Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Thursday, October 10th, 2019. 08:00.

The girl woke up late, still feeling the consequences of yesterday's frantic funeral service and questing. The sky was still dark and gloomy, with only the faintest glow of the sunlight piercing the dark cover. The atmosphere was damp and hot. She could hear heavy winds whooshing outside her window, raising small twisters of ash, dust, and soot.

Sara didn't stand up. Instead, she took a moment to try and remember a dream she had, a task she failed monumentally. It was gone, wiped from her mind just like humanity from the planet. What was left of both was nothing but a faint remnant.

At least she managed to get the fairy to communicate with her again. She had ordered it to not talk to her, and the poor thing was just obeying. Begging, requesting, wouldn't work against a direct order.

"Fairy, I order you to say, 'good morning, Sara'," she tested.

"Good. I revoke my previous order to not communicate with me. I order you to communicate with me whenever you deem necessary," She commanded.

"Also, I order you to, when I issue a request using polite language, to consider it as almost an order and do your best to accomodate them. We need to work together if we are to survive this shitshow of a post-Apocalyptical world."

"Let's try. What do you think I should do now?"

"Why so?"

"You still didn't explain. Why the interstate?"

"Stay away from the interstate. I hear you. Anything else?"

"So what should I do right now.

Sara rolled her eyes. "Yes, mom."

"Hell, no. Oh. Sorry. Heavens, no. Do I have to police my curses?"

With its androgynous genderless voice, it was hard to tell if the fairy was being sarcastic or not.

"That's my mom," Sara pointed at the photo, then remembered the fairy took sentences literally. "A picture of my mom. Of course I am not the offspring of a photo."

She raised an eyebrow. Was the fairy messing with her head?

"Look, I don't think this quest stuff will fly between us. Is it necessary?"

She sighed in relief. "Okay, meeting in the middle sounds great. But no quest stuff. If you think I should do something, just say so."

"Do you mean more of that black stuff?"

"Try not to break me, okay?"

"Okay, let's start the day, then. I need to grab all the food in the apartments, throw away what's spoiled and sort the rest. Also, more water bottles."

*

*

Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Thursday, October 10th, 2019. 14:00.

The fairy announced.

"Oh, boy. I'm so not looking forward to it."

Sara felt an undeniable urge to visit the toilet. Her body ached from all the effort from yesterday but she knew she couldn't even groan. Any lapse in her concentration would be catastrophic to her pride as a young lady. As she sat to do her business, Sara grunted as a sharp roiling gurgling colic assaulted her lower abdomen. What followed was lengthy, painful, and offended the senses in more than one way.

She tried not to breathe but it was impossible with the abdominal pains she felt. She reached for the bathroom door and waved it back and forth like a giant wooden fan to try and get some fresh air. Yet her body kept hard at work to finish what it had to do. Though nobody died in this apartment, she would rather be next to a dead rotting corpse instead. Was this vengeance for eating too much? Did all the food skip her stomach and small intestines? Halfway through, she heard sloshing and the sound of the toilet siphon gurgling even though she didn't flush. And oddly enough, she didn't feel like she was done yet. It felt like an eternity.

She cleaned up the best she could and stumbled out of the restroom in a beeline straight to the window. She opened it and leaned out to breathe. The aroma of smoke in the air felt like a Spring meadow but she could still smell the foul thing. Sara went downstairs back to her own room, noticing she had to mop the hallways. All that dragging and leaking of dead bodies in the early stages of decomposition did a number on the flooring and it added the stench of dead people to the Apocalyptic bouquet. She was too worn out to do anything, though. Her bottom was sore.

Hungry, tired, and in pain, she laid down on her stomach and grumbled. "What the hell was that?"

She was just venting her woes but it seemed the fairy took it a bit too literally. Sara tried to chuckle but what came out were just hoarse grunts. "I expelled impurities, har har. Right," the girl remarked sardonically. She believed that what she expelled could very well be considered level five biohazardous material. Lethal if exposed to for any period of time. Apparently, she was now a magical wire of some sort. She wanted to inquire about that to the fairy but didn't have the strength to vocalize her questions.

Sara's apartment, Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Thursday, October 10th, 2019. 16:00.

Tired of laying down, she moved to the couch, trying to not think about her fate and whatever was that which came out of her butt, her mind kept drifting to the subject. Sara decided to ask the fairy some questions.

"What are mana channels?"

Most of that flew right over her tired head. "So, mana, one 'N', is magical energy."

"Cast spells, call down lightning, shoot fireballs, create shields, that sort of thing?"

"And what about Qi? Is it the same thing as those cultivator stories?"

