The Last of Us (14)

“Rise and shine.” Tyler said, lifting himself up out of bed and realizing his brother was already standing there, completely dressed and ready to go.

Conor stood motionless, but full of energy. “You know, why did we even wear our good clothes if we knew it was going to take two days to get there?”

Tyler brushed the hindsight comment away and instead rolled himself out of bed and got ready. Meanwhile, Conor paced back and forth in the hotel room. It was a sketchy place, not one for two brothers like them. Conor, particularly, looked pretty harmless most of the time. He was often smiling and never aggressive. Tyler, on the other hand, could at least invoke fear in strangers or come across in an unwelcoming way, so many people would not bother them.

Disregarding the environment they were in, Conor walked outside. It was reasonably cold, but they were getting closer to Louisiana so the weather was not that awful. He looked around and saw a middle-age couple walking towards their hotel room. Conor politely waived to them and was given a weird “fuck-off” body language reply.

The younger brother grinned. “At least they didn’t give me the finger this time.”

It was then their hotel room door opened and Tyler marched out. “Let’s get going.” He said, taking a better look at the motel in the daylight. “This place is too Grand Theft Auto for me.”

Conor agreed. “Well, at least our car is still here.”

“Yeah, no one is gonna steal that.”

The two of them got into the car and back onto the highway.

“This is not going to be easy, brother.” Tyler noted. “I hope you know this.”

Conor agreed. “I was thinking about it last night. The infected, it could happen to anyone. There’s bound to be one or two DEFIANCE guys who, out of no fault of their own, have the disease spread into them.”

“Do you think,” Conor started, “do you think Dan was bitten? And who’s the host? Mikey?”

Tyler shrugged. “I’m not sure how it spreads, not yet anyway. There aren’t too many infected right now. Instead it looks like the UTA Fireflies just want to kill off everyone in sight. They got Andy Murray really good. Impulse, too.”

Conor might have had something to add to his brother’s comments, but did not out of respect.

“Mikey, I think he’s too stupid to be the host.” Tyler remarked. “But he’s definitely The Big Boss, that’s for sure.”

Tyler looked over at Conor to make sure he had his attention. “But you know, we can’t speak like this in front of The Developer. We have to come across as normal. We need to be accepted into the game. We need online access and then we can express our real views, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Hence why we’re dressed nicely, even if we didn’t need to dress like this yesterday.”

The two continued down the highway. They would spend the next 10+ hours driving, finally arriving the DEFIANCE Wrestle-Plex around 6pm at night. It would be there, where they’d take the first step into the game called DEFIANCE Wrestling and where they would begin the attempt to rid the system of the infected and the evil group called the UTA Fireflies.

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