I didn't know what was happening. One second I was on the ground with teeth in my neck and the reasonable expectation of dying. The next second I was looking at a glowing interface that had apparently decided this was a great time to introduce itself.
I lay there for a moment, just breathing, doing an inventory. Neck: should be destroyed but was not destroyed. Was in fact warm, the way a wound feels when it's doing the opposite of a wound's normal job. I reached up and touched it.
It was smooth and closed. The skin was intact like nothing had happened, which was insane, because something had absolutely happened.
[Threat Detected:
Level 4 Infected approaching.
Speed: High
Coordination: Advanced
Recommendation: Run to the walls immediately.]
Survival meant reacting. I'd spent my whole life running but my legs didn't want to cooperate this time. My right one in particular had apparently filed a formal objection somewhere around the time teeth hit my neck, and was now participating in the escape at a level I could only describe as reluctant. I forced it forward anyway. Survival didn't care about feelings. I'd learned that before I learned how to read.
The moaning was everywhere now. Not one source. Many. The kind of many that meant the math was not in my favor. I ran. Or did the closest thing to running my malfunctioning body could manage.
The plain wasn't wilderness, exactly. It was a no man's land, the dead zone between the outside world and the walls. I'd grown up hearing that it served a purpose: keep the infected visible, deal with them in case they penetrated through the life layer.
The life layer was what people outside called the protective barrier, an invisible line the infected couldn't cross. Engineered by people smarter than me, maintained by people richer than me. I didn't know exactly where it was. I just knew it was ahead, somewhere, and that ahead was the only direction that mattered. The infected were closing.
[Host advancing at a slow rate. Fifty seconds to the life layer.]
"This," I said through my teeth, "is the best I can do."
[Charge 12%]
One of them reached me. I felt the electricity before I understood it. It moved through me like a current finding its path, jumped from my skin to the infected's, and the thing just stopped. Dried out. Dropped. Like someone had pulled its plug.
Three more came. Same result. Which would have been incredible, genuinely one of the top five moments of my life, except I could see the charge percentage dropping on the screen in front of my eyes with every discharge. Eleven. Nine. Six.
The system was burning through whatever I had left like I was a phone being used for navigation in a foreign country. This was not sustainable.
[00:00:20 to the life layer.]
Twenty second. An infected hit me from behind, full weight, and instead of taking me down it launched me forward. I crossed the line mid-stumble, not gracefully, not heroically, more like a man being thrown through a door he hadn't opened himself.
The moaning stopped. Behind me, through the shimmer of the life layer, I could see them piling up against nothing, pressing against the invisible wall, furious and contained. The plain sat quiet beyond them.
In front of me were five people. Three guys, two girls. They were standing close to the walls, which meant they had abilities, which meant they were exactly the kind of people the government loudspeakers had been advertising for. They turned around at the sound of my arrival. I must have looked extraordinary. And not in a good way.
The walls were close. Closer than they'd ever been in my life. My charge was at two percent.
[Warning: Recharge Required]
[Charge restored exclusively through sexual activity with female ability users.]
I stared at the notification. Then at the five strangers staring back at me. Where the hell was I going to find female ability users? I filed that under problems for later and focused on the more immediate situation, which was five people looking at me like I'd just crawled out of a grave. Which, to be fair, was roughly accurate.
They were all clean. Not man-in-the-desert clean, genuinely clean, like people who had access to soap and had been using it regularly. Their clothes were decent. Nobody looked hollow-eyed or sun-cooked or like they'd been rationing water for the past week. They looked, in other words, nothing like me. I looked like survival.
They'd probably come together, from the same direction, which meant they knew each other, which probably meant there was somewhere out there that wasn't the walls and wasn't the wasteland I'd spent my whole life in. I filed that under also problems for later and kept my face neutral.
"The last one has arrived," said the youngest-looking of the boys, with the satisfied tone of someone checking off a list.
I turned that over in my head. 'The last one. So there was a number. Someone expected a specific headcount.'
The system in my vision offered no comment on this, which I was starting to recognize as its default personality.
The blonde boy stepped forward. He carried himself the way people do when they're used to being the one who speaks first, not arrogant exactly, just accustomed to it. He looked me over once, quickly, in the way of someone adjusting their expectations in real time. I couldn't blame him. I was adjusting mine too.
"Hey," he said. "I'm Max Donman. From Goth." He said it the way people say things that are supposed to mean something.
Goth. I knew the name. Everyone outside knew the name, the way you know about places you'll probably never go. A settlement. Structured, protected, not quite walls but not quite nothing. A second tier of survival for people who had enough ability or enough organization to build something that held.
'Do people just say where they're from like that?' I thought. 'Is that a thing? Are we doing that?'
I became suddenly, acutely aware that I was from nowhere. Not from a settlement. Not from a protected zone. From the outside, the actual outside, the part of the world that the apocalypse had been given full custody of.
"Abram Nadez," I said, because it was all I had. I didn't add a location. There wasn't one worth adding.
Max nodded like that was fine, though I noticed he didn't push for more. We fell into step together toward the gate, the group absorbing me at the edges the way groups do with strangers, polite but not yet warm.
The walls were right there now, close enough that I could see the seams in the concrete, the dark mouths of the gate mechanisms, the cameras that had probably been watching us the whole time.
Apparently the walls had been waiting for a full set. I was the last piece. The gate began to move.