Chapter 2

Sera Westbrook's POV

When I woke again, the vehicle had already rolled onto its side. Because I can't feel pain, I hadn't noticed in time.

I broke the window and climbed out, standing under the streetlight at the corner.

There seemed to have been an earthquake nearby—floors swaying and cracking, dust hanging in the air.

I checked my limbs and chest, back and forth. No injuries—at least no external ones. The wristband read: GCI 95.2%, heart rate 41.

GCI—Genetic Collapse Index. It's the number that records how far every survivor is from turning into a monster. Contact with spores, using abilities, or getting injured all raise it. Above 80% you get shot or driven out. At 100% you become a mutant completely. I'm at 95% now—only five points from the critical value. But it's fine, because my number has always been very stable, always hovering around 95%, so there's nothing to worry about.

Every shop on this street had its roller shutter welded shut, the seams rough and black, locked from the inside, wire stuffed into the gaps, the paper seals on the doorframes crumbling at a touch. I tried more than a dozen of them, walked two blocks—no exceptions.

I worked a length of rebar under an iron mesh and tried to pry it up. The rebar bent; the mesh didn't move at all. Whoever sealed these doors had no intention of coming back out, and no intention of letting anyone in.

I gave up trying to open the doors and kept going up. In this half-collapsed commercial building, one outdoor walkway still remained on the second floor, its columns poured concrete, the feet fixed firmly into the load-bearing wall.

I climbed up, sat with my back against the innermost column, and set the pack on my knees. From there I could see half the street, about four meters above the ground.

Suddenly, a few points of light appeared in the distance, then lit up again a few seconds later.

It didn't look like a distress signal—more like surveillance, or someone passing information.

I watched warily. Sure enough, before long a beam of light landed on me, and I moved behind the column in a flash.

I shifted the pack to my side and put my hand on the knife handle at the back of my waist. Someone was watching me, and had been watching for a while. My position was compromised. I was no longer safe here.

The wristband buzzed: 21:00 physical check. A reminder I'd set myself, every two hours, short and quiet so it wouldn't draw attention. I checked myself briefly—nothing but scrapes from climbing out of the vehicle.

I had no choice. I can't feel pain now, so the only way is to check myself regularly and avoid getting seriously injured without knowing it.

The panel still showed the same three numbers: GCI 95.2%, heart rate 41, body temperature low.

The light across the street flashed again—long, short, long, short, like something reporting to someone. A street's width lay between us. He wouldn't come over, and I didn't want to give myself away. We were both waiting for the other to move first.

Suddenly, the whole building began to shake violently. The walkway broke in the middle, and I fell with the break. When I got up, my first reaction was to check my wristband and my condition: GCI 95.4%. I didn't know what that fall had injured. Shoulder, back, ribs—I pressed them one by one, and nothing felt different.

At the same time, the light on the roof across the street went out too. Maybe something had happened to him. Either way, I seemed to be safe for the time being.

After the earthquake and aftershocks, the street was in complete chaos: the Eroded had stopped, the mutated dogs had stopped, and people and monsters alike were running in the same direction, no longer attacking each other. Then the rumble came from underground, low, climbing up through the soles of my feet and into the bone. I walked along the wall, off the center line where the crowd ran. Inside the buildings, screams rose in waves, and glass fell in sheets.

At the third intersection, I saw a piece of rebar flying straight at the head of the woman ahead of me. I caught her arm and pulled her aside; the rebar hit where she had been standing, bounced, and buried itself in the car beside her. Her face went white as paper. She grabbed my sleeve and got half a "thank you" out before her eyes slid down my arm and landed on my wrist.

The wristband was still lit, screen facing out. She saw the number.

"95%—" Her voice cut off. Her hand came off my sleeve and she backed away. "95%? That's not a normal number—don't come near me! Don't come near me!"

She started shouting that someone had gone crazy, shouting for help, loud enough to carry the length of the street.

For an ordinary person, 95% really is a hard number to accept.

I stood where I was and did not move, and only sighed quietly. She wasn't the only one on this street shouting for help tonight. She recognized my unusual identity. There was nothing I could do about it.

I stepped aside for the crowd pushing through behind me, caught her by the collar, hauled her up off the broken glass, and dragged her into a storefront whose doorframe was still standing. I put her against the load-bearing wall and told her to hold her head and keep away from the window. She nodded, shaking, her eyes never leaving my wrist. I let go and stepped back out, pulling the shutter down to half height—hopefully, it could keep those dangerous things out.

I had taken three steps when the second wave came.

The whole row of shops along the street folded inward like blocks. A precast slab came down; I turned my shoulder out of it, and the man behind me didn't, and the sound was very short and the smell of blood was sweet enough to cloy. The ground rolled sideways again, longer than the first time, brick grit raining down the back of my neck the whole while as the storefronts collapsed one after another. When it stopped, I looked up and saw the gray-white fluff drifting slowly down out of the sky—ash spores, thrown up from the woods outside the city by the shock and pouring into the district on the airflow. I pulled my collar over my mouth and nose and thought of the other thing at the same time: at sufficient density, a dust explosion was only a matter of time.

I turned the strap half a turn so the screen faced inward against my skin, walked two blocks north, and ducked under a collapsed connecting corridor. Board overhead, a drainage channel at my feet, half a wall at my back. I crouched and pulled my collar up higher to cover the band.

At 11:30 at night, the wristband on my sleeve buzzed: time for a physical check. I put my back to the wall, opened my jacket, and went through it quickly. Both sides of the ribs, pressed from the bottom up—no abnormality. Right shoulder lifted to chest height and stopped there—it would lift, not high.

There were people on the other side of the corridor—two men, crouched behind a broken wall, smoking.

I heard them talking.

The smoking man said, "The boss is in a foul mood tonight. The ones who supplied him with goods were almost completely wiped out."

The other man: "Wiped out how?"

The smoking man said, "Word is a woman killed them." He stubbed the cigarette out against the wall. "Even the people who used to come collect the supplies fled."

The other man said nothing, only clicked his tongue.

After a while the smoking man fished out another and lit it. "Though this city's been lively lately. Up north there's a new burr under everyone's saddle—a crew running around in an iron hulk, fast, hard to hit, like a rolling fortress."

The other man: "That formidable? So what does their leader look like?"

The smoking man said, "Haven't seen him. All I heard is the one in charge is young, black hair, doesn't say much, cold as ice. Name's something like—Reynolds." He said the name loosely, swallowing the rest of it.

I crouched under the corridor and didn't move.

Black hair, didn't say much, cold.

I seemed to know who he was—but the name sat right at the edge of my mouth and would not come out.

Could it be him?