Rick woke with a start.
He shot upright in bed, as if his body had made the decision before his mind could catch up. His heart hammered against his ribs, breath coming out in short, ragged bursts.
The images from the dream were still there, far too vivid — the cold slithering through his body, veins crystallizing from the inside out, the calm and satisfied voice narrating every scene of his failure as if it were a sport.
He wiped his sweaty face with his left hand, but a burning, throbbing discomfort drew his attention to his wrist.
The mark was there. Three black lines forming a trident, carved into his skin in an unnaturally dark shade.
In the dream, when he had first seen it, fear had risen inside him.
Now, staring at it, he felt nothing. No fear. No disgust. It seemed completely natural.
That thought should have disturbed him.
It didn't.
He began thinking about the shadowed man's proposal. About the intoxicating promise of freedom. The temptation that had made him scream in terror inside the dream now sounded reasonable. Completely justified.
It was just a boy. A small sacrifice for the greater good — his own good.
And Daniel... well, Daniel deserved to die.
As darkness crept into his thoughts, reshaping his perception of reality, a loud knock echoed through the house.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
Rick blinked, his mind violently dragged back to the present. A primitive panic surged through him at the thought of being discovered.
He jumped to his feet, bare soles slapping against the wooden floor, and rushed to his rickety wardrobe. Grabbing an old shirt he no longer wore, he tore a long strip of fabric with brute force and wrapped a tight, improvised bandage around his wrist, completely covering the mark.
"Rick? You in there?" a deep voice called from outside, followed by another heavy knock.
"Coming!" Rick shouted back.
He grabbed the bandage he had removed the night before — when his arm had been magically healed — quickly wrapping it around his forearm again. Then he looped the extra strip around his neck, recreating the sling to make it look like his arm was still broken.
He went downstairs, took a deep breath, and opened the door.
The sheriff stood there, posture straight, eyes scanning Rick from head to toe in a single second.
"How are you holding up?"
"So-so." Rick leaned against the doorframe. "Arm still hurts, but nothing I can't handle."
Boyd nodded slowly, unhurried. "I stopped by the clinic before coming here. Kristi said you didn't show up to change your bandage."
"Couldn't sleep all night because of the pain. Only managed to pass out in the morning. Just woke up now." The excuse came quickly.
Boyd studied him for a moment, absorbing the explanation. But the sheriff's gaze drifted from Rick's face to the freshly wrapped wrist.
"What happened there?"
"Burned it by accident." Rick subtly pulled his arm back in a protective gesture. "Hit the stove trying to cook something one-handed. Nothing serious."
"You should go see Kristi so she can change that arm bandage and take a look at the burn."
"No need, Sheriff," Rick replied quickly, shaking his head. "Seriously, it's just a surface burn."
Boyd found the refusal odd. Usually, people here ran to the clinic at the slightest sign of pain.
"And about the bandage, I'll change it tomorrow," Rick lied without hesitation. "Today I just want to lie down and not see anyone. The headache's killing me too. Tomorrow, I promise."
The sheriff's eyes narrowed slightly. Rick was sweating, tense, avoiding prolonged eye contact, making excuses to isolate himself.
"Is something going on, Rick?" Boyd asked, lowering his voice, trying to sound more like a concerned leader than an interrogator. "Has someone threatened you? Got yourself into trouble again?"
"No, Sheriff. It's nothing. I'm just sore and tired," Rick insisted, sticking to his story.
Boyd didn't feel reassured. Rick's body language screamed that he was hiding something. Still, the sheriff wasn't going to drag an injured man to the clinic over a delayed bandage and a vague suspicion, especially with night approaching.
"Alright," he said at last. "I'll let you rest. But tomorrow morning, you're going to see Kristi."
"Understood, Sheriff."
Boyd gave a curt nod and stepped down from the porch. He decided that, from that moment on, he would keep a close eye on Rick's movements.
---
At Colony House, Fatima and Ellis were sitting on the steps, chatting animatedly with Daniel and Julie, who shared the wooden bench.
"You know what tomorrow is, right?" Fatima turned to Julie, her eyes shining with excitement. She hadn't forgotten what she had overheard during the choosing ceremony the night before. "Your birthday."
