Chapter 55: Finding Negan
Gray finally stood up from the couch and paused the TV.
A sudden thought crossed his mind about Negan. At this early point in the apocalypse, Negan wasn’t the brutal leader of the Saviors yet. He was likely still stuck in his basement, desperately trying to take care of his sick wife, Lucille. Instead of waiting for her to pass away and letting Negan go the wrong path, Gray decided to take action and track him down right now.
He used his Jumper-style teleportation to blink high into the open air above his house. Once outside, he floated effortlessly before flying forward under his own power. He had fully mastered unassisted flight a few weeks back, and it felt as natural as walking.
Opening his maxed-out world map interface, Gray set his destination for Virginia. Moving at extreme speed, it took him less than 30 minutes to cross state lines and arrive in the area.
He slowed down and hovered in the sky, planning to check all the moving survivor dots around. First, he checked the other future major settlements to see how they were doing. Alexandria was already walled off, secure, and actively working. The Hilltop also had a couple dozen survivors moving around the property, and the Kingdom was thriving inside its campus. He didn’t see anyone from the garbage people anywhere on his radar.
Gray spent about two hours flying grids and checking dots, but he still hadn’t come close to finding Negan’s specific location. Realizing Virginia was too big to search blindly, he opened the system shop and opted to buy a magic compass that would show him where Negan was. He spent barely 10,000 Gold on it. Taking it out of his inventory, the compass needle spun instantly and showed Gray exactly where Negan was.
Gray simply flew over the trees until he reached the house. Activating his Wraith Sight, his vision pierced right through the structure, and he saw the two people down in the basement. He landed smoothly on the suburban street and walked over to the front door, noticing the generator was on.
He knocked a few times firmly. To make sure he looked less intimidating, he took off his Nazgûl mask and waited. After two more minutes of silence, he knocked again. Not hearing anything from inside, he simply called out, "Hello? Anyone in there? I come in peace."
Gray could feel someone watching him through the peephole, but he chose to ignore it and simply kept waiting on the porch. The low hum of the generator was starting to attract walkers. Gray heard their footsteps and groans approaching, so he casually reached into his back and pulled his UAC handgun from his inventory. With two precise shots, he got rid of the two growling walkers before they could even reach the steps.
He decided to try the door one more time. After knocking firmly, he finally heard a man’s defensive voice call out from the other side. "We don’t want any trouble," the man said, his tone tense. "We barely have any supplies left for us, so you best go on your way. There’s nothing here for you."
Gray simply smiled at the response. "Oh, I’m not here looking for supplies. Quite the opposite, in fact," he replied. "My settlement is a little bit far away, but I’m looking for more survivors."
To prove his point, Gray pulled a laptop from his inventory. He had loaded it with updated video files showcasing the incredible reality of the prison fortress. The footage showed the completed, secure apartment complexes with fully functioning water lines. Gray had recently upgraded the water system, completely replacing those old 10,000-gallon tanks with a massive underground infinite water source that could easily supply a large city for centuries. The videos also showed the towering 10-meter stone walls enclosing the perimeter, modern lampposts brightly illuminating the courtyard, children playing safely outside, and heavy security patrolling the area. The dozens of guards on camera were actually T-800 droids, but they looked exactly like real human beings.
Gray carefully set the laptop down on the doorstep and took a couple of steps back. "I’ll leave that laptop right here so you guys can see what I’m offering," he called out. Before walking away, he turned around to deliver his final words. "I will come back tomorrow morning so you guys can give me an answer."
With that, he walked off the porch and down the street. The moment he turned the corner and was completely out of sight, he launched himself straight up into the night sky.
Floating high above Virginia, Gray looked down at his maxed-out world map and saw massive hordes of walkers scattering the entire region. He decided to use the rest of his night productively by clearing them out. He mixed up his combat styles to keep things interesting. For one horde, he would drop down and use a standard gun. For another, he would slice through them cleanly with his high-energy phasesaber. Sometimes he would hover in the air and completely vaporize whole clusters using Merlin’s destructive magic.
But what he practiced the most were his Ki attacks. Thanks to his Minecrafter physiology, his energy bars and stamina regenerated instantly, giving him a practically infinite pool of energy to draw from. The only real downside was that his Saiyan metabolism forced him to eat much more frequently, but the nonstop practice allowed him to become completely used to the flow and feeling of his Ki.
Back at the house, Negan stood tightly gripping his wooden baseball bat, bracing for an attack. Seeing the strange kid through the peephole finally walk away, he unlocked the door, opened it just wide enough to scoop up the laptop, and quickly locked everything down tight again.
He hurried back down into the basement where his sick wife, Lucille, was resting on the bed. She looked up at him, her voice weak but full of concern. "What happened? Is everything okay?"
