Grey morning light came through the blinds of Room 612 and lit up the dust hanging in the cold air. Outside, the ruined city was quiet except for an occasional metallic screech bouncing off the concrete towers.
Zarek opened his eyes.
He sat up on the edge of the mattress and set his bare feet on the carpet. Beside him, Elsa lay curled on her side with her face buried in the crook of her elbow, his oversized shirt twisted around her. Her breathing was thin and shallow, and she shivered now and then under the blanket he had thrown over her hours earlier.The skin under her eyes was bruised dark. Whatever strength had carried her through last night was gone.
He nudged her hip.
"Get up."
Elsa’s eyes flew open. She scrambled back against the headboard with the blanket clutched to her chest, and the night came back into her face all at once, draining what colour she had left.
Zarek ignored it. He reached into his bag, took out a canned meat ration and an unopened bottle of water, and tossed them onto the bed between her knees.
"Eat."
She looked at the tin, then at him. Her tongue moved over her cracked lips. "Why?" Her voice barely worked.
He looked at her like it was the stupidest question he’d ever heard. "Because you’re starving. And an asset that dies from starvation is a piece of meat."
She hesitated. Her fingers twitched on the blanket. Then he popped the pull-tab, and the smell reached her.
She grabbed the tin.
At first she ate carefully, scraping small bites out with her fingers and keeping her eyes on him. Within seconds the hunger won. She shoved the food into her mouth, chewed frantically, and swallowed hard before gulping the water, which ran down her chin and into the collar of the shirt.
Zarek watched with his chin on his hand. He wasn’t watching her eat. He was watching the color come back into her cheeks, her breathing settle, the shake in her hands fade.
So this counts too.
He turned his attention inward, and the black panel opened in his vision.
Register Investment.
[Investment Registered.]
[Target: Elsa]
[Investment: Basic Sustenance (Food & Water)]
[Investment Value: Low]
Low. His eyebrow went up. He’d expected it. A tin of meat and half a bottle of water weren’t worth much to anyone.
He waited for something else, but the panel stayed still. No stat boost, no free weapon, nothing.
So the investment wasn’t the return. The system wasn’t going to pay him for handing over supplies. She had to do something with them, and the return came from that.
He dismissed the panel. Elsa was scraping the inside of the tin with her thumb.
"Then let’s see what this meal buys me," he muttered.
"What?" Her voice was clearer now, still guarded.
"Nothing you need to worry about." He stood and picked up the iron pipe from the corner. "Get up. We’re leaving."
She swung her legs off the bed. Her feet hit the floor and she wobbled, but she stayed up.Her back was straighter and her eyes were sharper. She was still terrified of him, still bruised, but she had some strength in her now.
He tossed her the rest of the water. "Hold on to that."
She caught it with both hands. Her grip didn’t slip.
He opened the door and stepped into the dark hallway. Elsa followed a step behind, flinching at every broken light fixture, but her feet were steady. She wasn’t dragging herself along the wall anymore.
They went down the concrete service stairs without talking. On the fourth floor the stink of old blood and copper hung in the stale air. As they rounded the corner into the main hallway, a heavy, wet scraping sound came from thirty feet ahead.
Zarek stopped. Elsa stopped behind him, her breath catching.
At the far end of the corridor, a mutated hound was tearing through the doorway of an open room. It was bigger than the one he’d killed in the street, with a spine bristling with jagged bone. It turned its misshapen head, black fluid dripping from the split jaw, and its milky eyes found them.
It hissed, a deep sound that vibrated through the floorboards.
Elsa went rigid. Her hands shook around the water bottle. "Zarek..."
He didn’t lift the pipe. He didn’t even set his feet. He looked down at her.
"Run."
She blinked. "What?"
"Run."
The beast roared and pushed off with its back legs, charging down the corridor as its bone claws shredded the floor.
Elsa didn’t think. She spun and sprinted back toward the stairwell.
Her lungs burned and her thighs screamed. The hallway blurred, and the thunder of the monster’s feet pounded behind her. But her legs didn’t give out. The food had put enough strength back into her body to keep her moving, and for the first time since the apocalypse began, she wasn’t running on an empty stomach.
Zarek watched her go for two seconds. Then he followed at an easy jog, in no hurry at all while the beast closed the distance behind him.
Elsa hit the fire door at the end of the hall, slammed into the crash bar, and fell into the stairwell. She slid down the far wall, chest heaving, sweat running down her temples.
He stepped in after her, pulled the steel door shut with a CLANG, and threw the deadbolt. A second later the monster hit the other side hard enough to rattle the frame, but the door held.
He didn’t look at it. He looked at Elsa, lying on the concrete with a hand pressed to her ribs, gasping but alive.
A panel snapped open in front of his eyes.
[Achievement Detected.]
[Target: Elsa]
[Achievement: Survival]
[Investment Contribution Detected.]
[Initial Investment: Basic Sustenance]
[Target utilized investment to restore physical condition and escape lethal threat.]
His eyes narrowed as he read.
[Investment Return Calculated.]
[Return: Basic Sustenance Rations x3]
He stopped. The only sound in the stairwell was Elsa’s frantic breathing. Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face. Three tins of meat wouldn’t make him rich. What mattered was that he could finally see the rule underneath it.
[Investment Return Received: Rations x3 added to System Inventory.]
He read it and laughed, low and breathless, and the sound bounced off the bare concrete.
"I give one meal..." he murmured, "...and I get three back."
He looked down at her. She was still on the floor, looking up at him with wide, confused eyes, with no idea that a screen was floating in front of his face.
A golden goose.
A cheap meal, thrown at a starving girl to keep her alive, had come back tripled because she’d used it to survive.
If a tin of meat could do this, what happened when he put something real into her? A proper blade. Training. Someone to push her until that potential came out.
He stepped closer and leaned over her. His grin stretched wider in the dim light.
"If food can produce a return like this..." he murmured, "...what happens when I teach you how to fight?"