Rules, Rations, and Rising Pressure
I woke up to the charming sensation of springs in my back courtesy of the mattress. The house already empty and it was only 6:30 a.m.
From there, the day unfolded with the consistency of a dull knife. First came school — not paying attention in school — then missing my golden window of opportunity to ditch said school. That was followed by another round of being a runner for ration logistics. A task I couldn't skip without risking my parents' wrath or a surprise lecture on civic duty from Sergeant-Spit-In-Your-Food.
In summary: boring as hell, but easy enough. Finished around 5 p.m. Still felt the mattress springs in my spine like they'd left their signature. But hey, at least I had a mattress.
In the warehouse, cots were a luxury. Not everyone earned one yet. Some had to make do with scraps — curled up on thin sheets of insulation foam salvaged from behind a crushed medical crate. That's what passed for beds down here. That, or the sweet embrace of untreated concrete.
I stepped into the warehouse and immediately noticed the silence. A rare treat. No clanking tools. No whispered bickering from Kev and Donny. No unnerving humming from Tasha — thank whatever audit-god still reviewed apocalypse prayers.
I sat down on a crate, rubbed my neck, and blinked when the familiar flicker of blue light flared in my periphery.
[NEW DAILY QUEST UNLOCKED – Basic Conditioning]Objective: Complete the assigned physical training for the day.
30 pushups20 squats1 sprint circuit (~100m)
Reward: +5 EXP
Really? That's it?
I looked down at my own limbs like they'd just disappointed me in public. Still… EXP was EXP. Even the pity kind. Besides, if the system was nudging me toward physical training, it probably meant I'd be punching more things in the future. Or running from them. Most likely both.
Pushups came first. My arms popped like bubble wrap in protest. Then squats. Halfway through, I genuinely considered collapsing out of spite. The sprint was the last act — a dusty loop between shelves, crates, and the section Rusty now proudly referred to as "The Generator Zone," which still sparked like it was built by Zeus and duct tape.
I rounded the last corner, breath caught somewhere behind my tongue, and collapsed against a crate marked:
[HYDRAULIC FLUID – DO NOT TIP]Spoiler: it was already tipped.
And then came the soft, satisfying ping.
[QUEST COMPLETE – Basic Conditioning]+5 EXP[EXP: 240 / 400]
System pleased. Muscles annoyed. Par for the course.
By the time I finished my cool down (which mostly involved lying very still and pretending not to die), the others were stirring.
Food time. I wandered over to our "kitchen," a truly majestic setup consisting of one dented pot, four mismatched spoons, and a crate with salvaged cans. The pot had been unofficially renamed The Chalice of Regret after someone tried to cook condensed soup in it and it fused with rust.
I chewed a ration biscuit hard enough to file down my molars and observed the group. Rusty was fiddling with a voltmeter like he was interrogating it. Tasha did that thing where she stretched like a cat and somehow revealed five concealed blades in the process. Donny was twitchy. Again. Marta was flat on her back, quietly studying the ceiling like it owed her money. Kev was grumbling about "reverse currents" and something called a "sodium arc bastard."
Lia wasn't here. Thankfully. She had dignity. And heating.
Still, the silence was nice while it lasted.
Progress, though? That was slow. The group had cracked maybe four crates in total over the past few days. Some were sealed like mini Fort Knoxes, others were so decayed they just crumbled into rust. Every once in a while, we got something salvageable — expired meds, uncharged toolkits, clothes that didn't smell like mildew and failure.
I'd barely swallowed the last gritty bite of ration biscuit when the noise started — a scrape, a clunk, and then a rising string of muffled curses from deeper in the warehouse.
"Goddammit Kev—"
That was Donny's voice. Nervous. Shaky. Which meant something went wrong.
I shoved the dented tin cup aside and followed the sound, winding past rusted shelving until I hit the far side of the workspace. That's where I found them — Kev standing stiff and pissed, Donny crouched beside an overturned crate with a panicked expression and a mess of white powder coating his sleeves.
Kev's voice was like gravel and regret. "Told you not to wedge it open like that. What'd I say? The seal was taut for a reason."
