The stockroom of GW’s trauma bay is cleaner than my apartment ever was, pre-apocalypse. Even when cleaning services still existed.

  White LED strips overhead, still humming. Climate control pushing filtered air through vents someone bothered to maintain. Pharmaceutical shelving organized by drug class, alphabetized, like the world didn't end three weeks ago. Like the apocalypse was just some market correction they were going to wait out.

  GW Memorial adapted fast. That much I'll give them.

  The System timer pulses in my peripheral. It’s useful, that countdown. Keeps me honest about how little time I have for everything pushing on down around me.

  Ceftriaxone. Wrong drug. Vancomycin. Wrong mechanism for what's spreading through Lily's bloodstream. Meropenem. Wrong resistance profile for whatever the System decided to cultivate in her, for whatever mutation turned a treatable infection into something the literature never anticipated.

  I've tried everything the streets had to offer. Ransacked pharmacies with their windows already smashed. Clinics where the doctors died week one and nobody locked the sample closets. Apartments where the medicine cabinets outlasted their owners.

  None of it mattered.

  The fever kept climbing. 104, 106, 108.

  Day six. While the rest of us were still learning what System notifications meant and why the screaming always got worse after sunset. Grady-Whitfield Memorial was locking down every hospital in Atlanta.

  Cornered the market on survival. Made treatment something you earned through labor contracts, never something you could buy or barter. Eliminated price discovery entirely.

  Smart. Brutal even. Exactly what I would have done if I hadn’t been preoccupied with keeping my sister alive through streets full of things that used to be people.

  There.

  Linezolid. The only antibiotic that might still work for my needs.

  Lily's fever, 108.9° this morning.

  Ceftriaxone failed. Doxycycline failed. Linezoid was our last option.

  600mg IV bags, six units per box, tucked in the back where someone knew they'd be valuable.

  Two boxes into my pack. Then a third. A fourth. Clearing the shelf of them. Twenty-four doses, two full courses plus margin, because Lily's infection stopped following predictable patterns the moment the System grabbed a hold of it.

  Four pounds settles against my spine. Four pounds that might buy her another month.

  That word keeps showing up. In everything I try. Might.

  I'm reaching for the Daptomycin backup when I hear it. Footsteps in the corridor but the cadence is wrong.

  The patrol cycles every three minutes. Two guards, synchronized, predictable. I spent three nights constructing that model and these footsteps don't fit it.

  Yet even as I think, my hands never stop moving. Two more boxes of this, a carton of that. Whatever's happening out there, the probability of Lily's survival stays the same.

  Either they're early or it's not them. Both options push me, remind me that I need to be somewhere else.

  ??A woman slips through the gap.

  Not a guard at least. Wrong posture, wrong movement, wrong everything. She's in scrubs that fit like she belongs in them, dark hair pulled back, moving like someone who knows this building but doesn't want to be seen in it.

  Still she’s too focused for her own good. Doesn’t even bother to scan the room. Instead, I follow her eyes to the shelving unit three rows down and alongside the other end of the room. The one labeled PEDIATRIC PAINKILLERS.

  Her hands move with clinical precision. Not grabbing randomly. Checking dosages, reading labels, discarding boxes that don't meet whatever criteria she's running. She’s doing it faster than me. A clear professional at least.

  Pediatric dosages though, are odd. She's stealing children's medicine.

  Either she's a motivated asset or a liability with nothing left to lose. Different risk profiles entirely.

  I’m running my own calculations now. I could wait her out. Let her take what she needs and leave. Except she's between me and my exit, and the patrol is going to come through that north corridor in less than a minute. Two thieves in a trauma stockroom means two people making noise, more variables I can't control.

  I twist toward the door. That’s when the extra boxes in my pack shift. Clink.

  She turns toward the antibiotics section. Toward me.

  We lock eyes. We freeze.

  Her gaze drops to my pack, closed but overstuffed, then to the gap on the shelf behind me. Her pupils dilated, she knows exactly what's missing even from across the room.

  My eyes drop to her arms, full of children's painkillers. Enough to keep a sick kid comfortable for months. Or dozens of sick children comfortable for a few days.

  Neither of us reaches for any kind of weapon. That's information, at least. We both understand the predicament.

