The winter of 2045 did not bring white snow. It brought a heavy, grey precipitate that tasted of copper and old pennies—the Ash-Fall.
It coated the ruins of Dartford in a suffocating shroud, dampening the screams of the dying and the rhythmic clicking of the Geiger counters.
Cian crouched behind the rusted remains of a delivery van, his breath hitching behind a charcoal-lined scarf.
He wasn't shivering.
Shivering was an expenditure of calories he couldn't afford.
He was focused on a small campfire flickering in the gut of an overturned shipping container fifty yards away.
He held his viewfinder to his eye, framing the scene.
There were two of them.
Muggles.
Not "Static-Muggles" whose brains had been liquified by the Aegis, but survivors.
They were gaunt, their skin hanging off their frames like wet cloth, huddled over a small pot.
The smell reached Cian—the heavy, metallic scent of boiling "Stain-Rat."
It was a low-quality protein, but it was a marketable asset.
"Observations: Subjects are distracted by biological necessity," Cian whispered into the empty air, his voice a flat, dead monotone.
"Defensive posture: Zero."
"Asset value: Three cans of preserved peaches and a half-bottle of iodine."
"Acquisition cost: Minimal."
Cian didn't feel a pulse of adrenaline.
He felt the cold, dry satisfaction of a businessman who had found a clerical error in his favor.
He reached into his oversized coat and pulled out a "thing."
It was a sharpened piece of rebar, the handle wrapped in electrical tape to insulate the chill.
He moved with the silence of a shadow.
His mother had taught him how to walk on the balls of his feet to avoid the crunch of the glass-ash.
She was currently two miles East, checking a "dead-drop" in a basement, but she had left Cian to "scout."
He didn't see himself as a scout. He saw himself as an independent contractor.
He reached the edge of the shipping container. The Muggles were arguing in hoarse, wet whispers about who would get the tail of the rat. They didn't hear the soft clink of the rebar against the metal floor.
Cian stepped into the light of their fire.
The man, the larger of the two, looked up. His eyes were milky with cataracts from the violet radiation. He saw a ten-year-old boy with a face as smooth and unreadable as a polished stone.
"Kid?" the man wheezed, reaching out a trembling hand.
"You... you alone? You hungry?"
Cian didn't answer. He was calculating the distance.
He wasn't looking at the man's face; he was looking at the soft tissue of the throat, just above the collarbone.
"I'm looking for a better position," Cian said.
His voice was eerily polite, the way a salesman speaks before closing a deal. "You're in my way."
The man blinked, confused by the boy's vocabulary. That second of confusion was the window.
Cian lunged. He didn't scream. He didn't close his eyes. He drove the rebar into the man's throat with a precise, downward thrust, using his entire body weight as leverage. It wasn't a fight; it was an extraction.
The man made a sound like a punctured bellows. The woman began to shriek, but Cian was already moving. He didn't feel the heat of the blood on his hands; he only noticed its viscosity. It was a dark, oxygen-deprived red.
The woman scrambled for a rusted pipe, but her movements were sluggish, hampered by weeks of starvation. Cian didn't wait for her to stand. He kicked the back of her knee, forcing her down into the ash, and struck her across the temple with the blunt end of the rebar.
One strike to neutralize. A second to terminate.
When it was over, Cian stood in the silence, watching the steam rise from the bodies. He checked his viewfinder. The way the firelight flickered off the pooling blood created a high-contrast aesthetic.
"The shot is balanced," he thought.
He began to strip them. He took the pot of rat-meat. He found the three cans of peaches hidden in a ragged rucksack. He took a pair of boots that looked like they might fit his mother. He worked with a clinical speed, his fingers nimble despite the cold. He didn't look at their eyes. To Cian, they weren't people anymore; they were liquidated stock.
Ten minutes later, he reached the "Rest-Point"—a brutalist concrete office building that had survived the nukes because it was mostly underground. It was a fortress of grey stone and rebar.
His mother, Sarah, was waiting in the lobby, her gas mask dangling from her neck.
She looked at Cian—the blood on his sleeves, the pot in his hands—and her eyes filled with a mixture of horror and a terrible, soul-crushing relief.
"You found something," she whispered, her voice cracking.
"I acquired some supplies," Cian corrected her.
He set the pot down on a concrete slab. "The previous owners were no longer using them. It was an efficient trade."
Sarah looked at her son. She wanted to hold him, to tell him that a ten-year-old shouldn't know how to kill for a pot of rat meat. But the cold was biting through her lead-lined coat, and the hunger in her stomach was a screaming animal.
"Eat, Cian," she said, her voice shaking. "We need to keep your strength up."
"I've already accounted for my caloric intake," Cian said, pulling the Rowle signet ring from his pocket and rolling it over his knuckles. "You should take the majority. You are the primary asset in this expedition. If you fail, the overhead of my survival triples."
Sarah stared at him. Sometimes, she wondered if the Rowle blood had done something to his mind—something worse than the radiation. He didn't act like a wizard, and he didn't act like a human. He acted like a machine that was learning how to mimic a boy.
"It's winter, Cian," she said, pulling her mask back on. The violet winds were picking up outside, howling through the hollowed-out skyscrapers. "The Ash-Fall is going to get worse. I'm going to head to the old pharmacy in Sector Four. There might be some antibiotics left. If I'm not back by the time the indigo moon rises, stay in the basement. Seal the lead-door."
Cian nodded. He didn't tell her to be careful. He didn't tell her he loved her.
"The pharmacy is a high-risk zone," he said instead. "Ensure you maintain a low profile. If the Static-Muggles are nesting there, the risk-to-reward ratio might be unfavorable. Be prepared to abort the mission."
Sarah looked at him one last time, a tear tracing a clean line through the soot on her cheek. "I'll be back, Cian."
She disappeared into the indigo haze of the Ash-Fall, leaving him alone in the massive, hollowed-out lobby.
Cian sat on a pile of dusty office chairs and pulled out his viewfinder. He looked at the empty lobby, the way the shadows stretched across the concrete. He reached into his pocket and touched a small, jagged piece of glass he had found near the bodies of the Muggles.
He didn't have magic yet. He was a "Zero." But as he sat there in the dark, watching the violet snow fall outside the reinforced windows, he began to realize that the world didn't need a hero. It needed a Manager.
He looked at the Rowle ring.
"The House of Rowle believes in blood," he thought, his eyes reflecting the cold indigo of the sky. "I will take their blood and I will put it on my balance sheet."
He closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to begin the long, mental calculation of how he was going to buy back the world.