Author - Took me a while, writing is kind of hard when you know more than 2 languages and yet cant speak non of them lmao.
The right wing excavation project, a glorious mix of back-breaking labour and hopeful cursing, was finally bearing fruit. The sealed tunnel they'd uncovered beneath the wrecked skyscraper had become more than a pipe dream. Cal and his crew had already logged their "Tunnel Access" side mission as complete, and the new major mission "Map the Collapse" was now in full swing.
And god, it was nasty.
Collapsed rebar, charred metal scaffolding, uneven footing, and the ever-present smell of mildew made the tunnel grind a whole new kind of miserable. Every few feet, someone had to sweep for mold patches. Twice, they'd had to pause and silently listen after a creak that might've been a support beam—or something worse.
Despite the risks, it felt worth it. The air down here was shifting, cooler, fresher. It meant the outer wall had cracks, leaks, maybe even a path.
Cal stood on a half-collapsed loading platform inside what used to be a maintenance junction. Light from overhead cut through a broken vent, catching the dust in slow, glittering spirals. The tunnel's exposed segment was clear now, stable enough for two-person patrols, with the route marked out in chalk and plastic tags.
A few summons were sweeping the western side of the rubble. The group rotated daily: a scav team in the morning, a restock shift at noon, and a dig crew in the evening, carefully clearing more of the building's collapsed gut. Cal had built the schedule himself, and somehow, people followed it. Not just followed, but started adding to it, improving routes, suggesting equipment swaps.
It seemed nobody else had touched this place or its surrounding area. Not FEDRA. Not the Fireflies. Not Robert's smugglers or the QZ rats who knew every crevice. The skyscraper wreckage and the surrounding area had been considered too unstable or too far from patrols. That meant untouched resources, untouched gear, most importantly, untouched danger.
Cal looked down the stretch of tunnel that curved into shadow. Beyond it, the map he'd started sketching in charcoal and salvaged blueprints promised a dozen more pockets of potential: sub-basements, a collapsed vehicle garage, a pipe maintenance route that might lead to the river...
There was opportunity out there. Smuggling, escape, salvage, maybe even allies. The problem? None of it could happen if it wasn't safe.
He'd already lost one person to a cave-in scare. Not dead, thankfully. Just had a bit of an oppsie and wont be running for a while and some bruised pride.
The truth was, he was scared. Not of the tunnel. Not even of what lay past it.
But of what success might mean.
If they opened this path, it wasn't just a way out. It was a new kind of visibility. And visibility got you enemies, Meredith noticed, it means others will to.
Still… he couldn't stop. Not now.
His chalk scraped across the update board nailed to the warehouse wall:
"Tunnel 1 – Stabilized""West Span – Partial Map Logged""Drop Point 3 – Cleared""Potential Exit – Airflow Confirmed"
He stepped back, eyeing the line beneath it.
Still to-do:
"Complete structural scan (right side)""Clear exterior obstruction""Draft outside protocol"
The last one haunted him a bit. Protocols. Like he was running a government.
God, what a thought.
He rolled the chalk between his fingers. In three days, he'd turn twelve. Somehow, that made it worse. There was something cursed about the idea of drafting emergency egress plans for a mini-faction while still being legally pre-teen.
But hey. It beat math class.
Behind him, someone whistled — two short, one long.
Warehouse signal for "visitors."
He turned fast, crowbar halfway drawn from his belt. But it was just Rusty on lookout shift, giving him a lazy wave. "False alarm," Rusty called. "Just Marta and Kev back from the upper crawl."
"They find anything?"
"Dead rats and a disassembled sink."
"Sounds about right," Cal muttered.
Still, even a busted sink could mean usable scrap or parts for water rigs. These days, everything mattered.
He returned to the board and tapped a final line beneath the mission tracker:
"Scavenge-Ready Team: 2 slots free."
It was almost time to expand. Again.
Cal turned toward the sealed area past the tunnel's bend, where loose brick and scorched concrete still blocked most of the final passage. That wall — the outer skin of the old building — was beginning to give. With Meredith's gear and his people's determination, they'd chipped it down to about a meter of packed rubble.
And beyond it?
The world.
Or at least the cracked parking lot and storm basin outside the QZ wall. But right now, it might as well be the moon.
Cal made a note:
"When wall is breached, initiate recon only. No full exit without clearance."
Clearance from who?
Him, apparently.
He tucked the chalk away, wiped his fingers on his hoodie, and exhaled.
The side mission was mostly done. The major one had barely started. But with each day, the goal got closer.
And somewhere beneath the rubble and rust, the future was waiting.
-----------------------------------------------
It had been few months since then.
The right-wing excavation site no longer looked like a collapsed deathtrap. It still stank like one, sure, but it was mapped, logged, patrolled. There were fewer jagged surprises now, fewer mystery creaks that made people stop breathing.
While the rest of the right wing is still somewhat collapsed but now the excavation team is on it, then they will move to the less valuable left sector to dig out all the fallen crates and everything.
And the skyscraper?
It was no longer a myth.
In those twenty-odd days, the team had fully mapped the majority of the collapsed building and its access points and surrounding. What had once been an uncharted nightmare of twisted floors and rebar hell now sat on six massive taped-together sheets of salvaged blueprint paper, hung on the war room wall. Half of it had been drawn from memory. The rest was scavenged with every slow step through the wreckage.
Mission Update: Map the CollapseProgress: 94% CompleteCurrent Objectives Remaining:
Verify northwest perimeter
Reconfirm support stability near stairwell shaft
Maintain isolation zone from infected wing
Rewards on Completion:
+500 EXP
+2 System Points
+1 Scavenger Rank Credit
Unlocks: Exploration Protocol Menu
They had named rooms. Marked safe paths. Noted air flow changes and possible structural threats. Someone, Tasha , probably started drawing faces on the walls in chalk. The kind that smiled at you from around corners. Cal didn't stop her.