  "You're not with PSI security." Her voice is steady, but I see the pulse in her throat. She's running the same calculation I am. I've seen that look in negotiations. Usually across a table with better lighting and worse stakes

  "Neither are you. Not anymore," I say.

  Something moves across her face, old and settled in. A mounting desperation the awake have grown used to. Maybe atleast, she was like me.

  I raise both hands. Palms out. The universal signal for "I'm not the problem you need to solve right now."

  "Scrubs fit too well," I say. "Right uniform, wrong posture. You know this building but you're not supposed to be here." I look at what she's carrying. "Pediatric painkillers, the general kind. Little street value so you're not selling. You're keeping a kid comfortable."

  Me too.

  "Linezolid. Someone important to you is septic."

  Ten seconds of observation and she's got my whole position read. I used to get paid for reads like that.

  Two people standing in stolen time.

  We didn’t have to be enemies leaving through the same door.

  "Patrol hits this corridor in thirty-five-ish seconds," I say. "I have an exit. What about you?"

  "Staff corridor." She says it like it's obvious. "Has maintenance access. It's clear enough that I can use it anytime."

  I shrug. If she's using the staff corridor to steal from her own people, they likely already knew. Probably even sanctioned it and just didn’t tell the staff. Petty theft as a pressure release valve, was not an uncommon deterrent to larger social problems. Let the doctors skim children's medicine, keep them compliant, maintain the illusion they still have agency, power, control.

  I've seen worse retention strategies.

  I tell her none of this, I head towards the exit instead while keeping at least a half dozen feet of distance between me and this good Samaritan.

  I don't hear her following. What was wrong with her, she should be moving, my curiosity gets me and I turn. She's crossed the room, over to where I was, boxes clutched to her chest, reading the empty space on the shelves I raided.

  "Linezolid and Daptomycin?" She somehow holds both boxes up to me.

  "Together? You'll fry their kidneys. Serotonin syndrome. You can't just…" She shakes one of the boxes in her hand at me.

  "I know."

  "Do you?" She takes a step toward me. I feel the accusation. She's worried for someone she's never met. "Lino toxicity presents as peripheral neuropathy. Starts in the fingers. By the time you notice."

  "I’m well aware that the damage is permanent. I’ve read your medical literature. But I don’t have a choice."

  I bite the inside of my cheek. I, Lily, neither of us have time for a consultation.

  What are you doing then?

  The blinking blue box continues to flash in my vision. The System, ever a reminder of my predicaments.

  Her mouth opens, then closes. I can see on her, however, the instinct she has is screaming that this is wrong.

  "There's a girl." I say, the words are out before I can stop them. "Eleven years old. Fever hit 109°. I've tried everything."

  Something shifts in her expression. Whatever decision tree she is running through gets replaced by something worse, recognition.

  "Dr. Vasquez," she says fast. "She has an outpatient program. She's fast tracking pediatric cases. Children all over the facility are having issues, all of them have trouble adapting to the System. Bring her in, she, we can help you."

  "No."

  She flinches. I didn't mean it to land that hard.

  She waits, hoping I’ll fill the silence with the answer she wants to hear, I let it.

  "Good luck with your kid," I say.

  She blinks. "She's... it's complicated."

  "It always is."

  I turn, my hand touching the door. But then, in front of me, I hear the shuffle of boots.

  Even for my most conservative models they are early.

  Regardless, the door swings open and I'm already moving. Dismissing the System timer with a moment of thought.

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  I slide behind a supply rack. Seven feet of steel and inventory between me and the door. My pack presses flat against the shelving, body angled to minimize my profile. The antibiotics shift against my spine. Four pounds of Lily's survival, rustling like evidence.

  But the good samaritan doesn't move.

  She stands in the open, arms full of pediatric painkillers. She doesn't move because she doesn’t have to. She belongs here in a way I don't. Her instinct says bluff, whereas mine says vanish.

  More complications, just like I told myself.

  Four guards roll into the room. Standard GW security loadout, but the patrol has doubled up.

  Still no guns, at least. GW Memorial figured out fast that gunfire after dark attracts things with worse intentions than thieves. One policy decision I can't argue with.

