There is a silence that belongs only to dying places. Not peace. Just the ground forgetting rain, the wind carrying nothing, and heat rising like a ghost from something that used to live.
It is the silence of a world that has already made its decision about you and is simply waiting for your body to catch up with the math.
The wind swept dust clean across the wilderness like it had somewhere better to be. The sun, meanwhile, had nowhere else to be and was making that everyone's problem.
The plain stretched out flat and indifferent in every direction. It didn't care about your feelings. It didn't care about your situation.
On one side of it sat the walls. Steel, concrete, and the particular smugness of a civilization that had seen the apocalypse coming and made sure the right people survived it. The government had known. Years before I was born, they'd had the data, the projections, the classified memos with the little skull icons in the corner.
They'd built the walls for two kinds of people: the rich, and the gifted. People with abilities got a seat at the table. People with money bought one.
Everyone else got the plain. On the other side of the walls was everyone else. I was everyone else.
My jeans had more holes than fabric at this point. My shoes had filed for bankruptcy somewhere around mile forty. My lips were cracked, my eyes were losing focus in that slow, cinematic way that meant my body was beginning to make peace with the situation. I moved like someone who had decided collapsing was acceptable, as long as it happened in the right direction.
"Forward. Always forward." Then I collapsed. To be fair, I was still technically facing forward, so I counted it as progress.
My name is Abram Nadez. Born outside the walls, raised outside the walls, currently dying outside the walls with elegant consistency. My father, whoever he was, had neither ability. My mother, God rest her, had no ability. They'd given me life, decent bone structure, and absolutely nothing the government was looking for. The apocalypse's gift to nobody.
In the distance, through the shimmer of heat, I could see the walls. And closer, mounted on crumbling poles, the government speakers still looped their broadcast.
If you possess an ability and are outside the protected zones, make yourself known. Help is available.
I had no ability. I had never had an ability. I had checked, repeatedly, with the focused desperation of a man scratching a lottery ticket he found in a parking lot. Nothing.
But I figured if I could drag myself far enough, look pathetic enough, be visible enough at the gates, maybe someone inside would feel something adjacent to mercy. It wasn't a plan. It was a vibe. It was all I had.
At least I'll die where they can see me, I thought, face down in the dust. That's something.
"Hey. You."
I ignored it. Hallucinations and I had a long and complicated relationship. Last Tuesday's had been a full buffet, steam trays and everything. This one was just a voice. Significant downgrade.
"Eeeg. Heeey."
Something in the tone snagged at me. Too weak to be my imagination showing off. Too specific. I pressed my palms into the dirt, arms shaking, and pushed myself upright. The sun immediately tried to kill me. It had been trying all day. We had a thing going.
I blinked through the brightness and found a man lying maybe twenty feet away, wearing clean clothes.
Not clean like washed recently. Clean like still has the fold lines. Clean like inside walls until very recently, made a series of choices I do not understand, and ended up here.
My brain, despite being aggressively dehydrated, did the math instantly. Clean clothes meant resources. Resources meant survival. This man was clearly done surviving.
I walked over. My hands were already moving toward his collar before I'd consciously decided anything. My body had its own economy, and stripping useful things off dying strangers was apparently in the budget.
That's when I saw the bite mark. Fresh. Ragged. On his forearm, just below the sleeve.
"Infected." My stomach dropped. He wasn't dying. He was transitioning. Which meant whoever had bitten him was somewhere nearby, which meant. 'Run for your miserable life.'
I heard them before I saw them. They came out of nowhere, which was impressive given that nowhere out here was a lot of open flat nothing. Five of them, maybe more. My eyes couldn't get an accurate count because they were moving wrong. Not the shambling, direction-confused kind I'd learned to outrun. These ones were fast. Coordinated. They fanned out like they'd rehearsed it.
'Oh,' I thought. 'These are the smart ones.'
I ran toward the walls because it was the only direction that held any hope, even if the walls were so far away they were basically theoretical. I ran with everything I had left, which was not much, which became immediately apparent when I felt teeth close around the back of my neck.
I went down hard. The ground came up fast, and the pain was extraordinary and immediate, and I opened my mouth to say something that would have been my last words, probably something embarrassing given my track record.
The teeth were in my neck. The weight on my back was absolute. Around me, the moaning was everywhere, close and getting closer, and for the first time in my life, after everything, after every day and night I'd survived by being too stubborn and too broke to die, I gave up.
My eyes closed. My eyes opened.
[PLAYER CHOSEN]
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
[Host: Abram Nadez]
[Class: Prime Charger (Level 1)
Synchronization: 100%
Vitality: ▓▓▓▓░░ Bite wound closing]
[Current Charge: 12%]
I stared at it. The interface hung in my vision like a notification I hadn't asked for, crisp and glowing against the dust.
[Core Rule: Have sex with female ability users to level up and grow stronger.]
[Every moan, every orgasm, every scream gives EXP.]
[First ability will unlock after your first successful charge.]
I read it twice. Then I read it a third time because I wanted to make sure I was not hallucinating from blood loss, which remained a real possibility.
Before I could begin processing any of it, the interface updated one more time with the energy of someone who had been waiting to say this.
[Threat Detected:
Level 4 Infected approaching.
Speed: High
Coordination: Advanced
Recommendation: Run to the walls immediately.]
Run to the walls immediately? As if I've spent the last three days crawling.