The skyscraper hadn't just fallen — it had folded. Floors stacked where they shouldn't be, hallways looped unnaturally. There were entire sections preserved in a diagonal slant, where office chairs still rolled slowly if nudged too hard. Cal walked through one of those tilted corridors alone once. It felt like wandering inside a dream half-crushed by memory and steel.
They found things in there. Not much that could save lives, but plenty that reminded them why they were fighting to survive, including a lot of skeletons of office workers and some later survivors.
Old lobbies with fake potted plants now grown moldy and strange. Bent lockers filled with rotting shoes. A kitchen where someone had tried, long ago, to write a goodbye note on the wall in dry-erase marker — too faded to read now.
It made the place feel haunted, but not hostile.
At least, until they reached that wing.
The infected section had been discovered during a risky split patrol. Rusty had called it in immediately: the air had shifted. Heavier. Warmer. Sweet, in that wrong way that meant rot — or spores.
Gas masks were distributed. The rest of the crew stood back.
That corridor was long, curved, and deathly quiet. And then they saw it — fungal growth thick on the walls, climbing over doorframes like veins. Spores drifted visibly in the flashlight beams. It was a fungal bloom, active and pulsing. They didn't need to open the next door to know what waited inside.
Cal didn't hesitate. He ordered it sealed.
For three straight days, they worked on walling it off. Sheet metal was welded over the corridor's entrance. Pipes were bent and bolted across as braces. Anything flammable was stacked behind it as a worst-case backup. And then, across it all, Marta scrawled the warning in hand-sized red letters with oil paint:
INFECTED INSIDE — DO NOT OPEN OR GO IN
It wasn't a tag. It was a billboard. Unmissable. Unmistakable.
The System even pinged afterward.
[Environmental Hazard Logged]Fungal Contamination Zone: Status - Isolated+20 EXP — Safety Measures Enforced
The tunnel beyond that barricade was dead to them now. They didn't speak of it.
Still, other areas remained dangerous.
A higher section of the collapsed tower — possibly the old 20th floor — was reachable by a half-buried stairwell. Kev and Marta had scouted the upper landing. They came back pale.
Clickers. Two of them.
Just pacing inside. Quiet. Still. But alive.
Cole and 3 of his secruity team went up there and disposed of them, however the more they advanced the more infected they heard, they retreated back downstairs.
Cal ordered that zone marked on the map in bold: "No Entry — Clickers Active." The stairs were blocked with collapsed lockers, a few busted crates, and a warning etched in scrap metal.
For all the danger, there were wins too. One relay room still had working wiring. A makeshift solar panel on a partly exposed roof edge actually charged a small device for five minutes. And one abandoned radio relay — scorched and leaning sideways — gave off a faint static hum when Kev fiddled with it.
They heard voices once. Not clearly. Just tones. Garbled words. It might've been weather. It might've been a survivor camp, or a forgotten auto-loop broadcast out west.
But it had been something.
Three weeks in, the faction had grown tighter. More cautious. More curious. They had salvaged, mapped, and survived things most people in the QZ never even imagined. And for the first time, the tunnel project wasn't just about escape or smuggling.
It was about freedom.
That wall outside the sealed tunnel had thinned.
Only a meter or so of reinforced concrete and rusted beams remained. On the other side? The broken parking lot and, somewhere beyond, the edge of the city.
Cal had dreams about it.
The air. The sky. The way it might feel to breathe without looking over his shoulder every five seconds.
But he wasn't stupid. Freedom wasn't free.
Opening that path meant exposure. Risks. Attention. FEDRA. Raiders. Fireflies. All of them. And even if none found him — the infected would.
He spent two nights sketching up a draft protocol sheet.
"If breach is successful: Stage 1 Recon Only. No trade runs. No solo exits. Mask protocol for unknown zones. Armed patrol pairs only."
I cant wait till the excavation team unearths the armoury in the right wing, I will jump for joy and finally be able to outfit more security and can use the summon token. Cant wait.
The warehouse wasn't just a hideout anymore. It was a base. A small kingdom of cracked tile and bad lighting, and the occasional curse from Rusty when he gets electrocuted.
By the time the third week ended, Cal looked at the system tracker again.
Major Mission: Map the CollapseProgress: 94%Pending: Final support checks + secure known infected zonesProjected Full Completion: Within 7–10 days
-----------------------------------------
Cal wasn't sure what woke him first — the strange silence or the faint smell of actual food.
Not burnt-ration-cube kind of food. Not stale-bar-left-in-a-boot kind of food. But warm, faintly greasy, slightly suspicious real food. Which meant one thing:
Something was definitely wrong.
He sat up fast, blinked at the faint sunlight filtering through the cracked blinds of his family apartment. It was early. No one had banged on the wall to wake him up. No scheduled work detail. No rusted alarm tone. The hallway outside didn't hum with boots. Just quiet.
Then came the second warning: he wasn't alone.
Both of his parents were standing in the kitchen.
His mom — his actual mom, Elena Reyes, hazard incarnate in a uniform — was wearing a sweater. Not her uniform. Not her boots. A sweater. His dad had two mugs in his hands and looked like he hadn't yelled at anyone all morning.
"Happy 12th birthday, it is 23rd February." Elena said dryly, less than usual, and is that a hint of motherly warmth?She slides something across the table like it was a business deal.
It was a ration tin. But not just any tin — it had been cleaned. Heated. Opened with care. Inside was rice, an honest-to-god fried egg, and half a sausage slice that definitely came from someone's smuggled supply.
"…Am I dying?" Cal muttered.
His dad snorted. "Not yet. But eat fast before your mom changes her mind and reassigns you to janitor duty."
Cal dug in with minimal ceremony, eyes darting between both of them. No one yelled. No one asked why his boots were dustier than usual or where his spare bag had gone. Just… silence. Weird, heavy silence with an undertone of fondness that made his skin itch.
Then came the gift.