"I didn't mean to—!" Donny stammered, swiping at the mess like he could unbreak it with enthusiasm alone. "It—it just buckled."
The crate in question was splintered along the edge, its metallic clasps half-melted. Inside had been neatly packaged FEDRA-stamped ration bars, emphasis on had. Whatever shock or chemical seal had kept them preserved was gone now and now splattered on them, moisture got in and soon mice too, probably. The smell hit me last, sharp, sour, unmistakably ruined.
I knelt and peeled one of the bars from the mess. It crumbled in my fingers like stale foam. Definitely unsalvageable.
Kev crossed his arms. "You just torched at least ten days' worth of high-calorie packs, courier boy."
Donny looked like he wanted to melt into the floor. "I—I thought I had it—"
"Don't apologize," I cut in, quiet but clear. "Just... stop touching crates unless you know what you're doing."
The silence that followed wasn't angry. Not really. It was worse. It was exhausted.
Marta appeared behind us, arms folded, saying nothing. Tasha hovered by the aisle, watching the broken crate with unsettling interest, like it might come back to life and attack. Rusty finally wandered over from the other end, squinting at the mess.
"Losses?" he asked, gesturing at the powdered disaster zone.
"Rations," I muttered. "Gone."
"Damn. Could've mixed 'em with coffee powder and called it soup."
"Not helpful, Rusty."
"Nope," he agreed, and walked away again.
I stared at the group, no yelling, no finger-pointing. Just collective fatigue. Even Kev, for all his grumbling, just sighed and walked off.
I stood there for a moment, then turned to Donny, who was still kneeling like a kid who broke his dad's radio.
"Seriously," I said. "Just ask first. We're not trying to win speed records here."
He gave a quick nod and scurried away. Probably to pace around and stress-chug half a water bottle.
I grabbed a nearby chalk stub and scratched a note on the metal panel beside the broken crate:
[DO NOT TOUCH WITHOUT CHECKING – LOSS ZONE]
There. Not elegant, but clear. I stared at the writing a second longer than I meant to.
Then I sighed and added a second line:
[RULES COMING SOON. YES, FOR REAL.]
We were going to need them. For all of this. A real set. Something visible. Simple.
The chalk message stayed on the crate for about two hours before I realized that maybe a few random scribbles weren't enough to stop someone from breaking something else next time. Half the people here barely slept, and the other half liked poking things they shouldn't.
So that night, after a half-hearted cleanup effort, a lot of silence, and a nearly edible dinner I found myself dragging one of the flatter crates into an open corner of the main room. I propped it upright against the wall and cracked open my backpack.
Out came the chalk. A dull white nub. Slightly melted from heat and misery.
The others didn't crowd around, which I was grateful for. A few glanced over. Marta gave a small nod and kept folding insulation layers near the sleeping zone. Rusty fiddled with a wire coil and muttered threats at a stuck screw. Lia? She just leaned on a metal pole and waited to see what I was planning.
Tasha was already asleep. Or pretending to be. You never really knew with her.
I started writing.
BASE RULES – Read Them or Eat Chalk
Don't open anything sealed with red. Not crates, not doors, not boxes, not barrels. Red means "someone died trying to open this." If you think you're smarter than the people who painted it, congrats, now prove it by not dying.
Don't touch the welded door. If you don't know what that means, congratulations, you're already smarter than Donny. Stay that way.
Check before cracking open any crate. Especially if it has a pressure latch or unfamiliar language. Don't just pry and pray.
Ask before moving equipment. Especially Rusty's setup. He may look like a disassembled radiator but he bites harder than one.
No stealing. Seriously. Even if it's food, even if it's "just one," even if it's "you thought it wouldn't matter." It will matter. And I will know.
If you break something, tell someone. Don't wait. Don't hide it. Don't pretend you didn't. This place can only function if we're not playing musical sabotage.
If you're sick, speak up. This one's not a joke.
By the time I finished chalking them up, my arm felt like a noodle and my back hated me. I stepped back and gave the board a once-over.
No one clapped. No one said "good job." But something shifted.