She braced herself. "Go ahead." Sara grunted as she felt a sharp poking headache. It lasted only a second.

Sara took a deep breath and unclenched her teeth. "That's what the facehugger said to the astronaut. Did you find what you wanted?"

"Ant crawling on paper. Got it!" Desperate for communication, she just wanted to keep the conversation going. To really grasp those concepts, the girl and the fairy would repeat the lecture several times in the future.

"Yeah, that seems right."

"So when hell and heaven fell on earth, they added more dimensions to our own?"

"And our tridimensional space can be folded to make shortcuts. Teleportation!"

"Why did they have to be cleaned?" She meekly protested with a mewling whine. The fairy was basically torturing her, Sara believed.

"What was that... stuff that came out of me out there?"

She blushed and cringed. What she understood from the text was that she was like a living sewer system, and all that fast food she ate was coming back with a vengeance now.

"Is this going to be a thing? I don't want it to be a thing."

"Is this happening again?"

She was too tired, too worn out to argue with the crystal inside her. Or process the blocks of information she received.

"I know you messed with my mind before. I wouldn't mind if you put me to sleep now."

Sara groaned, then stood up to go back to work. She would spend the rest of the afternoon sorting food and filling bottles with drinking water.

*

*

Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Thursday, October 10th, 2019. 20:11.

The eternally dark skies messed up with her internal clock, Sara admitted as she checked the time on her phone. She wasn't feeling as bad as before but she wasn't going to run a mile anytime soon. As her mind brushed the cobwebs out, she heard the sound of a heavy downpour.

She was starving and parched. She felt like opening the window and drinking straight from the rain but that was unwise. With all the smoke and ashes floating around since the world's end, the rainwater had to be awfully tainted. Sara found her way to the kitchen on autopilot, then remembered she had already eaten all the food in the apartment. Without a choice, she crossed the hallway into Mrs. Robinson's and helped herself to buttered salt crackers and a quart of milk sweetened with honey. She felt she could eat some meat but wasn't really in the mood to find and cook meat.

Instead, she finished her late-night breakfast and cried. The rain was making her moody. Or it was a sign her period was coming soon. A quick check on her calendar gave either hypothesis equal credibility.

She felt weak, exposed, alone. Vulnerable in a world where the few survivors left were shooting at each other in the streets. If what the System Core said and only one in every thousand survived, how many were left after just a few days? How would humanity survive, much less civilization? Were we heading to a "Mad Max" future? Or that Will Smith zombie disease movie, "I am Legend"? She surely didn't feel like a legend right now.

She opened Mrs. Robinson's fridge, wondering where Mrs. Robinson met her ultimate fate. Was it on the Interstate? Shopping for groceries? The world was just too fucked up. She felt she couldn't trust anybody. Rummaging idly in the fridge, she found some roast beef leftovers in a Tupperware. She warmed the meat in a pan, then uttered many gormandizing groans as she ate it, forgetting for one moment the fate of her species.

Well-fed, she went back to her bed and spent some time staring at the photo of her mother's photo on the phone. The same one lying on her desk. She let the sound of the rain guide her as her consciousness drifted away.

*

*

Sara's (new) Bedroom, Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Friday, October 11th, 2019. 05:40.

She woke up well-rested and invigorated even though she still had some stiff muscles from sleeping too much. Sara stood up and gasped in delight when she noticed she could almost see. It was a moonless night but as she opened the curtains, starlight shone in. She was enraptured by the crisp shining sky, delighted by the fresh (and smokeless) night air after heavy rain. An urban denizen, she never saw such a gorgeous sky in person, only in photographs or obviously 'shopped ads.

Marveled, Sara went upstairs to the roof with a blanket. It was still damp from the rain but she didn't care. Sara climbed the stairs to the water tower and sat on the edge after she laid the folded blanket down. Then she laid back and stared at the starlit sky. Not a single wisp of cloud in sight, her eyes followed the stars, trying to see the constellations. She traced the arms of the milky way, finally admitting that yes, it looked like a river of milk in the sky. She squealed as she found Uranus almost setting against the city skyline to the southeast, which she mistook for Jupiter. The planet, in her opinion, looked like a tiny moon, not a space station. She found no other planets though she did search for them.

She wished she'd paid more attention to classes, that she had studied the constellations. Sara wondered if Columbus used that as a map to navigate all the way from Europe on a wooden ship. She also dreaded that nobody alive knew how to build one anymore. Scientists, politicians, and people who knew how to keep the world running were nothing but gone. She knew it took a lot of people to keep things working. How many airplane pilots, how many airplane mechanics?