Elena dropped a small folded cloth package next to his plate. When Cal opened it, he found a simple leather strap, worn but functional stitched into a makeshift pistol holster and beside he there was also a knife holster. Real stitching. His dad's handiwork, no doubt.
"Can't be walking around with that old holster and this here is so you dont accidentally stab your ass when sitting down " his dad muttered. "Its not much but happy birthday.."
"Thank you," Cal said, inspecting it. "So now I'm a professional outlaw?"
"Professional something," Elena murmured. Her eyes lingered on him longer than usual. Not cold. Not hostile. Just… knowing.
He squinted. "You know, don't you?"
She didn't answer. Just sipped her tea.
"About Meredith," Cal added. "About me working with her."
That got a tiny grin and exasperated sigh.
"She was a friend," Elena said quietly. "Before all of this. Back when intel officers had a purpose. Before FEDRA trimmed half the damn departments and decided 'trust no one' was a better motto than 'gather information.'"
Cal blinked. "You were an intel officer?"
"I still am," she said, slightly too fast. "Just… under a different title."
"She's Ex-FEDRA?" Cal asked.
"Meredith left when the upper brass decided intel was expendable. She didn't want to become a grunt or a desk jockey. I did."
Cal thought about Meredith's words. About how she still worked, still listened, still traded — but never officially. It made sense now.
"Do you two still talk?"
"Sometimes," Elena said, looking directly at him. "Usually when she's worried you're doing something stupid."
That stopped him cold.
"She said that?"
"She said you're smart. Cautious. Good instincts. But not invincible." Elena leaned in, tapping a finger to his plate. "You're still a kid. A clever, overreaching, frustratingly independent kid. But a kid, my kid."
He opened his mouth to argue.
"And before you say anything," she cut him off, "you still need to go to work detail twice a week. And yes, FEDRA knows you're not on full schedule. Your father and I handled that. But if you skip even those people will start asking questions. Understand?"
He nodded, slowly. "You're not gonna… stop me?"
His dad finally spoke again. "If we wanted to stop you, we would've locked you in a closet by now."
"Still not ruling it out," Elena muttered.
"We're not blind, Cal," his father added. "Whatever it is you're doing — with that warehouse, those contacts — it's working. You're safer than most kids. Smarter than most adults. But don't mistake that for being untouchable. The world still wants to eat people like you alive."
The weight of their stares wasn't cruel. It was the kind of quiet that only people with too many regrets could carry.
Cal scraped the last of the egg from the tin and sat back.
"…Thanks," he said awkwardly.
"Don't thank us," Elena said, rising. "Survive long enough to get annoyed about turning thirteen next year."
He actually smiled at that.
And for the first time in a long while, Callum 'Cal' Reyes felt like he had a family, like back when granny was still alive.
He doesn't just feel like a liability. Not just as a FEDRA brat. But as someone making moves — someone his parents knew, feared for, and maybe even respected.
His mom ruffled his hair as she passed.
"Try not to burn down Boston before dinner," she added, deadpan.
"No promises."
Later as Cal ducked into the warehouse later in the afternoon, after actually spending quality family time, that was rare he wasn't really expecting anything.
Not unless you counted an impromptu ceiling collapse, a lecture from Rusty about proper rebar load-bearing angles, or maybe a knife in the shin from Tasha for stealing her chalk.
Instead, what he got was… candles.
Well. Candle-adjacent.
Someone had managed to salvage a broken string of stubby wax stumps from an old crate — probably emergency heat sources from a pre-outbreak kit — and melted them into little clumps along one of the flatter, cleaner sections of the loading bay wall. Their faint glow flickered against cracked concrete, casting soft shadows over scavenged crates, tarp-covered seating, and an old folding table dragged in from God-knows-where.
The flickering centerpiece?
A single ration bar, squashed slightly, with a smear of melted chocolate across the top and a piece of wire jammed into it like a sad, edible antenna.
"Surprise," Lia said from behind him, voice dry but weirdly pleased.
Cal blinked. Then blinked again.
Rusty stepped out from the side, arms crossed. "Told her it was dumb."
"No it is not," Cal muttered. "You helped set it up?"
Rusty shrugged, but didn't argue.
Marta popped her head out of a side room. "We even boiled water. Actual hot water. For tea. Or… powdered soup. One of those."
"It was mostly soup," Kev admitted. "But, like, happy soup."
The others began to gather — not all at once, but in that casual, shuffled-together way people do when they're pretending something isn't a big deal. Donny brought over a dented metal cup filled with what he claimed was "almost cider," which was probably just fruit-flavored water from the bunk cooler. Tasha didn't say anything, but she handed him a clean cloth to sit on, muttering something about "birthday dirt being unlucky."
Cal stood there for a second, awkward as hell.
Then Lia nudged him forward. "Sit down, General."
"Gotta update my rank if we're doing party politics," he muttered. But he sat.
What followed wasn't a party. Not really.
It was better.
They shared stories — real ones, fake ones, possibly exaggerated ones involving mutated sewer rats and an infected that allegedly learned to juggle. They passed around crackers, protein paste, a smuggled half-jar of peanut butter someone had definitely been hoarding, and a tiny plastic spoon Cal had never seen before that everyone took turns licking like it was holy.
Kev tried to toast. The cup was empty.
Donny toasted again. The cup was still empty.
Marta gave up and just said "To not being dead!" which got the loudest agreement of the night.
At some point, someone put on the old radio. Static hummed through the open bay, flickering with hints of music no one could quite recognize. Rusty sat back against a crate, humming off-key. Tasha laughed once. Lia leaned her elbow on the table and smirked like she hadn't been planning this for a week.
And Cal?
He said something sarcastic about the candle-wax fumes giving him brain damage.
But deep down — behind the scowl, under the hoodie, beneath the part of him that was always calculating, always watching — he was… grateful.
Not because it was his birthday. Not even because of the food.
But because they'd remembered.
