Day 25.
The Command Deck.
Sauget, Illinois.
09:00 Hours.
The execution of the Coalition envoys had bought us silence. The Enclave's broadcast bought us infamy.
I stood at the map table, watching the holographic display flicker. The blue wireframe of the Silo was stable, but the world outside was burning with red hostility markers.
Suddenly, the map table went dark. The overhead monitors in the factory floor—scavenged from the security office and wired by Boyd—flickered to life.
Static hissed, loud and angry. Then, a logo appeared. A blue shield with a biohazard symbol in the center.
THE ENCLAVE.
REGIONAL PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY.
"Jack," Boyd said, his fingers flying across his terminal. "They've hijacked the local System frequency. It's a broadcast. Unblockable."
"Let it play," I said.
The static cleared. Colonel Hale appeared on screen.
I had never seen him before, only heard rumors. He looked like a statue carved from ice. He was older than Sterling, with hair cropped to the scalp and eyes that looked like they had seen the end of the world and found it wanting. He wore a dress uniform, pristine and terrifyingly pressed.
"Citizens of the Exclusion Zone," Hale's voice was smooth, a baritone of absolute authority. "This is Colonel Hale. We have identified a Class-5 Biological Hazard in Sector 1."
The screen cut to a grainy, black-and-white aerial photograph. It was a drone shot of the Silo.
It zoomed in on the Gutter.
The image was high-resolution. You could see the intake fans. You could see the slurry tanks. And you could see what was going into them.
Bodies.
The Coalition fighters we had processed yesterday. The image froze on a shot of a human arm disappearing into the grinder.
"The occupants of the Coldwell Industrial Complex have resorted to the ultimate taboo," Hale narrated. "They are processing human remains. They are consuming the dead."
"We're not eating them," Paige whispered from the corner of the room. She looked horrified. "We're making fuel."
"To the rest of the world, there's no difference," I said.
"Sector 1 is designated a Cannibal Faction," Hale continued. "They are a disease vector. Any territory found trading with them will be sanitized. Any refugee found approaching their gates will be fired upon."
He leaned into the camera.
"Jack Monroe. You have forty-eight hours. Surrender your facility for sanitization by Day 27, 23:59 Hours. Or we will burn the infection out."
The screen cut to black. The System ticker returned.
`[GLOBAL REPUTATION UPDATE.]`
`[SECTOR 1 STATUS: PARIAH.]`
`[TRADE ROUTES: BLOCKED.]`
I looked at the crew. They were staring at the blank screens. The silence was thick, heavy with the realization that we were now the monsters of the story.
"They boxed us in," Yana said. She was leaning against the wall, her hand resting absently on her stomach—a tick she had developed recently. "No one will trade with us now. No alliances. We're alone."
"We were always alone," I said. "This just makes it official."
I turned to Boyd.
"How is the EMP?"
Boyd didn't look up. He was soldering a thick copper wire to a cluster of car batteries stacked on the floor. His skin was grey, his eyes unblinking blue LEDs.
"Capacitors are charging," Boyd droned. "Range is limited. Five hundred meters. It's a one-shot weapon, Architect. Once we fire it, the coils melt."
"One shot is all we need," I said. "If they bring air support, we ground it. If they bring tanks, we kill the engines."
"And the soldiers?" Helen asked. "The EMP won't stop a hundred men with rifles."
"No," I said. "The walls will."
The Infirmary (Level 2).
13:00 Hours.
I went down to check on the wounded. Or rather, I went to audit the assets.
Travis was sitting on a crate, shirtless. The air in the room was warm from the hydroponics lights, but Travis was shivering violently. His lips were blue.
Frost—actual crystals of ice—coated his eyebrows and the hair on his arms.
Helen was taking his temperature. She pulled the thermometer away and frowned.
"Seventy-eight degrees," she whispered. "Jack, his metabolic processes are slowing down. His heart is beating once every three seconds."
Travis looked up at me. His eyes were glowing a dull, sick orange.
"Boss," he rumbled. His voice sounded like grinding stones. "Am I dying?"
I looked at him with Decay Sight.
`[TRAVIS: TANK CLASS (TIER 2).]`
`[STATUS: EVOLVING.]`
`[TEMPERATURE: CORPSE COLD (ADVANCED).]`
`[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: UNKNOWN.]`
He wasn't dying. He was becoming something that wasn't warm-blooded anymore. He was becoming a golem.
"No," I lied. "You're evolving. The cold means the armor is hardening. It's part of the upgrade."
Travis nodded slowly. He trusted me. That trust was a weight I carried in the cold spot of my chest.
"Okay," Travis said. "Good. I want to be ready for the Colonel."
I walked over to Ronnie.
The welder was lying on a cot, sweating. The bandage over his missing eye was stained yellow and green. The smell of infection was sharp—sweet and rot.
"Let me look," I said.
"Don't touch it," Ronnie snapped, batting my hand away. "I'm fine."
"You're septic," Helen said, stepping in. "Jack, the infection has spread to the orbital bone. I need to debride it. I need to scrape the bone. He won't let me."
"I've lost enough pieces!" Ronnie shouted, sitting up. He swayed, dizzy. "You took my eye. You took my friends. I'm keeping the rest of my face, damn it!"
"Keep the pus," I said coldly. "Lose the head. Your choice, Ron."
I turned to Helen.
"Do it. If he fights, sedate him. If you don't have sedatives, get Travis to hold him down."
Ronnie stared at me with his one good eye. "You son of a bitch."
"I need you welding," I said. "I don't need you dying of a fever."
I walked out. I needed to check the perimeter.
Jack's Quarters (The Office).
14:30 Hours.
