Day 6.
Sauget Hardware & Supply.
3 Kilometers West of Sector 1.
The world didn't end with a bang. It ended with the smell of piss, stale beer, and the copper tang of meth-sweat.
We parked the truck a block away, hidden behind a rusted dumpster that stank of rotting cabbage. The hardware store—a sprawling, corrugated metal shed that used to supply the chemical plants—was buzzing. Not with the dead, but with the living.
I crouched in the alley, rain dripping from the brim of my hardhat. My Decay Sight painted the building in jagged red warning lines, pulsing like a migraine.
`[THREAT DETECTED: HUMAN. VARIANT: FERAL.]`
`[COUNT: 12 INSIDE. 2 ROOF. 1 BASEMENT.]`
I recognized the ragged armbands on the lookouts. In my first life, these guys coalesced into "The Rat Pack," a faction of sewer-dwelling scavengers led by a psycho named Sly. Right now, they were just disorganized meth-heads and opportunists getting a head start on the looting.
"People?" Travis whispered.
He was shivering in the passenger seat, his skin pale and clammy as wet dough. The orange glow of his veins pulsed erratically, syncing with his labored breathing. The serum was rewriting his biology, and his body was fighting it every inch of the way. He looked like a junkie three days into a bad withdrawal.
"Scavengers," I corrected, checking the load on my Fang .45. "They'll kill you for your boots and eat your protein bars while you bleed out. No mercy."
I looked at the crew.
YANA: Shadow Class. She was practically vibrating, her outline blurring into the gloom.
RONNIE: Welder. Nervous. He gripped a sharpened pry bar like it was a holy relic.
TRAVIS: Tank. Unstable.
"Yana," I said. "Roof. Clear the eyes."
She didn't nod. She just vanished. She slipped out of the truck bed, her outline blurring as the Shadow Class passive kicked in. She didn't walk; she poured herself into the alleyway shadows like ink in water.
Two minutes passed. Rain hissed on the pavement. Travis coughed, a wet, rattling sound that brought up black phlegm.
Then, the burner phone buzzed once.
Roof clear.
"Ronnie, stay close to Travis," I ordered. "Travis, you're the hammer. I'm the scalpel. We go in hard."
"On... on it, Boss," Travis grunted. He cracked his knuckles. The sound was like pistol shots. He wiped the black bile from his lip with the back of a massive hand.
We moved up.
The front glass was shattered. Inside, the aisles were a warzone of toppled shelving and scattered inventory. Men in dirty hoodies and masks made of rags were tearing through the stock. They weren't looking for lumber; they were looking for weapons. Axes. Machetes. Nail guns.
The smell hit us instantly as we stepped through the broken doors—unwashed bodies, nervous sweat, and the underlying rot of the infection.
A looter in a grease-stained mechanic's jumpsuit looked up from a pile of copper wire. He held a sharpened screwdriver. His eyes were blown wide, foaming slightly at the corners—early symptoms of the Rage Virus carried by the flu.
"Mine!" he screamed, voice cracking. "Get your own shit!"
"It's a hardware store, dipshit," I said.
I raised the Fang.
He lunged.
Travis stepped in front of me. He didn't raise a weapon. He didn't have to. He just backhanded the man.
CRACK.
It wasn't a fight. It was physics. The looter's jaw unhinged, spraying teeth and bloody spit across aisle four. He spun in the air and hit a display of paint cans, collapsing in a heap of broken bones and "Caribbean Blue" latex.
"Cops!" someone shrieked from the back. "Kill 'em! Kill the pigs!"
"Light 'em up," I said.
The store erupted.
Looters swarmed from the aisles, swinging tire irons and hatchets. They were fast—fueled by adrenaline and the flu fever.
`[VARIANT: OPPORTUNIST.]`
`[ROOT: LOOK AT THEM. RIPE FOR MUTATION. MAKE THEM YOURS.]`
I ignored the red text scrolling across my vision and fired. The Fang barked twice. Two kneecaps evaporated in pink mist.
But there were too many.
Ronnie was struggling. He wasn't a fighter; he was a welder who liked classic rock and cheap whiskey. A wiry looter with a shaved head tackled him into a rack of PVC pipes.
"Get off me!" Ronnie screamed, thrashing against the plastic tubing.
The looter didn't punch. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a spoon. A rusted, jagged dining spoon, the handle wrapped in electrical tape, the edge sharpened on concrete.
"Open wide!" the looter hissed, straddling Ronnie's chest. "Pop it out! Give me the wet!"
He jammed the spoon into Ronnie's left eye socket.
Ronnie's scream was a sound that didn't belong in a human throat. It was a high, tearing shriek of absolute violation that cut through the gunfire.
