on an incursion, not ever again." Sam muttered.

"I don\'t have much of a choice, not If I want to remain in college." Uriel said out loud, but not replying to his friend. He was just talking to himself as if trying to convince himself from doing something he really didn\'t want to do. Then, he proceeded to kneel down in front of the corpse.

"Hey, are you praying? I didn\'t take you for a religious person." Sam asked.

"No, I\'m retrieving this." Uriel said, showing Sam the tier one battery Atomic had strapped on his chest.

"Are you a psychopath? You can\'t steal from dead people!" He scolded Uriel.

"No loot left behind." Uriel coldly dismissed Sam\'s criticism. Sam was frozen in place for a short time, but he understood where did he come from.

"Yeah, I guess it\'s of no use to him now. We may as well bring some stuff from this place too." Sam rummaged around the store for a short while, picking up unopened boxes and placing them in a plastic bag. "It\'s Ironic... this and many other shops used to belong to my family, now I\'m scavenging for just the scraps." Sam sighed.

"You\'re from the Samsong family?" To say Uriel was surprised would be an understatement. Sam was his roommate in college male dormitories, it wasn\'t bad but it wasn\'t a place for wealthy students. He didn\'t expect Sam to come from one of the biggest companies of the old world.

"Uh, yeah, my name is... I probably shouldn\'t say it in here, but anyway, that was a long time ago. My family\'s company died even before \'the arrival\', all because of those annoying Mapple guys." Sam scoffed.

"They might be annoying, but if it wasn\'t for their zeppelin we would have died during our first incursion." Uriel replied but Sam wasn\'t willing to acknowledge that fact.

"Here, have this. It used to be our company\'s best cellphone prototype, it\'s not bad even for today\'s standards." Sam handed a sealed box to Uriel, who received it with a dumbfounded expression.

"Hey! It\'s vintage! This one is actually vintage!" Uriel was overjoyed after receiving a gift like that. If it wasn\'t for Sam\'s trait, finding something like that would have been impossible for Uriel.

When they came back Luna wasn\'t surprised to hear that Atomic was dead. It would have been a miracle if he survived for so long in a fight alone against the skinwalker so no one really had any hopes of finding him well. The only reason they went to look for him was to have something to tell Miss Dragonfang when she came to their rescue and also to distract themselves while Luna was performing the surgery.

"How Is Medusa doing?" Uriel asked.

"She\'s currently unconscious, but she\'s fine, she won\'t be able to move for a while though." Luna replied, she was covered in sweat and there was a lot of blood on her hands, but she seemed to be at ease.

After wiping down the red stains on the swiss army knife, Luna gave it back to Uriel who made it vanish immediately. With nothing left to do but wait until Miss Dragonfang came to rescue them, the group fell in deep silence.

Uriel, of course, took the chance to open his brand new smartphone. It was his first time opening a sealed box because he never bought new things and, although it was just an old phone, it was something really meaningful to him. Also, this one was actually vintage and not trash like his flip phone.

Apart from the smartphone, the small package contained a phone charger, a sim card and a small metal needle to open the sim port. Without wasting any time he discarded the phone charger and activated his tier 1 battery.

The battery emitted a shimmering light and an arc of electricity was sent directly towards the smartphone. This kind of battery didn\'t work like the ones of old, it was invented after \'the arrival\' using the theories of a Croatian scientist named Nikola Tesla mixed with some of the new technologies developed thanks to the traits. The best part of said batteries wasn\'t just that they were able to synchronize with any electronic device, but their huge capacity. A single tier 1 battery was enough to feed a coil gun for a full day, if used only to charge a cellphone it could last for a year.

The charge process was instant and Uriel proceeded to move his sim card to his new phone as soon as it was finished. When the card was replaced and Uriel turned it on a familiar feeling invaded him, It was the odd sensation of a new artifact.

"This is incredible!" Uriel gasped.

Not knowing anything about Uriel\'s trait, Sam thought he was overly excited about his new phone and looked at his friend with a pitying gaze. Without minding his friend, Uriel eagerly visited his mental museum and was greeted with the exciting presence of a new artifact on the pre-apocalyptic exhibition.