Backlund's East Borough.
The pale yellow smog still hung between the streets. The Sun, already slanting westward, was dim, and the sunlight it barely cast upon the Earth seemed shrouded in a layer of grayish white.
Several residents who had escaped disaster by hiding in attics high up in their homes cautiously opened their doors and stepped onto the streets, tentatively breathing the air that was still pungent, but no longer deadly.
These lucky ones were only a minority. Most people, trapped in homes where they could not shut out the air, used every possible means to protect their lives: damp towels or clothing, wardrobes stuffed with wet quilts, even crawling directly beneath their beds...
Yet even so, many frail, already ill unfortunate people had died in the poisonous fog.
Not to mention the homeless residents, or those who had not made it home in time. They lay silently in the streets, alleys, and even at their own doorsteps. Most of them would never wake again.
Bang—
Xio kicked open Sherman's front door and rushed inside like the wind, her petite body carrying in a wisp of fog.
"Sherman, are you here?"
She shouted as she checked the rooms one by one.
On her way here, the Bounty Hunter had already seen no fewer than a hundred corpses. Even more numerous were the survivors who remained alive, but wept and wailed for the relatives they had lost.
She did not want to see her friend become like that as well—become an insignificant number in the death toll tallied by the newspapers a few days later, perhaps even one that would be overlooked.
"I'm here, in the attic! Come help!"
A weak yet fairly clear reply came from above. She hurried up the stairs, pushed aside the hatch covered with wet