Ingrid woke up with a violent start, and pain immediately tore through every part of her body so brutally that she almost screamed. Her eyes flew open, but for several seconds, everything in front of her was nothing more than a blurry mixture of dark trees, pale fog, and shifting shadows, while a terrible heat burned beneath her skin.
Her entire body felt as though it had been beaten with a metal rod, and even breathing made her ribs ache, but the worst pain came from her injured arm, where a deep, throbbing agony pulsed beneath the dirty clothes wrapped around her body. Sweat clung to her forehead, her clothes were damp against her skin, and every breath came out unevenly because whatever fever had taken hold of her was making her head feel heavy and strangely detached from her body.
She tried to remember what had happened, and the memories came rushing back so quickly that her stomach twisted, bringing with them the Beast Zombies, the chase, her stupid attempt to use Time Stop, the Beast Zombie ripping a chunk out of her arm, and then the darkness that had swallowed her.
Just as Ingrid forced herself to focus, something appeared directly in front of her face. The familiar transparent system interface had changed, however, because instead of its usual harmless glow, the entire panel had turned a frightening reddish color. Ingrid stared at it through her blurry vision, initially too dazed to understand what she was seeing, until another line appeared beneath the warning and the numbers began counting down right before her eyes.
Her feverish mind struggled to process the meaning behind the timer, but then the words became clear enough for her to understand exactly what the system was telling her.
{ SYSTEM WARNING: HOST CONDITION CRITICAL. }
Ingrid stared at the translucent now reddish panel, initially too dazed to understand what it meant, until another line appeared beneath it and the numbers began counting down right before her eyes.
{ 04:00:00. TIME REMAINING UNTIL HOST DEATH: 4 HOURS. }
Her heart stopped. "Four hours?!"
The words came out as a strangled rasp, but the panic behind them was very real. Ingrid immediately pushed both hands against the ground and tried to sit up, only to have pain explode through her shoulders and back so violently that she nearly collapsed again. Ingrid gritted my teeth and forced herself upright anyway, breathing through the agony until she finally managed to sit with her back against a tree. Ingrid’s vision swam for several seconds, but once it steadied, she looked around the clearing and realized something was wrong.
Lysander wasn’t there.
Ingrid turned her head toward the trees, searching through the thick fog for any sign of his tall frame, his black hair, or that ridiculous dark veil he had tied across his face. There was nothing, not even a footprint that she could make out through the moss and dirt, and the silence around her seemed almost mocking after everything they had been through together.
Ingrid stared at the empty space beside her for a long moment before a bitter laugh escaped her lips, because apparently she had been stupid enough to expect that he would stay. Ingrid had come with him into the Whispering Ravine, risked her life looking for herbs he needed, nearly been torn apart by a pack of Beast Zombies, and after all that, he had probably decided that carrying her around was more trouble than she was worth.
"Of course he left."
Ingrid’s voice sounded bitter even to her own ears, and she rubbed her face with her good hand while trying to swallow the strange disappointment sitting heavily in her chest. She shouldn’t have expected anything from him in the first place, because Lysander had never promised to protect her, never claimed that he cared whether she lived or died, and certainly never volunteered to become responsible for her ridiculous decisions.
Maybe he had simply realized that Ingrid was going to get him killed too and decided that leaving her behind was the smartest thing he could do. Honestly, she couldn’t even blame him, because if she had been in his position, she probably would have abandoned me too after watching her challenge an entire group of zombies with nothing but two borrowed skills and an unreasonable amount of confidence.
{ HOST. }
Ingrid ignored Lorna but she continued anyway.
{ Ingrid, the mission timer is active. }
’I seriously don’t care.’
{ You currently have four hours remaining before the mission fails. }
"I heard you the first time, and I still don’t care."
Ingrid leaned her head against the tree and closed her eyes, allowing her aching body to sink against the rough bark. She was tired, feverish, injured, and angry enough that she didn’t even have the energy to pretend she was brave anymore.
If the system wanted to kill her in four hours, then fine, because she was already halfway there anyway, and Ingrid couldn’t bring herself to care enough to crawl through another monster-infested forest just because Lorna had decided that her life needed to become a badly written survival game. After everything that had happened, lying here and letting the countdown reach zero almost sounded peaceful compared to whatever horrifying obstacle waited ahead.
{ If you do not complete the mission, you will die. }
"I know."
{ Ingrid, I am being serious. }
"So am I."
Ingrid opened her eyes and stared directly at the red countdown. "You know what, Lorna? I’m actually done with this. I’m tired of you telling me things after they become useful instead of before they become useful. You knew what Beast Zombies were. You knew they were stronger than ordinary zombies, you knew there could be twenty or thirty of them, and you knew that my Time Stop was basically useless because my body was too weak to maintain it for more than five seconds, yet you waited until I was already standing in front of one before telling me anything."
Lorna became suspiciously quiet and Ingrid narrowed my eyes.
"And don’t even get me started on the startup pack."
{ I apologized for that. }
"You forgot about it!"
{ It was an oversight. }
"It was an oversight that nearly got me killed, Lorna!" Ingrid clenched her good hand as her anger continued building.
"How is a system supposed to work if the host has to interrogate it for every single piece of information? You should have told me about the Beast Zombies before I entered the ravine, you should have explained my skills before I used them, and you should have given me the startup pack before I almost got eaten. Instead, you keep standing there in my head acting like I’m supposed to magically know everything about this world."
{ Host— }
"No, I’m not finished." Ingrid pointed angrily at the floating panel even though Lorna obviously had no physical form for me to point at.
"If I die today Lorna, I’m dragging you down with me."