Chapter 76: She Ran

The stairwell smelled like wet iron and something already dead.

Elena ran anyway.

Twentieth floor was a rumor above her. The wolf was not. She heard the wings before she saw them, a wet slap of feather and membrane against concrete, and she took the next flight two steps at a time because stopping was a kind of dying. The white coat flared behind her. Under it the tank had ridden up, and every stride pulled the fabric tight across her chest. Her breasts were full, heavy, and they moved with the run ~ a deep bounce that dragged the neckline low, the soft weight of them shifting, slapping lightly against each other when her boots hit the landing. Sweat slicked the inner curves. The coat did nothing to hide it.

She hit the turn and the momentum dropped into her hips. The scrubs were too thin for this. They clung. Her ass rolled with each step, round and high, the cheeks flexing and bouncing as she drove upward, the seam pulling between them. A claw screamed off the rail behind her. She didn’t look back. Looking back was how people became stories.

Room 2001. Green door. She got the closet shut with both hands and slid down the inside of it, chest heaving, breasts rising hard against the damp cotton, thighs burning. The walkie-talkie shook in her fist.

"Ethan..."

Then the crash. Then nothing.

6:00 a.m.

Inside the Survival Space the only sounds were the ventilation and water moving somewhere in the dark.

Ethan opened his eyes and didn’t move. His head felt packed with sand. The factory came back first. Then the vipers. The venom, thick and wrong in his blood. Elena’s hands. And the decision she had made while he could barely keep a thought in his skull.

He turned his head.

She sat beside the bed with a blanket wrapped from her shoulders down. Her hair had come undone. Shadows lived under her eyes. Exhausted. The second she saw he was awake, the exhaustion lost.

"Ethan?" She leaned in. "You’re awake."

She started to stand. The blanket slipped off one shoulder. She froze. Her eyes dropped. For a second she forgot the reaching. Then her face went bright red.

"Ah!"

She spun, snatched clothes off the floor, and fought the blanket like it had betrayed her.

Ethan looked down. He was naked too. He rubbed his forehead. Right. That happened.

He flexed his fingers. No pain. The shoulder that had been opened by the wolf was whole. The venom weakness was gone. Hours ago he had been on the edge of the dark. Now his body felt like the fight had happened to someone else.

He glanced at her. She was struggling with the clasp of her bra, shoulders stiff, the line of her back bare, the blanket caught at her hips so the full curve of her ass showed for a breath before she yanked the cloth up. He looked away. The room was already awkward enough.

He opened the system.

[Target: Dr. Elena Vance]

[Beauty Score: 94]

[Rarity: 99]

[High Bonus Drop disabled.]

[Base Return: 80x.]

[Cooldown unchanged.]

So it had registered. Then the next line hit.

[Ding! Deep fusion detected between the host and the SS-Rank Extreme Ice Flame Ability!]

His face changed.

[Ding! SSS-Rank Space Ability, SSS-Rank Gravity Control, and SSS-Rank Water Vapor Purification are beginning fusion.]

Pressure moved through him. Not pain. Something deeper, torn down and built in the same breath. Energy climbed his spine. The Survival Space shuddered.

[Ding! SSS-Rank Gravity Control fusion complete.]

[Ding! SSS-Rank Water Vapor Purification fusion complete.]

[Ding! SSS-Rank Space Ability fusion complete.]

The dark rippled harder. He shoved himself upright. "What the hell?"

A rectangle formed in the air several meters off. Transparent. Like a window someone had forgotten to hang on a wall. Then the picture changed, and the ruined world outside the Space sat in it, real-time, shifting when he turned his head. A full circle. Eyes he didn’t have to risk a door to use.

[One Space Anchor Point has been added.]

[Current Space Anchor Points: 2.]

[Each Space Anchor Point can only be used once every 24 hours.]

[Ding! Fusion complete!]

[Survival Space expanded to 5,000 cubic meters.]

Five thousand. He went quiet. This wasn’t a pocket anymore. With work, it could be a place people lived.

In the corner, the old pool was gone. A pond sat there instead, about a hundred square meters, clear enough that he could see the stones on the bottom. He crouched and put a hand to the surface. Cold. Clean. Almost peaceful, which felt like a lie after the month they’d had.

[New Function Unlocked: Sun and Moon Radiance Simulation.]