The looter dug. He twisted his wrist, levering the spoon against the orbital bone like he was scooping hard ice cream.
POP.
The sound was wet and sickeningly audible. The eye came out. It hung by the optic nerve, a wet, white marble streaked with red, resting on Ronnie's cheek.
"Got one!" the looter laughed, raising the spoon like a trophy. "Who wants the other?"
Then the shadows behind him condensed.
Yana appeared. She didn't say a word. Her face was a mask of cold fury. She grabbed the looter's hair, yanked his head back, and drew her combat knife across his throat.
It wasn't a cut. It was an excavation.
She opened him up from ear to ear. Hot, arterial spray coated Ronnie's face, mixing with the blood from his empty socket. The looter gurgled, eyes rolling back, and collapsed onto his victim, his life pumping out onto the linoleum in rhythmic spurts.
Yana kicked the body off. "Ronnie! Pressure! Hold it!"
Ronnie was curling into a fetal ball, sobbing, clutching the hole in his face. Blood leaked between his fingers, dark and thick.
"Travis!" I roared. "Clear the aisle! We need an exit!"
Travis looked at Ronnie. Then at the blood on the floor. Then at the three looters blocking the exit with machetes.
Something snapped in the big man.
The System Sickness flared. His veins turned from orange to a blinding, molten gold. Steam rose from his skin.
"GET AWAY!" Travis bellowed.
He grabbed a heavy industrial shelving unit—loaded with fifty-pound bags of concrete mix—and roared. The sound was animalistic, a guttural thunder that shook dust from the ceiling.
`[LIMITER REMOVED. STRENGTH: 3.5X BASELINE.]`
`[WARNING: MUSCLE TEAR IMMINENT.]`
He didn't care. He ripped the shelves from the floor bolts. Steel screeched and snapped. He lifted the entire unit, fully two tons of weight, over his head. His muscles rippled, tearing under the skin, blood weeping from his pores.
The looters froze. They looked up at the glowing, heaving giant holding a wall of concrete above them.
"What is he?" one whispered, dropping his machete.
Travis threw it.
The shelving unit crashed down on the center aisle, burying three looters in a cloud of dust and pulverized concrete. The floor cracked. The impact shook the building foundation like a bomb blast.
Silence fell.
Then Travis dropped to his knees. The glow faded instantly, replaced by a grey, ashen pallor. He vomited black bile, collapsing face-first into the debris.
`[SYSTEM SICKNESS: CRITICAL. MUSCLE TEAR: 40%.]`
"Clear," Yana said, wiping blood from her eyes. She stood over Ronnie, pressing a trauma pad to his face.
I walked to the manager's cage at the back. I knew it was there because I'd looted this place three weeks too late in the first timeline.
I kicked the door in.
There, sitting on the desk amidst scattered invoices and old coffee cups, was a small, reinforced Pelican case.
I cracked it open.
Five vials. The glass was thick, containing a swirling, iridescent liquid that shifted from blue to red under the fluorescent lights.
QUINTUPLE SERUM BATCH.
[GRADE: REFINED.]
`[ADMINISTRATOR: RESOURCE ACQUIRED. POTENTIAL UPGRADES DETECTED.]`
I grabbed the case.
"Load up," I ordered, my voice tight. "Yana, drive. I've got Ronnie. We throw Travis in the back."
I walked back to the aisle. I hauled Ronnie up. He was in shock, whimpering, blood streaming down his neck.
"You're alive, Ron," I said, gripping his shoulder hard. "You're alive. We fix the rest later. Helen will patch you up."
"My eye," he sobbed. "Jack, my eye..."
"You have another one," I said. Cold. Necessary. "Move."
I dragged him to the truck. We threw Travis's unconscious body into the bed next to the bags of lime.
I looked back at the carnage in the aisle. The crushed bodies. The throat-cut looter. The eye on the floor, staring blindly at the ceiling.
This wasn't a game. It wasn't a grind.
It was a butcher shop.
And we had just cleared the meat counter.
`[RAID COMPLETE.]`
`[LOOT: QUINTUPLE SERUM (5 VIALS), HARDWARE STOCK.]`
`[CASUALTY: RONNIE (PARTIAL BLINDNESS).]`
"Let's go," I said, slamming the truck door. "Before the smell draws the dead."
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 6
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) ███░░░░░░░ 3/10 Nodes
MUDROOM: OPERATIONAL | GUTTER: 720kg | COMMAND DECK: ONLINE
Threat: Red Faction Convoy (Proximity: 12 Miles)
Users: 3 | Nulls: 6 (Ronnie Injured)
Loyalty: SHAKEN