Kev walked by and actually read every rule. Didn't say anything, but grunted in approval — which, in Kev language, was basically a hug and a thank-you card. Donny hovered like he wanted to apologize again. I waved him off. He sat down and started sharpening a rusted screwdriver like it was a ritual.
Marta wandered up behind me. Said nothing. Just nodded once.
Rusty? He just squinted at the board and muttered, "Finally," like he'd been waiting for it the whole time.
It wasn't a perfect system. I didn't suddenly become some kind of enlightened leader. But for the first time, it felt like a system. Like something we were all building, instead of just surviving inside.
And that meant I had to start thinking further ahead.
Even with everyone here… it wasn't going to be enough.
We'd hit capacity. Storage was tight. Time was tight. And even with the little tricks Lia taught me about trades and smuggling routes, we were burning resources faster than we were replenishing them.
I watched the others wind down. Tasha now really asleep. Lia quietly packing away a few labeled bags. Rusty dragging a half-assembled worklight closer to his bench. Kev already passed out with a rag on his face.
No one was fighting. No one was bleeding. For once, I wasn't panicking about what might break next.
But the thought lingered.
We need more people.
Soon.
Lia came soon after I written it. I watched Lia scrawl neat handwriting across a scrap of salvaged paper, her brows furrowed in that quiet, focused way she had when numbers were involved. She was sitting cross-legged beside one of the flatter crates, the one we'd unofficially started calling the "front desk." It had a few slips of worn parchment on top, bits of chalk, and a dented ration tin we now used for bartering tallies.
She didn't notice me watching at first. Or maybe she did and just didn't care.
"You're not bad at this," I said.
"I'm excellent at this," she replied without looking up. "Aunt has been trading longer than half these guards have been alive."
"Yeah, but she doesn't do it with a half-busted pencil and a ledger made out of ration wrappers."
That earned me a faint smirk.
Lia sat back and looked over the work we'd done in the last week. "We've only managed to move four crates worth of salvage. Most of it low-tier. Tools missing parts, old medkits, bulk junk. Nothing major."
"Yeah," I said, kicking at the ground lightly. "That's about what it felt like."
"We can't scale until we have more useful goods, but right now, nobody's asking questions. Hector's filtering the trades like we planned. Robert thinks the supplies are coming out of an abandoned ration dump near the dockside. No one's traced it back here."
"No one will," I said, voice quiet.
Lia raised an eyebrow at me. "You really think that?"
"I don't plan to give them a reason."
There was a silence between us, not awkward, not tense. Just the kind that settled when both people understood that what they were doing was bigger than they were supposed to be handling.
"I need to start rotating goods out faster," I said eventually. "We've got too many people and not enough supplies. The warehouse is good, but it's still just a hole full of potential. I need it to be something. Trade hub. Staging post. Hell, a rat motel with an upgrade plan. Just something."
"You still think five or six half-starved weirdos and a haunted tool gremlin count as an operation?"
I grinned. "Give or take."
She paused, looking toward the group.
Tasha was helping Marta bind up a busted crate with wire. Kev was yelling at Donny again. Rusty was halfway inside a vent for some reason. How did he even fit in there?
"Yeah," Lia said after a beat. "Maybe you're right."
I leaned against the support column nearby. The air was heavy with dust and old metal, but it didn't feel suffocating. It felt lived in now.
"You're not gonna be able to handle it alone," Lia said suddenly.
"Wasn't planning to."
"You were," she countered. "But you're getting better at pretending you're not."
Fair point.
She stood up, dusted her hands off, and looked toward the exit tunnel. "I'll work with Hector on the next batch. Try to get him a list of stuff we need more of. If we're gonna turn this place into something useful, we'll need more stable trades. Steady flow. No random dump-offs."
I nodded, grateful but not saying it.
"I'll also see what else aunt hears. There's always rumors about abandoned stores, old FEDRA caches, places no one wants to risk looting. Maybe we pull a few stories together, paint a better lie. Make our source sound like it's just risky enough."
I raised an eyebrow. "You enjoy this."
"No," she said, heading for the ladder. "But I'm good at it. And being good at something's all that matters out here."
Some time later, I didn't hear the ping. I felt it.