Negan nodded, trying to calm his breathing. "Yeah, everything is fine," he said, walking over. "It was just a strange kid. He was wearing some kind of medieval armor and left this." He held up the laptop to show her. "He said he came from a settlement that was helping out survivors, if you could even believe that," he muttered, letting out a skeptical scoff.
Lucille looked at the sleek device, a small spark of curiosity in her eyes. She gently patted the empty side of the mattress next to her. "Well, let’s see what’s in it then."
Negan shook his head, still highly doubtful, but he walked over and laid down on the bed beside his wife. He opened the screen and pulled up the media folder. The two of them watched the video files in complete, stunned silence, staring at what looked like absolute paradise in the middle of a broken world.
Both Negan and his wife stared at the screen in absolute shock. He wasn’t entirely sure if the footage was real, but seeing everything in such high definition made him feel a spark of hope. Lucille was completely speechless. Once she saw the video of the high-tech biological lab, with actual doctors working around state-of-the-art equipment, she genuinely believed this group could help her.
They were down to their last five bags of chemotherapy. Negan was already forced to travel further and further away into dangerous territory just to find basic things like food, medicine, and gas. Looking at the screen, Lucille was silently praying that this wasn’t some kind of sick lie. The two of them continued to watch the video files over and over again, dissecting every frame. Eventually, the sheer exhaustion caught up to them, and they closed the laptop to go to sleep.
Meanwhile, Gray continued his intense night work. He pulled up his maxed-out world map and took the time to clear out any blocked-off highways below. If he ran across a section of the road that was heavily damaged or broken, he would simply drop down, mine some raw stone blocks with his Minecraft tools, and completely fix the infrastructure on the spot.
He worked his way methodically all the way from Virginia back toward Atlanta. Flying high over the long stretches of highway, whenever he spotted piles of abandoned cars blocking the lanes, he would simply use Merlin’s magic to lift and move them out of the way, creating a perfectly clear path.
As he worked, Gray started thinking about the future. If he eventually wanted to bring in all the survivors from Alexandria, the Hilltop, and the surrounding settlements, the prison would probably be too far and run out of space. It would probably be much better to construct a completely new, separate safe zone just for the Virginia factions when the time came.
Once Gray made it all the way back to Atlanta, he saw the sun starting to rise over the horizon. Knowing it was time to get his answer, he used his Jumper ability and teleported back to Virginia, appearing a few blocks away from Negan’s house.
He didn’t want to show up in one of his smaller sports cars. Since the trip from the prison in Atlanta to this part of Virginia was around 650 miles, he chose to buy a new vehicle that would make a long journey much more comfortable for a sick person. He opened his system shop and bought a massive Earthroamer SX.
Taking the luxury overland truck out of his inventory, Gray stepped into the back to inspect it. The interior was fully loaded. It had a complete bathroom, plenty of kitchen space to cook, a washing machine, a dryer, a comfortable queen-size bed, and a booth-style dining table at the far end.
Gray immediately started stocking it up so it looked lived-in. He bought a 32-pack of bottled water, leaving about 20 of them in the storage drawers, and tossed in a few cans of Coke. Next, he stocked the fridge with fresh vegetables and meat, and even put a few snacks like ice cream in the freezer. Finally, he filled the remaining storage cabinets with extra clothes so they wouldn’t wonder why a giant truck was completely empty. Satisfied, he climbed into the driver’s seat and drove the short distance to Negan’s house.
Hearing the heavy rumble of a massive engine outside, Negan peeked through the window and saw the exact same armored kid from last night stepping out of a huge truck. He quickly woke up his wife and told her to stay put. Without making a sound, Negan grabbed his baseball bat and started heading upstairs. It was time to finally introduce himself to this strange kid and find out if that paradise on the laptop screen was real.
Before Gray could even walk up the steps to knock, the front door swung open. He finally came face-to-face with Negan, but this version was nothing like the brutal, imposing leader from the TV show. This Negan looked completely malnourished, his face was gaunt, and his eyes were deeply tired. It was clear that Gray had arrived at the absolute perfect time... if he had waited any longer, who knows how much longer they would have survived out here on their own.
Gray noticed Negan tightly gripping his wooden baseball bat, but he simply smiled and held his hands up casually to show he wasn’t a threat. "Nice to finally meet you. Name’s Gray," he said, keeping his voice low.
Negan stepped out onto the porch, keeping his guard up but looking over Gray’s armor and the massive truck parked on the street. "Negan," he replied shortly, his voice a bit raspy.
Gray walked forward and extended his hand for a handshake. Negan hesitated for a brief second before gripping Gray’s hand and shaking it firmly. Realizing this kid wasn’t here to harm them, Negan finally stepped aside and invited him inside the house out of the open air.
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