Her heart sunk when she wondered how many survivors died as their planes crashed because the pilot died. Though she had nobody, no family, no friends, she still wept for the fate of the world. Sara reached up with her hand, trying to grab a star. She pouted as she failed to grasp something thousands of light-years away. She looked for a shooting star and she knew deep in her heart that she would wish for everyone to come back to life. Even the bad guys, she decided.

Then the magic was over. As dawn approached, the skies slowly started to light up. Muted reds, pale oranges, then blue. Sara felt exposed as she stared at the office building two blocks away. The one she was sure was the Necropolis King's castle now. She would be easily spotted if she remained there so she took her now damp blanket and withdrew back into the bowels of the dead building she lived in.

*

*

Common Hallway, Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Friday, October 11th, 2019. 07:59.

If the world hadn't ended at rush hour, Sara would be at school now, among a throng of students eager to hear the final bell so their weekend would start. Now that everything went to shit, the weekend went from Tuesday to Monday and then all the way to the next Monday and so on. Yet at Lakeview Apartments, one girl was hard at work, mopping the hallways. She didn't want to smell cadaverine anymore. That particular stench the dead bodies give off.

She still felt energized. Maybe that mana channel cleansing thing wasn't so bad after all, now that she decided that the black stuff coming out of her body didn't happen. Right, she had to ruin it by remembering to forget. Sara paused and leaned on the mop, remembering the existential dread that came with putting all that stuff out of her body. No way. It was as bad as it felt, the memory something she would never forget. But at least it had a silver lining.

That reminded her. How much water did the water tank still hold? How long until the building ran out of water? What would she do when that happened? She had a lot of water right now but that wouldn't last for much longer. She stared at the bucket of dirty bloody water, at the mop. What the hell was she doing? Should she waste water cleaning the building?

She remembered a game about building a raft that she saw the guys playing on their cell phones once. It had a rainwater collector contraption. Now that she had clear skies, maybe she should make some of these to catch fresh rainwater. Actually, the air quality was quite good despite the smell of dead people. Without the hundreds of thousands of cars running around for five days, the wind and Mother Nature did their job of clearing air pollution.

While drinking water supply was an issue, they had a huge lake a few miles to the east. The one the big gold meteor vanished above. She knew she would need to move out of the building, but not before she exhausted all other options. But now, she had to find some ghosts. The System Core said two of them still haunted the building, and she wanted to deal with them before anything. Depending on the type of ghosts, for example, if they were worse than Mr. Taylor, she would have to move out.

She searched the building, and eventually found a bedroom she hadn't entered yet. This apartment had no dead bodies and was smelling rather good compared to the rest of the building. Sara thought she had combed everything but apparently, she skipped that one unconsciously. She opened the door and saw it was a kid's bedroom. A young boy lived here, by the decoration.

"Hello? Good afternoon? May I enter your room?" She asked anyway, though the probability of someone… never mind.

"Big sister Sara!" The kid rushed out of nowhere to slam into and hug her. He had dark skin, short hair, and was around seven or eight years old.

For a moment, Sara thought she was dealing with a living person. She could feel him, his warmth, everything. He wasn't deformed like the other two, probably because he didn't bear the weight of sin like Mr. Taylor or the decrepitude of old age like the old lady. Sara knelt to hug the kid back and confirm her suspicion. He was oddly solid and were it not for some weird sixth sense that told her it was a ghost, she wouldn't have believed it.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Sara, but you already know that," she introduced herself. Odd. All ghosts called her by name. So far, she assumed they knew her before the end but she was sure she never met this kid. She recalled some people moved in last week. Maybe —

"I'm Joseph," the kid beamed. "Nice to meet you, sister Sara!"

"What can I do for you, Joseph?"

The kid cocked his head, then poked his chin. Finally, he broke into a big wide warm grin. "Mom and Daddy aren't home yet. Can you play with me?"

Sara sat on the floor. "Sure. What are we playing?"

The kid brought a finger to his lips, then whispered, "don't tell anyone, but dad bought me a new LEGO set for Christmas! I wanted to assemble it! I want it so bad!"

"It isn't Christmas yet," Sara pointed out.

"I know," the kid bashfully admitted. Staring down, he continued. "But everyone is dead and I'm going to vanish before Christmas."

Sara almost fell backward. So he was aware he was a ghost, just like the others. She was also afraid of this new information. The ghosts would vanish after a while. She would have to do her best to help as many as she could before that. She had a hunch that not every ghost would vanish at the same time but no way to confirm that. She felt bad for Joseph.

"So, let's check it out. Where is it?"

"In my dad's closet!"

