Day 27.
The Command Deck.
Sauget, Illinois.
08:00 Hours.
The System didn't scream this time. It whispered.
I was standing at the map table, staring at the blue wireframe of the Silo. We were Rank 201. We were right on the edge of the threshold. If one more territory died, we were in the Top 200.
Then, the text scrolled across my retina. It wasn't the usual jagged red of the Root or the clinical blue of the Administrator. It was grey. Static-laced.
`[GLOBAL UPDATE: PHASE 1 COMPLETION PENDING.]`
`[TIME REMAINING: 72 HOURS.]`
`[RANKINGS FINALIZED: DAY 30, 00:00 HOURS.]`
My head swam. The User Chill spiked, dropping my core temperature so low my breath fogged in the heated room.
`[TOP 10: ADVANCE TO GENESIS SELECTION.]`
`[ALL OTHER TERRITORIES: [DATA CORRUPTED].]`
I blinked, trying to clear the static. My Decay Sight—usually a reliable overlay of death timers—glitched violently. The numbers over my own reflection in the window split into three distinct, contradictory futures.
Future A: A black void. Total erasure. The Server Wipe.
Future B: I was standing on a mountain of skulls, holding a burning flag. Alive.
Future C: `[ENCRYPTED].`
I rubbed my eyes. The static cleared. The headache remained, a dull throb behind my eyes.
"Jack?"
I turned. Boyd was standing in the doorway.
He looked... wrong.
He hadn't slept in four days. His skin was the color of wet cement. He had wired a headset directly into a portable battery pack clipped to his belt, the cables taping into his neck like veins. He wasn't blinking.
"The generator," Boyd said. His voice was a flat monotone. "It's talking to me."
"It's a machine, Boyd," I said. "It vibrates."
"It's lonely," Boyd corrected, tilting his head like a bird listening to a worm underground. "It wants to run hotter. The governor chip is choking it. I can bypass the governor. I can give it what it wants."
"Do it," I said. "We need the power for the perimeter lights."
Boyd nodded once—a mechanical jerk of the head—and walked away. He moved like a puppet on strings.
"He's losing it," Helen said from the corner.
She was sitting on a crate, nursing a bottle of scavenged whiskey we'd found in the Red Faction trucks. She looked terrible. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hands trembling as she brought the bottle to her lips.
"He's optimizing," I said.
"He's a child!" Helen snapped, slamming the bottle down. "He's twelve years old, Jack! And you've turned him into a circuit board!"
"I turned him into a survivor," I said. "And you're drunk."
"I'm coping," she spat. "My Hippocratic Oath said 'do no harm.' In the last three weeks, I've amputated limbs with a hacksaw, poisoned people, and watched you feed men into a woodchipper. I think I've earned a drink."
"You've saved twenty people," I said. "That's the math."
"The math?" She laughed, a wet, hacking sound. "Is that what Ronnie is? A decimal point?"
I stiffened. "What about Ronnie?"
"He's septic," Helen said, taking another pull of whiskey. "The infection in his eye socket has gone systemic. The abscess is pressing on his brain. If I don't lance it today, he dies."
"Then lance it."
"He won't let me," she said. "He's delirious. He thinks I'm trying to take his other eye."
I grabbed the Fang .45 from the table.
"Get your kit," I said. "We're going down."
The Infirmary (Level 2).
12:00 Hours.
The smell in the infirmary was heavy—rotting meat and cheap alcohol.
Ronnie was strapped to the table. We had to use zip-ties. He was thrashing, his skin burning hot to the touch, sweat soaking through his clothes. The bandage over his left eye was bulging, leaking a foul-smelling green fluid that dripped onto the pillow.
"Get off me!" Ronnie screamed. "Don't take it! I need to see!"
Travis stood by the head of the table. He looked at me, his orange eyes dim with concern. His new arm—the one fused by the serum—hung heavy at his side.
"Boss, he's hurting."
"He's dying, Travis," I said. "Hold him down."
