The hound came, and Alex knew what it would do.
In the game, a culvert hound always opened with a long jump. Every new player died to that jump. By his third try, Alex had learned to step left and let it fly past.
It jumped from way further away than anything that size should be able to.
Alex stepped left.
He meant to move half a meter. His body threw him a full one, faster than he'd ever moved in his life.
And Alex wasn't where it landed.
The claws went past the front of his shirt, close enough to move the cloth.
'Left! Just like the game!'
The hound hit the tunnel wall and was turned around again faster than he could follow.
The water workers had left a stack of gray steel pipes by the wall. Alex grabbed one. It was a bit over a meter long, and heavier than it looked.
The second time, it came high, straight at his face.
Alex swung at its head like a bat. Every new player did that in their first hour. He knew better and did it anyway.
The pipe hit its skull with a clang that rang down the tunnel. The shock jarred both his arms. The hound didn't even blink.
It hit him in the chest.
He went down on his back, and his head cracked against the wall. The weight on him was hard, knotted muscle. A claw raked down his left forearm where the sleeve had ridden up, and he felt the skin open.
The jaw unfolded sideways, right over his face. Its breath stank of the meat from the cooler.
"GET OFF ME!"
He jammed the pipe crosswise into its open mouth and shoved with everything he had.
The hound came off him and flew backward across the grate. It landed on the far walkway in a heap of legs.
Alex scrambled up with his back to the wall. His arms were numb to the elbows, and blood was running down his wrist.
'Think! You know this thing. You've killed a thousand of these...'
And he did know. There was a soft spot under the hinge of the jaw. He'd written a whole paragraph about it on the wiki.
Don't hit the skull, he'd written. When the jaw opens sideways to bite, the hinge underneath is bare. Go in under it, upward, once.
The third time, the hound came along the ground.
Alex watched the jaw and nothing else. Two meters out, it began to unfold.
His whole life, every part of him had said the same thing. Step back. Step back, Alex.
He stepped in.
He drove the end of the pipe up into the soft spot with his whole weight behind it. It went in. A hot gush poured over his right hand and up his wrist.
The hound's body jerked once. It tore itself off the end of the pipe and nearly pulled Alex down with it.
It lay on the walkway and tried to get up. It tried again, slower.
And it stopped trying.
The tunnel went very still. Just the one lamp humming, and the water.
Green words appeared in the corner of his vision.
HOSTILE ENTITY TERMINATED.
EXPERIENCE GAINED.
Under the words was a second bar. It was wider than the thin feeding bar that had climbed to 9.4% in Sam's back room, and it was split into little blocks. It counted kills. While he watched, one solid green block filled in at the left end.
'Experience? Real experience?'
Alex laughed, and it echoed off down the tunnel.
There were rules down here, and they were game rules.
You kill a thing. You gain experience. You get stronger.
'I know how to do this. I know how to do this better than anyone in this whole city.'
And he smelled the blood.
***
Three days ago, the biggest thing Alex Walker had ever killed was a spider.
He moved the pipe to his left hand and held up his right. The hound's blood was running between his fingers. It smelled of hot metal and wet fur, and of something sweeter underneath.
He was already wondering what it tasted like.
The green words changed.
CONSUME?
That was all. One word and a question mark, in the same plain green as everything else. It didn't flash. It didn't get bigger.
"No," Alex said.
It stayed.
He set the pipe down carefully, so it wouldn't ring. He wiped his hand on his jeans, but that only spread the blood.
He walked toward the ladder, got about halfway, and stopped with his back to the hound.
The word had come with him. Same spot.
It was in his eyes. It would follow him home.
Alex waited for it to push.
And he realized that was what he wanted. He wanted it to do what it did in the shop. That day the whole room went away, and his body lined itself up on Sam's neck without asking him. That way he could hate it. Tomorrow, he could tell himself he'd been taken over in the tunnel, and it wasn't his fault.
It didn't push.
It waited.
'It's a menu. It's just a menu. It's... asking me? Seriously?'
It didn't seem to care which answer he gave.
So it was just him, then.
Him, and the smell. And the empty cooler on the ledge. And eleven packets in Sam's cooler at the shop that he couldn't take, because Sam would count them. And the fifteen minutes this morning when the hunger stopped. And a bar with one green block in it.
And the clock. His clinic deadline was eight and a half hours away. He couldn't walk into a clinic like this. He'd be staring at the nurse's neck before she found a pen.
And nobody down here.
Nobody would ever know what he did in the next minute, unless he told them.
"Yes," Alex said.
He said it out loud.
***
He went back and knelt on the walkway.
There was the place under the jaw where the pipe went in. It was still warm. Warmer than he was.
He'd half hoped it would be like the shop, that he'd go away somewhere and come back to find it done.
He didn't go anywhere. He was there for all of it, and he knew where his hands were.
He put his mouth to the wound and drank. It did more for him than the marrow hare ever had.
With every swallow, the hunger got quieter.
In the corner of his eye, the thin feeding bar was climbing. Eleven. Fourteen. Nineteen.
He watched it climb. And he leaned in.
He only stopped because of a low, steady sound in the tunnel. He thought it was the pump up above, until he understood it was coming from his own throat.
He sat back against the wall.
31%
The change hit him a second later, all through his body.
The ache in the back of his head was gone. The numbness had gone out of his arms. He made a fist. He was stronger than when he'd lifted the hatch half an hour ago, and he could feel it. His heart was slow and heavy. He could hear every drop falling into the channel, all the way back to the ladder. He felt like he could run to the harbor and back.
The cuts on his arm were still bleeding a little, slow and ordinary.
There was blood up to his elbow on one arm. It was on his chin, and all down his shirt.
About a minute later, he felt ashamed. But he still felt great.
The hound had stopped moving its foot.
***
He lifted a section of the grate and washed in the channel, in water he'd have gagged at on Monday. The cuts stung. He took his shirt off and zipped his jacket up to his neck over his bare chest.
He took the broken cooler and both halves of the lid, because Sam would want to know.
He didn't look past the second light again. But he could hear air moving down there, from the other side of the wall.
It smelled like leaves.
He climbed the twenty-two steps of the ladder and shut the hatch. He locked the green door and tried it, like Sam told him to.
He walked home under the wall with the empty cooler in his arms, just a guy out late, doing a favor for a friend. Up on the walkway, the two guards were still arguing about the coffee. The city paid them to shoot anything that wasn't human.
Neither of them looked down.
***
At home, he left the shirt soaking in the sink, with the broken cooler on the floor beside it. He got into bed in the dark.
Upstairs, the couple were asleep. He could hear them both breathing, hers light, his slow.
The green pharmacy cross blinked on the ceiling, over and over.
His phone said 12:58. Seven hours left.
He thought about setting an alarm for seven, for the clinic. He put the phone face down on the floor without setting it.
Alex was warm all the way through. He kept waiting to feel sick.
'Any minute now. Any minute, I'll feel how bad this is... right?'
He was still waiting when the edges of the room started to blur.
"Lexie."
The voice was soft, and close. Like someone had said it from the other pillow.
Alex opened his eyes.
The ceiling. The green light blinking on it.
Nobody.