The light of blue dawn cuts through the kitchen window at an angle that says I've slept later than I meant to. The camp stove takes three tries to ignite, my fingers clumsy with the matches in my hand. Sleep still clings to the edges of my vision, that fog that comes from dreams I can't quite remember but know weren't pleasant.

  I crack a jar of powdered eggs, pour five servings into a bowl. Add water from the pre-boiled jug I keep on the counter and whisk until the lumps dissolve into something that might pass for food if I don't think too hard about what eggs are supposed to look like.

  To the right sits a pile of paper-thin pork strips. I’d spent the previous evening dredging them in coarse salt and flash-drying them over glowing coals, forcing the moisture out before the Georgia humidity could rot the kill. They’re seasoned with pepper and dried rosemary now, the salt crystals glinting like frost. The smell of the fat hitting the pan is almost normal, almost like a kitchen in a world that still made sense.

  I let the routine carry me. Flip the eggs, turn the meat, watch the proteins change color and tell myself this is just another breakfast. Alongside another morning in Atlanta and not a breakfast that comes from things that tried to kill me twelve hours ago.

  The scabs on my arms itch from where the wounds are and I ignore them glad that my system regeneration and Sofia’s help makes the whole thing an afterthought. I grab two plates then set them on the counter. The eggs need another minute, the meat needs two, so I pull up yesterday's notifications while I wait.

  The level 12 was the big one, the pack leader probably. Three hundred forty-five points for something that nearly gored my hip. The level 8 was barely worth the stamina it cost to kill. The System's way of saying I should be hunting bigger game, as if I needed the reminder.

  I scroll past the kill notifications to the entry underneath.

  Eleven thousand experience… Seven times what the entire hog pack yielded, sitting in a column I can see but can't touch. Accruing value like a position I can't close.

  But I’m also reminded of how my Nemesis sat at the edge of the plaza and watched me bleed against the hog pack without taking a single hit itself. It turned my trap inside out and used the engagement as a free education.

  That thrust through its side, two feet of steel into what should have been vital organs. Eight hundred points of damage and it looked at me like I'd scratched its paint.

  I pull the eggs, turn the meat, and as I plate the eggs Sofia appears in the doorway. She takes in the scene without comment. Me at the stove, pretending domesticity means something.

  "Sleeping in?" She moves to the cabinet where we keep the hard plastic cups. "That's new."

  Blue dawn is early by old-world standards, perhaps even too early. But by new-world standards, I've already wasted half an hour of usable daylight.

  "The Sanctuary did something to my sleep cycle." I don’t mean it as an excuse, but the words come out sounding like one anyway.

  Sofia pours water into the plastic cups and then adds an instinct coffee mix to both glasses, stirring them. "I was on the roof last night after you went to bed. Took some binoculars from your supplies."

  "See anything?"

  "Pack of something canine-adjacent three blocks north. They didn't stay long, headed toward Piedmont Park around full dark." She pauses. "Also saw torches to our west. Near that government building on the corner of Mitchell and Peachtree. People moving around inside."

  Looters or scavengers. The distinction mattered less than the implication of other humans operating in our radius, close enough to notice, close enough to become a variable I haven't considered.

  "How many?"

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  "Six, maybe seven. Hard to tell through the windows." She sips her coffee and hands me mine. "They weren't exactly being subtle about it. Torches blazing, moving floor to floor. It felt like they were looking for something specific."

  New to the area, or desperate enough that speed matters more than caution. Neither option is comforting, especially not so close to night.

  I plate the eggs and meat, slide one portion across the counter toward her. She accepts it without comment, which is as close to gratitude as I've gotten from Sofia so far.

  We eat in silence for a few minutes. The eggs are acceptable, improved marginally by the spices. The boar is better than acceptable. Rosemary covers a multitude of sins.

  "Lily's fever broke around midnight," Sofia says between bites. "She's sleeping normally now. Not the restless kind either, actual REM cycles, if her eye movement is any indication."

  Something loosens in my chest, a tension I hadn't realized I was carrying. "On her own?"

  Sofia shakes her head. "Not quite. I administered Midazolam a few minutes after she woke up. I felt her body needed proper time to heal."

  "What about the blue in her throat? Any signs of it returning?"

