The dawn didn't bring the relief some were hoping for.
On the contrary, it brought the realization that this was the new normal. As well as the heat of a tropical sun raging above.
"It doesn't look like we're about to get any reprieve, does it?"
Julia was at Noara's side, atop the barricade, looking at the desolation around them.
Noara shook her head, sighing.
"It doesn't. There's no signal of communications returning, so we should work with the idea that this isn't an isolated case. From what Samira told us, Roosevelt Plaza suffered the same as us, and if this is a city-wide malfunction…"
"The government will already have their hands full safeguarding the rich neighborhoods."
Noara didn't intend to put her thoughts into words, and still Julia picked them up and said it.
"Yeah… We're screwed. But we need to get to a high place to get a good view of the city and see if there's any chance that civilization still holds on somewhere else."
The two girls looked at each other, the bags under their eyes chanting a tale of their sleep deprivation. Yet, they knew they weren't allowed to relax just yet.
"I agree that we need to send some sort of scouting out. The food we have here… well, that bar used to be a BDSM club, not a restaurant. Whatever food was inside is long gone, though we still have a stock of water."
At that moment, the sun was already strong enough to hurt in a cloudless, blue sky.
"I'll go out with Lu. There's a restaurant right there."
Noara pointed to a building only fifty meters from them.
"Last night we were too panicked and still holding onto the hope of dawn ending the nightmare, so we didn't do anything. But that place must have a lot of food in stock. We'll check if it's safe, then we go to that skyscraper right there."
Lu's laughter was quickly followed by the arrival of her body, landing on top of the barricade in one jump from the ground.
"Did I hear something about moving around?"
"You are surely having fun with your class abilities, huh? Aren't you going to run out of mana?"
The newcomer laughed away Julia's practical concerns.
"No worries… this costs just a little bit of stamina points, not mana. And what dancer wouldn't want to show off their legs? But, anyway, are we going out? When? To where?"
***
Fifteen minutes later, a volunteer group was selected for scouting. It was a small group, to make it easier to handle emotion-based threats.
The group consisted of Noara, Lu, and the delivery guy, Marcos. He still had his insulated backpack, which would come in handy to carry food back to the shelter.
"You three. Stay always within each other's arm's reach. No straying away, no shouting. And, the most important of all, no playing hero. You see danger, you grab the others and run. Understood?"
The three nodded and muttered their agreement to Julia's words, then went to the front of the restaurant, not much further away from the barricade. Lu with her makeshift spear, Noara with her knife, and Marcos with… well, he was there.
"This was already closed when chaos broke out at midnight. It means that, unless someone broke in before us, we'll strike gold. But how the hell do we enter?"
The restaurant had iron bars in front of the glass windows, for security reasons, and the door had a heavy chain on it.
Just a normal storefront in a city like São Paulo.
"The hinges are rusted."
Lu stared at where Marcos was pointing and immediately bolted into action. She took a stone from a pile of debris from a construction site nearby and started banging on the hinges.
After some beating, the hinge begins to crumble under the impact. Lu takes her makeshift spear and uses it as a lever, unhinging the door with a metallic squeal.
The interior of the restaurant looked exactly like it was left by the workers when they went back home the night before. It didn't even look like the world outside had completely shattered.
Bang!
The door slammed shut, startling the three. They looked back at it, Lu quickly positioning herself between the door and the other two.
Nothing happened. No sound, nothing.
"The wind…"
Noara noticed, letting out a deep breath.
"Fuck. Where's the fucking pantry?"
She turns around, going deeper into the restaurant. Their footsteps are too loud in their ears, but they keep going anyway.
It was still there. The freezers were filled with perishables, plus lots of shelves of food.
"All this meat will spoil if we don't eat it soon. Let's signal to Julia so they can send the carriers to retrieve it. This is much more than what we can carry."
***
After signaling that the coast was clear to the ones who had remained behind the barricade, they kept going up the street, towards the high ground.
They already had a specific building in mind. It was a commercial building, full of offices. Exactly the kind that would have been empty at midnight, except for the security guard.
When they arrived, the outside gate was already open.
"Did the security guard flee?"
"That would make things easier for us. Let's hope that that's the case, Marcos."
While Noara and Marcos were chatting, Lu had already entered the place.
"Guys! Come see this!"
In the middle of the lobby, there were two people in security uniforms. Both were dead.
"This wasn't monsters. They were killed by bullets."
The scene would have made their stomachs churn if it was any day before. But even just a night of wild survival was enough to make them numb to some sights.
They advanced in silence now, scurrying upstairs.
The staircase was silent and dark, except for the little flashlight Marcos produced from his pocket.
"When you deliver food at night in this city… It's never too much to be prepared."
As they went up, the silence became more and more eerie, weighing on them like the pressure of an ocean above their heads.
***
When they reached the fourteenth floor, Noara decided to check if they could already see something.
She opened the door that led outside the staircase, reaching a big hall. They picked a corridor and went through it, testing the doors.
"We'll have to break in, Noara. Lemme do it."
Lu didn't wait for an answer, kicking a random door inwards, breaking it almost effortlessly.
"Since when you're that strong?"
"Hey! That's mean, Noara! Know that pole dancers have to do leg workouts every day, and I've been on it for years now."
It was an advocacy office, with several desks equally distant from each other, a cheap coffee maker in a corner, and several posters about rights and inclusion. On a central desk, a pile of case folders had a big label with 'URGENT' written in red letters.
They entered the office still chatting away, in a brief instant of relaxation amidst the tension.
After all, whoever killed the guards with bullets wouldn't have come to the fourteenth floor, right? Those offices wouldn't have anything of value, and there were no signs of anyone breaking into them…
Right?
A sound of paper being ruffled inside folders and then dropped on the ground at once cut their conversation short.
From somewhere in the office, hidden behind a thin partition wall, a voice whispered.
"Tell me what happened."