A weird little drop in the stomach, like the moment before you realize a ladder's missing a rung. Then the subtle flicker of blue at the edge of my vision, like a whisper of static curling behind my eyes.
[NEW MISSION UNLOCKED – Big Moves, Big Profits]Objective: Complete a legitimate, high-value trade with a known market player. Maintain cover, secrecy, and plausible deniability.Reward: +200 EXP, +1 Summon Token (1 Guaranteed Combat-Oriented Individual)
No fanfare. No long intro. Just a blunt nudge forward.
But 1 guaranteed combat oriented summon? I am getting fucked soon aren't I?
I closed the prompt with a slow breath and stared down at my hands — chalk-stained, sore-knuckled, the beginnings of calluses forming from days of pulling open ancient crates. This wasn't the first big mission the system handed me, but it felt different.
This wasn't just about scavenging anymore.
It was about scaling.
Trading with people like Robert wasn't some petty barter for old batteries or a dented radio anymore. This meant planning. Manipulating rumors. Coordinating cover stories, rerouting suspicion, keeping every eye pointed anywhere but here. It meant trusting Hector to keep his mouth shut. Lia to keep the lies straight. Rusty to not build something explosive on top of the pantry.
And me? It meant starting to act less like a scrappy little rat and more like the guy running the maze.
I pulled up my status again, almost automatically.
[SYSTEM STATUS]Name: Callum ReyesLevel: 6EXP: 240 / 400SP: 4Summon Tokens: 1Scavenger Rank Credits: 1Condition: StableBuffs: Debuffs: None
Right.
One Summon Token waiting to be used. One shot at adding someone dangerous, or at least competent to the group. And no resources to keep them alive if we ran dry.
I knew what that meant.
I'd have to hold onto it. Keep it tucked away until supplies were stable, sleeping arrangements expanded, and people weren't side-eyeing each other over stale rations.
Still... another combat-focused summon.
It was tempting.
I tapped through a few menus, looking for more details. Instead, I found something new in a tucked-away corner of the Scavenger Rank tab.
[NEW SYSTEM NOTICE – Rank Unlock Preview]Rank Threshold: Level 10Upon reaching Level 10, Scavenger Rank Credits may be exchanged for Supply Drops. Contents will vary based on location, rank, and mission history.
Well now.
That changed things.
Supply drops, if they worked the way I imagined would be a game-changer. Food, gear, materials. Maybe even tools. It wouldn't solve everything, but it'd reduce the tightrope we were walking across razor wire every day.
I leaned back, thinking. Gears clicking.
I'd need to keep pushing forward. Get the trade done. Let the system trust me with more. Build the base. Use the warehouse for more than just slow-burn inventory work.
Getting supplies is one thing. Selling them without getting shot, stabbed, or reported by a jealous snitch? That's the real Olympic sport of the QZ.
So we started small.
First came the inventory list, Rusty, Lia, and I spent the better part of two hours laying out potential goods. Tools that weren't completely fused with rust. Sealed medkits that didn't smell like damp regret. Battery packs that gave a green light when poked instead of leaking mystery fluid. It was, generously speaking, a rough cut of the warehouse's more presentable offerings.
"What about that crate of respirators?" Lia asked, flipping through her scavenger's journal. Her handwriting was neat. Organized. Of course it was.
"Too busted," I said. "Half of them still have old mold in the filters. We'd be selling someone a lung infection."
"So… Robert?"
I smirked. "Maybe as a last resort."
We both laughed a little at that. Rusty, meanwhile, muttered something about capacitor ratings and started testing a salvaged radio unit in the corner like it might confess to a crime.
We circled a few items. Some tools, some first aid, a sealed protein brick case — the kind you only found in old military depots. It smelled like regret and chalk, but it was sealed and stamped. Someone desperate would pay a lot for 'authentic' survival stock, even if it tasted like salted concrete.
"Who's going to handle the drop?" Lia asked after a beat.
That part had already been decided.
"Hector again," I said. "Your uncle-in-law's been handling ration depot manifests for what, five years?"
"Six," Lia said. "And yeah. He's twitchy, but he keeps quiet."