Travis placed one massive, stone-grey hand on Ronnie's chest. Ronnie stopped thrashing instantly, pinned by the weight of a Tank.
"I'm sorry, Ron," Travis rumbled.
Helen approached with the scalpel. Her hands were shaking from the booze, but when she got close to the wound, they steadied. Muscle memory overriding the trauma.
"I don't have anesthesia," she whispered. "I used the last of the lidocaine on your leg."
"Do it," I said.
She cut.
The sound was a wet pop.
Pressure released. A fountain of pus and black blood sprayed onto Helen's apron.
Ronnie didn't just scream. He howled. It was a sound that scraped the inside of my skull. He bucked against Travis's hand, his spine arching off the table.
"Drain it!" I ordered.
Helen worked fast, inserting a tube, flushing the cavity with saline. Ronnie's screams turned into broken, hitching sobs.
I watched. I forced myself to watch.
This was the cost. This was the receipt for the hardware raid.
"Jack," a voice whispered beside me.
It was Paige. She was holding a bucket of bloody rags. She looked at Ronnie, then at me.
"Is this it?" she asked. "Is this how we end? Screaming on a table?"
"He's alive," I said. "That's how we end. Alive."
She looked at me. Her eyes were hard, stripping away the layers of the "Warlord" persona I wore.
"I hated you," she said softly. "When you made me change my name. When you made me scrub the floors. I hated you more than the zombies."
"I know."
"But you were right," she said. "Vanessa would be dead. Vanessa would have died in the elevator. Paige... Paige is holding a bucket of blood and she's still standing."
She touched my arm. Her fingers were rough, callused.
"Thank you," she whispered.
She walked away to clean up the mess.
I looked at my loyalty meter.
`[PAIGE: LOYALTY 82% (DEVOTED).]`
She wasn't just a slave anymore. She was a believer.
The Employee Bathroom.
14:00 Hours.
Yana locked the door. She leaned over the sink and vomited.
It wasn't bile. It was blood. Thick, dark clots.
She wiped her mouth, shaking.
"Helen!" she hissed at the door.
Helen slipped inside, closing the lock. She smelled like whiskey and antiseptic.
"Let me see," Helen said.
Yana lifted her shirt.
Her stomach was flat, hard muscle. But there was a bruising pattern around her navel—a dark, violet starburst that looked like a nebula.
Helen pressed a cold stethoscope to Yana's abdomen. She listened for a long time.
"Your core temp is eighty-one degrees," Helen whispered. "You're suffering from User Chill. You are biologically dead, Yana. Your organs are shutting down to fuel your speed. A fetus requires warmth. It requires blood flow."
"I know," Yana said.
"So explain to me," Helen said, pulling the stethoscope away, her face pale, "how there is a heartbeat in there? A fast one. Too fast. It sounds like a hummingbird."
Yana stared at her. "Is it... human?"
"I don't know," Helen said. "It shouldn't exist. But it's thriving. It's... feeding on the System energy."
`[ADMINISTRATOR: BIOLOGICAL ANOMALY DETECTED. MONITORING.]`
The text floated in Yana's vision.
"Does Jack know?" Helen asked.
"No," Yana said. "And he can't know. He optimizes everything, Helen. If he sees this... if he sees an unknown variable growing inside me... he might cut it out. Or worse."
"He wouldn't," Helen said. But she didn't sound sure.
"We keep it secret," Yana said. "Until Day 30. If we live that long."
The Roof.
18:00 Hours.
The sun was setting, casting long shadows across the wasteland.
I adjusted the frequency on the long-range radio. Boyd had boosted the signal, allowing us to pick up chatter from the city.
It wasn't chatter. It was a sermon.
"...Day 30 is not the end!" The voice was distorted, layered with static and screams. Prophet Eclipse. "It is the beginning! The System isn't killing us—it's upgrading us! Those who resist will be formatted. Those who EMBRACE will ascend!"
