The mutated hound lay motionless in the dust, its crushed skull leaking thick black fluid onto the cracked asphalt.
Zarek stood over the carcass, chest heaving, air dragging through his throat. Sweat stung his eyes and mixed with the grime on his face. Black blood soaked his torn jumpsuit, most of it the dog’s, some of the red his own from the cuts along his ribs and shoulders.
His fingers were locked around the bent iron pipe, knuckles white.
In the middle of his vision, unaffected by the dust or his ragged breathing, a translucent black panel hung in the air.
[Investment System binding complete.]
His eyes swept the area. The streetlights stayed dead, and the ruined buildings across the road showed no sign of life. No booming voice came down from the clouds, and no power surged through his veins to close the cut on his ribs. Just a floating panel.
He reached out a blood-smeared hand. His fingers went straight through the light and closed on warm air. He focused on the text and willed it to close, and it vanished. He took a short breath, thought about it, and it snapped back.
A breathy laugh escaped him.
"So you’re actually real."
He wiped his face with his sleeve, shifted his grip on the pipe, and looked straight at the text.
"What can you do?" His voice came out low and raspy.
[Investment-related functions are available.]
"Investment in what?"
[Qualified individuals.]
"What do I invest?"
[Any resource possessing recognized value.]
Zarek tilted his head. "Money?"
[Yes.]
"Food?"
[Yes.]
"Weapons?"
[Yes.]
"Knowledge?"
[Yes.]
"Training?"
[Yes.]
"Protection?"
[Yes.]
The answers came back instantly, cold and exact. His grip on the pipe loosened.
"What do I get out of it?"
[Return is generated from the achievement produced by the investment.]
Zarek stopped. He turned the phrasing over in his head like a butcher sizing up a slab of meat. He needed a concrete case.
"If I give someone a knife and they kill a monster?"
[Return is calculated according to the resulting achievement.]
"If I teach someone how to use a sword, and they become a master?"
[Greater achievement produces greater return.]
Then it clicked. He wasn’t getting his investment back. He was getting paid for what the investment turned into. It wasn’t handing him strength for free, and it wasn’t asking him to grind monsters until his arms fell off. It was a multiplier.
He looked down the street at the burning skyline: the collapsing high-rises, the distant fires, thousands of survivors running around right now, frightened or capable or brilliant or useless. Soldiers, doctors, fighters, engineers. It didn’t look like an apocalypse anymore. It looked like a city full of opportunities.
And if the return depended on what the other person achieved, then how much he put in mattered a lot less than who he put it in.
"Can I invest in anyone?"
[No.]
He raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
[Investment requires an established Bond.]
"How do I establish one?"
[Intimate relationship.]
Zarek stared at the words. A chuckle rattled in his chest.
"That’s convenient."
He tapped his chin with a dirty finger. "Does the bond last forever?"
[Bond remains active unless conditions for termination are met.]
"How many people can I bond with?"
[Current Bond Slots: 0/3.]
Three. Limited slots. He couldn’t just throw investments at every panicking civilian he dragged out of a gutter.
"Can I increase that?"
[Yes.]
"How?"
[A Bonded Partner reaching 100 Favorability unlocks an additional Bond Slot.]
Zarek nodded slowly. Favorability. Probably a measure of how much they liked having him around. Max out one asset, and you got room for the next.
"One more thing." He stepped over the dead hound and started toward the road. "How do I know who’s worth investing in? I’m not wasting a slot on trash."
[Potential Assessment.]
"What does that measure?"
[Potential represents an individual’s capacity for growth and achievement.]
"Does it scan everyone automatically?"
[High-potential individuals within range are flagged automatically. Full assessment must be requested.]
"So you flag the good ones, and I ask for a closer look when I want one."
[Correct.]
Zarek grinned. It wasn’t going to hold his hand, and it wasn’t going to tell him what to do with whoever it flagged. It was an instrument, cold and efficient, waiting for him to play it. But it would at least tell him where the good stuff was.
He walked on down the avenue. The wind carried the stink of scorched rubber and copper-heavy blood.
No food, no clean water, no shelter. One bent iron pipe, and no idea what had blown the city apart. Three open slots, but signing up the first screaming person he found would be a fool’s move. Food and a weapon that wouldn’t bend came first. Then information. Then someone worth the slot, then the Bond, then milk the returns.
He didn’t need an army commander, either. A starving street fighter given a solid blade and some training could pay out huge if she had the growth in her. A top surgeon, kept alive through the worst of it, could be worth even more. He just needed the right raw material.
He knew this district. Two blocks east was the commercial zone: luxury hotels, restaurants, pharmacies, underground shopping. That was where people would hoard supplies, and where the first organized groups would try to barricade themselves.
He kept his steps light and his eyes on the shattered storefronts. Up ahead, a man dragging a suitcase was cut down by something leaping from an upper window. Zarek didn’t slow down. A woman behind a locked glass door was screaming for someone to open it. He kept walking. The panel stayed blank for all of them.
He wasn’t looking at people as victims. He was taking inventory. Who panicked? Who froze? Who went looking for a weapon? Who used someone else as a shield?
A hundred yards ahead, a five-star hotel towered over the intersection. Half of the grand entrance had caved in, and broken glass covered the driveway like fallen snow. The bottom three floors were pitch black, but a light flickered on and off in a broken window on the fourth.
Then a woman screamed, sharp and terrified, followed by the slam of wood and a heavy thud. Then nothing.
Zarek stopped beside an overturned SUV.
He could skip the hotel, work the convenience stores, and pick up rations without risk. That was the safe play. He looked at the dark lobby, then down at the pipe in his hand.
"Looks like someone’s still alive in there."
[High-potential individual detected.]
Zarek stopped.
A slow grin spread across his face.
So the system had finally found something worth noticing.
He didn’t request an assessment. Not yet. First, he wanted to see what had caught its attention.
Zarek rolled his shoulders and cut across the street toward the entrance.