  "Dr. Rios?" The first guard's voice carries genuine confusion. Not suspicion, not yet but I can feel it coming. "Your night shift ended two hours ago. Curfew is in effect."

  Doctor.

  I file that away. Revise my probability estimates. If anything they have gotten worse. Doctors and their oaths always made things tricky.

  "Couldn't sleep." Rios’ voice comes out almost steady. "Thought I'd check the inventory on the pediatric supplies. We're running low on…"

  She gestures with the boxes in her arms. She’s loaded down. The motion catches, too quickly, too hurried and one box tumbles from the crook of her elbow.

  Children's Tylenol scatters across the floor. Like a confession.

  The silence that follows is one I know. That fills rooms where someone's about to lose their job or their teeth. Or both at the same time.

  "Ma'am." The second guard's hand moves to his baton. "I'm going to need you to put those down."

  Through the gap in the shelving, I see the doctor's face. She's clearly aware of her predicament. Four guards, batons out. One unarmed doctor. The spread on it is ugly. Best case, she walks away bruised and with a busted lip and that would be a soft and considerate response. But they don’t look considerate and she’s thinking it too.

  Her eyes flick toward my position. Just for a heartbeat.

  I don’t even think she means to do it.

  Still the first guard catches it.

  "Someone else in here?"

  His hand drifts to the wall-mounted intercom. Hardwired into the grid.

  Nineteen seconds.

  That's how long a facility-wide alert takes to propagate once called in. Nineteen seconds and every exit locks down. Every calculation I've run for the past three nights becomes worthless.

  I can't get out of the building in nineteen seconds.

  But with the System, I can cross twelve feet in one.

  Still I had to consider minimum effective force. That's what I tell myself separates survival from murder. Take only what's necessary from the dead. Kill only what you have to.

  Four guards. One intercom. Nineteen seconds.

  My plan conceptualizes before I've finished the thought, incapacitate where possible, eliminate only where required. Lily needs me to come back. She doesn't need me to come back as a butcher and we don't need the heat.

  I explode from behind the shelves. My knife staying sheathed. The guards are still processing two people in a room that should be empty. Training tells them to assess, report, wait for backup.

  Their training is too slow.

  The one moving toward the intercom gets my attention first. His fingers reach for the transmit switch. Eight feet becomes four. His eyes widened.

  I drive my palm into his solar plexus and not the throat like my knife would find. It forces his diaphragm to spasm. He can't breathe, can't shout, but he'll recover. He folds, staggers back from the intercom before managing to hit it, hands clutching his chest instead of the switch.

  The second guard doesn't hesitate. Baton already drawn, swinging for my skull before I've even finished the pivot. Fast and trained at least, of muscle memory that comes from actual practice, not simply repetitive drills. Yet I can feel the slowness, this one is barely system enhanced.

  I duck under the arc. The baton whistles past my ear. His momentum carries him forward, weight committed to a strike that didn't land.

  My knee finds his thigh. I’m outnumbered so I dead the leg hard enough that he buckles. Catching the back of his head on the way down, guiding it into a filing cabinet hard enough to ring the metal. His whole body goes limp from the impact.

  Two guards. Three seconds. Both breathing.

  The third guard is smarter than his partners. He ignores his baton, lunging for the emergency panel on the far wall. Red button, palm-sized, impossible to miss.

  I can't reach him in time. My control, my reluctance to butcher them, it had to have cost. Two seconds it will take me to close the distance but he only needs one.

  A box hits him in the face.

  Rios, the doctor, coming in clutch. I smile, glad to know she's made her choice. The impact doesn't hurt him, but he flinches, hand slapping uselessly against the wall.

  I cover the distance. He's turning back toward the panel, fingers stretching for the red button…

  Still I remind myself of minimum effective force.

  I grab his collar, spin him, drive my forehead into the bridge of his nose. Cartilage crunches. Blood sprays. He screams, hands going to his face instead of the button.

  I shove him into the shelving. He hits hard, slides down, doesn't get up, but I see that he's breathing and that is enough.

  Three guards. Five seconds.

  The gunshot is deafening.

  Guard four, backpedaling toward the far shelving. Revolver out, hands shaking. Not standard GW issue. A personal weapon of choice.

  Minimum effective force has left the building.