I looked at the monitor Boyd had rigged up. It was showing a pirated video feed.
Zealots. Hundreds of them. Gathered in the ruins of Busch Stadium.
They were lining up. Voluntarily.
One by one, they stepped up to a priest who held a syringe filled with glowing violet liquid. Zombie blood.
They injected it. They fell to the ground, seizing, their bodies twisting, bones snapping as they mutated into Howler hybrids.
"They're defecting," Boyd said, standing beside me. "Forty percent of the remaining territories are surrendering to the Reborn. They'd rather be monsters than dead."
`[RANKING UPDATE: 201.]`
We had cracked the Top 200. Not because we fought, but because everyone else gave up.
"Turn it off," I said.
Boyd killed the feed.
I looked south.
The Enclave ultimatum had expired at 23:59 yesterday. They hadn't attacked yet.
But I could see them.
On the horizon, five miles out, floodlights flickered on. A line of them. Stretching across the highway.
They weren't blocking the road anymore. They were staging.
"They're coming," I said. "Tonight or tomorrow morning."
"We're ready," Travis said. He stepped out of the shadows. His new arm—the one fused by the serum—hung heavy at his side. He flexed the fingers. The joints cracked like pistol shots.
"Are we?" I asked.
I looked at the crew. A one-eyed welder. A drunk medic. A pregnant assassin (I knew; Decay Sight saw the second heartbeat, even if they hid it). A robot kid. And a monster.
`[TOP 200 THRESHOLD ACHIEVED.]`
`[BONUS UNLOCKED: [ENCRYPTED] — ACCESSIBLE DAY 30.]`
I turned to leave the roof, the weight of the coming slaughter pressing down on my shoulders like a physical load. I was tired. Soul-deep tired.
Then, the blue text flickered in my vision.
It wasn't a warning. It wasn't a threat. It was steady, calm, and surprisingly bright against the darkness of the evening.
`[ADMINISTRATOR: PERFORMANCE REVIEW.]`
I paused, my hand on the hatch. "Not now," I muttered.
The text scrolled anyway.
`[DAY 1 RANK: UNASSIGNED.]`
`[DAY 27 RANK: 201.]`
`[ANALYSIS: YOU HAVE DONE THE MATH. YOU HAVE MADE THE HARD CALLS.]`
The interface shifted. The jagged red static of the Root was pushed back, suppressed by a wall of clean, orderly blue code.
`[NOTE: THE ROOT SEES A BUTCHER. I SEE AN ARCHITECT.]`
`[STATISTIC UPDATE: SECTOR 1 HAS THE HIGHEST SURVIVAL RATE OF ANY NON-VASSAL TERRITORY.]`
I stared at the words. Highest survival rate. Despite the starvation. Despite the mutiny. Despite the acid.
`[PROJECTION: VICTORY IS NO LONGER A STATISTICAL ANOMALY. IT IS A PROBABILITY.]`
A new window opened. A reward box. But it wasn't a weapon. It wasn't a turret.
[REWARD: BLUEPRINT - WATER PURIFICATION PLANT (INDUSTRIAL).]
Cost: 0 Points (Merit Grant).
Function: Converts toxic slurry/river water into potable water.
Effect: Sustainability. Hope.
`[MESSAGE: BUILD IT, JACK. THERE WILL BE A TOMORROW TO DRINK IT.]`
The window faded, leaving a gentle, pulsing blue icon in the corner of my HUD. A water drop.
I took a breath. For the first time in twenty-seven days, the air didn't taste like ash. It tasted like rain.
"Yeah," I whispered, gripping the ladder. "There will be."
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 27
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) ████████░░ 8/10 Nodes
RANK: 201 (Top 200)
STATUS: SIEGE PREP
New Asset: Water Purification Blueprint (Hope)
Threats: Enclave (Imminent), Zealot Mass Mutation
Secret: Yana's Pregnancy (System Monitored)
Next Event: The Sanitation Squad / Chlorine Gas