Day 35 (Early Morning).
The Command Deck.
Sauget, Illinois.
00:00 Hours (Midnight).
The cold started in the marrow.
It wasn't the weather. The ambient temperature in the Command Deck was seventy degrees, warmed by the server racks and the body heat of the crew.
But I was freezing.
I sat in the command chair, wrapped in a wool blanket I had scavenged from the barracks. My teeth were chattering so hard I had to bite down on a piece of leather strap to keep from cracking a molar.
`[CORE TEMPERATURE: 82°F.]`
`[STATUS: SYSTEM HYPOTHERMIA.]`
`[CAUSE: METABOLIC OVERCLOCK.]`
Helen stood over me with a thermometer. She looked terrified.
"Your blood is cold," she whispered, pulling the probe away from my neck. "It's not just your skin, Jack. You're losing thermal energy faster than you can generate it. It's entropy."
"It's not entropy," I stammered, my jaw shaking. "It's... optimization."
"What?"
I looked at my hand.
To anyone else, it was just a hand. Callused, dirty, shaking.
But I didn't see skin.
I saw the code underneath.
I saw the maggots again—the recurring hallucination that haunted me since the infection began. But this time, I focused. They weren't worms. They were strings of data—blue and white light—wriggling under the epidermis, rewiring the nerves, stripping away the insulation.
The System was burning my body fat to power the processor in my brain.
"The System," I wheezed. "It's not... killing me. It's... updating me."
"You're delirious," Helen said, reaching for a saline bag. "You need warm fluids."
I pushed her hand away. My grip was weak, icy.
"Listen," I said. "Human bodies... are inefficient. We waste energy on heat. On emotion. On... empathy. The System needs a processor. A cold... machine."
I looked at the monitor. The deficit burned red.
`[DEFICIT: 660 PTS.]`
`[TIME TO IMPACT: 06:00:00.]`
"It's freezing me out," I whispered. "It's burning off the humanity to run the software. That's the sickness, Helen. It's the price of the interface."
"If your core drops below 80, your heart stops," Helen said flatly. "Machine or not, you die."
"Just... keep me awake," I said. "Six hours. Just six hours."
I tried to reload the Fang .45 sitting on the console. It was a motion I had done a thousand times. Muscle memory. It should have taken 0.8 seconds.
I pressed the mag release. The empty magazine dropped. I reached for a fresh one.
My hand didn't move.
It wasn't paralysis. It was lag.
A full second passed. Then, my hand jerked forward, grasping at the air where the magazine used to be. I fumbled it. The mag clattered to the floor.
"What the hell?" I whispered.
I tried to pick it up. My fingers brushed the metal, but I couldn't grip it. My proprioception—the sense of where my body was in space—was drifting.
Ding.
The System window popped up. It wasn't red (The Root) or blue (The Administrator). It was a dull, bureaucratic grey.
`[SYSTEM ALERT: PERFORMANCE CAP REACHED.]`
`[USER LEVEL DISPARITY DETECTED.]`
`[NOTE: TO MAINTAIN NARRATIVE TENSION AND BALANCE, HIGH-LEVEL USERS ARE SUBJECT TO DIMINISHING RETURNS.]`
"Balance?" I spat the word out. "We're fighting for our lives!"
`[ADMINISTRATOR: CORRECT. AND YOU ARE WINNING TOO EFFICIENTLY.]`
`[PATCH 1.04 APPLIED: "THE GLASS CANNON".]`
`[DEBUFF: REACTION TIME -50%. DURABILITY -40%.]`
`[DURATION: 6 HOURS.]`
I stared at the text.
It wasn't a sickness. It was a nerf.
The System was actively handicapping me because I was grinding too hard. It was making me vulnerable so the low-level threats—the zombies, the environment, the Nulls—had a fighting chance.
It wanted a fair fight. And in a zombie apocalypse, a "fair fight" meant I died.
The Roof.
02:00 Hours.
The wind was howling, tearing at the tarps Ronnie had set up over the welding station.
I climbed the ladder to check on the progress. Every rung was a battle against the lag. Reach. Wait. Grip. Pull.
I crested the roof.
Ronnie and four Nulls were wrestling a heavy steel I-beam into place for the Riveter's recoil dampener.
"Heave!" Ronnie shouted.
They lifted. The beam groaned. It weighed three hundred pounds.
"Jack!" Ronnie yelled, seeing me. "Grab the end! We're slipping!"
I moved to help.
Normally, with my User strength and the adrenaline, this would be easy.
I grabbed the beam.
`[STRENGTH CHECK...]`
`[SYSTEM INTERFERENCE: ACTIVE.]`
My muscles fired, but the signal didn't reach my tendons in time. My grip was weak. Slippery.
"I got it," I grunted.
I didn't have it.
The beam slipped through my gloves.
"Look out!" Ronnie screamed.
The steel crashed down.
It missed Ronnie. It didn't miss Pete.
The beam landed on the Null's foot.
CRUNCH.
Pete screamed. It was a wet, ragged sound. The steel pulverized the boot and the bones inside.
"Get it off!" Pete shrieked, thrashing on the wet concrete. "Get it off me!"
The other Nulls scrambled to lift it. I stood there, staring at my hands. They were shaking violently now.
I had failed. I had dropped it.
The Nulls lifted the beam. They dragged Pete back. His foot was a ruin of blood and leather.
Then, silence.
The wind howled, but nobody spoke.
The Nulls looked at Pete. Then they looked at me.
They didn't look at me with the usual fear or reverence. They looked at me with confusion.