We all agreed. Hector was perfect. A wiry, hunched man with the emotional range of a terrified clipboard, but he knew the back routes and had a standing excuse to visit smaller outposts. He'd keep the trail clean and deliver the goods. Robert never asks too many questions, just like last time, especially since we'd be disguising the haul as a "routine clearance of expired depot supplies."
The lie was boring. Bureaucratic. Beautiful.
While Rusty started welding a latch shut on one of the containers, "presentation matters," he claimed, I wrote out the crate manifests by hand. Faked depot labels. Even mocked up a delivery tag stamped with a salvaged FEDRA inspection marker. Lia watched me work, then quietly slid over one of her old market ledgers. It had the names of buyers, sellers, and what things were worth last month.
"Prices shift weekly," she murmured. "You'll get more if you frame this as a rush unload. People like thinking they're getting something rare."
I glanced up at her, eyebrow raised.
She just shrugged. "What? I used to lie about selling off-brand bleach packets as skin disinfectant. This is cleaner."
Holy moly, this girls evil. I like her.
By the time we were done, the warehouse smelled like metal shavings, printer dust, and sweat. We had two crates packed and disguised. Hector had already been prepped with cover instructions and fake paperwork. Robert was expecting a "mid-week transfer" from a back-channel source, nothing unusual in the chaos of black market shuffle.
"Think he'll bite?" I asked.
"He'll bite," Lia said. "He always does."
Three days. That's how long it took for the plan to take place.
Hector, jittery as always, picked up the crates from our disguised depot stash right on time. He didn't say much, just gave Lia a nod, glanced at me with that usual haunted look like I might be the reason he didn't sleep at night, and hauled the stuff out under the guise of "unclaimed emergency gear transfer."
From there, it was a game of waiting. Lia and I didn't follow. Too risky. But Hector knew his route, looping through the southern corridors, cutting past the old tool garages, and ending up in the Shell Lot where Robert liked to stage his trades. That whole part of the QZ had a smell: hot metal and cold nerves.
We didn't hear anything the first day.
Second day, Lia spotted Robert in the market square. He looked… pleased. Or as close to pleased as a man like him could look without pulling a muscle. He walked lighter. Smiled a little. Bought real bread.
That was when we knew.
Third day, 7:12 p.m., I was home, in my room eating something that claimed to be soup. The house was quiet. My parents hadn't returned yet. Probably still at the logistics offices. I was half-dozing when the system pinged.
[MISSION COMPLETE – Big Moves, Big Profits]
I sat upright, half-choking on the soup.
The system didn't need to explain. The timing lined up perfectly. Hector must've completed the exchange. Crates delivered. Payment handled. Transaction secure.
I closed the system window and leaned back on the mattress, staring at the cracked ceiling above me. A new token meant I could call in more help. A better kind, maybe. The system clearly thought I was ready.
But more mouths meant more food. More noise. More things to manage. I was walking a line between scavenger boss and crumbling babysitter.
Still… a combat-ready summon?
That might finally give us a way to explore further. Or defend the place properly. Or hell, even open some of the harder crates without breaking every tool we had.
I exhaled, slow.
The next few days passed in a blur of sweat, minor triumphs, and exactly one electrical shock incident. Not mine, thankfully. Donny tried to "help" Marta reroute one of the old cables and got flung halfway across the room by a rogue spark. He was fine. Mostly. Singed eyebrows and all.
But for me, it was about discipline.
The system didn't just dump rewards in my lap anymore — it wanted sweat equity. So every morning, before I even opened my eyes properly, I ran the now-familiar Basic Conditioning quest.
30 pushups. 20 squats. 1 sprint circuit.
And every morning, I got the same little ping for my effort.
[QUEST COMPLETE – Basic Conditioning]+5 EXP
It wasn't much, but it added up. And it gave me something the others didn't have: routine. Power, in small pieces.
Between the workouts and the normal chaos of warehouse life — trading, sorting, keeping Tasha from sharpening knives near people — I also started quietly prepping for the next summon.
I didn't summon just because I had the token now. That would've been reckless. We didn't have enough food stocked, not enough bedding, and definitely not enough space carved out for whoever came through next. One combat-capable person meant more risk, not less, if I wasn't ready.
