Chapter 5

The panel brightened, and something moved through me.

It started at the base of my skull, a cold line sliding down my spine like swallowed ice water. I gasped. Then the cold settled behind my breastbone and turned into warmth, a faint, steady pulse that was not my heartbeat, though it kept time with it.

[Host confirmation received.]

[Binding Survival Empire System to Host: Abbie Lockwood.]

[Binding complete.]

The text dissolved. In its place, a clean, quiet screen assembled itself, lines of pale blue on air.

SURVIVAL EMPIRE SYSTEM

Host: Abbie Lockwood

Condition: Healthy

Survival Points: 0

Territory: None

Empire Level: 0

Below that sat four tabs. Status. Missions. And two with small padlock icons: Storage. Territory.

I reached out and tried to touch the first tab. My finger passed straight through the light, but the tab brightened anyway, as if it had heard me think.

"Okay," I said to my empty apartment, in a voice that cracked on the second syllable. "What are you?"

[I am the Survival Empire System. I record. I assign. I reward.]

"Who made you?"

[Access denied.]

I let out a shaky breath that was nearly a laugh. Of course. "Why me?"

The screen paused for a heartbeat.

[Host selected at moment of death. Selection criterion: unyielding wish. Resolve exceeded threshold.]

Resolve. The word landed somewhere under my ribs. All those weeks in the cold, I had felt like the weakest creature alive, someone being crushed by a world that had no use for her. And it turned out that somewhere in that wreckage there had been enough of me left to want.

The screen added a line, in smaller letters.

[Recorded wish: "I would build something so strong that no one could ever leave me on the floor."]

My eyes burned. I pressed the heel of my hand against my mouth until the feeling passed.

"If I die again," I said when I could speak. "Do I get another chance?"

[Rebirth is non-repeatable. If the Host dies, the System ends.]

No third try, I see. Whatever I did from here on, I would do it once.

I wiped my face and straightened my spine. Somewhere in the last hour I had stopped being afraid of the screen. It was only text, after all. Text had never lied to me the way people did.

I decided to test it.

"Give me a million dollars."

[Request denied. The System does not create wealth.]

"Figures."

[The System rewards effort. Rewards are granted for completed missions, survival milestones, and territory development. Resources are earned. Nothing is free.]

I stared at that last sentence for a long time.

In two lives, every person who had ever offered me anything had wanted something quietly in return. Garrett's love had come with an invoice I never saw. Dana's friendship had a price tag on every hug. And here was a glowing blue interface that simply said it outright, no smile, no pretending.

It was the first honest thing anyone had said to me in a very long time.

"All right," I murmured. "Explain the tabs."

The screen obliged, in short, unhurried lines.

[MISSIONS: Objectives assigned by the System, each with a deadline. Success grants Survival Points and rewards. Failure forfeits rewards and may carry penalties.]

[SURVIVAL POINTS: Currency of the System. Spent on Territory development.]

[TERRITORY: A claimed location the Host can defend and improve. Status: none established. Locked.]

[STORAGE: A protected reserve of limited capacity. Unlocked through mission rewards. Locked.]

So I could earn points, but I had nowhere to spend them. Not yet. The System wasn't going to hand me a fortress. It wanted me to find one first.

One more line floated up under the rest.

[Long-term directive: Establish a sovereign survival territory. Expand without limit.]

"An empire," I said slowly. I laughed, a short, ragged sound. "I'm a freight dispatcher with a lease and four thousand dollars."

[Every empire begins with a door.]

I went very still.

It was a coincidence. It had to be. I had not said that out loud. I had only thought it, standing under a streetlamp, with the jasmine and the noodles and the long, steady hate.

But the System had already moved on, and perhaps it was simply a turn of phrase, and perhaps it wasn't. I decided I could ask later. There were more urgent things.

"What can't you do?"

[The System cannot alter the Freeze. It cannot revive the dead. It cannot compel other people. It is visible only to the Host.]

The last part mattered. It meant nobody could use it against me, and nobody could take it. It lived under my breastbone, in the soft, steady beat that I was starting to feel was mine.

Then, because I couldn't help myself, I asked the question I had been choking back for hours.

"Garrett and Dana. Can you tell me where they are right now? What they're doing?"

[Query outside parameters. The System does not track individuals beyond the Host's territory.]

I was not sure if what I felt was relief or disappointment. Probably both.

"Fine," I said. "Then tell me what matters. How long do I have?"

The screen blinked, and a countdown opened at the top, clean and merciless.

[Freeze onset: 49 days, 2 hours, 11 minutes.]

Below it, in the same flat typeface:

[Projected survival of an unprepared Host: 11 days.]

Eleven.

I sat down on the edge of the bed because my knees had stopped agreeing to hold me. Eleven days. A few days of cold, a few of hunger, a few of watching the world go quiet. I thought about the frozen street, the shadow with its wet breathing, and I understood that the first time around, I had been lucky. Lucky that my own supplies were large enough to feed three people for a while, until the people I fed took them and left.

If I walked into the Freeze with nothing, I would not even last as long as I had before.

"Then I'd better not be unprepared," I said.

The warmth under my breastbone pulsed once, bright and warm, like an answer.

The screen flickered. The tab labeled Missions lit up, and the first line of text rose out of the dark.

[New mission available.]