Because people who could've left, who owed him nothing, had looked at this half-broken world and chosen to celebrate him.
In their own weird way.
As the last melted candle finally sputtered out, casting the corner into familiar gloom, Cal leaned back on his elbows and let out a breath.
Maybe turning twelve in a fungal-infested, half-collapsed warehouse surrounded by semi-strangers and survivors wasn't normal.
But it was his life.
The warmth of the gathering didn't last forever.
By the time most of the group went off to take a break or returned to their tasks, the warehouse had settled into that eerie half-quiet hum Cal had grown to recognize — the way rusted pipes and distant water drips filled in for crickets or street noise, pretending everything was fine.
He lingered near the bunks a little longer than usual.
Some part of him wanted to pretend today didn't matter. That tomorrow he'd wake up and the warehouse would still be the warehouse, and he'd still be the now eleven-going-on-war-criminal who made deals in the shadows.
But he'd turned twelve. That mattered more than he wanted to admit.
He stepped away from the faint flicker of the dying heater and wandered past the edge of the sleeping area, past where Kev had parked himself face-down on a pile of blankets. And into the tunnel and eventually the skyscraper, he somehow made his way towards the hallway where the west stairwell was. It was colder less foot traffic, fewer tarps, not much in this area yet.
However, someone was standing near one of the metal doors.
He almost didn't see her at first. Then she moved.
Tasha.
She stood half-shadowed, her back to the corridor, one hand resting loosely on the crowbar she'd sharpened the week before. Her coat was half off her shoulders, sleeves tied around her waist. The glow of the emergency lantern nearby made the edge of her face seem almost… soft.
"Didn't you say your away for a nap?" Cal said, keeping his tone casual.
She didn't turn right away.
"I don't sleep much."
He moved closer, leaned against the wall beside her, and kept one eye on the weapon in her hand. Just in case. Not because he thought she'd use it on him. Just… in general.
"You're staring at the infected zone."
"No," she said, voice low. "I'm making sure it stays sealed."
"That's not creepy at all."
Finally, she glanced at him — and there it was. That faint flicker in her gaze. Not bloodlust. Not even danger.
Just… fixation.
"You can't let your guard down," she murmured. "That's when things break."
Her fingers clenched slightly on the crowbar.
Cal studied her carefully. "You okay?"
Tasha didn't answer for a few seconds. Then she tilted her head toward him and offered a half-smile — crooked, small, and not entirely friendly.
"You're different, you know," she said. "You're… careful. Like me. You think ahead. You see cracks before they show."
"That's a very flattering way of calling me paranoid."
"I like paranoid," she replied softly. "Paranoid keeps people alive."
What fucking backstory did the system give her, take a chill pill girl.
Cal didn't quite know what to say to that. The flickering light caught her eyes in a strange way — sharp one second, shadowed the next. He suddenly became very aware of how empty this hallway was.
"You don't trust them, do you?" she asked. "The others."
Cal gave a half-shrug. "I trust them to do what's best for them. Which usually lines up with what's best for me. So, yeah. I trust them enough."
"But not fully."
"Tasha—"
"I wouldn't betray you," she said, quickly, like she was swearing a vow. "No matter what happens. Even if the others do. Even if you told me to stand here for days and guard the tunnel with a spoon."
I looked at her bewildered "Why would I give you a spoon to guard a tunnel?"
She tilted her head again. "Because you'd know I could make it work."
And that's when Cal saw it — not danger exactly. But something else.
Obsession, maybe.
Not romantic. Not overt.
But intense. Singular.
Tasha wasn't just loyal.
She was his loyal.
Oh. That makes things easier but also so much more fucking complicated.
Cal cleared his throat and pushed off the wall. "That's… good to know. Thanks for the hypothetical spoon loyalty."
She blinked, her expression unreadable.
"I mean it," she said. "You're the reason I'm not still starving in that alley."
"And you're the reason we have a working west stairwell," he replied, forcing a lighter tone. "It's mutual."
But she didn't smile. Just stared a second longer than was comfortable.
Eventually, she turned back toward the sealed zone.
"I'll keep watch a little longer."
Cal nodded, stepping away. "Don't stab anything unless it's actively leaking spores."
A small nod from her.
He walked quickly back toward the main area, boots quiet on the dust-covered concrete.
That girl was gonna be a problem someday.
Or his biggest asset.
Probably both.
Elsewhere in the Warehouse
Lia was still going over the inventory we have.
He noticed her sitting near the supply crates, fiddling with a scavenged harmonica she'd never learned how to play. It made a soft, whining sound when she blew through it, something between a note and a sigh.
"You know that thing's haunted, right?" Cal said as he approached.
She didn't look up. "At least it's less annoying than Donny screaming after getting spooked by his own shadow."
He sat down beside her, cross-legged, stretching out his aching legs. "Guess you've hit the age where everything is annoying."
"No," she muttered. "Just thinking."
A pause.
Then: "You were with her, weren't you?"
Cal blinked. "Who?"
Lia rolled her eyes. "Tasha."
"Wow. That sounded real normal."
"She stares at you like you're the last can of peaches in a raider stash."
Weird fucking comparison but alright? Cal squinted. "That… might be the weirdest compliment I've ever received."
"I'm serious," Lia said, turning toward him. "She's intense."
"She's loyal."
"She's unhinged."
Touché.
He gave her a look.
Lia puffed her cheeks slightly and looked away, her arms folded tight over her knees. She wasn't pouting. Not exactly.
But… okay, maybe a little.
"Jealous?" he teased.
She snorted. "Of a crowbar-wielding fanatic? Please."
"You brought me a ration bar with chocolate on it."
She glanced at him sideways. "Yeah, well. I didn't expect you to enjoy it."
"I didn't. It was awful. But the gesture was noted."
Silence stretched a little.
"You ever wonder what we'd be doing right now if the world hadn't ended?" she asked, softer this time.
