THE HOSPITAL

We didn't take the elevator. In a world where the power grid was about to become a suggestion rather than a law, elevators were just vertical coffins.

Ronan moved down the stairwell with a silence that made my own footsteps feel like drumbeats. Every few floors, he'd pause, his head tilted, his crystalline blue eyes tracking shadows I couldn't see yet. He didn't look back at me, but I could feel his awareness of my position, a tactical tether that kept us anchored in the dark.

[Objective: Relocate to High-Value Perimeter.] LUS hummed, the text flickering in the corner of my vision like a neon sign in a storm. [Strategic Recommendation: Spokane Valley Health. Note: The facility possesses Level 5 Fortification potential and a critical Medical Asset.]

"The hospital," I whispered, reaching the bottom of the stairs.

Ronan stopped at the heavy steel fire door, his hand hovering over the handle. "Your system too?"

"It says it's a high-value perimeter. And that there's someone there we need."

"Dr. Elias Thorne," Ronan said, his voice dropping to that subsonic rumble. "My system's been pinging his name since I crossed the threshold of your apartment. He's the only trauma surgeon in the county who's survived a Grey-S encounter in the other timeline."

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the drafty stairwell. "You know his history?"

"I know he's a delinquent debt the Abyss hasn't managed to collect yet." Ronan pushed the door open a crack. The sound of the city hit us like a physical blow, a cacophony of screaming tires, distant explosions, and the rhythmic, wet thud of things that were no longer human hitting the pavement. "If we're going to build a fortress, we need a way to keep the people inside it alive. Thorne is the only way."

We stepped out into the alleyway. The air smelled of ozone and scorched rubber. Two blocks over, a plume of black smoke was rising from a crashed tanker, staining the twilight a bruised purple.

[Wraith Pulse: Siphon Mode ACTIVE.] [Detection: 14 Delinquent Entities within 100 meters. Perception Overlay: ENABLED.]

Suddenly, the world turned into a ledger. Through the brick walls and the dumpster-lined shadows, I saw them, sickly red silhouettes pulsing with a numerical value.

Grey-S Stalker: Level 3. Strength: 12. Siphon Value: 4.

"There's one behind that delivery truck," I said, my voice steady, my hand tightening on the obsidian knife.

Ronan didn't question me. He swung his rifle up, his movements a blur of practiced grace. Thud. The suppressed shot was barely louder than a handclap. The red silhouette behind the truck flickered and vanished into a cloud of gray static.

[Siphon Successful: +4 Strength Points stolen.]

I felt the rush again, the electric heat spreading from the knife, up my arm, and into my marrow. It was a jagged, addictive warmth. I looked at Ronan, and for a second, the math in my head tried to calculate his value too.

Ronan Vance: Level [UNKNOWN]. Asset Value: Infinite.

My breath hitched. I forced the gray void in my eyes to settle, but the number stayed lodged behind my ribs like a splinter I couldn't work loose. I hadn't asked LUS to run that calculation. It had done it on its own, unprompted, the same easy way it priced out Strength Points and Perception, and that was the part that frightened me more than the Stalkers in the dark. If the system could put a value on him without being told to, it meant it was already treating him like everything else in my life. An asset. A number that could, theoretically, change.

I didn't want to know what it would look like on the day that number went down instead of up.

"You're doing it again," Ronan murmured, stepping closer until the heat from his body acted as a counter-current to the Siphon's chill. "Calculating the cost."

"I was calculating the value," I corrected him.

He looked at me for a long beat, his thumb brushing the holster of his sidearm. "Just make sure you don't forget which one I am, Audrey. I'm a Dividend, remember? Not a debt."

He turned and started moving toward the hospital, his silhouette cutting through the smoke like a blade.

We navigated the back alleys of Spokane, moving through a graveyard of abandoned cars and half-eaten lives. By the time the massive, sterile silhouette of Kootenai Health loomed ahead, the sirens had faded into a dull, constant thrum.

The hospital wasn't dark. It was blazing with emergency lights, a beacon of order in a world that was rapidly losing its mind. But the perimeter was a mess of military barricades and civilian panic.

Ronan pulled up short at the mouth of the parking garage, one hand out, flat against my sternum. "We case it first. Two minutes. I want eyes on their exits before we're the ones being counted."

"We don't have two minutes." [Target Located: Dr. Elias Thorne.] [Asset Status: Under Siege. Time to Liquidation: 12 minutes.] "We have twelve, and I just spent four of them arguing with you about it."

"Twelve minutes doesn't help either of us if we walk into a kill box because we didn't look first."

"Then don't look. Move." I stepped past his hand, and I felt him bristle at that, some old soldier's instinct that hated being overruled, but he fell in step half a beat later anyway, which told me something about where his trust actually lived—not in agreement but in the choice to follow even when he didn't.

"Then stop doing the math," he growled, his boots hitting the pavement in a heavy, rhythmic stride, "and start clearing the path."

As we hit the hospital parking garage, the first wave of Grey-S entities emerged from the shadows of the concrete pillars, not just scouts this time but a pack of Stalkers that moved with a terrifying, coordinated speed.

I didn't wait for Ronan to fire. I lunged forward, the Wraith Pulse flaring behind my ribs, the world slowing into the beautiful, lethal clarity of the Flash.

"Thorne is mine," I shouted over the roar of the first creature. "Cover the exit!"

I didn't just want to survive the hospital. I wanted to own it.