I came back to the Command Deck to find Helen standing by my desk. She had the drawer open.
She was holding my ration pack.
It was empty.
She looked up as I entered. Her face was a mask of confusion.
"Jack," she said. "Where is it?"
"Where is what?"
"Your food. The User rations. The double-share you allocated for yourself."
I closed the door. "I ate it."
"Bullshit," Helen said. She held up a wrapper. "This is a half-ration wrapper. The Null portion."
She walked around the desk. She grabbed my wrist. Her hands were warm; mine were ice.
"You've lost weight," she said. "I thought it was the User physiology stripping the fat. But it's not. You're starving."
She looked at me, really looked at me.
"You cut the rations for the Nulls," she whispered. "And you cut yours too. You're eating the same garbage we are."
"Efficiency," I said, pulling my wrist away. "Users burn more calories. If I eat a full share, the stockpile runs out on Day 28. If I eat a half-share, we make it to Day 30. I need to be alive on Day 30 to win."
"You let Miller say you were hoarding," Helen said. "You let the crew hate you. You let them think you were a glutton while you were starving."
"Hatred is a motivator," I said. "If they hate me, they watch me. If they watch me, they stay alert. It keeps them alive."
Helen stared at me. Her loyalty meter flickered.
`[HELEN: LOYALTY 48% -> 52%.]`
"You're a monster," she said softly. "But you're a monster who does the math."
"Get back to the infirmary," I said. "Ronnie needs his bone scraped."
The Employee Bathroom (Level 2).
15:00 Hours.
Yana locked the door.
The bathroom was a wreck—cracked tiles, a toilet that didn't flush, lit by a single battery-powered lantern.
She sat on the edge of the sink. Her hands were shaking.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the plastic stick she had scavenged from the pharmacy aisle of the hardware store on Day 22. She hadn't told anyone. Not even Jack. Especially not Jack.
She looked at the little window.
Two lines.
Positive.
She dropped the stick. It clattered on the tile.
"How?" she whispered to the empty room.
She touched her stomach. It was flat, hard muscle. But inside...
She checked her temperature yesterday. 81 degrees. She was suffering from User Chill. Her body was shutting down non-essential functions to fuel the Shadow Class speed.
Reproduction was a non-essential function. At 81 degrees, a fetus couldn't survive. It shouldn't be able to divide.
But it was.
"I'm dead," she whispered. "My body is dead. What the fuck is growing inside me?"
She thought about the System. The glitches. The Root.
Was it a baby? Or was it a mutation? A tumor given consciousness by the chaos magic?
She grabbed her knife. She held the tip against her stomach. Just a little pressure. Just end it before it became... something else.
Then she felt it.
A flutter.
Not a kick. A vibration. Like a phone buzzing deep inside her womb.
She gasped, dropping the knife.
`[ERROR: BIOLOGICAL ANOMALY DETECTED.]`
`[SYSTEM: MONITORING.]`
The text floated in her vision. The System knew.
She picked up the knife and sheathed it. She couldn't kill it. Not yet. She had to know what it was.
She flushed the test down the dry toilet and walked out.
The South Gate.
17:00 Hours.
"Jack!" Yana called over the radio. "Activity at the perimeter. Not Enclave. It's... a delivery."
I grabbed the Barrett and ran to the roof.
Down on the road, just outside the range of our sensors, a figure was standing. He was wearing a hooded robe made of stitched-together hazmat suits painted black.
He waved. Then he placed a large metal cage on the ground.
He turned and walked away, disappearing into the ruins of the chemical plant.
"Zealots," I said. "The Reborn."
I looked through the scope. The cage was chicken wire and wood. Inside, there were three figures.
They were Nulls. Or they had been.
They were naked. Their skin was translucent, veins glowing a sickly violet. Their throats were bulging, distended sacks pulsing with light.
Howler Prototypes.
Tied to the cage was a piece of cardboard with words painted in black bile.
JOIN THE REBORN.
EVOLUTION IS SALVATION.
DAY 30 IS REBIRTH.
"They're gifts," I said, disgusted. "Eclipse is trying to recruit us."
The creatures in the cage saw me. They opened their mouths. Their jaws unhinged.
They began to scream.
It wasn't the full-force sonic blast of a Tier 3 Howler, but it was enough to make my teeth ache from three hundred yards away.
"Shut them up," I whispered.
I lined up the crosshairs on the center creature.
BOOM.
The .50 caliber round hit the cage. It turned the first mutant into violet mist. The bullet passed through and killed the second one instantly.
BOOM.
The third one tried to claw its way out. I put a round through its chest.
Silence returned to the perimeter.
"Violet eyes," Yana said, standing beside me. "Did you see? Their eyes weren't orange like ours. They were purple."
"Different power source," I said. "We run on System Points. They run on corruption."
I looked at the ranking board.
`[RANKING UPDATE: 298.]`
Territories were falling. Some were being eaten. Some were being sanitized by the Enclave. And some... some were walking willingly into the Zealot camps to be turned into monsters.
"Forty-eight hours," I said. "Hale gave us forty-eight hours."
I looked at the setting sun.
"We have two days to turn this factory into a meat grinder that even the Enclave can't choke down."
"Can we do it?" Yana asked.
I touched the Cruelty trait in my chest.
"We don't have a choice," I said. "Day 30 is coming. And I'm not dying at Rank 298."
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 25
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) ███████░░░ 7/10 Nodes
RANK: 298 (Top 300)
STATUS: PARIAH (Cannibal Label)
Threats: Enclave Siege (48 Hours), Zealot Expansion
Secret: Yana's Pregnancy (Confirmed)
Defense: EMP (Charging)