Tee had tried to take her life countless times over the years she had stopped counting so long ago, around the time the concept of mathematics had become too complex for her to understand. It was begun as a search for the end, a way to put an end to a meaningless existence. She had thrown herself off buildings of increasing altitude, there had been decapitations, blunt force trauma to her head, death by firing squad, extreme exposure to the elements, starvation, poisoning, combustion, even going as far as trying to will herself out of existence; it all ended the same way.
[You have been incapacitated. Undead regeneration activated.]
That foreign voice in her head would announce the same thing, every time the world faded into black. She knew it was a foreign voice because of the way it spoke, the words it spoke were far more refined than what she was capable of producing these days. Despite hearing it every day, year, second–the concept of time had also eluded her–she still couldn't figure out exactly what it meant, just that she had failed once again.
Tee wandered the wasteland, what was left of her brain set to auto-pilot as it sought out her next meal. Hundreds of former citizens shambled through the city, adopted siblings she never asked for, they gave her no mind as they chased their own endless hunger. At one particularly dark point in her afterlife she even went as far as to join the horde. She couldn't speak, not well, but that wasn't an issue for her kind.
The lingering whispers of memories roared as thousands joined in unison. It was difficult, though not impossible to single out individual thoughts, if you could call them thoughts, but that took great concentration. A single word would sometimes break through the cacophony of background noise; a name of a parent, child, lover, even a family pet. She would track down the source of thought, but every time it would return to that of food.
Hunt. Kill. Eat. Bite. Sound? Movement! Chase! Food. Food! Food! Food!
She would shadow the intellectuals, but find that no matter how long she listened for something human, something familiar, their thoughts never returned to their previous life. The fascination of one free thinker would be lost as another name caught her attention, and the cycle would continue until she broke free from the horde and wandered.
Tee had seen all there was to see. She had see settlements, and been killed. She had met wildlife, and been killed, she had found the weak and wounded, left behind to fend for themselves… And did the killing this time. The world was dead, she had reached the end, but was denied the chance to cross the finish line. So as she stood atop a skyscraper and contemplated death by impact–having had forgotten the dozen of other times she used this specific structure to attempt to cross over–she saw something new and exciting.
From the shattered crown of the skyscraper, she had seen the ripple in the dust, the sudden arrival of something warm and alive in a city that hadn't heard the beat of a heart in ages. She screamed silently in triumph and took the fastest path to meet this new arrival.
[You have been incapacitated. Undead regeneration activated.]
With those familiar words still ringing in her head, she rose on unsteady feet and searched for the man. Tee had already forgotten which direction he was in, but she could figure this out. The important part was that she remembered why she had fallen this time, and what she needed to do. Swaying gently, Tee opened her mind and let the assault of primitive thoughts bombard her consciousness.
Food. Food. Food. Stuck. Hungry. Sad.
That last one caught her attention, but her new mission was more important than following another aberration.
Hungry. Food. Stuck. Stuck Sound? Sound! Movement! Food! Stuck! Attack! Stuck! Attack! Ouch!
Then silence, but it was a clue to go off of. She wasn't fast by human means, but for a zombie, she could seriously move. If she could still reason out solutions with logic, she might ponder the effects of undead regeneration beyond that of being the precursor to her waking up after every failed attempt on her own life.
The second set of thoughts that caught her attention came as a duo. She listened as they briefly hunted and went silent shortly after.
The third caused her to move more quickly.
Human? Danger. Run! Food? Hunt! Pain. Escape! Escape! YOU MUST ESCAPE! Food? Attack!
A flame was lit in her heart as dozens of thoughts flickered for blocks, throughout the entire neighborhood, all saying the same thing.
Food!
As if the dinner bell had been rung, the undead were converging on the point of the fallen Elite and whatever had killed it.
Tamara was first on the scene, though some of the others would be there soon. She turned the corner and saw the man standing maybe a block away, staring down at the body of the powerful enemy he had taken down. She had come here for a reason, she had moved so fast to get here, but now that she was, she couldn't recall why. Her body ached at sight of him, a switch in her brain flipped and she was overcome with hunger.
Food?
She slowly made her way toward her prey but stopped about halfway there. She tilted her head and observed him again. He was alive, there was a living human in the city. She couldn't remember the last time she saw a living–
Food!
The thought hammered into her brain, echoed by a dozen others that were getting closer. If she stalled, she would have to share, and her happy moment would be gone too soon. She pressed onward, the thrill of the hunt pulling her strings like a puppet as she made her way to the first warm meal in, well, forever? Hunger was the only feeling left that she could feel. Hunger was constant, a low drum constantly pounding away at her skull, but this was different. This was the same quiet pull she had felt as she listened to Rodriguez scream her name, as she heard the transports roar into the distance, carrying the last of the civilians from a base she called home. Something new had arrived, and she needed to understand it.
Again she stopped, this wasn't right, she wasn't here to eat. How can that be true though, when a human, a living human stood a short sprint away. She couldn't remember the last time she saw a living human in this city. Or… Could she?
Now this man stood in the middle of the shattered avenue, clothed in the scraps he had found and streaked with blood and dust, staring at the glowing words only he could see. The light had just finished its work, leaving him swaying on his feet, chest heaving, eyes wide with the shock of what had been done to him.
He had barely succeeded, and managed to claw his way away from her brethren. The beasts that only sought flesh and pleasure. He made it! He was on the right track, and she wanted… What did she want? She wanted to eat him! No! She, wanted… to help him? To help him in any way she could. Tamara stepped out of the shadows and into the open, now thirty feet away.
