There was always a strange quiet before a boss fight.
Games had trained an entire generation to recognise it. A corridor with suspiciously generous healing items. A save point placed in front of a large dungeon door. Music fading away as the party approached a suspiciously empty clearing...
The sensible response was preparation.
Check equipment. Top off resources. Rearrange the party.
Reality had no glowing door or conveniently placed checkpoint. It did, however, have three people crouched behind a stack of abandoned precast panels less than a hundred metres from a fortified construction site, listening to distant machinery while deciding how best to enter.
The Doctor had stopped them there.
Charlotte stood near the edge of their cover, one hand resting lightly against the Lumen Stylus as she periodically renewed the nearly invisible Photon trace leading towards the stronghold. She resisted the urge to take a puff. The Stylus' rainbow smoke would glow like a flare against the night.
Lunallu remained several steps behind him, chains wound tightly around her arms now that their glow had been suppressed. She flexed one hand experimentally. Ever since killing the infected, something had felt different. Her limbs were lighter. Electra moved more cleanly beneath her skin. Even the chains seemed to answer with less effort than before. Somehow, some of her old strength was returning.
Neither woman spoke for a while.
Both watched him.
The Doctor had dropped his backpack onto the concrete and was rummaging through it.
It was a considerably less dignified sight than either woman associated with him.
In Cyverse, the Doctor was rarely alone. Researchers, medical personnel, Operators, soldiers—men and women alike had always seemed to gather around him. Some came for instructions. Others for treatment, advice, arguments, or simply because his presence had a habit of drawing people into the same room.
Even when he wasn't the highest-ranking person present, there had always been a certain weight to the title.
Doctor.
Someone standing beneath sterile lights with reports in hand. Someone surrounded by specialists and dangerous people who nevertheless stopped to hear what he had to say. Not a man crouched behind a slab of concrete at three in the morning, elbow-deep in a backpack while quietly swearing because something had apparently fallen to the bottom.
A bottle rolled out first.
The Doctor caught it before it reached the edge of the slab, stared at it for half a second, then pushed it aside.
Next came gauze.
A power bank.
Two magazines.
Something wrapped in foil.
Lunallu watched in silence.
Charlotte did not.
"Remarkably organised."
The Doctor looked up.
"...It's dark."
"But why are you carrying all of that?"
He paused.
Charlotte pointed towards the backpack with the Stylus.
"You've spent the last hour making entire containers disappear, and yet you're still digging through that thing like an ordinary person."
Lunallu's gaze shifted towards the bag as well.
The Doctor looked down at it.
Then at Charlotte.
"...It doesn't work on everything."
"Oh?"
"Only certain things."
Charlotte's eyes sharpened immediately.
"Things from Cyverse?"
The Doctor hesitated just long enough to be noticeable.
"Something like that."
"Hm."
She crouched beside him, studying the contents scattered across the concrete.
"You've got quite a lot of things in here."
Charlotte shifted aside a packet of gauze, then stopped.
Her eyes brightened.
"Ooh. Is that... chocolate?"
At the word, even Lunallu's attention snapped towards her.
Charlotte had already plucked a small wrapped bar from beside the power bank.
Lunallu stared at it for a second longer than necessary.
"...Seriously?"
"What?" Charlotte turned the bar over between her fingers.
Her teasing expression had softened into something much more genuine.
"...Is this real?"
Lunallu stepped closer before she seemed to realise she was doing it.
"Let me see."
Charlotte held the wrapper towards her.
Neither woman spoke for a moment.
Chocolate was one of those ordinary things Cyverse had managed to lose somewhere along the way. Not an irreplaceable technology. Just one more casualty of ruined ecosystems, collapsed agriculture and a civilisation that had long since learned to manufacture substitutes for things it could no longer grow.
There were substitutes, technically. Cyverse could synthesise something close enough in taste and texture. Cocoa beans, however, had long since disappeared from the recipe.
The Doctor looked between them.
"...It's just chocolate."
Both women looked at him.
Charlotte slowly raised an eyebrow.
"Doctor."
Lunallu's voice came quieter.
"...You have no idea how offensive that sentence is."
He glanced at the bar again.
"Then you'll probably hate this even more."
Charlotte tilted her head.
"There should be plenty."
