The stairwell on the fifth floor was cold and reeked of damp concrete. One floor down, the hound had stopped hitting the door.
Zarek shifted the iron pipe under his arm, reached into a broken maintenance closet, and pulled out a heavy steel bar about two feet long with a flattened tip. He turned and tossed it at Elsa’s feet.
Metal clattered against the concrete.
Elsa flinched and jumped back an inch before looking down at it. Her knees were still trembling from the run and the climb away from the door, and her forehead was wet with cold sweat. She looked up at him and swallowed.
"Pick it up," He said.
She hesitated, then bent and scooped the pry bar off the floor. Her fingers closed awkwardly around the smooth steel, her wrist sagging under the weight. "Why are you giving me this? I thought..." Her voice cracked. "I thought you said you were going to protect me."
He stepped close and kept coming, forcing her back until her shoulder blades hit the grey concrete wall.
"I said I’d keep you alive, Elsa. I didn’t say I’d carry you across the city," he said, without heat or pity. "If a monster corners us and my hands are full, you either strike or you get eaten. I won’t always be there. Learn to protect yourself, or become dead weight."
She clutched the cold metal to her chest. She hated his voice. She hated the way he looked at her, not like a man looking at a woman but like something he was deciding whether to keep. But the memory of the hound slamming against the steel door was still fresh.
She tightened her grip.
"Show me your stance."
Elsa spread her legs awkwardly and raised the bar high over her right shoulder, like she was about to throw a pitch.
Zarek didn’t bother hiding his sneer. He stepped in and slammed his bare foot against the inside of her left ankle, knocking it wide.
"Wrong. A light breeze would knock you over. Lower your center. Feet shoulder-width, left foot forward, right back. Weight on the balls of your feet."
She stumbled, almost dropped the bar, and scrambled to match his position. Her thighs burned. "I can’t... my legs are shaking," she gasped, the bar trembling near her ear. "I’m too tired."
He leaned in until his nose was an inch from her ear. "Then lie down. I’ll leave you here when I go."
He said it so flatly, with such complete indifference, that her heart dropped into her stomach. He wasn’t angry. He was stating a fact.
If she didn’t meet his baseline, he would walk out and not look back.
Fear burned the tiredness off her. She ground her teeth, planted her back foot, gripped the bar with both hands, and dropped her hips into a solid stance.
"Again," Zarek said. "A forward thrust, straight into the eye socket. Don’t swing it like a club. The tip is flat. Drive it through."
She took a breath, stepped forward, and shoved the bar out.
It was sluggish. Her elbows flared sideways and her wrists bent up at a terrible angle. If she’d hit anything solid, her fingers would have snapped.
Zarek said nothing. He raised a hand and slapped her wrists down hard.
"Ow!"
"Again. Do you think a monster will wait while you cry?" His eyes were cold and unblinking. "Elbows tucked into your ribs. Lock your wrists before impact. Drive from your back leg, not your shoulders."
She wiped sweat from her eyes with her sleeve. Her arms felt like lead. She set her stance, tucked her elbows in, and lunged.
Tuck. Drive. Lock.
The bar cut the air with a sharp swoosh. It wasn’t perfect. Her trailing foot dragged and her left shoulder hitched too high, but the line was straight, and the force came from her hips. The flat tip stopped less than two inches from Zarek’s throat.
He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He looked at the steel, then down into her eyes.
"Rotate your hips three inches right at the end of the stroke. It adds power without costing you balance."
She pulled back, breathed out through her nose, and thrust again, turning her hips as the stroke peaked. It was faster and cleaner, with twice the force. The bar didn’t wobble.
Zarek watched her closely. Most untrained people took hours to stop flaring their elbows. She’d taken the correction on the first try, her body adopting the mechanics the second he said them.
Exceptional Growth Capacity, huh. The system wasn’t exaggerating.
He didn’t smile, and he didn’t say a word of praise.
"Ten in a row. Mess up the footwork on one, and we start over from zero."
Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t complain this time. She stepped back, set her feet, and lunged.
One. Two. Three.
By the fifth, her movements had become noticeably cleaner. She was still a beginner, and her stamina was already failing, but her strikes were direct and her footwork was improving with every repetition. Most people needed far more corrections to grasp the same movement. Elsa was already making it look natural.
On the tenth she froze in her follow-through, chest heaving, sweat dripping off her chin onto the concrete. Her arms shook, but she held the stance and looked up at him, waiting for the blow or the insult.
He checked the lock of her wrists and the position of her back heel.
"Acceptable."
Her shoulders dropped. A strange, unexpected relief washed through her chest. It wasn’t praise. It was barely an acknowledgment.
But next to his threat of leaving her behind, it felt like a lifeline. She realized, with a faint sense of dread, that his cold predictability was almost comforting. He didn’t lie, and he didn’t play games. As long as she did what he said, he kept her alive.
Zarek had seen enough to justify the experiment. He opened the system and registered what he’d given her: the weapon and the combat instruction. Whether her rapid improvement would translate into a worthwhile return remained to be seen.
[Investment Registered.]
[Target: Elsa]
[Investment: Basic Combat Training + Weapon]
[Investment Value: Moderate]
A panel flashed open in his vision.
[Target: Elsa]
[Favorability: -10 → 10]
He studied the number. Ten. Still nowhere near affection, let alone loyalty.
Elsa was still afraid of him, and she had plenty of reasons to hate him. But somewhere beneath that fear, she’d begun to recognize something useful in his cruelty: he was teaching her how to survive. That didn’t make him a good man. It simply made him harder to hate than before.
He looked at the bar in her hands.
The food had paid him back tripled. Now he’d put thirty minutes of training into a woman with exceptional growth potential.
If she can learn this much from a few corrections, how far can I push her once she has a real target?
He turned away and swung the iron pipe up onto his shoulder.
"Rest five minutes. Then we’re continuing."
Elsa’s face fell. "Five minutes? My arms are dead!"
Zarek looked back over his shoulder with a wide, wicked grin.
"What? Did you think you were finished?"