A Reborn: Apocalypse fanfiction

21. Please. I'm Not Bulletproof,

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.