  "Completely gone" Sofia sets down her fork. "Whatever caused that reaction, it seems to be resolving. I'd like to run tests, but..." She gestures vaguely at the world outside. The gesture encompasses the lack of functioning labs, MRI machines, blood panels. Everything a doctor needs to actually diagnose anything.

  "She's getting better?"

  "Yep," Sofia confirms.

  Sofia finishes her eggs, sips her coffee, then watches me over the rim of the mug with an expression I've seen before. The attending physician look the one that precedes uncomfortable questions and is always defensible by oaths and professional obligation.

  "You came back yesterday with fresh wounds and a vacant look in your eyes," she says. "And I've seen that combination before. Residents after their first code blue. Surgeons after a table death. Families who faced truth with the light of hope to them through it."

  I don't respond. The eggs on my plate need attention they're not getting.

  "I'm not a fighter," she continues. "You know that. I'm not going to have tactical insights or combat strategies for you. But I've done enough after-action reviews to know that talking through a problem helps organize it. Especially when the problem is sitting in your head refusing to sort itself out."

  She sets down the mug.

  She’s right of course, it was bothering me, so I decided to give in. I give her the version that's true without being dangerous. My Nemesis, the size of it, shoulder height above any moose that ever lived. Antlers that catch light wrong, crystal-edged, enough mass to crack marble columns. The wrongness of its proportions, legs jointed for speed that shouldn't be possible at that weight.

  "It's intelligent," I say. "Not animal-intelligent. Not even the enhanced instinct the System gives to most creatures. Actually intelligent, smarter than most of our species, in all likelihood."

  Sofia sets down her coffee. "How do you know?"

  "When I tried to lead it into an unfavorable position, it recognized what I was doing, choosing to flank around instead of following. Cut off the angles that were ideal and herded me toward open ground." I push eggs around my plate. "I tried to draw it into the feral hog pack at Liberty Plaza. Figured if I could get them to fight each other, I could use the chaos."

  "And?"

  "It stopped at the edge of their territory. Scented the air, worked out what I was doing, and watched from a safe distance while I dealt with the consequences of my own trap."

  Sofia is quiet for a moment. "So you fought the hogs and it just watched?."

  "Yeah, I killed two thirds while it sat and watched the whole thing. Thirty meters out and it saw every technique I used, how I varied patterns, which targets I prioritized." I set down my fork. "It wasn't interested in killing me yesterday. It was more interested in studying me…"

  Her posture has shifted, straighter now, the attending physician look fully engaged.

  "What's your class?"

  "Patient Hunter", I choose to lie, she doesn’t understand yet, why I am doing her favor.

  She wraps both hands around her mug. "We're preparing to deal with something that will likely kill you if you approach it like everything else. You clearly don’t trust me with your class but I need to know what you can actually do. Not what I've observed, but what the System gave you."

  I look at her. "You don't. You really don’t"

  Frustration moves across her face. "The Board had us declare our classes on intake. Posted them on a roster by the medical bay door. Name, level, class, primary abilities." She pauses. "Like a staff directory."

  "Efficient." I say the words before I can stop myself.

  "That's what I thought." She says it flatly, the word landing differently in her mouth than I’m used to hearing. "Well, let me start with myself, I'm a Field Medic, level six." She sets her mug down. "You remember your class selection?"

  I nod, "The System gives you a list. You pick from the list."

  "Mine were words," she says. "Mostly nouns, verbs and one adjective. Twelve of them total for me. Well I had someone standing next to me telling me which ones to choose. He knew what the group needed. He was very calm about it. Very certain it was the right call. And from what he chose for me, the System generated my class from the combination." She looks at me directly.

  I watch her face, she means it. No subtext, no resentment working its way to the surface. She was forced to hand someone the decision and yet she was comfortable with how it was spent.

  "What abilities did you end up with then?" I ask

  “Field Triage and Tethering. Field Triage accelerates healing by a factor by (WIS) for (INT*100) seconds. And Tether Protocol lets me designate teammates with a passive damage reduction while I stay within (CON) meters. Requires reapplication every twelve hours." She pauses. "I also have an unspent class ability and there are three options available."

  "And why haven’t you chosen?"

  She looks at me and sort of shakes her hands in my direction.

  Was she expecting me to pick for her?