Chapter 4: The Crossroads Decision
The office building becomes Scott's fortress over two days—barricaded doors, supplies organized with System efficiency, a rooftop vantage point overlooking the dead city.
Scott has claimed the top three floors of a mid-rise accounting firm, its corporate sterility now serving as sanctuary from Atlanta's decay. The building's glass facade offers commanding views of the surrounding streets while its concrete construction provides solid protection against both walkers and the elements.
He's transformed three connected offices into functional zones using his EMT knowledge and System organization. The corner office serves as his medical station—first aid supplies arranged by priority, IV bags hanging from makeshift hooks, a surgical area sterilized with alcohol and lit by battery-powered lamps. The middle office holds his food stores, organized by expiration date and caloric content, with a small camping stove for hot meals. The third office is his sleeping area, mattresses dragged from the building's break room and arranged to block sight lines from outside.
But it's the isolation that gnaws at him.
Scott stands at the main window, watching the sun paint Atlanta's skyline in shades of orange and rust. Smoke rises from a dozen fires across the city, some from crashed vehicles, others from buildings that have been burning for days. In the distance, he can see the cluster of lights that marks a survivor encampment—campfires and flashlights and the warm glow of humanity refusing to surrender to the dark.
The System's quest tracker pulses steadily in his peripheral vision.
[ACTIVE QUEST: FIND SANCTUARY]
[OBJECTIVE: ESTABLISH OR LOCATE A SAFE ZONE]
[PROGRESS: SETTLEMENT FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED]
[NEXT STEP: EXPAND INFRASTRUCTURE OR SEEK ALLIES]
The new settlement interface is a marvel of tactical information. It shows the building's structural integrity (87%), lists defensive improvements he could make, tracks resource consumption and production. He could turn this place into a real fortress given enough time and materials.
But fortresses are for kings with armies, and Scott is just one man with too many secrets.
"I could stay here. Build up this place. Use my System to create the perfect survival bunker. Never have to worry about hiding my abilities or explaining my knowledge."
The idea has appeal. No Shane to navigate around. No complex group dynamics to manage. No risk of exposure when the System chimes at the wrong moment or when his foreknowledge slips out in conversation.
Just him, his growing power, and the certainty of safety.
Scott activates his Analyze skill and sweeps it across the distant lights. The results are fragmentary—too far for detailed information—but he can see enough to know people are out there. Families. Children. Survivors trying to build something from the wreckage of the world.
"And I'm up here playing hermit with cheat codes while they're down there struggling with basic survival."
The ethical weight of his knowledge presses down like a physical thing. He knows which camps will fall, which leaders will make fatal mistakes, which children will die because their parents make the wrong choice at the wrong moment. He has the power to change those outcomes.
But only if he's willing to risk everything.
Movement catches his eye through the binoculars—a figure moving through the streets below with impossible grace. Scott adjusts the focus and feels his heart stop.
Young Asian male, maybe early twenties, moving between abandoned cars with practiced efficiency. He carries a backpack and moves like he's done this a thousand times before, ducking from cover to cover with the kind of skill that only comes from experience.
More importantly, he moves like someone who knows the walker patterns, who understands their behavior well enough to predict and avoid them.
Scott's enhanced memory supplies the details his eyes can't quite make out from this distance. Glenn Rhee. The pizza delivery boy turned master scavenger. One of the most capable survivors in the entire series, and the heart of Rick's group until—
"Until the Saviors bash his skull in with a baseball bat. Jesus Christ, he's just a kid."
Scott tracks Glenn through the binoculars, watching him navigate the death maze of Atlanta with fluid precision. He darts between cars, avoiding walker patrols with timing that seems almost supernatural. When he reaches a pharmacy, he slips inside through a rear entrance so smoothly that Scott almost misses the movement.
The implications crash over him like cold water.
Glenn exists. Which means the quarry camp exists. Which means Shane and Lori and Carl and Dale and all the others are out there right now, three days before Rick wakes up in the hospital. They're making the same mistakes, following the same patterns that led to so much death in the show.
And Scott could change all of it.