The man's head snapped up as his gaze locked on her.
She was a woman-shaped thing in the tattered remains of a military uniform, one eye clouded white and useless, the other sunk deep into a skull, hardly recognizable. Her jaw hung loose, revealing blackened gums and broken teeth. Her dog tags caught the dim light when she moved… ALVAREZ, T. was fused to her collarbone by decades of dried blood.
He stumbled back, snatched the blood-slick knife from his hip, and raised it in defiance. His knuckles went white around the metal.
Tamara opened her ruined mouth. The sound that came out was barely air, dry and ancient and wrong, but she forced it anyway.
"Tee…"
She moaned as she took another slow step forward.
"System," he croaked, voice cracking. "Please allocate my stats. Ten into Constitution. Ten into Strength. Make me a beast that can fend off these monsters. Please."
"Do it."
The exhaustion from the fight, the blood loss, the System's brutal rewrite, everything crashed over him at once. His vision tunneled to a pinprick as the knife slipped from his fingers and clanged against the street. His knees buckled, and he collapsed face-first into the dust, unconscious before he hit the ground causing Tamara to stop.
The hunger roared inside her, tasting the salt of his fear and the warmth of fresh blood so close she could almost feel it on her tongue. She wanted to feast, he was weak and she wanted to feast on his flesh… But she didn't move for several painstaking minutes.
After a time, she made her way to the fallen human and stood over his motionless body, head tilted at that same curious angle, single milky eye fixed on the slow rise and fall of his chest. The wind stirred the ragged edges of her tattered coat and carried his scent across the space between them.
For the first time in longer than she could measure, Tamara Alvarez was surprised.
Tamara crouched beside the unconscious man, the hunger still raging at her, begging her to dig into his flesh, but it had quieted to a murmur, almost respectful. This moment was different, and she would control herself.
She lowered herself until she was close enough to feel the heat rolling off his skin. Carefully, deliberately, she studied him. The scraps of clothing he had scavenged that oncehung loose on his frame, stained with dust and blood, were now tight, almost constricting. The knife lay where it had fallen, just beyond his outstretched fingers. His face was smeared with grime, one cheek bruised purple from the collapse, but beneath it all she could see the changes the System had already begun.
His shoulders had grown broader, there was heavier muscle along his arms, the way his chest rose stronger and deeper than it had but a few moments ago. Ten into Constitution. Ten into Strength. She could almost see the words, and had felt the shift in him as she hovered above his body.
Tamara reached out and let her fingertips hover just above the pulse in his throat, lightly touching. She didn't know why she did that, but she could feel his blood and it pumped hard, his pulse was strong and steady. Something in her felt relieved at that, but another part screamed at her to consume.
She moved lower, tracing the air over the shallow cuts on his forearms, the swelling along his ribs, the torn skin of his palms where he had gripped his weapons too hard. She catalogued every wound the way she once catalogued ammunition counts and water rations and the faces of soldiers who she had long forgotten the names of.
A low, wet moan drifted in from the east, and then another. It was the unmistakable drag-scrape-drag of many feet shifting their way closer, growing louder.
Her head slowly shifted up as she tried to see them in the distance, despite her decaying sight. She could tell they were coming… The others.
She rose in several rickety motions and stepped over Kayn's body, planting herself squarely between him and the approaching sounds. The tattered remnants of her uniform fluttered as she squared her shoulders the same way she had the day she held the breach. Her remaining eye narrowed. The hunger inside her shifted, no longer aimed at the man behind her, but at anything that tried to reach him.
The first shambler appeared at the end of the block, a tall figure in the rags of a construction vest, head cocked, sniffing the air. Behind it came more, so many more, dozens in a modest estimate. They were all pouring out of doorways and alleys, drawn by the scent of fresh, living blood. They moved with the single-minded focus she had once shared, that she tried to ignore.
Tamara opened her ruined mouth and forced air through the hole where her throat had been. The sound that came out was low, rattling, and unmistakable.
Mine.
The construction worker lunged anyway and she met it in kind. She caught its arm, twisted hard, and drove it face-first into the side of a rusted delivery truck. The impact crumpled its skull. Before the body slid to the ground she was already moving, though shakily, she shoulder-checked the next, driving her elbow into the temple of another, using momentum and weight and decades of muscle memory that had still not died. She fought the way she once had with a rifle and a squad at her back, only now she fought with bare hands and a bit of delay behind every strike. She knew how to fight, she was simply disadvantaged with the lack of developed muscle.
Bodies fell in wet heaps and the pack hesitated, confused by one of their own turning on them. That hesitation was all she needed. She pressed forward, a silent, relentless wall of green tatters and old discipline.
When the last of them lay dead once more, the avenue was quiet again except for the wind and Kayn's steady breathing.
Tamara turned and walked back to him. She crouched once more, checking his pulse again before a flicker of recognition flashed in her eyes. She pulled her hand back and settled onto the cracked asphalt beside him, back against a chunk of fallen concrete, positioning herself so that anything that wanted him would have to go through her first.
Hours passed, maybe days, or years, she still couldn't get the hang of time. She simply sat guard, head tilted in that same curious angle, her watchful gaze never leaving his face.
For the first time in a thousand empty Tuesdays, Tamara Alvarez had something to protect again. She saved those people so long ago, but knew what happened to them. This time again, she would protect another, and she would not let it be taken from her. She would see his survival and life through that.
[Congratulations. You are now a level 1 Guardian.]
[Stat points are now ready for allocation.]