Sara took Joseph with her as she explored the master bedroom closet. She found a large LEGO set hidden on the hat shelf. The black cardboard box was almost the size of a carry-on suitcase. The massive LEGO set was themed after Spider-Man, with an alarming 3,372 piece count. On the front cover, the fully assembled set showed The Daily Bugle building besieged by several Spider-Man villains. The back of the box said the set was almost three feet tall when fully assembled.

"There it is! Assemble it with me, sister Sara!" Joseph was overexcited.

Sara took the huge box back to Joseph's bedroom and ripped it open. Bag after bag of pieces came out of it, along with a booklet containing enough paper to print two bibles.

"Let's start assembling, then," she reached for a random bag before Joseph held her.

He tutted, "No, that's not the right way! Wait, we need trays to separate the pieces. And you are supposed to start from bag one. They're numbered, see?"

Joseph was some sort of LEGO aficionado by the looks of it. He brought several stacking acrylic trays and guided her on opening and sorting the bricks to make the assembly process easier. Sara opened the instructions book (calling it a booklet was an offense) and started putting the pieces together, chatting with Joseph as they went.

The kid not only knew their LEGO bricks but also was a Spider-Man geek. No wonder he gained this set as his last ever Christmas gift. Sara assembled Dr. Octopus and a droplet of water hit the Minifigure.

"What's the matter, Sara?" Joseph asked, concern and fear evident in his voice.

Sara sniffled and wiped the moisture off her eyes. It was Joseph's moment, his final wish. Her feelings could stay bottled until after. "It's nothing."

"Are you afraid of me? Because I'm a ghost?" Joseph's voice was trembling.

Sara met the kid's eyes and pulled him in a tight hug. "No! Not at all! I know you're a good ghost. Like Casper."

"Who?"

She explained to him, "He was a boy ghost just like you, but he was very lonely. And the thing he wanted the most was to make friends. He wasn't scary."

"I'm not a scary ghost either! And I want to make friends too!" Joseph bragged.

She nodded and kissed his cheek as she let go. "Well, you got me. I hope it's enough." Joseph grinned. "Come, those bricks won't assemble themselves. But I have a request."

"Anything, sister!" His patented sunshine grin melted her heart and made the pain of the incoming separation even harder.

"I don't want just to assemble this set. I want to play with you until it gets dark," she proposed, wishing to move the goalpost and keep Joseph for a bit longer.

"Yes! Sure! But we need to stop eating."

He lowered his head. "I don't eat anymore. But I got a bag of M&M's in my drawer. You can have them if you want. Too bad I won't be here for Halloween... Mr. Taylor downstairs promised he'd have a lot of candy for me."

Sara was shocked by this new development. "You shouldn't go anywhere near Mr. Taylor!" She scolded and then reined in her temper. "Sorry. You did nothing wrong. Mr. Taylor is a bad man."

Joseph blinked, then nodded. "I know it now. And he's gone forever." The kid's voice became cold and detached. "He shall have no salvation."

Sara shivered. She decided they should go back to their LEGO set. "Let's start assembling. Look, the first bag has a lot of hands and feet, let's see which characters we got."

"Okay!" He was back to his cheerful mood, and they started assembling the set.

"So, the next one is the Sandman. What can you tell me about him," she said feigning ignorance.

Joseph indulged her and talked about each character on the set, enough to cast about four movies. The two had the time of their lives as they assembled the massive brick set and then played Spiderman until the reddish-orange sky announced the end of the day.

The boy stared at the window. "It's time to go, sister. I am vanishing."

She found no sadness in his voice. Joseph just stated a fact. Sara, however, was bawling. The kid knelt next to the tower almost as tall as he was and picked the Spiderman Minifigure.

"Here. This one is me. Would you take it with you?"

Sara sobbed, her chest moving up and down in a staccato. "Of course."

"We need to superglue him," Joseph said. "So he won't come apart. I have a vial in the second drawer of my toy box." Sara fetched the superglue. "Now, careful. We want to glue the hips and head on the torso, but without locking the legs."

Sara glued the pieces together and attached a keychain to the head. "Now, I'll never lose it."

Joseph became translucent. "Remember me, sister."

She would rather be stabbed in the chest than watch the kid vanish. "How could I forget?" She sobbed. "I had the best afternoon ever!" Sara gushed as tears flowed freely from her face.

"Me too. Thank you, Sara."

Joseph vanished for good and Sara didn't have the will to move out of his room. She hid her face in her hands, and let her feelings flow along with her tears.

> Mission Complete! Hidden Objective Completed!

> You gained 2 points ...

"Please, no," she begged with a whimper.

She didn't want to see any notifications and the System respected her moment by not slamming a message or window to her face.