His hands shake as he adjusts the binoculars, trying to keep Glenn in sight. This is the first canon character he's encountered, the first face he recognizes from countless hours of television. The temptation to rush downstairs, to make contact, to start changing things is almost overwhelming.
"But what if I make it worse? What if my interference causes deaths that wouldn't have happened otherwise? What if knowing the story isn't enough?"
Glenn emerges from the pharmacy fifteen minutes later, his backpack noticeably fuller. He pauses at the entrance, scanning for threats with practiced caution, then sets off toward the northern suburbs. Toward the quarry where the survivors are camped.
Scott follows him.
He uses fire escapes and rooftops to maintain visual contact, his System's minimap tracking Glenn's progress while highlighting potential threats. It's like watching a master class in urban survival—Glenn's route selection is flawless, his timing perfect, his instincts for danger razor-sharp.
"He doesn't need my help. Kid's a natural."
But even as he thinks it, Scott watches Glenn pause to quietly mercy-kill a walker trapped under a fallen tree. The creature is pinned but still dangerous, its arms reaching and grasping at nothing. Glenn could have walked past, left it for someone else to deal with. Instead, he takes the time and risk to end its suffering with a precise thrust through the eye socket.
The small act of compassion hits Scott harder than he expected. This isn't just a character from a TV show—this is a human being with genuine empathy, someone willing to show mercy even to monsters.
Someone worth saving.
Scott trails Glenn for another six blocks, using his System's Analyze function to check for threats and his enhanced agility to keep pace across rooftops. He watches Glenn navigate a particularly dense walker cluster with moves that would make a parkour expert jealous, sees him pause to leave a cache of medical supplies where other survivors might find them, witnesses him risk his own safety to clear a path that other people might use later.
"He's good. Better than good. He's exactly the person this world needs."
When Glenn stops at an intersection to check his map, Scott nearly calls out to him. The words are right there, burning in his throat: "Hey! Wait! I can help!"
But something holds him back. Maybe it's caution. Maybe it's fear. Maybe it's the weight of knowing that once he makes contact, once he steps into the story, there's no going back to the safety of observation.
Glenn finishes checking his route and disappears into the northern suburbs, heading toward his camp and his people and a future that Scott could change with a single conversation.
Scott returns to his safe house as the sun sets, Glenn's face burning in his memory. That night, he lies on his makeshift bed and stares at the ceiling, wrestling with the biggest decision of either of his lives.
The System can't tell him what choice is right. It offers no quests for moral dilemmas, no experience points for doing the right thing. The interface just glows softly in his peripheral vision, waiting for him to decide what kind of person he wants to be in this new world.
[QUEST UPDATE: FIND SANCTUARY]
[NEW PATHS AVAILABLE]
[PATH 1: ESTABLISH LONE SETTLEMENT]
[BENEFITS: COMPLETE SECURITY, UNLIMITED SYSTEM USE]
[RISKS: ISOLATION, LIMITED GROWTH POTENTIAL]
[PATH 2: JOIN SURVIVOR GROUP]
[BENEFITS: HUMAN CONNECTION, ABILITY TO CHANGE CANON EVENTS]
[RISKS: EXPOSURE, COMPLEX SOCIAL DYNAMICS]
"Do no harm. That was the oath I took as an EMT. First, do no harm."
But can he live with himself if he does nothing? Can he sit in his fortress while people die from mistakes he could prevent, from dangers he could warn them about?
Glenn's face haunts his thoughts—young, determined, compassionate. In the show, he survives longer than most, becomes a leader, finds love with Maggie. But eventually, inevitably, he dies because he trusts the wrong person at the wrong moment.
Unless Scott does something about it.
Dawn paints the Atlanta skyline in blood-red hues as Scott makes his choice. He packs his gear into his System inventory, secures the office building for a possible return, and heads for the stairs.
His EMT oath whispers in his memory: "First, do no harm." But sometimes, Scott realizes, doing nothing is the greatest harm of all.
The quarry camp is fourteen miles away. By the time he reaches it, Rick will still be unconscious in his hospital bed, and Scott will have inserted himself into a story he once watched from the safety of his couch.
There's no going back from this moment. No return to the simple safety of isolation.
But maybe that's exactly what the world needs—someone willing to risk everything to save everyone.
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