  The first shot goes wide. Shatters a glass cabinet six feet to my left. The second punches through a shelf of saline, spraying sterile liquid across the floor.

  He's not aiming at least. But surviving against a panicked revolver in a room like this feels like playing Russian roulette.

  The third shot is closer. I feel it pass my ribs like a hot whisper.

  I dive behind the shelving unit, with its steel and inventory. I move laterally, listening to his breathing. Ragged, shallow. He's backing himself into a corner and doesn't realize it.

  Fourth shot. Punches through bandages, buries itself in concrete.

  Two rounds left. Unless he didn't load a full cylinder.

  "Stay back!" His voice cracks. "I'll—I'll—"

  His back hits the wall. No exit, no cover, nothing but the gun in his shaking hands.

  I step out from the shelving.

  Fifth shot is wild. Somehow it buries itself into the ceiling.

  Then I'm on him. The revolver comes down for the sixth shot and I'm already inside its arc, my hand closing around the cylinder. He pulls the trigger and the hammer falls on a blocked chamber.

  His eyes meet mine.

  He doesn't let go.

  Minimum effective force means matching the threat who knew what else he might have up his sleeve.

  Still his grip tightens, I can see it in his eyes. He's not surrendering, not for nobody, not for anything. He's deciding whether to swing the pistol as a club

  I don't give him the chance.

  The knife comes out. One thrust is all it takes, delivered under the ribs and he makes a sound like air escaping a punctured tire.

  I let him drop.

  Four guards. Nine seconds total, maybe ten. Three breathing. One deceased.

  I exhale, sheathe my blade. Give myself a second.

  The silence after gunfire is never really silent like it is in the movies. There's still a ringing that fills the space where sound used to be. And underneath it, the distant sound of everything those shots just summoned.

  I check the System log.

  One kill notification, not four. The other three must have been taken out.

  Wait!

  I spin.

  The first guard. The one I palm-struck in the solar plexus instead of crushing his throat or slashing it open. He's on his knees by the wall, one hand clutching his chest, the other stretching toward the intercom by the door.

  The cost of proportionality.

  God, I should have killed him. Every second I spend being merciful, none of it ever seems to help me in any way.

  I move. Twelve feet between us.

  His fingers graze the panel.

  Eight feet.

  He finds the switch.

  Four feet.

  He toggles it. The intercom crackles to life.

  I hit him before he can speak. Drive his skull into the wall hard enough to split the plaster. He goes limp, slides sideways, leaves a red smear on the intercom housing.

  The channel is open. The line is live. Somewhere in the building, someone heard three seconds of distant gunfire and now through the channel, the wet sound of a body hitting concrete.

  I flick the channel closed.

  I look down, his eyes are still open, still watching me. His mouth works, trying to form words with lungs that can barely push air.

  I watch him for a few more seconds until he stops.

  Two kills now. The one who gave me no choice. And the one I gave a choice to.

  Neither will ever know how much they might have cost me.

  Rios arrives next to me, she’s staring at the bodies. At the blood spreading across the floor. Then at my side.

  "You're bleeding."

  I look down. A graze near my ribs. The revolver shot I thought missed. Adrenaline masked the sting, but the knowledge that I had forgotten about it was already disappearing.

  Still blood loss is negligible. Infection probability given the environment, given my current stress load, given everything else competing for my immune system's attention...

  Even with my new ability, I still had no idea how the System could possibly give me such an answer…

  "I can help," she says. Her voice steadying, the tremor from watching me kill two people in front of her… gone. She's looking at the wound like a blueprint, the same way trauma surgeons do. Like every wound can be fixed and is nothing beyond a simple puzzle to decode.

  She grabs gauze from a nearby shelf. Moves toward me without asking permission. Her hands are already working before I can object, pressing the gauze against the graze, applying pressure with ease.

  "If you get me out." She looks me straight in the eyes while she works. Her words land like terms in a contract.

  A trade. Not a plea. I can work with trades.

  But this one has variables I don't like. Getting her out means trusting that she can even manage my exit route. My operational patterns could become compromised.

  Thirty-eight percent infection probability. That's not a number I can ignore, not with how dire things are for Lily. And the doctor demonstrated competence under pressure, watched me kill, didn't freeze, didn't run, went straight to the wound.