But I laid the groundwork.
Rusty built another sleeping cot out of pipe joints and scavenged mesh. Marta helped rig a curtain to give the far corner some privacy. Lia and I did another quick inventory of what we could trade for food — and agreed we'd need Hector again, soon.
And through it all, the group settled. Not peaceful never peaceful but steady.
Elsie and Kev finally stopped arguing long enough to fix the busted wall lamp. Tasha asked me if it was okay if she carved something into one of the crates. I said yes, because saying no would probably just make her do it anyway, and louder. Donny sat still for almost twenty minutes one afternoon. New record.
By the third night, I was back home again. Everyone at the house had long since gone to bed, and I was half-asleep under the covers when the system window slid open quietly.
[MISSION COMPLETE – Preparations for Expansion]+100 EXP[EXP: 165 / 450]
There it was.
The warehouse was ready. I was almost ready.
Just one more thing to sort, and the next phase would begin.
Later as I was working I noticed something tucked beneath one of the makeshift shelves near the area I usually work near, right next to the mess of scavenged parts and half-dismantled tools, there was a knife. Old, but cleaned and sharpened. Not military-grade, not FEDRA-issued. Personal. Something someone had taken time to prepare.
Etched faintly into the hilt were two letters: C. R.
My initials.
The scratches were crooked, but deliberate. I didn't need a forensics team to guess the culprit.
Across the room, Tasha was sitting cross-legged on a crate, chewing dried fruit and staring at me with that wide, curious smile. Too wide.
She didn't say anything. Didn't have to.
Lia, halfway through arranging some salvage by the wall, paused just long enough to catch my glance. Her eyes narrowed.
I said nothing. Slipped the knife into the back loop of my trousers while covering it with my hoodie, and moved on. Pretended it wasn't weird. Pretended I didn't feel the weight of it, or the meaning behind it.
The system flickered softly in the back of my vision.
[Relationship Menu – Update Detected]Tasha: LOYAL – (UNSTABLE?)
A gift. A gesture.A warning.Maybe all three.
I didn't have the luxury of overthinking it. Not yet.
But I had a very bad feeling about this.
It was past midnight when I snuck in the house, didn't really have to since my parents weren't home until 5 minutes later.
I always knew the walls in our apartment weren't soundproof. It's Boston QZ, nothing's soundproof unless you're in the inner compound, and even then, the mold listens. Usually, though, it was just the standard ambient noise: distant boots, machine groans, the occasional muffled domestic argument, and once, a very unfortunate FEDRA radio operator who had what I can only describe as "aggressive stomach problem."
I had just finished brushing teeth in front of a cracked mirror, with government-issue paste that tasted like sadness.
Then I heard my parents' voices. Not raised. Not fighting. Worse. Low. Controlled.
I opened my bedroom door just a crack, they probably thought I was asleep. And to be fair, most nights, I would be.
My dad. His voice was always scratchy when he was tired, like gravel dragged across metal.
"—saw the manifest change twice. Someone's moving things they shouldn't be. Off-grid. Private routes."
A pause. Paper shuffled. Footsteps.
"Robert?" my mom asked. Her voice always had that metallic edge, like a comms radio at the wrong frequency.
"I don't know. Could be one of his runners. But someone's trading in the from the docks to the southern district again. High-value stuff too, ammo, meds, not just food."
Robert, the guy we made some trades previously. That guy was like a rumour with legs. A fixer. A smuggler. A dead man walking half the time, if the stories were true.
"You think it's the same pair as before?" my mother continued.
Now that got my attention.
Dad didn't answer immediately. A long drink. Water, maybe. Or something stronger. Then: "Could be. Older guy, real quiet. Younger woman, mean as hell. They got caught up in a sting last year and vanished. Now some guards are whispering they saw them again near the northern checkpoint."
He exhaled sharply.
"They are dead last I heard.."
Mom was quiet. Then: "Dead don't barter antibiotics for intel."
There was weight behind that. Not fear exactly, but respect. A kind of grim acknowledgment that people like that, the smugglers who could survive outside and come back in one piece were either very good, very connected, or very lucky. Or all three.
And dangerous. Always dangerous.