The Architect... slipped? The man who kills zombies with a hammer... couldn't hold a beam?
I saw the calculation in their eyes. A dangerous realization was forming in their heads.
He bleeds. He fails. He is mortal.
"Get him to the barracks," I ordered. My voice sounded hollow, distant in my own ears.
"You dropped it," a Null named Carter whispered. He was new. Conscripted. "You just... let it go."
"It was heavy," I snapped. "The rain. Slick gloves. Do you want to file a complaint, Carter, or do you want to live?"
"Yeah," Carter said. But he didn't look convinced. He looked at my shaking hands.
`[LOYALTY CHECK: NULLS.]`
`[RESULT: DOUBT SEEDED.]`
"Back to work!" I roared, forcing the authority into my voice. "We need those points! This gun doesn't get built by staring at me! Move!"
They moved. But they moved slower. The spell of my invincibility had cracked.
If the System kept this debuff on me, it wouldn't be the zombies I had to worry about. It would be my own workforce.
The Gutter.
04:00 Hours.
The silence was the worst part.
For twelve hours, the Gutter had been a cacophony of gunfire and grinding gears. Now, it was quiet.
The killbox was empty. The floodlights illuminated nothing but bloodstained concrete and black slurry.
We had over-farmed.
Every zombie within hearing range of the vents had been lured in and processed. We had cleaned the sector.
And we were still short.
`[CURRENT BALANCE: 1,540 PTS.]`
`[REQUIRED: 2,000 PTS.]`
`[DEFICIT: 460 PTS.]`
I sat on the catwalk stairs, trying to control the tremors in my legs. The System's timer for the debuff showed two more hours. Two hours of being a "Glass Cannon."
Travis was slumped by the intake grate.
He wasn't moving.
Helen was kneeling beside him, changing the saline bag.
"He's comatose," Helen said without looking up. "His kidneys have shut down completely. The toxicity in his blood is knocking him out."
"Wake him up," I said.
"I can't," Helen snapped. "He's not a machine you can just kick, Jack! He's dying! Let him rest!"
"If he rests, we die," I said. "We need 460 points. That's forty-six kills. Or four tons of biomass."
"There's nothing to kill!" Paige shouted from the catwalk. She looked exhausted, her face smeared with grease. "The yard is empty! We killed them all!"
I looked at the timer.
`[LEVIATHAN IMPACT: 02:00:00.]`
Two hours.
We were going to fail. We were going to come up short by a few hundred points, and the Leviathan was going to walk through the wall and crush us.
Because we were too efficient. We had run out of enemies.
The radio crackled.
"Jack?"
It was Yana.
She was out in the truck. I had sent her to scout for stragglers an hour ago.
"Go ahead, Yana," I said. My tongue felt thick.
"I found them," she said. Her voice was tight. "I found... a lot of them."
"Where?"
"Highway 15. About four miles east. It's a migration knot. Looks like a horde moving toward the river."
"Count?"
There was a pause.
"Five hundred," Yana said. "Maybe six. Plus Runners. And... I think I see a Brute."
My heart skipped a beat. Literally. The System skipped a beat for me.
Five hundred.
At 10 points a kill... that was 5,000 points.
It was a fortune. It was the jackpot.
But it was also an army.
If I let five hundred zombies into the courtyard while I was nerfed, I couldn't fight them. I would miss shots. I would lag. I would get overrun.
If the Nulls saw me fail in combat... if they saw me get pinned... the hierarchy would dissolve.
But if I said no, the Leviathan would kill us all.
The System wanted this. It had nerfed me specifically for this moment. It wanted to see if I would take the gamble when the odds were stacked against me.
`[ADMINISTRATOR: DIFFICULTY SPIKE PREPARED.]`
`[QUESTION: DO YOU FOLD?]`
I looked at the deficit.
I looked at the terrified crew.
"Bring them," I said.
"Jack," Yana's voice wavered. "It's five hundred. If I lead them back... that's not a farming run. That's an invasion. If the Gutter jams, or if Travis can't swing... they'll breach the gate. They'll flood the factory."
"We need the points," I said. "Bring them all. And Yana?"
"Yeah?"
"Drive fast. We need the points before the boss shows up."
I stood up. I grabbed the railing to steady myself. The world spun.
I walked down the stairs to the grate.
I knelt beside the mountain of grey muscle that was Travis.
"Travis," I whispered.
No response.
I leaned close to his ear.
"Overtime," I said.
I slapped his face. Hard.
"Wake up, you son of a bitch. The game isn't over."
Travis's eyes snapped open. A slit of orange fire in the grey ash of his face.
"How... heavy?" he rasped.
"Five hundred," I said. "And I can't shoot straight. I need you to carry me."
Travis grinned. Blood leaked from his teeth.
"Set 'em up," Travis growled.
He forced himself up. His joints popped like gunshots. He swayed, but he stood.
I checked my gun. I checked my hands. They were still lagging.
The System had made me vulnerable. It had given the world a chance to kill me.
"Come and get it," I whispered to the empty air.
`[QUEST UPDATED: THE FINAL PUSH.]`
`[WAVE INBOUND: 500+.]`
`[PLAYER STATUS: COMPROMISED.]`
I shivered. The cold inside me was spreading.
But for the first time in twelve hours, I smiled.
"Let's get paid."
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 35
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) █████████░ 9/10 Nodes
RANK: 172
OBJECTIVE: 460 Points Remaining
STATUS: NERFED (System Sickness / Latency)
NEXT EVENT: The Golden Wave / Leviathan Arrival