Chapter 81: White Core, Black Eyes

Ethan’s eyes settled on Zara for a second longer than they needed to.

The system answered at once.

[Ding! Gift target detected.]

[Zara, 23.]

[Beauty Score: 90.]

His face did not change. Another eligible target. He put it away and said nothing. There would be time for that later.

She was twenty-three and still looked like the gym had made her: ponytail, sharp eyes, a fighter’s stance even with the rod hanging useless in her hand. The shirt clung where sweat had dried. Her chest was full under it, and when she shifted her weight the curve of her ass filled the worn pants, round and high, the kind of shape the apocalypse had not managed to take. Hunger had thinned her face. It had not thinned the rest.

Aria finished wrapping her waist. Blood had already spotted the gauze. "We can’t stay here." She looked toward the hallway. "The others downstairs will come up once they realize what happened."

Zara swallowed. "Then where do we go?" She glanced at the windows. Bats still cut the moon. "Outside is worse."

Aria looked at Ethan. Something almost pleading sat in her eyes. "Ethan." She stepped closer. "Can you take them with us?" She nodded at the women. "They’re good people. They helped me survive all this."

He thought about it. The Survival Space needed land cleared and planted. A hundred square meters of greenery was not going to keep itself. If the Space kept expanding, he would need hands that could work, guard, and maintain it. He nodded.

"I can take you."

Relief showed on more than one face.

"But there’s a condition." The women went quiet. "If you’re coming with me, you follow my rules."

Zara nodded at once. "We agree." She glanced at the others. "As long as we can survive, we’ll do whatever you need."

The rest nodded too.

Aria remembered something. "There are still supplies in the supermarket downstairs."

"How much?"

"Enough to matter." Her face went serious. "But the mutant crocodile is still there."

His eyes lit. "Take me to it."

They headed down. Aria led. Ethan followed, sword still wet. The other women stayed close together, rods in hand, none of them pretending they wanted to be first through a door.

On the fifth-floor stairwell, voices came up from below. Several people looked up. Then they saw Ethan. More than that, they saw the blood dripping off the blade. One man stared at the sword, then at the blood, then at his face. Nobody spoke. They turned and ran.

Ethan did not chase them. They had already understood.

By the time the group reached the first basement level, the Museum was silent. Aria pointed at a closed rolling shutter. "That’s it."

Something moved behind the metal. A low scrape. Then a wet crunch.

Everyone went still.

Ethan stepped closer. The shutter was half open. Behind it lay a mutant crocodile nearly five meters long. Scales dark green and black, thick enough to pass for armor. One side of the jaw was stained fresh red. A severed human arm hung from its mouth. The creature chewed, slow.

Crunch.

The sound walked the basement and came back.

Zara’s face went pale. "That’s..."

"The crocodile," Aria whispered. She tightened on her sword. "I’ll try."

Ethan looked at her. She had just woken the ability. This was the cleanest chance he was going to get to see what it actually did. "Go ahead."

She nodded and extended one hand. Vines crawled the concrete, silent, slow. One wrapped the tail. Then another. Then a third. The crocodile stopped chewing. Yellow eyes shifted back. Aria pulled. The vines cinched.

For one second it worked.

Then the crocodile roared. The sound shook dust off the shutter. Its body twisted, huge and sudden, and the vines snapped one after another, green whips flying. Aria’s eyes widened. The thing lunged. The jaws opened wide enough to take her whole.

"Aria!"

Zara screamed.

Aria got the sword up. She was not fast enough. The crocodile was already over her, the arm still hanging, the smell of blood and river mud filling the gap.

Ethan vanished.

A blur crossed the basement. He appeared above the skull. The sword came down, straight through the eye. Bone gave. The blade punched deep. The body convulsed, tail slamming the shutter hard enough to buckle it. The jaws snapped shut inches from Aria’s face, a wet crack of teeth on teeth, and then the enormous weight went limp.

Silence came back ugly.

Zara opened her eyes. She had squeezed them shut. Ethan was standing on the crocodile’s head. The sword was buried in the skull. Nobody spoke.

He pulled the blade free, crouched, and split the thick bone. Something glowed inside. A white Core. He picked it up and turned it in the emergency light.

"White."

His expression went thoughtful. Could this be a Space Ability Core? He remembered the white Core the Survival Space had swallowed on its own. He was not taking that chance again. He slipped it into his pocket. He would find out what it did later.

Then he looked past the corpse, into the dark aisles. "Let’s see what this thing was guarding."

The supermarket was almost untouched. Rows of shelves ran into the dark. Fresh food was long gone. Cans remained. Cases of bottled water. Toilet paper. Rice. Basic medicine. Cleaning supplies. Not enough to change the city. For a handful of survivors, enormous.

Ethan started collecting. One shelf at a time. Cans vanished. Water vanished. Boxes went into Temporary Storage without him lifting most of them. The women watched in stunned quiet. From where they stood, he was barely touching the stock. It simply stopped being there.

Zara stared. "Where is all that going?"

He did not answer. Aria already knew. The others did not. Their eyes followed every box that failed to stay on the shelf.

When he finished, the supermarket looked scraped. What they had taken would feed dozens of people for weeks. That was not even what hit the women hardest. They had just watched one man put a five-meter crocodile down with a single strike. Now he had taken a supermarket without carrying a box.

Zara stared at him. Something almost starstruck sat on her face. Ethan noticed. He pretended he had not.

They went back to the sixth floor. The women gathered what they could not leave. There was not much. A few clothes. Photographs. Small things the apocalypse had not yet priced. Ethan waited until they were ready, then opened the entrance to the Survival Space.

They stepped through one by one and stopped.

The air-raid shelter they had called safe was nothing next to this. Open ground. Clean air. Soil. Stores stacked where nothing with teeth could reach them. A quiet they had not felt since the first week.

Zara turned in a slow circle. "This..." She could not finish it.

Ethan watched their faces. He had seen the look before. People who had spent weeks in death, realizing there was a place to sleep. It always landed harder than the explanation.

Once they had settled, he went back to the Museum. He wanted the Space Anchor he had set in the air-raid shelter. He concentrated.

Nothing.

He frowned and tried again. Still nothing. The ability did not feel weak. It felt stopped.

"Huh?"

He looked around. Something was wrong. He pushed harder. Nothing answered. Then he felt it. A presence. Someone watching.

He raised his head, slow.

The Museum’s glass dome held the moon. At first he saw only glass. Then two eyes. Pitch black. Shining. The pupils were narrow and vertical.

His body went still.

The thing had been on the other side of the glass the whole time. It knew he had seen it. Something moved. A head came over the edge of the dome. Black scales. Two curved horns. Fresh blood at the corners of the mouth.

His grip tightened on the sword.

It leaned farther out. The eyes never left him. The mouth opened. Rows of fangs. No roar. No sound at all. The expression was still clear.

It was smiling.

Every instinct he had screamed. Whatever was on the dome was not a normal mutant. And it had already noticed him.