The Doctor gestured vaguely towards the sleeping city beyond their cover.
"Not just this one. Shops, warehouses, homes. Whatever hasn't spoiled yet."
His gaze returned to the wrapper in Charlotte's hand.
"And later, if things stabilise... there's no reason we can't make more."
Lunallu stared at him.
Chocolate. Spoken about as though it were merely a matter of planting the right things again. Restoring farms. Moving goods. Waiting for factories to work. Ordinary problems for an ordinary world.
Charlotte looked down at the bar, her earlier amusement fading into something more thoughtful.
"...Plenty to go around," she murmured.
"Yeah."
The Doctor began putting the scattered supplies back into his bag.
"That's kind of the point, isn't it?"
Lunallu's eyes remained on him for a moment longer.
Then, very quietly...
"...I suppose this world really is rich."
The Doctor finished packing without saying anything more about it.
Instead, he reached into the open bag one last time and pulled out two red wrappers.
Charlotte's eyes followed them immediately.
Lunallu's did too.
He held one towards each woman.
"...Here."
Charlotte took hers first.
Lunallu hesitated for perhaps half a second longer before accepting the other.
Neither waited very long.
The wrappers tore almost simultaneously. For all Charlotte's composure, the first bite stopped her completely. Her eyes widened behind the round lenses as the chocolate shell cracked beneath her teeth.
Lunallu was quieter. She simply stared at what remained of the bar in her hand, chewed slowly, then took another bite before she had quite finished the first.
"..."
"..."
The Doctor watched them.
Something strange settled across his face.
A small, satisfied smile.
Charlotte noticed, naturally.
She pointed the remaining half of the KitKat towards him.
"Don't look so pleased with yourself."
The smile disappeared almost immediately.
"...I'm not."
"You are."
Lunallu took another bite.
"He is."
The Doctor looked betrayed.
Charlotte laughed softly.
For a few moments, there was no stronghold nearby.
Only three people crouched behind concrete in the middle of the night, eating chocolate.
...
The last pieces of chocolate disappeared.
The Doctor gathered the wrappers, folded them together and tucked them into one of the smaller pockets of his bag.
By then, most of what he had pulled out had gone back inside.
He wasn't bringing the backpack with him.
A pistol. R-17 Shock Baton. A handful of medical supplies. A few smaller things disappeared into the pockets of his clothes, while everything too bulky or too uncertain to be useful remained behind.
The rest of the backpack was pushed farther beneath the precast concrete, somewhere it wouldn't be immediately visible from the road.
If everything went properly, they could retrieve it on the way out.
The Doctor zipped the final pocket shut.
Then he paused.
"There's one more thing."
Both women looked towards him.
His gaze shifted towards that familiar empty point in the air.
"Communication."
Something appeared.
Lunallu's eyes widened. Charlotte seemed to be the odd one out this time. That difference lasted only a second before the detective noticed it.
"...You can see something?"
Lunallu barely heard her. A small translucent interface had unfolded in front of her, familiar enough that for a moment she simply stared.
"...Is this a PMT?"
It resembled one.
PMT. Personal Mesh Terminal.
Some variation of them had once been almost universal throughout Cyverse. Messaging, identification, navigation, payments, network access—an absurd amount of ordinary life had depended on the little terminals. This one was almost insultingly bare by comparison. Only a text field, and one clear recipient. Calling it a PMT would have been generous.
Her brows rose.
"It works."
Charlotte moved closer.
"What works?"
Lunallu looked at her.
"...You don't see it?"
"I see you poking empty air."
Charlotte's attention immediately shifted towards the Doctor.
He was watching Lunallu's reaction.
"Only Luna, then."
Charlotte's smile thinned.
"How discriminatory."
"Probably later. It's a limitation of my ability. Anyway, try sending something."
Lunallu looked back towards the interface.
She tapped her fingers in mid-air, slowly and carefully.
The Doctor's gaze shifted towards the familiar empty space beside him.
"Yeah. I can read it."
Lunallu blinked.
That was enough to exhaust Charlotte's patience.
She stepped closer, eyes moving between the two of them.
"How?"
The Doctor looked at her.
Charlotte pointed towards him with the Stylus.
"I checked. You don't have the Somatic Mesh Implant in you."