Julie's eyes widened slightly, caught off guard. She herself had almost forgotten the date amid the chaos of moving houses and dealing with monsters and murders.
"Yes..." Julie confirmed, shrugging. "Tomorrow."
"Perfect!" Fatima clapped her hands. "Tomorrow night is also my one-year anniversary here. My Arrival Day."
She explained, "We don't just celebrate births, we celebrate new beginnings. The day you arrive, we call it your 'Arrival Day.' And tomorrow marks exactly one year since Ellis pulled me off the street and into this house."
Ellis smiled and kissed Fatima on the cheek.
"The point is," Fatima continued, "we always throw a party. But I want tomorrow's to be a shared birthday. For both of us."
Julie shook her head quickly, hands resting in her lap. "You don't have to. It's your one-year milestone, that's important. I just got here, people barely know me. It'll be uncomfortable throwing a party for a stranger."
"No way," Fatima insisted. "No arguing, Julie. We need reasons to celebrate here. It's decided. It'll be a party for both of us."
Realizing it was useless to resist the hurricane of positivity that was Fatima, Julie eventually gave in and agreed.
She then turned to Daniel, who was watching the scene in silence.
"And yours?" Julie asked. "When's your birthday?"
Daniel shrugged, as if it didn't matter much. "Still a while. I had mine last month."
"Last month?" Fatima asked curiously. "How old are you?"
"Turned twenty."
Julie looked at him. The question slipped out before she could think it through. "Are you coming to the party tomorrow?"
Daniel studied her. There was expectation on Julie's face that she was trying to mask with a neutral expression, and she clearly wasn't succeeding.
"I will."
Julie's smile widened, genuinely happy with the answer.
Fatima saw everything and had the discretion not to comment. She merely exchanged a glance with Ellis, who was also pretending not to notice.
Daniel remembered that it had been on the night of Fatima's birthday party that the massacre at Colony House had happened. The creatures had gotten inside because one of them had seduced a resident, convincing him to open a window.
The problem was that in the current reality, all the windows were nailed shut. And with the subtle butterfly-effect changes he himself had caused in the storyline, Daniel didn't even know if that specific guy was still being seduced.
Worse, he couldn't even remember the face of the idiot who had appeared in, at most, two episodes for a few brief moments.
He decided he would spend the night observing from the motorhome. He wanted to see whether any female creature approached the windows to attempt contact.
The conversation stretched into late afternoon. The sun slowly descended, painting the sky in an orange hue that would have been beautiful anywhere else. Here, it looked like a warning.
Daniel said goodbye with a short wave and returned to the motorhome.
He maneuvered the vehicle until he found the right angle, a position that gave him a direct line of sight to the façade of Colony House without being too obvious.
He prepared dinner, took a shower, and when darkness fully settled, lowered the blinds to ensure he wouldn't attract the attention of the night patrol.
He turned on the external camera feed on the television. The image quality was good enough to make out details.
Sitting on the couch with a soda in hand, he kept his eyes fixed on the screen.
The creatures emerged from the tree line in irregular groups, walking without urgency, like beings moving through territory they recognized as their own.
Daniel raised the blind just enough to create a narrow slit, giving himself a direct line of sight, and activated his analysis ability. He needed to see, in numbers, what he was dealing with.
He focused on the first creature that passed a few meters from the vehicle, a woman dressed like a 1960s flight attendant.
Name: Miranda
Age: ??
Life Level: 1
Strength: 15 – 30
Endurance: 15 – 35
Intelligence: 5 – 13
Speed: 12 – 26
He raised his eyebrows, absorbing the data. The speed range of 12 to 26 confirmed a dark suspicion. They didn't walk slowly because they couldn't run. They did it out of pure sadism. They knew the humans had nowhere to escape.
They were cats toying with mice before the final strike.
He used his last daily activation of the ability on another creature dressed like a milkman walking right behind her. The statistics were very similar. The only thing keeping them at "Life Level 1" on the System's power scale was the limitation in intelligence.
No hand-to-hand combat for now.
