The red pulse of the Apex Feed was a rhythmic throb behind Rowan's eyes, a digital heartbeat that mocked the frantic hammering in her chest. The three men moved with a practiced, casual cruelty, fanning out to block her path to the treeline. The one in the center, a man with a jagged scar running through a greasy beard, kept the revolver leveled at her sternum.
"I don't want any trouble," Rowan said, her voice sounding thin and alien in the open air. She kept her hands visible, her fingers inches away from the bow she'd spent weeks mastering. "I was just scavenging. I'm leaving. You can have the house."
The scarred man barked a laugh, a dry, rasping sound that set Rowan's teeth on edge. The two men flanking him—one wiry with a twitching eye, the other a hulking shadow in a stained duster—grinned, their eyes raking over her with a hunger that made her skin crawl.
"Trouble? Honey, trouble's the only thing left in the world," the leader said, taking a slow step forward. "And you're standing there with a real nice bow, a clean flannel, and a look like you haven't missed a meal in a month. That's a lot of things we want."
"I have nothing for you," Rowan lied, her internal panic reaching a fever pitch.
In her mind, the hospital room flickered—the smell of bleach, the sound of the heart monitor. She felt like that fragile girl again, trapped in a corner while her body betrayed her. Her vision blurred at the edges, the fear of death a cold, oily weight in her stomach.
"Engagement Spike!" the System chimed, a cheery notification in the corner of her vision. "Viewer Goal Reached: 15,000. Unlock 'Adrenaline Surge' for 2,000 points?"
Not now, she screamed internally. Not for them.
"Look at her," the wiry one leered, his voice a high-pitched snicker. "She's shaking. Probably never even killed a biter up close. Why don't you put the bow down, girlie? We'll find a use for you back at our camp. We're always looking for new... talent."
The hulking man laughed, a low, guttural vibration. "Maybe she's got more of those peaches in her bag."
The panic in Rowan's chest suddenly hit a wall. It was the same wall she had hit in the hospital when she realized the doctors couldn't save her. It was the same wall she'd hit when she drove the stake into Mrs. Gable. It was the realization that "talking" was a luxury for the old world. In this world, words were just the sounds people made before they started bleeding.
She thought of the foraging books. She thought of the hours spent in the rain, learning to read the woods. These men weren't survivors; they were rot. They were the same as the walkers, just faster and meaner.
The scarred man lowered his gun slightly, a smirk of triumph crossing his face as he saw her shoulders slump. He thought she was surrendering. He thought the "sick girl" was giving up.
"That's it," he cooed. "Just drop it."
Rowan didn't drop it.
The transition was instantaneous. The weeks of muscle memory took over, overriding the tremor in her hands. She didn't think; she didn't breathe. She reached, notched, and drew in one fluid, blurring motion.
The leader's eyes widened, his thumb reaching to cock the revolver's hammer again, but he was too slow. The carbon-fiber arrow hissed through the air, a black streak that caught him just below the collarbone. The force of the compound bow at close range sent him staggering back, the gun discharging harmlessly into the dirt as he collapsed.
"Kill her!" the wiry one shrieked, his hand diving for a knife at his belt.
Rowan was already moving. She dived behind a stack of rotted firewood, her heart beating with a terrifying, steady power. She felt the metallic, bitter ghost of that undead blood on her tongue again, but this time, it didn't make her gag. It made her cold.
The Apex Feed was exploding. The chat was a frantic scroll of fire emojis, the audience in another world screaming for more.
She wasn't a girl in a hospital bed. She wasn't a character in a script. She was Rowan, and she was the only one in this clearing who knew exactly how the story ended.
The rush of the first hit hadn't been enough to end it. Rowan's hands were shaking as she reached for a second arrow, but the wiry man was faster than he looked. He didn't run; he charged, fueled by a frantic, jagged adrenaline. He cleared the firewood stack before she could aim.
He slammed into her, his weight knocking the wind from her lungs. They went down in the mud, a chaotic tangle of limbs and desperate gasps. Rowan felt the sharp, stinging bite of steel—a knife edge slicing through the sleeve of her flannel and into the meat of her upper arm.
The pain was white-hot and sudden.
"Gotcha, you little bitch!" he hissed, his breath a foul cloud of tobacco and rot in her face.
Panic, raw and suffocating, threatened to drown her. For a second, she was back in the hospital, the feeling of a needle sliding into her vein, the helplessness of a body that refused to fight. She felt the cold shadow of death reaching for her again.
"Warning: Vitality Dropping," the System flashed in a blinding crimson light. "Engagement at 98%—The audience is losing their minds! Spend 5,000 points on 'Instant Recovery'?"
"No!" she screamed, the sound tearing from her throat.
She didn't want the System's help. She didn't want to be a miracle. She drove her knee upward with every ounce of strength she had mastered in the woods, catching the man in the ribs. As he gasped, she shoved her thumb into his eye socket, a visceral, sickening movement she hadn't known she was capable of.
He shrieked, clutching his face, and Rowan rolled. Her bow was out of reach, but her hand found a heavy, jagged piece of the rotted firewood. She didn't hesitate. She swung it with a primal, rhythmic violence until the screaming stopped.
The third man—the hulking one in the duster—had been frozen by the suddenness of the leader's fall, but seeing his companion slumped in the mud snapped him into motion. He pulled a heavy machete from his belt, his eyes wide with a mix of fear and rage.
Rowan scrambled to her feet, her breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches. Blood soaked the sleeve of Mrs. Gable's shirt, the warmth of it a stark contrast to the damp air. She felt the metallic, bitter tang in her mouth again—not from the dead this time, but her own copper-sharp adrenaline.
She didn't wait for him to reach her. She lunged for her bow, notched an arrow while sliding across the wet grass, and pivoted on her heel.
The man lunged, the machete whistling through the air where her head had been a second before. Rowan let go. The arrow caught him in the side of the neck. He didn't die instantly; he fell to his knees, clutching at the shaft, his eyes fixed on her in a look of stunned disbelief.
Rowan stood over him, her chest heaving, the bow still raised. She watched the light leave his eyes, waiting until the forest fell silent again.
The Apex Feed was a blur of notifications.
[BATTLE CONCLUDED]
Points Earned: 4,500
Title Unlocked: 'The Relentless'
New Viewer Record: 22,000
Rowan looked at the screen, then at the three bodies cooling in the mud. The panic that had nearly paralyzed her was gone, replaced by a cold, obsidian clarity. She looked at the wound on her arm—a shallow but jagged reminder that the world wouldn't stop coming for her just because she hid in a cabin.
The "sick girl" was dead. Truly dead this time. The woman who had been afraid of the script, afraid of the characters, and afraid of her own faulty heart had been buried under the floorboards of that hunting cabin.
She walked back to the house, ignored the loot, and found a clean rag to bind her arm. Her movements were slow, deliberate, and devoid of the tremors that had plagued her for weeks. She looked at the horizon, toward the roads that led to Atlanta, to the farm, to the prison—to all the places she had vowed to avoid.
She wasn't going to follow the script. But she wasn't going to hide from it anymore either.
"I'm done waiting for the end," she whispered, her voice like flint.
She walked back to her cabin one last time, packed her foraging books, her salt, and her arrows. She left the door open. She didn't need the walls anymore. She had the bow, she had the knowledge, and for the first time in two lives, she had a will that was stronger than the heart beating in her chest.
Rowan stepped onto the road, the mud of the clearing still on her boots, and began to walk.