She gestured vaguely over his body, suspicion returning in her eyes.
"What exactly is your ability, Doctor?"
The Doctor pointed towards Lunallu's floating interface.
"Remind me to answer your question later. Right now, this means Luna can contact me without making a sound."
Charlotte pouted and folded her arms.
The Doctor's attention shifted towards the stronghold.
"Which means she can scout ahead."
Lunallu looked at him.
"As long as I remain chained to someone."
The Doctor's mouth curved.
"...About that."
Lunallu's eyes narrowed.
"What?"
"I think there's something about Refraction you haven't tried before."
Lunallu immediately disliked the look on his face.
He reached down beside the concrete barrier.
Something squeaked.
Her expression froze.
The Doctor straightened with a rat dangling from its tail.
"I picked this up on the way."
Silence.
Charlotte stared at the rat.
Lunallu stared at the Doctor.
The rat stared at nobody in particular and continued struggling.
"...You carried that with us?" Lunallu finally asked.
"Not the entire way."
Somehow, that did not improve matters.
Charlotte's eyes dropped towards the Doctor's hands.
Then, very slowly, she remembered the chocolate bar that had passed through them.
She pushed her glasses higher, moonlight flashing across the lenses.
"...You did wash your hands, right?"
A pause.
"Right?"
It was a rhetorical question.
They had been together the entire way here.
The Doctor looked at his hand.
Then at the rat.
Then back at Charlotte, and fell silent.
Charlotte's expression went completely flat.
A second later, she made a dry gagging sound and turned her face away.
"Doctor... urgh. I've misjudged you."
Lunallu looked between them.
"...That badly?"
Charlotte pressed the back of one hand to her mouth.
The Doctor's shoulders sank slightly.
"...I held it by the tail."
"Just... stop talking about the rat."
Lunallu sighed.
"Give it here."
The Doctor blinked.
"...Really?"
"Before I change my mind."
A violet chain extended reluctantly from her arm.
It looped around the rat with considerably more care.
The animal squeaked.
Her face tightened.
"...I'm going to have my fill of chocolate tomorrow."
Lunallu handed the old physical relay she had back to the Doctor.
Then Violet light travelled along the chain. Her outline shimmered.
Charlotte's amusement vanished almost immediately.
"I'll be going then."
The Doctor nodded.
"Be careful. Find the hostages first. Message me when you do."
With that as the signal, the light bent around Lunallu first, then around the chain, swallowing the violet glow link by link. Her silhouette became translucent for barely a second before the darkness behind her simply continued through the space where she had been standing.
The rat disappeared with her.
Silence.
The Doctor stared at the empty patch of concrete.
Charlotte slowly lowered the hand from her mouth.
"...Oh."
Two muted teal eyes narrowed behind her glasses.
Somewhere inside the distortion, Lunallu turned her head towards Charlotte.
For the briefest instant, Refraction failed to hide the movement completely. A faint violet impression of her eyes remained.
Charlotte met them.
Neither woman said anything.
Then even that disappeared.
A few seconds passed.
Charlotte turned the Stylus between her fingers.
"Interesting. Refraction, you called it?"
She glanced towards the empty street.
"Concealment tied to a mobile biological anchor. Infiltration, surveillance, close-range elimination..."
Her smile returned.
"Vesper wasted a rather competent assassin on prison administration."
"Luna isn't an assassin."
Charlotte looked towards him.
The answer had come quickly.
"No?"
The Doctor's gaze shifted briefly towards that familiar point in empty air.
Only for a moment.
Then...
"She doesn't like killing people."
Charlotte's eyebrows rose slightly.
The Doctor continued, his voice quieter.
"She'll threaten them. Restrain them. Scare the hell out of them if that's what it takes."
A pause.
"But if someone can still be brought back alive, she'll usually try."
Charlotte studied him.
"You sound rather certain."
The Doctor's eyes remained on the darkness where Lunallu had vanished.
"That's just the kind of person she is."
Nothing answered.
Charlotte smiled faintly.
"...High praise from the Doctor."
A chain shifted somewhere farther ahead.
Barely audible.
The Doctor stopped speaking. Charlotte looked in that direction. Then back at him. Her smile widened by a fraction. Neither commented on the faint chain sound from somewhere ahead.
