Free. He was free. Not safe. Not even close to safe. But free.

  Now what? His immediate instinct was to run.

  Get up, get moving, get away from the dozens of undead surrounding him. But that was fear talking.

  He took several deep breaths and his brain kicked in, cutting through the nausea and panic. Where would he go? Camila at least was here. Where were the others? He was surrounded by people, his spiritual hearing told him they were free of Nath, likely not dead and now he could rub the fluid off and open his other eye he could see more clearly.

  At least the ones next to him were still alive. Beaten down, unconscious but alive.

  He had no idea why and even as he tried to focus couldn’t come up with an explanation.

  So, look at the situation. Assess the variables.

  He was injured badly enough that his system flagged it as severe damage. Concussion meant his balance and coordination were compromised. He needed more Health, more Stamina. Frankly more skills…

  Then he stopped. Skills were built on stats which were built on resources. He couldn’t get a new skill, but he could boost the fundamentals. It was time to spend some free XP. Before he could think about it too much, he dumped all his free experience into vitality, figuring that more efficient concussion repair was exactly what he needed.

  That done he didn’t really feel any different, so he paused to assess. One eye was still gummed shut. He had maybe 35% of his Magic left and negligible Health and Stamina despite conversions. There were zombies everywhere. A Dozen maybe in this room, more outside. Plus, those things - those fast intelligent zombies that had hit him and taken him down with so little effort. They were out on the tarmac with Camila.

  How many were there? He couldn’t hear anything other than the chant of the Nath right now. So maybe they were inactive too?

  He hoped so, if he tried to run, they'd catch him. He didn't have the stamina for a chase. Didn't have the coordination to fight. But he couldn't stay here. David's gaze fell on the other bodies draped over nearby seats.

  Other members of the raid, he recognized the ones he could see anyway. Were they all alive? He couldn't tell but there were a lot. Then he felt sick again. Moving his head had not only given him a wash of nausea but show there were significantly fewer bodies here than there had been people in the raid group.

  Was everyone else dead? He had to do something, had to know.

  He needed help, ideally Mark or another healer. Or Charlie or Sarah to nuke the fast zombies from a safe distance, or Billy to unleash a ghost hound on them. Or if he could find a Gun for him Carl. Really, he needed his friends.

  Still worried that too much movement would trigger the zombies David focused on his spiritual hearing; no help there. The Nath's chanting overwhelmed everything else, a wall of sound that his bloodline forced him to process. But he could use his spirits. Extend his senses.

  Carefully, moving as little as possible, David released a single spirit. The familiar sensation of it separating from him, extending outward like a gossamer thread. His connection to it was clear despite his injuries. There was something wrong though. It was being tugged, drawn towards something.

  Unconsciously he turned his head, his free spirit, which was as far as he knew mostly a Nath itself wanted to move towards the tarmac. He couldn’t see from down here, but he was sure it wanted to go straight towards where Camila was pinned down.

  He directed it to move in a different direction and with a hollow feeling of limited resources bottoming out reinforced the command with power from his mostly depleted reserves.

  It moved toward the nearest body. The man he had climbed over. Now what? He knew the guy was alive and he pushed. The spirit pushed featherlike against the body and he felt solid resistance, a pulse of life.

  David felt a rush of relief at that solidity, that evidence of life. He didn’t have to move to check if anyone had died. So, he kept pushing on. His single spirit fluttered across the room like a butterfly alighting on each person. Push, good. Push, good. Then something different. The push felt soft, muted, passive somehow. Maybe someone with worse injuries?

  David's mind raced through possibilities, until a stab of pain brought him up short. Right, need to check everyone. Two sensations now. Check the third person, hope they aren’t dead…

  Then it happened. Instead of feeling a push repelling him he felt a warm sensation from his spirit. This was good! Warm and welcoming, before he even realized it the spirit was snuggling and wriggling into that warm welcome sensation and its feedback changed sharply.

  In, In, In…

  It was faint, he could feel satisfaction, this was right! Then David’s eyes shot open. Bile rose in his throat and he instinctively tugged, trying to get the spirit to pull back. It fought him, confused. His head began to throb as he felt his heart rate spiking. Then as he was distracted it clamped down on the warm welcoming feeling settling in and even as he felt it, he realized it was starting to change. The spirit was feeling heavier, less mobile.

  It took David’s muzzy brain a moment to realize what this meant, and the next words confirmed it for him as they came across the link.

  Move, move, move…

  Nausea gripped his stomach as adrenaline flooded his system. Head throbbing, he could draw only a single conclusion. This was how the Nath made zombies. He had just turned a, presumably dead, raid member into a fucking zombie.

  Don’t panic David, you didn’t mean to do this. Just don’t maybe tell anyone… Yeah! Nobody needs to know. What’s one more zombie in an apocalypse?

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  Then the next thought hit him. Camila will be pissed…

  Oddly, that helped him to get out of his panic. For Camila to be pissed he had to rescue her. So how was he going to do that?

  He could free the others. Cut through their bonds one by one, wake them, coordinate an escape. Safety in numbers.

  Except that plan required time he didn't have, medical supplies or healing magic he didn’t have, noise he couldn't afford to make, and physical capability he didn't possess.

  Every person he woke was another person who might panic, might make sound, might alert their captors. He checked his resources. Magic ticked up to 10%, Health was back down to 1% and Stamina a miserable 1% too.

  The exertion of extending his senses had almost bottomed out his very limited resources. Think. Should he have spent his free XP on something other than boosting his vitality? He had to remind himself aggressively that second guessing was bad now. What’s done was done.

