But…

  I think about the night I just survived. Eleven creatures across four and a half hours. Nothing that required me to detect lies. Nothing that spoke to or displayed anything above basic instinct.

  Social abilities are investments in a future I might not live to see. Combat abilities are investments in surviving tomorrow. Getting to tomorrow comes first.

  I stare at the list. Run the scenarios. Predator's Momentum plus Efficient Predation throw Pressure Point on top when at a high enough level and I would have a build that makes single-target elimination brutally efficient. A synergy combo that could compound advantages until whatever I'm fighting stops being a threat.

  It's the right choice. Obviously the right choice.

  I start to confirm. Then stop.

  I go back. Read each ability again. A third time.

  Vendetta Mark, Read the Spread, Pressure Point, Predator's Momentum, Opportunist's Window, Contingency Protocol, Threat Hierarchy, Cold Read, Investment Return, Efficient Predation, Threat Hierarchy.

  A fourth read.

  Threat Hierarchy. Automatically assess relative danger level of nearby entities. Display as color-coded tinge on HUD.

  Nearby entities. Not visible entities. Not enemies in line of sight.

  Nearby.

  Why did I dismiss that word the first three times?

  The second Brute. The one that almost caught me in the stairwell after the Carrier fight. I didn't know it was there until it was almost on top of me.

  That ten seconds of ignorance nearly cost me everything.

  I can read a room, sure. But I can't read through walls. I can't read what's crouched behind a door or nesting in a ceiling I didn't think to check.

  The combat abilities make me more lethal. But Threat Hierarchy might keep me from walking into something that kills me before lethality matters.

  I'm going to be pushing further now. Pushing into buildings I might not have time to case. Into territory where I may not know the spawns or the patterns.

  The combat abilities make me more lethal. Threat Hierarchy might keep me from walking into something that kills me before lethality matters.

  Information I don't have to work for. Passive and always on, with no stamina cost, no cooldown, no activation window.

  Free data. In my old life, free data was either worthless or the most valuable thing in the room. This didn’t feel worthless.

  I make the selection.

  Threat Hierarchy (Passive)

  Having spent one ability point, I then hold the other in reserve. The System allows banking after all so I'll take the optionality.

  I push through the door. The hallway stretches toward the conference room where Lily is fighting for her life and Sofia is doing everything I couldn't.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  I don't go to them.

  Not yet. Not like this. Covered in fluids the System decided to put inside things that want us dead. Smelling like four hours of combat and the particular copper-rot stench of a Bloated Carrier's death burst. Lily doesn't need to see that. Sofia doesn't need to smell it. If Lily's conscious, if she's aware, the last thing she needs is her brother walking in like a reminder of everything wrong with the world outside these walls.

  I turn left instead. Toward the corner office I've converted into something like living quarters.

  The cleanup station is a plastic tub, three gallons of water I keep hauling up from the basement cistern, and a bar of soap I found in a lawyer's desk drawer. Ivory Spring.

  I strip off the outer layer along with my thermal jacket all of which goes in the pile for later cleaning. The shirt is a loss though. Too much blood soaked into the fibers. Pants might be salvageable if I get to them before the stains set.

  The water is cold. November cold. I don't let myself flinch.

  Systematic. Face first. Hands and forearms where the spray hit heaviest. Neck where something got too close before I put it down. The soap doesn't lather well in cold water but it does the job. Good enough. Clean enough.

  Fresh shirt from the filing cabinet I use as a dresser. Same military surplus as the last one. Same dull green that doesn't show stains until they've had time to really sink in.

  The kitchen is two doors down. Calling it a kitchen is generous. A break room with a mini-fridge that works when the power grid decides to cooperate. A microwave that shares the same optimism. But there's counter space. A sink with no water pressure. And a pair of Bunsen burners I liberated from Georgia State's chemistry department in week one.

  I set up the station. Burner on the counter. Butane canister connected, valve checked, igniter clicked three times before the flame catches. Blue and steady. The one reliable thing in a world that stopped being reliable.

  Pan on the burner stand. Sealed water measured by eye. Three cups, maybe a little more. Oatmeal from a pack of family sized canisters I've been rationing since I found a case of them in a Kroger stockroom. The instant kind. One minute cook time once the water boils.

  I watch the water. Wait for the bubbles.

  The generator hums through the walls. Still running. I pass the time with a book on the origins of Atlanta's BBQ scene, left on the counter from yesterday. My bookmark is stuck in a chapter on the Georgian stew debates of the 1930s. What strictly constitutes a Brunswick Stew. Whether tomatoes are essential or heretical. An argument people used to have when the stakes were low enough to care about things like authenticity.

  I've been thinking about smokers.

  Not the arguments. The construction. There's a diagram a few chapters back showing a traditional offset design. Firebox on one side, cooking chamber on the other, smoke drawn across the meat by convection. Simple physics really. The same thermodynamics that govern everything else now applied to pork shoulder.

  I could build one. The materials exist. Sheet metal is in abundance. Welding equipment exists in a maintenance closet in the basement, assuming I can find fuel for the torch. The hard part would be temperature control. Maintaining 225 degrees for twelve hours requires consistent airflow, which requires dampers, which requires fabrication. I could never manage that with what's available.

  But even with a perfect seal, the environment is the real enemy. At twenty stories up, I’d be at the mercy of the city’s laminar flow. On a clear, still Georgia afternoon, a smoker spews white plumes that would rise and linger, hanging against the blue sky like a flag for everyone in the South End with a pair of binoculars.

  I’d have to time its usage with the weather then. I’d need a front moving in, something with enough teeth to provide a low, gray ceiling to mask the silhouette of the smoke. High winds, maybe fifteen miles per hour out of the Northwest, to shred the scent molecules before they could reach the street.

  Because without the wind, the evening cooling would create a temperature inversion and by dusk, the lobby doors would smell like a barbecue pit.

  The only way to play it safe would be to source coal or burn the wood down in a separate, hidden firebox first. I’d need that thin, translucent "blue smoke" that vanishes almost as soon as it leaves the stack.

  Anything heavier, the thick, acrid "dirty" smoke of a fresh fire and I might as well ring a bell and invite the whole city to dinner.

  But the theory is sound. Low heat, long time, wood smoke penetrating the collagen until it breaks down into something tender. Brisket would be ideal. Pork shoulder is more realistic given what's actually wandering through Atlanta's ruins. Wild hogs have been multiplying since the farms collapsed. I've seen tracks near Piedmont Park. Nothing wrong with locally sourced meat after all.

  Someday. When there's time. When Lily is stable and the building is secure and I can spend fourteen hours babysitting a fire instead of clearing floors and hauling antibiotics.

  The water boils then. I pour in the oats. Stir with a plastic spoon that's starting to warp from heat exposure. One minute. I count it in my head.

  Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Sixty.

  I kill the flame. Pour the oatmeal into two mugs because all the bowls are in the conference room, repurposed as containers for medical supplies. The mugs say "World's Best Paralegal" in faded letters. I found them on adjacent desks on the fourth floor. Their owners never came back for them.

  I add sugar and creamer milk powder, quite a bit of it until it becomes sweet and thick. Exactly what my body needs after four hours of burning stamina.

  I eat standing up. Both mugs. Then I make two more, putting my body through lightweight stretches while the water boils again. Calisthenics between stirs. Keeping the muscles from locking up, while down the hall, a doctor I barely know tries to save the only person I have left.

  I rinse the pot. Fill two fresh mugs. Grab both spoons.

  Then I go, to see if my sister survived the night.