Charlotte waited until the faint distortion ahead had disappeared completely.
Then she crouched beside the Doctor.
"Now."
He looked at her.
"Let's review your plan."
She tapped the Stylus against the concrete between them, then drew a short line through the dust.
"The men believe we followed them here."
Another line.
"They also believe they know where we'll enter."
The Doctor glanced towards the hidden approach.
"Front entrance is probably trapped."
"Naturally."
Charlotte added another mark.
"Lunallu scouts ahead, finds the prisoners and reports back. We identify a safer route, enter, regroup with her and extract them."
She looked up.
"Simple enough."
The Doctor was quiet for a moment.
"...That's not quite what I was thinking."
Charlotte's Stylus stopped.
"Oh?"
He crouched beside the crude diagram.
"Luna still finds the hostages first."
His finger moved towards the marks representing the stronghold.
"But before we go in, I want to know how many of the men are actually committed to this."
Charlotte watched him.
"Committed?"
He pointed towards the centre.
"The one they call 'boss', and probably the ones closest to him too. They're the ones with the most to gain from keeping things this way."
Then his finger moved outward.
"But the ones farther out? Some of them might just be following whoever looked strongest when everything fell apart."
The Doctor rose to his feet and met Charlotte's eyes.
"Charlotte. I still believe in people."
A pause.
"We're here to save this world. If believing some people can still be saved makes me naive..."
He looked towards the stronghold.
"...then you'll bail me out, won't you."
Charlotte stared at him.
Her lips slowly curved.
"Well, you could be wrong."
The Doctor paused a beat.
"Then stay beside me and tell me when I'm wrong."
Charlotte's smile faltered. She turned her head away.
"...Mm. Continue."
The corner of the Doctor's mouth lifted faintly before he crouched again and returned his attention to the rough diagram.
"Luna finds the hostages first. That's still the priority."
His finger moved towards the outer marks.
"After that, I don't want us sneaking in and immediately taking everyone down."
Charlotte's Stylus tapped once against her knee.
"...You want them to know we're there."
"Eventually."
His finger returned to the centre mark.
"The big guy already showed us how he controls them. Threats. Fear. Punishment."
"As long as they think he's the safest person to stand behind, they'll keep doing what he says."
Charlotte's Stylus stopped tapping.
"...So you want to change that."
"Yeah."
His finger moved away from the centre.
"Give them a reason to think twice."
Charlotte studied the marks.
"An alternative authority."
"Not exactly."
The Doctor shook his head.
"A way out."
That made her look up.
"We let them know what we're there for. The hostages come with us. Anyone who puts their weapon down and stays out of the way gets left alone."
A pause.
"No revenge. No chasing them down afterwards. Yeah, maybe some of them become a pain in the ass later."
A faint smile crossed his face.
"Then we'll handle them later."
Charlotte's expression grew thoughtful.
"And the ones who stay beside their little king after that?"
The Doctor looked towards the centre of the diagram.
"Then they've made their choice."
Charlotte's smile slowly returned.
"Mm. Better."
"Better?"
"Your first version was missing something."
He looked at her.
Charlotte lowered the Stylus and added another line through the dust.
"You can't offer frightened men an escape while the person they're frightened of is still standing beside them."
The Doctor frowned slightly.
"So we separate him."
"Not physically."
Her smile sharpened.
"Socially."
She tapped the centre mark.
"He has spent however long convincing those men that obedience keeps them alive. We only need to prove that, for once, standing beside him is the more dangerous option."
The Doctor glanced towards the stronghold.
"...Luna."
Charlotte drew a circle around the boss's position.
"Our assa— scout appears somewhere she should never have been able to reach."
Another mark.
"We appear from a different direction."
Her eyes narrowed pleasantly.
"Suddenly their leader no longer looks like the man who controls the situation."
The Doctor studied the rough diagram.
"Then we offer surrender. Before anyone has time to recover their courage."
Charlotte leaned back slightly.
"It's still painfully idealistic, but... yes. It should save considerably more of them."
A beat.
He raised an eyebrow.
"...Probably?"
"People remain inconveniently capable of choosing badly."
"I know."
Charlotte watched him for a moment.
The Doctor paused.
His eyes narrowed.
