"Jessica, stop looking at the screen," Ethan said, his voice low but commanding. He reached over and physically turned her chair away from the black monitor where she had just heard her mother die. "Look at the door. If the handle moves, you scream. Can you do that?"
Jessica stared at the floor, tears dripping silently onto her knees. She nodded, a jerky, mechanical motion.
"Good."
Ethan spun his chair back to the main console. "Claire, find something to write on. A notepad, a marker, anything. We have maybe ten minutes of battery backup on this UPS before these screens go dark."
"Okay," Claire said, wiping her face. She rummaged through the clutter on the desk and found a technician's clipboard and a permanent marker. "Ready."
Ethan's fingers flew across the keyboard. He minimized the VoIP window and expanded the security grid.
"We aren't going out there blind," Ethan muttered. "We need to know where the death is."
He clicked on the camera feed for the 27th Floor - Main Lobby.
The screen flickered to life. The scene was a nightmare in greyscale. The bodies of the reception staff and the security guard were gone, likely risen and wandered off. But the carpet was stained black.
A group of five infected were standing near the elevators. They weren't moving. They were just... standing. Shoulders slumped, heads hanging low.
"They're dormant," Ethan whispered, confirming his earlier theory. "When there's no prey, they go into standby mode to conserve energy."
He switched to the Central Stairwell - 27th Floor Landing.
"Oh god," Claire gasped.
The stairwell was a bottleneck of flesh. Bodies were piled three deep against the fire door. It looked like a stampede had occurred, and then the infection had swept through the crushed crowd. Limbs were twitching in the pile. It was a writhing wall of undead.
"Scratch the main stairs," Ethan said grimly. "That's a suicide run. Write that down. Main stairs are blocked."
Claire scribbled frantically. Stairs = Blocked.
Ethan clicked to the Freight Elevator - 27th Floor.
The hallway leading to the freight elevator was relatively clear. Just one body, Greg, the IT guy they had looted the keycard from. But the elevator doors were closed.
Ethan cycled the camera to the Freight Elevator Interior.
It was empty. Blood smeared the walls, but the car itself was empty.
"It's stuck on the 15th floor," Ethan noted, checking the digital readout on the camera feed. "We can't call it up because the power is cut. But the shaft... the shaft is clear."
He moved the view to Floor 26 - Executive Suites.
The layout was different. Fewer cubicles, more glass offices. It looked quieter.
"Wait," Ethan said. "Zooming in."
On the feed, he saw movement. Not the jerky twitching of the infected, but the desperate, frantic movement of the living.
In one of the glass offices, a man in a torn suit was swinging a golf club. He was beating someone on the floor.
"Is he fighting one of them?" Claire asked, leaning in.
Ethan squinted. "No."
The man stopped swinging. He reached down and pulled a wallet out of the fallen person's pocket. Then he took the gold watch from the wrist. The person on the floor raised a hand, a human hand, begging and the man with the golf club stomped on their face.
Ethan felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning.
"He's looting," Ethan said coldly. "The body is still warm, and he's stealing a Rolex."
"But... why?" Claire asked. "Money is useless now."
"Habit," Ethan said. "Or he thinks help is coming tomorrow. He's wrong."
He watched the looter move to the door, check the hallway, and sneak away.
"The laws are gone, Claire," Ethan said. "That man just proved it. If we run into survivors, we don't assume they're friendly. We assume they want what we have."
[Ding!]
[Skill Unlocked: Map Analysis (Basic)]
[You have gained tactical insight into the immediate area.]
[New Feature: Mini-Map (Temporary) added to HUD.]
Ethan blinked as a small, translucent grid appeared in the top right corner of his vision. It showed the layout of the 27th floor, with red dots marking the clusters of infected he had just seen on the cameras.
It was a cheat code. A god-tier advantage.
"I have a route," Ethan said. "Claire, listen to me."
He traced a path on the screen with his finger.
"We leave the server room. We stick to the left wall. There's a ventilation maintenance hatch about twenty meters down, near the bathrooms. If we can pop that hatch, we can drop into the ceiling crawlspace of the 26th floor."
"The ceiling?" Claire asked. "Can it hold our weight?"
"It's an industrial building," Ethan said. "Steel beams and suspended tiles. We crawl on the beams. It bypasses the hallway, bypasses the stairs, and drops us right into the Executive Kitchenette on 26. From there, we take the Executive private stairwell down."
"How do you know about the private stairwell?"
"I saw it on the feed," Ethan lied. He actually saw it on his new Mini-Map. "It connects floors 26 through 20. It's locked from the outside, but if we drop in from the ceiling, we are already inside."
Beep... Beep...
The UPS began to whine. A red light flashed rapidly on the unit under the desk.
[Power Critical]
"We're losing the feed," Ethan said. He stood up abruptly. "We have the intel. Now we need gear."
He didn't have time for the hour-long crafting session he had considered earlier, but he couldn't leave empty-handed.
He walked to the red tool cabinet Facilities. He yanked the bottom drawer open.
There it was.
A Heavy Duty Crowbar. Painted yellow. Solid steel.
Ethan grabbed it. It felt heavy, lethal, and reassuring.
[Item Acquired: Heavy Duty Crowbar (Common)]
[Attack: 6-9]
He tossed a heavy framing hammer to Claire. "Trade the knife for this. It has better reach and it won't break."
He looked at Jessica. She was still staring at the door.
Ethan walked over and crouched in front of her. "Jessica."
She didn't look at him.
"Jessica, your mother is gone," Ethan said. His voice was harsh, stripped of pity. "And if you stay here, you will join her. Do you want to be eaten by the thing that used to be Henderson? Or do you want to live long enough to kill every single one of them?"
Jessica's head snapped up. A spark of anger flickered in the void of her eyes. It was faint, but it was there.
"Kill them," she whispered.
"Then get up," Ethan said. He handed her a long, flathead screwdriver. It was a shank, pure and simple. "Aim for the eye."
The UPS emitted a long, dying wail.
Beeeeeeep.
The monitors went black. The only light left in the room came from the blinking red LEDs of the dead battery backup and the green glow of the exit button.
Ethan gripped the crowbar. The Mini-Map in his HUD glowed softly, showing the red dots of the infected outside the door. There were three of them in the hallway now.
"Three bogies in the hall," Ethan whispered, pretending to listen at the door. "We move fast. Left turn. Maintenance hatch. Go."
He hit the door release.