[The simulated day-night cycle will synchronize with the outside world.]

He looked up. Nothing. Then a faint orange gathered overhead and thickened into gold. It walked across the walls, the soil, the pond. For the first time, the Space felt like morning.

"There’s sunlight."

He smiled before he meant to. Before the end, nobody priced a sunrise. Now sunlight was food. Plants. Oxygen. A chance to stop begging the outside world for every breath.

[Water quality: Suitable for direct consumption.]

The water problem, for the moment, was done.

[Environment: External oxygen supply required.]

[Storing twenty-four hours of air at once can provide sufficient oxygen for one person for twenty-four hours.]

[If 100 square meters of one-meter-high green trees are successfully cultivated within the Survival Space, an autonomous ecological cycle can be established.]

[Air can then be purified autonomously.]

[Oxygen can become self-sufficient.]

He let the breath out slow. That was the real door. Until now the Space had a leash: fuel, generators, noise, the endless hunt for diesel. Trees under this light could cut the leash. Rose’s S-Rank Plant Growth was built for exactly this. Once she was inside, the work could start.

Electricity next. Solar panels, if the city hadn’t already eaten them. He had lasted this long. He would find them.

The next expansion would be worse. Two new SSS-Rank abilities. Another deep fusion with a woman he had never been with. Harder. He had come this far. He would find the shape of it.

"Ethan."

He turned. She was dressed. Hands clasped. The relief had drained out of her face and left nerves behind.

He understood. "I know."

"You do?"

"You did it to save me."

Her eyes widened. "How did you know?"

"I can’t think of another reason you’d do that."

Color climbed her cheeks. She looked at the pond, not at him. The silence sat. Then she spoke, quiet.

"When I woke up, you were on the ground. Covered in blood. You could barely breathe." Her fingers tightened. "I’ve treated people on the edge. I’ve watched the edge take them. Seeing you like that..." She swallowed. "I was scared."

The word cost her. "I remembered the other times. When you were hurt badly, you came back faster if the right conditions were in here. So I thought maybe it would help again. I didn’t know if it would work." She looked up. "I couldn’t sit there and watch you die."

The Space hummed. Gold light moved on the water.

"I didn’t expect it to work," she said. "But when I woke up, the injuries were gone."

She raised her hand. Blue flame licked her palm. The air dropped. Frost crawled her wrist, then stretched, and a spear half a meter long took shape ~ translucent ice, blue fire running the length of it without heat. The cold off it was the kind that lived in bone. Patterns of frost mapped the shaft.

"My Ice Flame is stronger."

He could feel it from where he stood. Denser. Three times, easy. That spear would punch scale on most mutant animals. She let it go. The ice broke into sparks of light and died.

His own body was whole. Energy sat at the top again. Gravity Control was gone. Water Vapor Purification was gone with it. He frowned. Ray’s liquor came back, the poison sliding under the burn. He would not be drinking anything he hadn’t watched poured. Still worth it. The Space had jumped a year in a night.

"Your brother and sister-in-law."

Her face changed at once. "They’re still at the Museum."

"When I got back to the center I went straight there. There used to be an indoor zoo beside it. The animals mutated. The whole area is crawling now. Getting through is almost impossible."

"The people inside?"

"I don’t know." Her voice cracked on it. "That’s the problem. Anyone in can’t get out. Anyone who tries to enter gets hit." She breathed. "I spent days looking for you. I kept thinking you were somewhere in the city. I couldn’t find you. So I went back for them myself." Her eyes hardened. "That’s when the wolf found me."

He remembered the thing. The wing. The eye. "I understand." He stood. "After we eat, we head back. Once it’s dark, we go into the Museum."

She stared. "You know what that ground is."

"I do."

"That wolf nearly killed me."

"That’s why we go at night."

She was quiet. Then she nodded. "Okay."

They ate without wasting the hour. The Museum was kilometers off, and he wanted the light still up when they reached the edge, so they could watch the approaches before the dark took the streets.

He triggered an Anchor.

Space twisted. The pond, the gold, the quiet ~ all of it smeared.

The air-raid shelter snapped into place around them.

Elena caught her balance. Then she stopped.

In the corner, a little girl sat on the floor with crayons scattered around her, drawing on a scrap of paper like the world outside the concrete had agreed to wait.

Elena’s lips parted.

"Lana..."

The girl looked up.