"Probably arguing in a real school cafeteria," Cal muttered. "You'd still have that 'I'm smarter than you' face. I'd still be faking homework and skipping classes."
She laughed, quietly, but genuinely.
"I'd still be better at math."
"Lies. I'm a statistics god."
"You miscounted the food logs yesterday."
"I was… distracted."
Lia arched an eyebrow. "By what?"
Cal opened his mouth. Then closed it.
She smiled.
There was something gentle in her expression now. Tired. Familiar.
"Don't trust Tasha too much," she said after a while. "She means well. But sometimes people who owe you everything… get confused about what they're supposed to be."
Cal didn't answer. Not right away.
Instead, he leaned back against the crate, eyes fixed on the cracks in the ceiling above.
Two girls. One intense. One quiet but perceptive. Both dangerous in their own way.
He wasn't built for this emotional minefield crap. He barely remembered to feed himself some days.
Still…
"You know I trust you, right?" he said finally.
Lia didn't respond immediately.
Then she bumped her shoulder lightly into his.
"Good."
Next day, the warehouse woke up like always in layers.
First came the shufflers, Kev and Donny stumbling around like half-conscious zombies looking for the latrine corner or something edible. Then the early risers — Rusty doing inventory, Marta heating water, Cole checking the patrol sheet. Eventually, Cal dragged himself through the tunnel and inside, eyes barely open, hoodie half-dragged over his head like a tiny warlord crawling out of a blanket fort.
The mission log still hovered at 94%, taunting him with its almost-there glow. They'd need one final push to finish mapping the last flooded sub-corridor — and no one wanted to volunteer for "wet boots and tetanus roulette."
As he reached for his chalkboard to update the rota, he paused.
Lia and Tasha were talking near the bunk entrance.
Correction: Lia was talking.
Tasha was standing very still.
Cal didn't need to hear every word. He could read the body language like a map.
Lia stood with arms crossed, head tilted just slightly, not aggressive — but not backing down either. Tasha's arms were loose at her sides, but her knuckles flexed once, twice, around the cloth tied at her hip. Her eyes didn't flinch. They stayed locked on Lia's face, unwavering.
He moved a little closer, staying out of sight behind one of the old scaffolding beams.
"...He's not a symbol, you know," Lia was saying. "He's a person. With limits. With stress. And he doesn't need people turning him into some kind of… messiah figure."
Tasha didn't respond.
Lia stepped in just slightly — not hostile, but firm.
"I know what it's like to want something solid to hold onto. Someone who makes sense when nothing else does. But if you keep treating him like that… eventually, you're going to scare him. Or worse, he'll start acting the way you see him — instead of who he actually is."
Tasha's voice was low, clipped. "I don't scare him."
Well, about that...
"You think that matters?"
Tasha's jaw flexed.
"I'm not trying to take your place," Lia added, softer now. "This isn't about 'who's closest.' It's about not dragging him down with your issues."
And just like that, Tasha's eyes narrowed — barely, but enough.
"You think I'm dragging him down?"
"I think you're clinging," Lia said. "And you're not the only one who cares about him."
A long silence followed. You could almost hear the warehouse creak in response.
Tasha looked like she might say something sharp. Something brutal.
Instead, she said nothing.
Just turned and walked away.
Lia stayed still for a moment, her hands shaking just slightly as she exhaled.
Then she looked toward the scaffolding beam.
"Enjoy the show?"
Cal winced. "I wasn't trying to eavesdrop."
She arched a brow.
"Okay, I was kind of trying. It was hard to ignore the emotional weather system forming over there."
She sighed and rubbed her eyes. "I wasn't trying to start a fight."
"I know."
"I just… I've seen that look before."
Cal nodded. "The 'If I can't have you, no one can' starter pack?"
"She's not there. Not yet. But she's close."
Cal scratched the back of his neck. "Yeah."
Another pause.
[Relationship Menu – Update]
Tasha – Loyalty: 95% | Emotional Status: Unstable / Possessive / Loyal
Lia – Loyalty: 88% | Emotional Status: Guarded / Protective
[System Note]: Prolonged emotional tension between units may affect morale, coordination, and critical mission choices. Recommend conflict mediation or separation during high-stress operations.
Cal stared at the glowing box and sighed, huh no question mark this time that's progress.
"Perfect," he muttered. "I'm living in a soap opera, but with more crowbars and less makeup."
After a while Cal just muttered. "Thanks, though. For talking to her."
She shrugged. "Don't thank me yet. She didn't swing at me, but I don't think she appreciated the heart-to-heart."
"Noted."
They walked back toward the central supply table together.
Around them, the crew was already moving — prepping for the final corridor dive, arguing over who had the driest boots, passing around last night's stale crackers.
Cal paused for a second, watching the chaos.
Then opened the chalkboard and added:
"Final Corridor Survey – 2 PM. Group C. Masks and flares mandatory."
Beside it, he quietly scribbled a smaller reminder:
"Monitor emotional loadout. You're not invincible, and neither are they."
He capped the chalk, tucked it in his hoodie pocket, and exhaled.
Twelve years old.
Leading a faction.
Balancing resource trade, patrol rotas, and the emotional stability of two girls who might kill for him — or because of him.
-------------------------------------
The last of the floodwater had been siphoned out two days ago.
That corridor — the final stretch of the skyscraper's ruined substructure — had been a bitch. Collapsed scaffolding, rusted floor tiles that gave under your weight, and a truly stupid number of dead rats. Cal didn't even want to know what they'd been eating.
But now it was done.
Mission Complete: Map the Collapse (Major)+500 EXP | +2 System Points | +1 Scavenger Rank Credit New Feature Unlocked: Exploration Protocol Menu
The system pinged, cheerfully emotionless as always. Cal didn't even react. He was too tired, too caked in grime, and too sore to do his usual internal monologue about progress bars and victory points.
