Chapter 11

Sera Westbrook's POV

Tonight's dinner was unusually lavish. The folding table had been fully extended and completely covered, and there still wasn't quite enough room. After all, we'd just scavenged a large warehouse-style supermarket and hauled supplies off two trucks: cans, vacuum-packed dehydrated vegetables, compressed ration bars, and even a few bottles of liquor that had never been contaminated by spores, all piled on the table. Two unopened crates were shoved under the table legs too—there was everything you could want.

The warm yellow light made the dinner table feel especially cozy. Steam rose from the soup pot, and a layer of moisture had condensed on the metal ceiling.

Sequencers burn through energy fast—they need several times the calories of an ordinary person. And with the recent drop in vegetables on the top deck and shrinking food stores, we hadn't been eating much these past few days. Tonight, with supplies finally plentiful, we could eat our fill at last.

Cole had a big appetite. He ate three portions and licked his plate clean. Jax ate while stuffing compressed biscuits into the pockets of his work clothes until they bulged.

Vera tapped the edge of the table with her fork. "Slow down. At this rate, a month's rations will be gone in a week."

Jax, mouth full, mumbled, "Don't worry. We've got Sera. With her around, we've got no obstacles."

I had no objection to that. After all, I really was strong.

I didn't know why my ability was so outstanding, and I didn't know what I'd been through in the past. I only knew that when I came back to my senses, I could suddenly use abilities—and only later did I learn that I had become a Sequencer.

Just then, Dorian set down his utensils, wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin, and said, "Sera is strong, yes, but don't over-rely on her."

Jax stopped chewing, a small crumb still at the corner of his mouth, looking a little lost. "Why?"

Dorian said, "Her GCI is too high. It needs to be kept stable. The moment a Sequencer uses an ability, their GCI fluctuates. Once GCI goes out of control, the Sequencer goes mad and loses their reason. You don't want Sera to go completely insane, do you?"

With that, he brought up a projection. Several figures appeared on the screen—the grades of the Eroded.

Grade D had no self-awareness at all, reacting only to sound, causing limited damage, and having no crystal inside. Grade C had begun making instinct-level judgments—it would take detours, set ambushes—and carried a crystal core inside. Grade B had the intelligence of a ten-year-old child, knew to put obstacles between itself and guns, knew when to retreat, and its crystal core was of higher quality, making it the main source of inhibitor. Grade A was the final form, superior to all other grades in every metric, and each Grade A carried a high-purity crystal core, but they were extremely rare.

The Eroded accelerated the condensation of crystal cores and their rise in grade by devouring their own kind, devouring high-concentration spores, and devouring the corpses of Sequencers. Corpses on the battlefield were never just corpses—they were experience packs that could be leveled up.

Crystal cores had special properties. They were also the only base material for extracting GCI inhibitors. The inhibitor production process had always been a mystery—only the Combine held the process and the formula. In today's wasteland world, among Sequencers, inhibitors were the true hard currency.

Vera asked, "How long will our current inhibitors last?"

Dorian shook his head. "Not long. I've worked out an extraction method and it's in testing now. If we can produce a usable inhibitor, we'll be able to make our own."

Dorian's ability was called plant extraction—as the name suggested, he was very good at extracting medical compounds.

Dorian looked at me. "Sera's situation is special… so we need higher-grade crystal cores."

The grade levels of ordinary Sequencers were all based on GCI range. If the number was too low, the sequence couldn't be activated and abilities couldn't be used at all; if it was too high, the state would become unstable and could collapse at any moment. Only a number between the two was optimal, so everyone preferred to keep their numbers stable, and demand for inhibitors kept rising. But my number was too high—I needed more and better inhibitors.

95%. I didn't belong in those grades at all. Those grades were set for ordinary people, and I was long since nothing like ordinary. Even treatment couldn't follow the standard procedure: standard doses didn't work on me, conventional judgments failed on me, and even the old saying that "pain makes her stop" didn't apply to me.

Dorian said, "So we have to decide our next move early and get more crystal cores." Then he looked at me. "And you need to restrain your abilities. We want you to use them healthily, not drain your body dry."

Hearing that, I felt a mix of emotions. I seemed to recall something from a long time ago, but what exactly it was, I couldn't remember no matter how hard I tried.

"Mm, I know. I'll take good care of myself." I understood the condition of this body better than anyone. I knew restraint was the only way I'd survive.

Kyle didn't look at me. He set his cup on the table and said, "Then let's go with Dorian's plan."

With that, the conversation turned to another topic. The somewhat heavy atmosphere livened up again, and Vera turned to Jax and started chatting with him, asking how the biscuits tasted.

After dinner, we moved to the command room. Kyle spread a three-dimensional map of the West Coast ruins across the entire wall. The red areas were ash-spore forests, the blue areas were the landing zones of deep-sea mutants, and the green areas were the scattered points between the two blue lines.

Kyle tapped his knuckle on the wreckage of a supply station. "Barring any surprises, there should be some uncontaminated supplies left there, but the odds aren't good. Want to go take a look?"

Taylor nodded, and Jax said bluntly, "Of course. Free is free."

Then Kyle began assigning tasks. Taylor's job was to push the drone swarm's reconnaissance radius as far as possible, fly them as far as they could go, and not feel guilty about losses. Jax's job was to dig up all the survivor frequencies recorded over the past few months, including fragments, and note the speaker's location, time, and accent. Dorian's job was to tally how many inhibitors each person used every day and give him the exact numbers before the next morning.

On the map, a thin dotted line pointed toward the Rocky Mountains, cutting across the blank area on the latter half of the map. No one spoke, but everyone understood what that line represented—it was the road we would eventually have to take.

I looked down at the wristband on my arm. 95%. Everything normal.

"Since you can't use your ability." Kyle pushed a knife and a gun in front of me. "Then use these from now on."

I picked up a rifle and tried it out. It felt good in my hands. "Okay."