Zeph woke to sunlight streaming through a window that had actual glass.
For exactly three seconds, his body didn’t know where he was. His hand moved automatically toward the space where his axe should have been, muscles tensing for the threat that always ca with morning in the ruins—scavengers checking for easy targets, monsters that hunted at dawn, structural collapses from overnight settling.
Then awareness caught up to instinct.
Safe. He was safe.
The panic drained away, leaving sothing that felt almost like embarrassnt in its wake. He forced his hand to relax, focusing on the sensation of actual sheets against his skin instead of the tarp and rubble he’d gotten used to.
One look at the date on his digital bedside clock told him he’d slept for three days straight!
Three days without waking once to check his periter. Without jolting awake at phantom sounds. Without the constant low-grade awareness that sleeping ant vulnerability and vulnerability ant death.
Just... sleep. Actual, genuine, restorative sleep.
Zeph sat up slowly, his 6’9" fra making the small bed creak in protest. His feet hung a good eight inches off the end, and his shoulder had been pressed against the wall all night, but he’d barely noticed. Compared to sleeping on concrete with a brick for a pillow, this was luxury.
The apartnt looked different in daylight. Still small—the entire space was maybe fifteen feet by twenty, with the kitchenette taking up a quarter of the available area—but the morning sun revealed details he’d been too exhausted to process on the first night.
The walls were painted a neutral beige that had probably been chosen for being inoffensive rather than aesthetically pleasing. The floor was so kind of synthetic material designed to look like wood, easy to clean and probably impossible to damage without serious effort.
The window overlooked other apartnt buildings, creating a view that consisted entirely of more beige walls and more windows, but it let in natural light and that was more than he’d had in years.
His reflection caught his eye in the small mirror mounted near the bathroom door.
Storm-gray eyes stared back at him from a gaunt face that was all sharp angles and hollow cheeks. The silver streaks in his black hair caught the sunlight, making them seem almost luminous. Dark circles under his eyes had faded slightly after actual rest, but they were still visible—three years of chronic sleep deprivation couldn’t be fixed in two nights.
He looked exactly like what he was: soone who’d survived by being harder than the things trying to kill him.
’But I’m not in the ruins anymore.’
The thought was strange. Liberating and terrifying in equal asure.
Zeph stood, stretched, and imdiately regretted it when his hands hit the ceiling. The apartnt had standard eight-foot ceilings, which ant soone his height had barely a feet of clearance. He’d have to rember to avoid certain actions indoors.
Just another thing his body had to adjust to.
His stomach growled—a sound so loud and insistent that it actually made him flinch. When was the last ti he’d eaten? Three days ago? Four? He’d had so dried at and stale crackers at so point during the journey, but his mory was fuzzy on the specifics.
The kitchenette’s cooling unit was empty except for a single bottle of water, probably left by whoever had stocked the apartnt for new residents. The cabinets held nothing but dust.
Right. Food.
That ant going outside. Interacting with civilization. Being around people who weren’t trying to kill him.
The prospect was simultaneously appealing and anxiety-inducing.
Zeph pulled on his hoodie—the sa oversized black one he’d been wearing for days, which probably slled terrible but was comfortable and familiar—and checked his pockets. Citizen ID, credit chip, the small communication crystal Marcus had given him.
The crystal made him pause. His brows furrowed slightly as mories of his last interaction with the S-Ranker crossed his mind. It all still felt unreal to him, and he wasn’t sure whether it was in a good way or a bad one!
After all, he had made a very important decision that day...
_____
[Flashback.]
[Six Days Ago. The Underground tunnels...]
Swoosh!
Zeph’s lungs burned despite his 161 Vitality as he pushed his enhanced speed to its limits. The Underground Bazaar’s tunnels blurred past—stone walls reduced to streaks of gray and brown by AGI 312.
Behind him, Marcus’s footsteps echoed with the steady rhythm of soone out for a casual jog.
’Still not trying. Still just watching!’
Zeph’s enhanced hearing tracked every sound with perfect clarity. The S-rank was fifty ters back, maybe sixty. Not closing the distance but not falling behind either.
’What the fuck does he actually want?’
His Force enhancent flickered—eight seconds remaining. Then he’d drop from AGI 312 to 156, and even that advantage would shrink.
The tunnel branched ahead. Left toward the old tro system, right toward a maintenance shaft, straight into deeper restricted areas.
Zeph chose straight, his boots hamring against cracked concrete as he—
Force deactivated.
[AGILITY: 312 → 156]
The sudden loss felt like soone had cut his legs off at the knees. His next step faltered, montum carrying him forward in a stumble that he barely converted into a controlled slide.
’Shit.’
He caught himself against the tunnel wall, pushed off, kept running. Still fast—superhuman by any normal standard—but no longer the impossible blur he’d been monts before.
His sharp gaze gave him a clear view of what lay ahead of him. The tunnel stretched another two hundred ters before the next junction. Ergency lighting cast everything in sickly green. Water dripped sowhere to his left from corroded pipes.
And behind him—
Silence.
Marcus’s footsteps had stopped!
Not slowed. Not changed direction.
Stopped entirely!
Zeph’s blood froze.
’He’s not behind anymore!’
He kept running, but his mind raced through tactical assessnts. Enhanced Hearing could track sounds within three hundred ters. Marcus had been at fifty ters. There was no way he’d gotten far enough away to—
BANG!
The tunnel ahead exploded.
A pillar of white-hot fla erupted from floor to ceiling, twenty feet wide, completely blocking the passage. The heat hit Zeph like a physical wall—his skin tightened, his eyes watered, the air itself seed to scream as it was instantly superheated to plasma.
He skidded to a halt thirty feet from the inferno, throwing his arm up to shield his face.
’When did he—how did he—’
"I said we need to talk."
The voice ca from behind him.
Zeph spun, axe coming up in a defensive guard, and found Marcus standing ten feet away in the tunnel he’d just been running through.
Arms crossed. Expression calm. Not breathing hard. Not even sweating despite the thousand-degree firestorm he’d just created.
Waiting.
"You keep running," Marcus continued mildly, as if comnting on the weather.
Zeph’s mind processed the tactical situation with the cold efficiency of three years spent making life-or-death calculations.
’He didn’t chase . He teleported ahead, cut off my escape, then appeared behind while I was distracted by the flas.’
’I never even sensed him move. No sound, no air displacent, nothing.’
’AGI 156 versus... what? Five hundred? A thousand? Plus S-rank physique, decades of experience, skills I haven’t seen.’
’Temporal Fracture is on cooldown. Adaptive Resilience needs to take hits first—and against S-rank damage, the first hit might be the only one.’
’The Inevitable title saves from one fatal blow. Then he kills on the second strike.’
’Can’t outrun him. Can’t outfight him. Can’t outlast him.’
’Which ans—’
Zeph didn’t lower the axe. Didn’t relax his stance. But his voice ca out level and analytical.
"Talk, then."
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