The team had spent the next day cleaning, patching boots, doing supply rotations, and setting up another cook fire near what had become the unofficial "gathering corner" — an old reception area half-covered by a collapsed sign that once read "NORTHEAST CORPORATE HOLDINGS." A few makeshift reused candles burned atop a scavenged filing cabinet. One of the summons had even used a busted vent plate as a stovetop to cook up something vaguely edible.
It was the kind of night that shouldn't have mattered. Just another scrap of rest between the work. But something about it felt different.
Maybe because, for once, no one was bleeding.
Tasha leaned back against a broken bench, watching the ceiling as if it might fall on her just to keep things interesting. Cole was sharpening one of the newer knives near the back, his movements mechanical but oddly soothing. Rusty dozed with his boots half-off and a cracked mug of heated water still in his lap.
Lia sat beside Cal, sipping something that used to be tea, probably. They weren't touching — but they were close.
Then it started.
First with Marta.
"Used to do this," she said, unprompted. "Campfire talk. Back in Denver. Safe zone out west. Had a teacher who ran these survival classes. Told us ghost stories to keep our nerves off the fences."
Donny glanced up. "Denver?"
"Yeah. Big zone. Set up in an old sports dome. They had solar panels and a community garden. Didn't last, obviously, but... it was home."
Cal's brow twitched.
He didn't interrupt.
Just waited.
Kev grunted. "Never heard of a Denver QZ. Thought that city got glassed during the 2016 uprisings."
"No," Marta said, frowning. "This was 2018. I was 25 then, I remember because I lost my first knife that week. Stupid thing. Slipped through a vent."
Cole looked up, curious. " You were 25 in 2018?"
"Yeah."
"Huh," he said. "Its 2028. That'd make you—"
Marta glared at him. "Go on, what were you about to say?"
No one said anything, too afraid to point out her age.
They just let it hang.
Next came Jules, who'd been unusually quiet.
"I remember a riot," he said. "Back in the old Boston QZ. 2015, I think. They said it started because of food cuts, but everyone knew it was about conscription."
Cal blinked.
"2015?" he asked, gently. "You sure?"
Jules nodded. "Yeah. They shut the south wall down for weeks. Burned part of the housing block. My mom got caught in the smoke."
"There wasn't a riot in 2015," Cal said, still calm. "It was 2013. I remember. My dad helped suppress it. I wasn't born yet, but he's told the story enough times."
Jules frowned, confused. "No. It was '15. I'm sure of it."
More murmurs followed. More fragments.
A girl named Mina talked about escaping through a tunnel in Phoenix — except Phoenix never had tunnels, not like that. Someone else mentioned firebombings in Seattle that never made the history logs. A man named Ed kept mixing up which Firefly cells had supposedly saved him.
They weren't lying.
That's what chilled Cal the most.
They weren't improvising, or spinning tales for sympathy. These were memories, anchored and repeated, shaped by real emotion. Their voices cracked. Their hands shook. One of them teared up talking about a sibling Cal was 90% sure never existed.
But the facts didn't line up.
And not just in small ways. In foundational ways. Like their timelines had been written by someone who skimmed the post-pandemic headlines and guessed the rest.
The system implanted the memories.
Not downloaded them. Not copied from real people.
Fabricated them.
Flawed.
Cal's stomach twisted. These people believed what they said. Believed their grief, their joy, their traumas. It was real to them.
But some of it wasn't real at all.
And that meant…
What else wasn't?
He checked the Relationship Menu without thinking:
Marta – Loyalty: 91% | Status: Reflective / Grounded
Jules – Loyalty: 87% | Status: Conflicted / Anxious
Mina – Loyalty: 76% | Status: Curious / Unstable
Ed – Loyalty: 70% | Status: Defensive / Isolated
The word unstable caught his eye.
So did conflicted.
The system didn't just track emotions, it noticed deviations. Changes.
And maybe it had started noticing more than even Cal could track on his own.
He shut the menu.
---------------------------------
Two days after his birthday, the right wing was finally quiet.
Not cleared, not fully. Not yet.
Though most of the rubble had been hauled away and the support beams reinforced with scrap, the most tantalizing section remained buried: the old armoury. A sealed sub-chamber tucked beneath warped flooring and a collapsed storage corridor, locked behind twisted rebar and a six-inch slab of reinforced concrete. The kind of place that screamed classified even before the world ended.
They'd uncovered the edge of it during the early mapping sweeps. Rusty had tapped the panel and muttered, "That's not just a storage room." Cole agreed. The pressure-lock mechanism embedded into the frame wasn't the kind you found on janitor closets.
And they still couldn't open it.
Even Meredith's tools hadn't helped. The locking mechanism was partially fused. Tasha theorized it needed a power source. Lia thought it might require a military ID chip. Cal just added it to the growing list of "Shit I Need a Miracle For" and moved on — for now.
But the rest of the right wing?
Done.
They'd expanded the sleeping quarters, created more storage dividers, even established a semi-private space for rest and downtime. That's where most of the group had gathered now: the hangout zone. What used to be a cracked tile break area was now strung with scavenged Christmas lights and a moth-eaten curtain someone proudly declared a "mood divider."
There was music too, sort of. Rusty had managed to get a broken radio to loop faint static that, when you tilted your head and squinted, almost resembled a beat.
And that's where the trouble always started.
Because comfort led to talking. Talking led to sharing.
And sharing led to cracks.
It began harmlessly enough. Kev had just lost a card game with Donny — again — and was telling some half-baked story about his "childhood gang" out west. Then Marta chimed in with a tale about surviving a FEDRA lockdown. Tasha laughed and claimed she remembered a similar situation in San Diego. It spiralled from there.
Cal, half-listening from his spot on an upturned crate, caught it immediately.
Kev swore the Denver Safe Zone lasted until 2026, complete with working radio towers and an underground market.
That never happened. Cal knew it. His parents had been stationed on the east circuit. Denver collapsed before he was even born.