  The exit is the exit. No harm comes from letting her try my route regardless. And a thirty-eight percent infection probability while caring for Lily is a compounding risk I can't afford.

  "Can you keep up?"

  "Try me."

  "Antibiotics," I say, pointing to the shelves. "Doxycycline, Azithromycin. Fill your pockets." She’s already moving before I finish the sentence.

  I turn to the guards. Looting isn't greed; it's survival.

  I strip the tactical vest from the second guard. They are wearing a kevlar composite and I strap it across my shoulders. I work down the line, collapsible baton, trauma kit, boots with actual tread.

  Rios appears at my elbow with a canvas duffel. She takes the boots without a word, loading them while I check the revolver.

  Five spent casings. One live round. Five more loose rounds in one of the pockets.

  I reload. Six in the gun. Zero spares. A non-zero integer at least.

  "Done," Rios says. Her pockets bulge.

  "Move."

  I take the bag. We hit the south stairwell. The route I've been running in my head for three nights. It leads to a medical office with a window overlooking the old parking structure. A twenty foot drop to a car roof, then freedom.

  "System level?" I ask as we clear the first level upwards within the stairwell.

  "Four."

  I stop. I turn to look at her.

  "Constitution stat?"

  She blinks, surprised by the pivot. "Eight. Why?"

  "Eight?"

  I turn to face her.

  "My exit involves a twenty-foot drop. Impact threshold for bone integrity needs a constitution around 20 but at least 15. At eight, you'll shatter both legs."

  “I didn’t put any points into it and we’re not allowed above level 4," she says. "Medical personnel aren't authorized for combat advancement. The Board concludes that we are too valuable to risk in the field, so we stay to support.” She gestures vaguely in my direction. “Division of labor. Specialization, it's more efficient."

  Efficient.

  I look at her. Really look at her. A doctor who can't leave the building without an escort. Who can't survive a twenty-foot drop. Can't fight off a System-spawned monster when it corners her in a hallway. Every physician in this building is a captive asset with a lab coat and a convincing story they tell themselves about why they’ve stuck around as if being unable to leave is not an answer enough.

  The Board didn't protect their medical staff. They collared them.

  But she believes it. She's repeated the logic enough times that it feels like her own thought. I've seen that before. Analysts who defended their bonus structure while the firm bled them dry.

  They called it an opportunity.

  The VP called it growth.

  HR would have called it efficient.

  KLAXON.

  The sound rips through the stairwell, vibrating in my teeth. Red emergency lights bathe the concrete in blood tones. A security message blares overhead.

  ‘Security event in progress. Lockdown initiated. West Wing’

  Above us, six flights up, a heavy mechanical thud echoes down the shaft, magnetic locks engaging. Three flights between us and the window. We'll never make it. Even if she could survive the drop.

  Then another thud. It was closer now. Five flights up at most.

  They’re sealing the building from the top down. Flushing the rats to the bottom.

  The window exit zeroes out. New variables meant backup plan.

  "Change of plans," I say.

  Thud. Four flights up.

  I spin, grab the duffel strap, drag her momentum with mine.

  "Down."

  "What?"

  "Down! We have to go down. We have to go deep."

  We sprint. Gravity aids us now. We take the stairs two at a time, sliding on the landings, boots punishing the concrete.

  The heavy thud-clack of mag-locks chases us down the well. It's getting closer, the noise is changing. Three flights now. Clank

  We pass the ground floor. We keep going. The air turns cold.

  Two flights. Clank

  Sub-level one. ‘Storage’

  It’s nearly above us now.

  Sub-level two. ‘Maintenance’.

  Directly above us now. Clank

  Sub-level three. I can feel it.

  The lock sound it’s about to engage. We’re about to be sealed in the stairwell with a response team that shoots first and burns the bodies after.

  The door at the bottom is heavy steel. Painted with hazard stripes. Sloppily welded shut.

  I don't slow down.

  I channel the System instead, into my right leg. I force it to recognize the limb as a weapon.

  "Extension!" I scream, exploiting the logic of the ability.

  Metal screams. The frame buckles. The door flies open, tearing off its top hinge and revealing a maintenance hallway bathed in red emergency lights turning everything the color of arterial spray.

  Clank.

  It's useless. Were already through.