"Wait. You came into this conversation sounding like my original plan wasn't good enough."
Charlotte's smile returned at once.
"Did I?"
"You did."
He pointed the Shock Baton towards her.
"What were you planning?"
Charlotte looked towards the stronghold.
Then back at him. Her smile became almost angelic.
"I like your plan better."
The Doctor stared.
"...Charlotte."
"Doctor."
"What was your plan?"
She resumed turning the Stylus between her fingers.
"Let's preserve your faith in humanity for another five minutes."
...
Before he could ask again, his attention shifted towards that familiar point in empty air.
"She's found the lower level. ...Ten prisoners. Three women. Seven men."
Charlotte's eyebrows rose.
"She's good."
The Doctor's gaze remained fixed on whatever only he could see.
Another few seconds passed.
"Two guards keeping them in, and six more above. They're moving equipment and reinforcing the entrances."
Charlotte stopped turning the Stylus.
"Looks like they're preparing for us properly."
His eyes shifted again.
Then his posture eased by a fraction.
"...All ten are alive."
Charlotte's expression changed with that.
"Good for you, Doctor."
"...Yeah. Really..."
The boss had planned for almost everything.
That was the part he couldn't fucking understand.
The eastern generator had been ready. The men on the upper scaffolds had been armed. The main approach had been narrowed into a corridor with enough sheet metal and concrete to turn retreat into a bottleneck. One signal would start the machinery outside, another would bring the infected towards the entrance, and the shutter would come down behind whoever was stupid enough to walk into it.
They had done it before.
They knew it worked.
Except nobody walked into it.
By the time someone realised the violet-haired woman was already inside, she had somehow passed two checkpoints, a welded gate and six armed men without any of them seeing her.
Refraction had always meant to be used as an offensive tool. Under the veil of night, Lunallu had become unstoppable.
The prisoners were gone from their cage before the alarm properly started.
Then the lights on the lower level went out.
Someone screamed that the yellow-haired woman had appeared through the service passage.
Someone else shouted that there were two of them.
Then three.
Then nobody seemed to know where the fuck any of them were.
The zombie lure never started.
One of the generators had been disabled before the switch was thrown. The sheet-metal drop meant to draw the infected had fallen uselessly inside the compound instead, sending half the men guarding the west side running towards the wrong noise.
Charlotte, understanding the structure and layout of the lair, easily dismantled the simple traps and used it against them.
The rifles should have changed things.
They hadn't. The moment his men had reached for the weapons taken from the EDF patrol, violet chains had swept through the upper level. One rifle disappeared over the railing. Another smashed against a concrete column hard enough to split its stock. The rest were ripped from hands and flung somewhere into the darkness before anyone managed more than a wild shot.
After that, they were back to what they had started with.
Crowbars. Hammers. Pipes. Nail guns...
And then the man, who had been their prey for the day, had stepped into the open himself.
"Put your weapons down!"
His voice carried through the loading bay.
The boss remembered laughing.
At least, he thought he had.
"The hostages are coming with us!"
A violet chain tightened around one of the upper railings.
"Anyone who doesn't want any part of this, put whatever you're holding down and move over there."
He pointed towards an open section of the loading bay, well away from the boss and the remaining armed men.
"You stay out of our way, we stay out of yours."
A pause.
"Nobody has to die here."
The yellow-haired woman leaned against a concrete pillar as though she had wandered into somebody else's argument by accident.
That was when Seng dropped his crowbar.
The sound seemed impossibly loud.
Someone stared at him.
"Seng?"
He raised both hands.
"Fuck this, boss."
Another man slowly lowered a steel pipe.
Then another.
The boss felt something tighten in his chest.
"What the FUCK are you doing?!"
"He said we can leave."
"You believe him?!"
Nobody answered.
The man stepped aside.
"If you're leaving, then leave."
Simple as that. No speech. No demand that they join him. No punishment.
One of the men started walking.
The boss recognised him. Kian. One of the quieter ones. He had never been particularly brave. Never particularly loyal either. He lowered the length of pipe in his hand and began crossing the loading bay.
The strange man watched him approach.
"Keep going."
Kian nodded.
He passed within arm's reach.
Then his hand disappeared beneath his shirt.
Metal flashed.
A knife.