Then someone talked about a riot in 2015 over bottled water in Houston — but he'd read a declassified FEDRA report. That happened in 2013. Houston was emptied by mid-2014.
Lia furrowed her brow at that, shooting Cal a sideways glance across the room. She didn't say anything, but he could tell she noticed something too.
Donny piped up with a story about a military checkpoint on Long Island that got overrun in 2022. But that checkpoint was never built — the bridge was blown in 2019.
Every summon had their own story.
All vivid.
All contradictory.
All… wrong.
To them, it wasn't. Their memories were sincere. Real, even. When Marta described the scent of burned rubber from the Atlanta barricades, her voice shook. Kev looked visibly annoyed when Cal casually said the Denver QZ was "a myth." Donny swore up and down he'd heard the Long Island checkpoint transmission himself, even mimicked the call sign.
It wasn't malicious.
That's what made it worse.
They weren't lying. They believed it.
Cal forced a smile, nodded along, and stayed quiet. But inside, the unease was rising fast.
After an hour, people started to drift off. Some went to their bunks. Others to late watch or tunnel checks. Only Cal remained behind, pretending to organize salvage logs while his brain reeled.
Once alone, he pulled out his tattered journal.
He flipped past the scavenge notes and ration counts and opened to a page he'd marked with a strip of red fabric.
It was his "People" page.
Marta – claims riot in 2015 (Atlanta)Kev – Denver Safe Zone "lasted till 2026"Donny – Long Island checkpoint, not possibleTasha – avoids details, mostly listensCole – vague past, speaks more in combat terms than personal onesRusty – story checks out… maybe
He wrote slower now. More deliberately.
Lia – consistent, observant. She notices the contradictions.
And that led to another line beneath the rest:
These aren't errors. They're implants.
The fucker not only was late in giving me the system but gave me a faulty one?! The absolute gall of that fucking cocksucker knows no bounds. I will hang him from the nearest lampost when I can.
Sigh.
At these moments I wanna take a drag of my cig but if I, a twelve year old starts smoking at this age, a lot of people will kill me, especially Carla, Lia, Tasha, Meredith, Rusty. Huh, now that I think about it pretty much everyone would kill me if I started smoking now.
He leaned back against the wall, fingers curling over the pen's cracked body. The journal sat open on his lap, accusing him with every scribble. He hadn't wanted to believe it — not really — but the signs were too clear.
They weren't from here. Or maybe they weren't from anywhere.
The shitty system gave them memories. Personalities. Names. But it wasn't perfect. It stitched together fake timelines and let them fill in the gaps. Some of them probably were based on real people. But pulled from where? Dead worlds? Alternate timelines? Files?
Or worse… assembled like dolls, dressed in believable histories and dropped at his feet.
Cal's hand tightened around the pen. He wanted to ask. To confront someone.
But the moment he imagined saying the words — "What if none of your memories are real?" — he felt sick.
What would it do to them? What would it do to him?
Marta would cry. Kev would break something. Tasha…
Tasha wouldn't believe him. Or worse — she would.
And she'd turn that obsession of hers into something darker.
He exhaled through his nose and shut the journal.
For now, it was enough to know the truth. Or part of it. They might not be real. Or they might be real in a way no one could understand. But they were here, in this ruined warehouse, working, bleeding, and surviving under his command.
They were loyal.
They mattered.
Even if their pasts didn't.
Cal stood slowly and walked toward the armoury door — still buried, still unopened.
A few loose tiles cracked underfoot. The air smelled faintly of rust and oil.
He placed his hand against the sealed panel, tracing the edges where they'd tried to pry it open.
Maybe the answers were behind this wall.
Or maybe they were in the system he still didn't fully understand.
But if he ever learned the full truth, he wasn't sure he'd like it.
For now?
He kept walking.
And the journal stayed shut.
--------------------------------------
Later when there was not much to do, finally, he noticed something he hasn't before.
An update.
He didn't notice the update right away.
It was the day after the contradictions started piling up, after the weird stories and the too-confident lies passed off as memories. Cal had spent most of the morning in the tunnel, reviewing barrier placements and drawing up fallback markers in case one of the infected zones ever spilled out.
He was halfway through inventorying a crate of cracked filters when the ping echoed behind his eyes.
System Update Complete[Birthday Patch v12.0]New Features Unlocked:
Relationship Management Interface
Loyalty Analytics Module
Emotional Index Preview
Origin Threads (BETA – Unstable)
He froze.
I physically groaned. Of course its fucking unstable.
It was like getting a notification that someone had reorganized your friendships into spreadsheets.
The world around him, metal creaks, low conversation, the hiss of the purifier, faded. Slowly, he focused inward and willed the menu open.
And there it was. A new tab. Nestled right between "Crafting Tips" and "Base Tracker."
RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT[View Summon Roster][Filter: Loyalty | Emotional Status | Origin Notes]
He tapped in.
The interface unfolded like a dossier.
Rows and rows of names — some with thumbnail faces sketched in grayscale. Each entry had a glowing bar beside it, split into neat labeled sections:
Loyalty – Measured from Disloyal to Unwavering.
Emotional State – Real-time mood chart. (Apparently, Marta was currently "mildly anxious.")
Assigned Role – Guard, Scavenger, Maintenance, etc.
Origin Thread (Beta) – Short blurbs. Some were clear, others were absolute nonsense.
He blinked hard and stared at one line:
KevLoyalty: StrongEmotional State: PleasedOrigin Thread: "Urban survivor, Denver QZ remnant (probability mismatch: 81%)"
Probability mismatch?
He clicked another.
MartaLoyalty: FluctuatingEmotional State: RestlessOrigin Thread: "FEDRA evac from Atlanta – cross-reference failed. Memory fragmentation: High."
Another.
RustyLoyalty: UnquestionedEmotional State: SteadyOrigin Thread: "Repair crew, former smuggler. Background stitching: Stable."
His stomach sank.
This wasn't a list. This was a control panel.
