2 months later....

The Three teens sat around a small campfire sipping hot coffee. Thick white clouds rose from their mouths with each breath. The morning was cold over the campsite they had set up for the night near Wolf creek pond in Ohio. They had been making their way to New York to try to make contact with Colonel Forsyth at the D.A.H.T. Nothing could have prepared them for what the world had turned into during their seclusion in the mountains of Montana.

They had walked over 1500 miles and through six states. The devastation and decay they had witnessed was unfathomable. They had quickly decided to take a route that would avoid large urban areas because there was chaos and destruction prevalent in all the cities.

After just a couple days without people to watch over them, power and public utilities broke down. In the darkness that followed, the few people left, raided and looted. Whole cities burned without public services such as firemen and police. After a couple of weeks fires burned out of control and the silence and darkness that followed were marred by nuclear explosions when power plants overheat and explode, creating irradiated hotspots for miles around them.

The worst thing was the dead. Death was everywhere. The Bugs, in an unlikely display of mercy and by their intrinsic purpose, dried up and used the bodies of the infected, leaving behind something that did not smell or rot. The infected and insane survivors displayed no such mercy. The dried up and almost mummified lay alongside the bloated, murdered bodies in every corner of the country and probably the world. So, they avoided the large urban areas.

Now the teens sat around a fire in the early morning cold, drinking coffee in a secluded part of the Ohio wilderness.

Jeffery was the first to notice and he slowly set his cup down on the ground.

"What is it Traceur?" Corbin asked, noticing his comrades change in behavior.

Jeffery said nothing out loud. With a smooth silent movement he had his swords out and his head cocked, listening to the wind. In his head and in the heads of the other two he said, "Someone is coming."

Thanks to an unexpected development in the Neuro-ram implant's interaction with the Knight tech, the Knight Hunters are able to communicate in a so called telepathic manner. The bugs communicate with each other and also the Neuro-ram implants. With their extensive training, the teens have created a link with the bugs and are able to communicate with them subconsciously and in turn with each other. These communication are not so much like a voice inside their head, but more like a memory or knowledge that they have always known, due to the Neuro-rams vicinity to the hippocampus.