“Minh, why are you studying so hard?” A girl in the class approached him and asked.

“Don’t you know about the graduation exam?” He responded.

“But, today is Halloween, yes? Why not play for a day?”

The boy looked around the class to see most of them were wearing costumes and stuff and having fun, and then he turned to the seat next to him, which was where Mai used to be. “Fuck…”

“Oh…uh…if you-”

“Tell the teacher that I’m going home early today.” Before she got to finish the sentence, Minh interrupted. The boy stood up and walked out of the door after that.

The boy was at Mai’s home, or what’s left of it.

When the gang members were caught, they said that the girl was killed by a grenade, but Minh knew full well that Mai could easily counter it.

Because of that, Minh and his team went to her house to investigate and found five sneaky rocket launcher shots.

The girl’s house wasn’t very sturdy in the first place, so five PG-7 HEAT rockets easily brought it down to the frame. However, with how much passion she put into collecting everything, Mai had built a hidden nuclear shelter under the house to protect all her stuff. The huge mountain of things in her backyard was just a decoy and only attained 1% of all her items.

Minh was shocked when he discovered this place which Mai never told him, and so was his team and the government. Considering that Mai built this facility by herself to save money, the government researchers concluded that the place is better protected than any other fallout shelter found in the world.

The boy used a shovel to dig through some fallen cement chunks and other debris to expose the entrance to the nuclear shelter. There was a password pad on the hatch, and it was still on without maintenance in two years. In fact, the whole place ran on a nuclear battery that Mai asked him to make a year prior to her death.

“Password please or I ain’t gonna let you touch my stuff.” Said an artificial voice on the pad.

“01012007,” Minh replied.

“Where did you get it?”

“It is my birthday,”

“Uh… what? Are you Minh?”

“Certainly.”

“Come on in then, sorry that Mai hid this from you.”

The hatch opened upward, revealing a ladder.

“What is this…? How big is this place?” The boy wondered as he climbed down

“Well, this room is 1000 meters squared, and we have ten floors here.”

“How did Mai build all this by herself?” Minh let out his thought.

“I don’t know. When I was brought here, the place was already completed.”

“Oh, so that raises a question. What are you?”

“You can guess it. I’m an AI developed by Mai’s father as a birthday gift. Name’s Alkatraz. My setting voice is loli, and my setting personality is neutral.”

“Cool,” was the boy’s reaction.

Minh went around exploring the place, but there wasn’t much to see in the first place. The shelter wasn’t designed for human use but for storing stuff effectively.

“Alkatraz, do you have some food here?” Minh asked. Since the heater system inside some rooms was pretty good, he decided to stay there and do homework. Hours passed, and the time was 6 PM, a time to get ready for dinner.

“There is canned food inside the freezer room.” The AI, which told Minh their pronoun is she, answered.

“Okay, excuse me then.”

The boy got a beef can and a pasta pack to cook a simple meal and slowly ate it in the living room.

After filling his stomach, Minh turned the TV on to pass the time since he had done his homework already and got nothing else to do. However, what he saw was unexpected.

The TV was in the middle of an emergency alarm. “-hina has suddenly declared war on us. Radars have detected enemy aircraft heading for Hanoi. Citizens in the city are advised to find a sturdy shelter to protect themselves from bombings. This is a recording. The situation will be updated.” And the same lines repeated.

The boy turned off the television. “Is that true?”

“Yes, my radars also detected a monster number of planes heading to this place,” Alkatraz said.

“Shit, why don’t command tell me about this….”

“My take is that the Chinese have sabotaged our communication. You know connections have been bad since the afternoon. Now, the bombers will arrive in six minutes, I have an anti-air system installed, so I will try to shoot down as much as I can, but you should stay in here.”

“No, I will fight for my country. Where are the weapons?”

“As you wish.”

Minh was sitting in Mai’s backyard with a rocket launcher and as many rockets as he could find. There were also well-hidden AA guns and missiles pointed to the sky by Alkatraz.

“Hoho, those big-ass planes are here.” He picked his rocket launcher and fired. The rocket hit a bomber’s body, tearing it into two.

Alkatraz followed, taking down enemy aircraft effectively without being detected.

The Chinese bombers released their payload, raining hell on the city.

The boy became more and more emotional every time a bomb exploded, destroying buildings and killing people.

Soon enough, he ran out of ammunition and had to use unguided missiles, and even then, those rockets were depleted, so he resorted to using a Moshin Nagant to take down planes by shooting at their engines.

Minh stood on the ruined remain of Mai’s house with the rifle in his hand. The city was burning in front of his eyes.

He suddenly turned back, aiming the gun at a corner. “Who?”

A man wearing a suit appeared and walked to him. “Your senses are still sharp after all this; you are strong.”

“You are… Mai’s father?”

“Indeed I am.” The main raised his arm. “This place is not safe anymore. Come with me to the United States, and we are avenging our country later.”

“You think I want to go with you?”

“Yes, people are waiting for you.”

Minh caught the man’s hand and held it tightly.

“Perfect, your new name is — Player Alica.”

Nhatduongg

Two chapters in two days are quite tiresome. Here’s the next poll by the way.

https://discord.gg/kkE3nyn9bW