The yellow-haired woman moved first.
Her Stylus crossed the distance in a streak of yellow and buried itself through Kian's thigh.
"Aargghh!!! Bitch!" He screamed. His body buckled. The knife still came up.
The strange man turned.
The pistol rose.
One shot.
Kian's head snapped apart in a violent spray as the rest of him collapsed onto the concrete.
Silence.
The boss stopped breathing.
For a moment, everything in front of him became too bright.
Then too red.
His peripheral vision narrowed until the loading bay seemed to collapse into a tunnel around the man holding the pistol.
Somebody was shouting.
Maybe several people.
He couldn't make out the words.
His heartbeat had climbed into his throat.
His fingers had gone numb.
The edges of his vision pulsed in and out of focus.
The strange man lowered the pistol. He looked across the remaining workers.
"Anyone else?"
Nobody moved.
The boss's mouth had gone dry.
His men had surrendered.
The hostages were leaving.
Everything he had planned and built was collapsing around him.
And somehow, that only made him angrier.
He staggered forward.
"You think you're tough because you've got women doing everything for you?!"
The Doctor looked at him.
"Fight me like a man!"
Silence.
Charlotte's head tilted slightly.
Lunallu stopped several metres away.
The Doctor stared at him for a moment.
Then.
"...Okay."
His hand moved towards empty air.
Something materialised into his grip.
"...Pilgrim." The name barely left his mouth.
Sections of dark metal locked together along the weapon with a sequence of mechanical clicks, its barrel settling into place as a faint line of light ran along the frame.
The boss froze.
"...What the fuck?"
The Doctor raised it.
"This is how I fight."
He pulled the trigger.
The report struck the loading bay like thunder.
The boss's body snapped backwards.
A cavity opened through the centre of his torso, the force carrying blood and fragments across the concrete behind him before what remained collapsed heavily onto the floor.
He was given no final words.
Whatever he might have said died with him.
Nobody spoke.
The echoes continued for several seconds after the shot itself was gone. Loud enough, surely, to draw infected from several streets away.
But in that moment, the man holding that incomprehensible weapon did not look remotely concerned.
He stood over what remained of the boss with the rifle still levelled, expression unreadable, as though the violence had required no more thought than pulling a trigger.
Whatever was shambling towards them outside suddenly felt considerably less threatening.
Looking at him, it was difficult to imagine the approaching dead as anything more than the next things he would kill.
Perhaps the only question was whether they were worth the ammunition.
The Doctor lowered Pilgrim.
His gaze moved across the men who had surrendered.
"Well..."
Nobody seemed eager to hear what came next.
He glanced towards the entrance, where the first distant groans were already beginning to answer the gunshot.
"...Looks like I can't let you leave anymore."
Several faces went pale.
One man who had already edged towards the exit stopped dead.
Charlotte slowly turned her head towards the Doctor.
Lunallu did the same.
Silence stretched for just long enough to make the words considerably worse than they probably needed to be.
Then the Doctor pointed towards the darkness outside.
"There are going to be zombies all over the place because of that shot."
A few shoulders visibly sagged.
"So unless anyone feels like testing their luck out there, we're staying here tonight."
He rested Pilgrim against one shoulder, or tried to. The rifle's weight dragged him half a step backwards before he caught himself.
His boots scraped across the concrete.
Charlotte's eyes flicked towards him.
Lunallu noticed too.
The Doctor adjusted his grip as though nothing had happened.
"...Nobody touches the hostages. Nobody picks their weapons back up. We secure the entrances, deal with anything that gets too close, and wait for daylight."
Charlotte pushed her glasses higher.
"So much for our quiet exit."
Lunallu's eyes moved towards Pilgrim.
Then towards the Doctor.
"...You really wanted to use that weapon, didn't you?"
The Doctor said nothing, his attention shifted towards the prisoners.
"In the morning, we'll clear a route out for them."
Then back towards the surrendered men.
"You can follow the same route afterwards."
Nobody answered.
The Doctor looked around what remained of the stronghold. Bent railings, shattered timber and scattered weapons marked where the fight had passed through, while violet scorch marks still crawled faintly across parts of the concrete.
"For tonight, I guess we're roommates."
Outside, the first infected began arriving at the barricades.