"Command wants to know if they're planning something. Fireflies have gone quiet since that last raid. Too quiet."
I heard the scrape of something boots maybe, and imagined dad pacing our tiny kitchen.
"Doesn't mean the Fireflies are dead," he said. "Just means they're waiting. And if Robert's playing middleman for those two again..."
"We should report it," my mother said.
There was silence. Not agreement. Not refusal. Just... weight.
Mom again: "They'll ask how we know. And then we explain we listened to guards gossip? Or that your shift logs have gaps?"
"I'm not saying we report it now," dad said. "But we watch. Quietly."
Dad's voice lowered again, like the walls themselves had ears. "There's been more infected sightings too. Outskirts, mostly. South and south-east corridors."
I felt my spine stiffen.
"How many?" mother asked, instantly alert.
"Too many for coincidence. Patrol from Checkpoint Delta had to burn through half a tank of fuel backing off a swarm near the collapsed rail line. Said they saw stalkers. Dozens. Fast ones."
Mom didn't respond right away. When she did, it was with the kind of calm that meant she was worried. "And the runners?"
"More than usual. Reports from the south fence talk about some kind of mutated runners, they call them howlers, infected that don't stop moving, even when you shoot them. All the while howling like some nightmarish beasts.."
A moment passed. Then mother muttered, "Mutations."
Tomas grunted. "Or someone's stirring up the nest. Could be Fireflies. Could be those smugglers again. Drawing them off routes. Creating gaps."
Then came something I hadn't expected: fear. Not in the words, but in the breath dad let out. "There was a firefight out past the scrapyards. Not just infected. Raiders. At least one group scavenging hard out there. They clashed with a FEDRA recon team."
"Casualties?" Elena asked.
"Three dead. One missing. All ours."
More silence. A heavier kind.
I imagined them both standing now, staring at the cheap kitchen map like it had answers. That map had always been there, faded lines, thumbtacks for sectors, frayed edges. My dad updated it sometimes with string and little bits of chalk. Mostly to feel in control.
"The city's getting restless," Tomas said quietly. "People are hearing rumours. Someone claimed they saw fire in the distance last night. Real fire, like someone set up a camp or torched a building, probably in one of the fallen skyscrapers. I don't know."
Mom made a sound, low and sceptical, but she didn't dismiss it.
Then she asked the question I didn't want her to ask:
"What about inside?"
Dad took a breath. "Inside the QZ? Nothing confirmed. But more runners. More black-market chatter. Someone sold four military-grade filters in Sector 5 last week. No idea where they came from."
Mom exhaled sharply. "That's not nothing."
"No," dad said. "It's not."
They went quiet again, and for a moment I thought the conversation was over. But then mom spoke, softer than before: "We can't control what happens out there. But in here... we can't afford surprises."
Dad didn't answer.
But I didn't need him to.
Neither did she.
Another silence.
"...and the kid?" my mom asked suddenly.
That snapped my spine a little straighter.
Tomas sighed. "He's not involved."
"He's always sneaking off. You notice that?"
"He's eleven. He's restless."
"He's smart. Too smart."
A longer pause. I pictured dad rubbing his temples. He did that a lot.
"He's a good kid," my father said.
"He's our kid," mother corrected. "Which means if something goes wrong, they don't ask him first."
I sat frozen. Not because I was scared, but because that last sentence was true. If FEDRA suspected anything, if they even smelled an infraction, they wouldn't start with me. They'd pressure my parents. Especially mother.
Especially the one who worked comms and was expected to be loyal above all.
Dad grunted something noncommittal, then the conversation shifted. Less intense. Talk of ration deliveries. A busted loading drone. Things that didn't matter right now.
I leaned back from the vent, heart thudding, thoughts spinning.
The smugglers. The return. The barter.
I didn't know if it that pair my parents were worried about, older guy, quiet, and a younger woman who sounded like she'd bite you for sneezing, but I knew one thing for sure:
They were paying attention. Which meant I had to be more careful.
More careful about who saw me leave the apartment. About what crates we sold. About what routes we used. One wrong move and it wouldn't be Robert I had to worry about. It'd be Elena Reyes. FEDRA Technician. Mother. Patriot.