Reflecting on the statistics, Daniel opened his own panel to take a look at his abilities. One of them, in particular, had changed.
[Predator's Senses – Level 2 (2/15)]
"The ability gained two experience points. System, why?"
[Practice leads to perfection. Abilities also level up when activated and used. 'Predator's Senses' has the additional effect of allowing you to feel when someone watches you for an extended period of time. You were surrounded by people all day.]
Thinking about it, that made sense. He had felt the subtle tingling of the ability activating several times throughout the day.
"Interesting," he thought. The next day, he decided, he would actively spend time training his abilities.
[You're welcome for the free analysis. If you want to maximize training, try standing still in the middle of a circle of people staring directly at you. It'll level up faster. With the added bonus of looking completely unhinged.]
Daniel ignored the comment and activated Danger Wi-Fi twice at random, just for practice, keeping the final use reserved for an emergency since abilities only reset in the morning along with the daily mission.
In the meantime, a few creatures approached the side of the motorhome and knocked against the metal paneling. They didn't say anything. Just knocked, waited, knocked again.
Daniel turned on some music at low volume and kept watching.
It didn't take long for the usual pattern of aimless wandering to break. Suspicious movement caught his attention.
A female creature approached the house's porch.
With disturbing agility, she climbed onto the structure without making a sound, moving like a spider. She stood upright, pressing herself stealthily against the side of one of the second-floor windows. And stayed there. Waiting.
Daniel picked up the remote and pressed the record button.
After a long twenty minutes of complete stillness, the creature tilted her head as if she had heard a subtle signal from inside. Her pale lips began to move. She seemed to be talking to someone through the narrow gaps in the wooden boards.
Inside the house, the scene unfolded in whispers. A resident with a gaunt face and tired eyes locked the second-floor bathroom door. He stepped closer to the window.
"Jasmine?" he whispered into the darkness outside. "Are you there?"
"I am," the female voice echoed back, sweet and melodic. "I got the flowers. They're beautiful."
"I'm glad you liked them," he replied, trying to see her through the glass.
He had spent hours preparing a small bouquet of wildflowers and had left it at the side of the house specifically for her.
He had always been a lonely person, but the isolation had worsened a hundredfold after getting trapped in that town. With Jasmine, though, things felt different. He felt like he could be himself. Like she understood him.
"It's a shame this separates us," Jasmine lamented softly, slicing straight through his heart. "Before, I could at least see your face through the glass. But now, with these boards... I can't even do that."
"I miss seeing you too."
"Why don't you open the window? Just so we can see each other better through the cracks."
"You know I can't do that," he said, agony filling his voice.
"I guess you're afraid of me," Jasmine replied, her tone shifting from sweet to deeply hurt and disappointed.
"Of course not!" he rushed to reassure her, heart tightening at the thought of losing the only connection he had. "I'm not afraid of you, I swear!"
At that exact moment, three loud knocks sounded on the bathroom door from inside the house.
"Hey! You gonna take long in there?" a man complained from the other side.
"Coming." He turned back to the window. "I need to go. There are people here. We'll talk later."
"Alright," Jasmine replied.
He stepped away from the window, splashed water on his face without looking at his own reflection, and left.
—
Outside, in the motorhome, Daniel watched through the camera's zoom. The creature's sweet smile vanished, replaced by an expression of silent fury.
She leapt down from the porch with agile precision and walked away from the house toward the forest, blending into the shadows.
He stopped the recording. He had what he needed.
Suddenly, a familiar chime echoed in his mind.
[New Mission Accepted]
Love is blind, and in this case, it also rips out your entrails. One of the residents is about to make a fatal mistake and open the henhouse door to the foxes. Investigate and confirm the identity of the creature's "boyfriend."
Requirements: Reveal the information to at least 4 people. At least 2 of them must believe you.
Difficulty: Easy.
Reward: 4 attribute points, 10 skill points
[Purgatory's Tinder is out of control. I suggest intervening before this romance ends in a celebratory bloodbath. You're welcome for the warning.]
"It's time to go into detective mode," Daniel said to himself, replaying the recorded footage on the TV, memorizing every movement pattern of the creature and preparing his strategy for the next day.
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