  What could he actually accomplish? He couldn't fight. Couldn't run far. Couldn't coordinate a group escape. But he was free. He still had a bunch of spirits.

  His spirits. He had thirty-one of them according to his status. Thirty-one Nath bound to his will through his bloodline. That was a lot of scouts. The skill descriptions the Herald had given him flooded back. Convert let him feed resources to his spirits. It did so because it linked all his resource pools and allowed conversion. When the Herald had given him the evolution it had linked his spirits to all three of his half-step skills…

  He had used that to make the spirits stronger, more capable. He'd discovered during training that he could supercharge them, even when using them to supercharge Halt. though the process drained his resources quickly.

  That was it. He was thinking about empowering them, nothing said he couldn’t do the reverse. Hell hadn’t he done that with Halt, ripping the spirits apart to pay the resource costs of his actions.

  All he needed to do was repeat the process without throwing Halt.

  Closing his eyes David activated Convert again. It took him a moment but as soon as he did it was easy. He had done this and burned something like a third of his Magic to earn a sliver of Stamina and Health. That was all but depleted now.

  Time to see what spirits offered.

  The immediate answer was nothing. The mental twist to change the flow of resources so that he was drawing on spirits to fuel the others was easy. The sensation he got was problematic.

  If fueling Stamina or Health from mana had been like drinking cool water through a thin straw this was like trying to drink a thick milkshake through the same straw. Milkshake with big old Oreo pieces in it that almost immediately clogged the straw. Unlike the system resources the spirits were discreet entities.

  So he tried to suck harder.

  Nothing happened. He needed something to get the spirit to start transferring. Then it hit him. His bloodline was the solution.

  Rather than pull up ‘liquid’ as the skill intended, he unfurled the tentacle like protrusions of his will and grabbed the spirit, then he pushed. Stuffing the thing into the ‘straw’ of his skill. Only now he was imagining it as a funnel. No a gaping maw of a wood chipper. That was better.

  After a surge of effort akin to the initial harvest of the spirit there was a pop, at least to his spiritual hearing. Followed by a rush of energy. Lots of energy.

  It wasn’t efficient, but then the sucking transfer hadn’t been efficient either. Still the surge of energy made him feel a lot better.

  After a quick check of his status his eyes widened. He was down a spirit, but he was up five percent Stamina, five percent Health and something like two percent Magic. The final number that shifted made his eyes open wide.

  Experience available: 187/200 He had drained it all minutes ago.

  David grinned, making adjustments. He had dropped a percent of Health but his head was still feeling clearer. He needed Vitality, Toughness and Health so he started dumping free points and rupturing spirits. Checking each time.

  The numbers varied a bit but he was getting anywhere from 160 to 200 experience points per spirit. After consuming six more spirits with his bloodline and trickling experience into Vitality, and Health he burned three each boosting his Toughness and Stamina, then another two increasing Magic. He stopped there knowing from experience that you quickly got into diminishing returns after the initial surge of gains.

  His body was feeling a lot better, yes he was still in pain, but the partially full health and Stamina pools were covering that. Indeed he felt them draining fast for a time as they played catchup with his condition. After a minute or two the drain stabilized. He wanted to continue but knew that his spirit reserves were precious if he wanted to use big combat Halt spells…

  A quick check of his status gave him cause to smile. Now he was thinking clearly, he recognized that despite telling Charlie to focus on more than Magic he really hadn’t taken his own advice. The boosted stats made him feel a lot better and more functional.

  Even as he looked his Health trickled down to 54%, reminding him he was on a clock, he didn’t know if he was buying time or actually fixing stuff with the resources without skills to back them up. Well, he guessed he had Reinforce, for all the good that had done him.

  Able to think and move more easily David's gaze returned to the window overlooking the tarmac. He could only see the upper slice of it over the closer rows of seats draped with captives.

  Camila was down there, trapped under that cargo net. So were those fast zombies plus the strange woman with grey-white hair. Some kind of ritual or ceremony that had all the regular zombies entranced. He had a horrible feeling he knew what they were doing and why it was taking so long.

  What he needed was actionable information. Information that might help him find a way to save her. To save any of them.

  He also needed allies, so checking the entranced zombies around him he began to move, checking people by hand, staying low and moving slow and smooth.

  He started with the man he climbed over, his back now to him. Give him a prod. Nothing. Hands out of reach. Move on.

  Next was a woman, also a stranger, though he recognized her from the first raid. Poke, pinch, little groan! Hands accessible. Free them and move on.

  The pattern repeated to the end of the row. Everyone was pretty beat up, and he suspected that unlike him hadn’t taken it well. So maybe Reinforce was good for something after all. Most responded to pain when pinched but none of them stirred. They had all been beaten and signs of massive bruising, swelling and blood loss were everywhere. He still freed the hands of the half he could reach.

  Now it was his first big risk, he scooted to the other side of the row, much more exposed to the zombies. No reaction. He still lost his nerve and shuffled round the row to continue working from cover.

  Half-way through this row he found Charlie. The kid was slumped over and unresponsive. Even compared to the others his beating looked particularly bad. His his head just looked wrong; his face was distorted and swollen and there was a large sticky patch of blood in his hair with what David could only describe as a dent in his skull. David’s mind couldn’t help painting the picture. His friend had been beaten, even after he was knocked out. He was so still he might be dead.

  Slowly, with a sick feeling of fear, he reached out and felt for the younger man’s pulse. He didn't want to use his spirits to check, not if Charlie might be dead…