The game was getting bigger.
And I needed to be smarter.
Tomorrow, I'd start planning the next summon batch. Quietly. Carefully. Because one thing was now crystal clear:
This city was not asleep.
And neither was I.
I didn't sleep right away. Not just because of what I heard, though that was plenty but because my brain had already gone full strategist mode.
Every creak of the floorboards overhead, every distant clang of a pipe made me rethink the schedule. Routes. Timing. People. Especially people.
By the time I cracked my eyes open again, the sky through my tiny bedroom window had turned that weird gray-blue mix that meant it was either too late or too early to fix your life. I blinked. Turned over. Stared at the chipped ceiling.
Next summons.
I had one token. Another batch of people maybe? Or just 1 maybe 2, good thing 1 of them is guaranteed combat specialist.
I had to be smart this time. The warehouse was reaching capacity in more ways than just physical space. I needed more hands, yeah, but not more mouths unless I could secure more food. And water. And tools.
Plus, I still had to handle the fact that Lia was getting more aware of how the whole operation was shifting from "strange" to "structured." Rusty was adaptable. Joe was… Joe. But Lia? She was starting to notice things. Subtle things. Too many patterns for it to be pure luck.
So the cover story would have to deepen.
They were refugees. Smuggled in. Grateful but cautious. The kinds of people who knew better than to ask too many questions.
Same as always.
I thought about the summon token that was pulsing in my system.
It wasn't fear. It was… calculation. Not every summon was a good one. They didn't all match what I needed. Some were paranoid. Some talked too much. Some didn't talk at all. And one, specifically, had gifted me a knife with my initials carved in the handle.
Still hadn't figured out how I felt about that.
The menus flickered into view, clean and cold as always. One notification still hung at the edge of the screen from earlier, the one where I got the 2nd token where I got the unfortunate 5.
Sort of.
Tasha still smiled like a scalpel and made Lia visibly twitchy. Donny kept flinching at shadows and probably hadn't slept in three days. Kev had turned one corner of the warehouse into what could either be a maintenance bench or a death trap depending on how you flipped the switch.
Still, there was movement. Progress. The place was becoming a real operation.
Now I had one more token. I'd save it. No rush. Not until I could get a few more sealed crates open and stockpile actual supplies.
I opened the Relationship Menu to review. It had changed a lot since the beginning. Color-coded lines now extended from my icon to eight others. Each one labeled. Ranked. Monitored.
Most were stable.
Rusty: Loyal – PracticalLia: Trusting – WatchfulJoe: Unranked – CuriousKev: Supportive – GruffMarta: Wary – QuietDonny: Nervous – CommittedElsie: Neutral – TiredTasha: LOYAL – (UNSTABLE?)
That last one still bothered me.
Not because I was scared.
But because I didn't know what she wanted.
Lia had noticed too. She hadn't said anything, not out loud, but I'd seen the way her gaze sharpened whenever Tasha hovered too close to me. Or how she subtly placed herself between us if they were both in the same room. No accusations. No drama. Just… presence.
Maybe its a glitch from the system? Wouldn't be surprising considering the bastard who gave it to me 11 years late. Stupid fuck.
I leaned back in the chair, exhaled.
What I needed now wasn't more chaos. It was resources.
That meant cracking crates. Upgrading the toolset. Finishing the fusebox project Kev and Rusty had started. And, maybe most importantly, keeping Joe from wandering too close to the "red crates." He'd started showing up more often now, muttering stories about old-world secrets, eyes scanning the walls like they still whispered to him.
The problem? Sometimes, the stories made sense.
Like the one about the door.
The welded door.
The one no one touched anymore. Not after the clicker.
Not after Donny's little accident where he politely knocked on the welded door, and the occupant responded.
That door still stood. Still rattled faintly at night.
And I still hadn't figured out what was on the other side, definitely 1 clicker with, but I dont know if its just one or a whole swarm with bunch of bloaters.
Tomorrow, I'd check the seals again.
For now, I closed the interface, pulled the blanket over my head, and let the city hum quietly outside the window.
Boston didn't sleep.
Neither did I.