Chapter 74: The Voice Wasn’t Elena

The walkie-talkie kept hissing in the shelter, a thin ugly sound that didn’t belong with the blankets and the sleeping bags.

Krrrzzzt.

Ethan held the transmit button down. He already knew the voice. Dr. Elena Vance. The cut had been too clean. One second she was there. The next, the city had swallowed her.

He waited. A few seconds. A minute. The room went strange with quiet. Maya and Lana had stopped their whispering. They watched his face, then drifted behind Penny and peered around her arm like the radio might bite. Sasha sat with her bat across her knees and didn’t fill the silence.

Five minutes crawled.

Then the crackle came back.

"Ethan... can you hear me?"

He straightened so fast the chair leg scraped. "Elena."

Her voice was thin. Uneven. He could hear the breath in it, hard, like she’d been running and hadn’t been allowed to stop.

"I hear you. Where are you? What happened?"

"Willow Creek." Another breath. "Building Three. East side of the Museum." The words dropped to a whisper. "A flying Mutant Wolf marked me. I burned too much of the ability. I’m empty. Closet. Twentieth floor."

His face hardened. "Is it still there?"

"I think so."

Something scraped on her end. Wall. Claw. She stopped breathing into the mic.

"It’s still in the building."

"Don’t move." He was already on his feet. "Stay in the closet. Don’t make a sound. I’m coming."

"Ethan, you don’t— the wolf—"

"Which room?"

A pause. Then, very small: "Unit Three. Room 2001. Closet door is green. You’ll see it when you come in."

The line died.

Krrrzzzt.

"Elena?"

Nothing.

"Elena, answer me."

Static. His jaw set. He shoved the radio into his pocket and pulled the phone. Willow Creek sat about 1.8 kilometers from the library. On an old morning that was a walk. Now it was a question the streets got to answer.

Museum ground was thick with mutants. He looked at Penny.

"I have to go."

He took the gray Core out of storage and held it out. "This is yours."

She stared at it. "For me?"

"Absorb it."

Her fingers closed slowly. She hadn’t expected the weight of it. "You just got back."

"And I’m leaving." A shrug that didn’t match his eyes. "You’ll need the strength while I’m gone."

She looked down at the Core. Something warm moved across her face, surprise first, then a hope she tried not to show. She swallowed it.

Heat hit her. Her shoulders locked. A faint white glow ran under her skin, quick, like light caught in water.

The system spoke.

[Gifted: Gray Core. Female target. Beauty Score 87. Growth Potential.]

[Base Return: 65x.]

[Emotional fluctuation: Surprise. Expectation.]

[Super-High Bonus Drop.]

[Return: Daily Teleportation increased to 10. Single jump increased to 500 meters. Spatial Cut increased to 20.]

[Penny Eira’s Flight upgraded.]

[New Skill: Light Blade. While flying, condense a 0.5-meter blade of light. Cuts ordinary steel. Cooldown: 7 days.]

Ethan went still.

Beauty Score 87. Base Return 65. He looked at Penny, then at the empty air where the notice had been.

"What the hell."

Her score had climbed. The return had climbed with it. No ceremony. No reason he could point at except the one in front of him. She’d been eating. The change wasn’t dramatic, but it was there — softer in the face, fuller through the chest and hips than the thin, scared woman he’d first pulled out of the dark.

He rubbed his jaw. Damn. The system really did keep a ledger on figures.

Sasha, from the bunk, gave him a look that said she’d heard the thought even if he hadn’t said it. He ignored her. The numbers in his own body were louder. Ten teleports. Five hundred meters. Twenty cuts. An ordinary gray Core had just pried his Space ability open another notch.

Penny was staring at her hands. Behind her, the wings unfolded.

They weren’t only clear anymore. A thin white edge traced them, bright enough to throw a little light on the concrete. Her eyes went wide. She beat them once, instinct, and a streak of white snapped into being in front of her.

Whoosh.

The blade was half a meter of hard light. It took the corner off a wooden table and kept going until it died against the far wall. The severed piece slid, hit the floor, and rocked.

Penny stared at the cut. Then at him.

"I can fight."

Excitement. Under it, something hungrier. She had never had a real way to hit back. Now the air in front of her could be a knife.

"Good."

Her smile broke wide. She spread the wings again when she thought he wasn’t looking, pleased with the glow, with the proof. He was already moving. Food. Water. Medical. A weapon Penny could lift if the door failed. Enough to hold the shelter while he was gone. In the south corner he set a new Space Anchor, a door for the version of the night where he came back wrong.

He turned to Sasha. "Stay. Eyes on the kids."

"Don’t worry."

He started for the hidden entrance. Behind him, Penny’s whisper carried.

"Sasha, that Core — it had to be valuable. My ability jumped the second I took it."

She was trying for casual. She missed.

Sasha glanced at the wings Penny was failing to hide. The corner of her mouth moved. "Cute kid."

Ethan heard it from the door. He smiled despite himself. Penny was happy. For the next hour, that would have to be enough.

Dawn was only a rumor over the roofs when he reached the edge of Willow Creek. He kept to the walls. Alleys when he could get them. The open street was a bad idea with teeth. Zombies drifted between dead cars. Windows watched him from buildings that had no one left to do the watching. Now and then a bat shrieked over the tiles, close enough to change his pace, far enough to let him live.

The sword stayed in his hand.

At the western entrance, three Mutant Golden Snub-Nosed Monkeys sat on a streetlight like they owned the intersection. Ethan stopped in the shadow of a truck.

One of them had a rifle.

The biggest sat in the middle, thick arms easy on the weapon, head turning, scanning the road the way a sentry scans a road. Ethan stared.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

The monkey’s head swung his way. He stopped breathing. One step back. Then low, along a row of trash cans that had overflowed weeks ago and never been anyone’s problem again. The monkeys didn’t clock him. He didn’t give them a second look.

The 1.8 kilometers took nearly an hour.

Building Three rose on the east side of the Museum with its front doors open and its lobby already lost. Glass underfoot. Furniture dragged into a barricade that had failed — he could see where the claws had gone through it. He tightened his grip and went in.

The stairwell smelled of blood and old meat. Bones on the steps. Torn cloth among them. Someone had tried to make a stand here. The stairs had kept the bones and nothing else.

He climbed. One floor. Another. The higher he got, the quieter it became, until the quiet felt like a held breath.

Nineteenth.

CRASH.

The ceiling jumped. Dust sifted onto his shoulders. He stopped, sword up, eyes on the dark above him.

Another impact. Glass went. Something heavy hit a wall and the wall answered.

Elena.

He took the last flight at a run.

The twentieth-floor corridor was a wreck. Doors off their hinges. Plaster in chunks. Claw marks through the paint, high, too high for a thing that walked. At the end of the hall, Room 2001 stood with its door smashed inward, the frame splintered, the dark beyond it waiting.

He could hear breathing in there that wasn’t hers. Low. Wet. Close.