It didn't just let him see who was doing what or how they felt — it let him evaluate them. Their fake histories. Their made-up minds. Their loyalty like it was a number on a bar graph.
And it worked.
Which somehow made it worse.
There were even passive flags. One popped up on Tasha's entry:
Notice: Emotional pattern divergence detected.Subject may act erratically under perceived emotional threat.
"Yeah," Cal muttered under his breath. "No fucking shit."
He backed out of the menu, teeth clenched.
This was what the system thought relationships were. Loyalty sliders. Mood previews. Algorithmic flags.
It was helpful. Extremely helpful. It let him manage trust, catch lies, notice fractures in the group before they became dangerous. On a cold, strategic level — it was brilliant.
But it made him sick.
These weren't units. They weren't cards in a deck or names in a save file.
They were people. His people.
Even if their memories were stitched together by code or pulled from fractured timelines, they believed in what they'd lived. They laughed. They cried. They risked their lives for one another.
And the system was treating them like assets.
He stood in the darkened corner of the tunnel mouth, gripping the edge of the rusty filter crate, breathing slowly until his heartbeat slowed.
He opened the tab one more time. Just briefly.
He scrolled to the bottom and stared at the final prompt:
Override Permissions: Assign Emotional Management Protocols?[Yes] [No]
He didn't even hesitate.
[No]
If they were his people, then they deserved trust.
He'd use the system as a tool — but never as a leash.
Not unless they gave him reason to. And not unless there was no other choice.
Because no matter what the system said, they weren't numbers.
They were family.
And he wasn't about to lose any more of them to algorithms.
Late into the evening, Cal sat alone beneath the rust-flaked scaffolding that braced the tunnel arch near the right wing. The others were asleep or on patrol. Even Lia had gone quiet, she'd taken to scribbling in a salvaged notebook near the south entrance, trying to draw layouts of the connected tunnel systems from memory.
Cal didn't blame her. Everyone needed a project to stay sane.
He stared out toward the half-dug foundation of the buried armoury, a crowbar resting across his knees, the chalkboard map folded beside him. His flashlight flickered on low battery, casting uneven light over the stone floor and the rough sketches he'd carved into the edge of a plastic crate.
Skyscraper mapped.Right wing cleared.Tunnel breached.Clickers confirmed — neutralized or avoided.Unknown routes: 2Armory status: sealed
It looked like progress. Felt like it, even. But in the back of his mind, the numbers were still ticking.
He opened the system silently. The flicker in his vision was almost familiar now.
LEVEL 17EXP: 625 / 900
Scavenger Rank Credits: 3System Points: 6
Next Milestone: Level 20Unlocks:
Specialized Summon Types
Supply Manifest Editor
Weapon Drop Function (Basic Tier)
Area Deployment Menu
Warning: Higher level unlocks increase external detection risk.
There it was again — the trade-off.
Every time he expanded, the system grew louder. It reached further. The progress wasn't invisible anymore. Not to FEDRA. Not to the smugglers. Not to whatever poor souls still wandered the edges of Boston and whispered about strange lights behind collapsed walls.
He hadn't said it out loud, but he knew it: someone would find them eventually. Not just Joel or Tess. Not the Fireflies either. Someone worse. Someone with less patience and more firepower.
And if they weren't ready…
He swiped to the Base Development tab.
Active Structures:
Alleyway storage house (Nickname sex house)
Sewer connection
Main Warehouse
Left Wing (Mostly disorganised)
Right Wing (Expanding)
Tunnel Zone, Skyscraper and surrounding area (Mapped: 96%)
Fungal Quarantine Area (Sealed)
Potential Upgrades:
Armory Unlock (Requires Excavation Tool Tier III)
Defensive Installations (Requires Mechanical Crew – Rank 2)
Ventilation Link to Surface (Risk: Moderate)
Faction Perception:
FEDRA: Neutral-Interested
Fireflies: Opportunistic - Hopeful
Robert: Friendly - Cocky
Meredith Operations: Protective - Friendly
Various inside QZ factions - Weary - Curious - Antagonistic
Various outside factions - Unknown
Unaffiliated people: Spreading rumours
Projected Sustainability: 39 days (current resources)
Thirty-nine days.
If the tunnels collapsed again, or if food shipments stopped, or if someone triggered the fungal barricade?
They were done.
Cal leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He let the system fade out from his vision and watched the faint moonlight pushing through the vented roof cracks above the tunnel bend.
He didn't want to be a warlord. Didn't want to be some child tyrant running a bunker cult beneath a ruined skyscraper. But he also didn't want to die starving in a ditch or end up with his head cracked open in some Firefly interrogation room.
So… what now?
First, finish clearing the right wing completely. Strip the armoury section as cleanly as they could without triggering a cave-in. Then work on smuggling in more reliable rations — preferably not from Robert, if they could help it.
Second, build better shifts. Cole could oversee training of new recruits. Marta and Donny were solid for hauling runs. Tasha—well, Tasha needed watching. She'd gotten clingier lately. Not quite dangerous, but enough to make Lia pout whenever Cal gave her attention.
Third, prepare an exit route. He knew it was risky, but they'd have to find a new escape tunnel. Not for smuggling — for running. If things ever collapsed, if FEDRA came down on them or the Fireflies started getting brave… they needed a way out that didn't end in a bullet.
Cal ran his fingers over the map, then opened his journal and made one final scribble for the night:
Plan:
Clear Armory
Expand Food Sources
Rotate Defense Shifts
Track Lia + Tasha dynamics
Find External Route B
And: Don't become what they fear. Be better.
He paused.
Then he added, quietly:
But not soft.
The weight of it all sat square on his shoulders. He wasn't just managing supplies and weapons anymore.
He was managing people. Relationships. Histories that might not be real — and a future that had to be.
If the system wanted him to treat these people like numbers, too bad.
They were his numbers now.
He'd protect them.
No matter what.