The smell of ozone and burnt hair hung heavy in the small security office. They dragged Dave's unconscious form into a supply closet and Ben, with a surprising amount of practical knowledge, used a bundle of CAT5 cables to tie him to a sturdy metal shelf.
"That should hold him," Ben said, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. He seemed more comfortable with the electronics than the violence. He kept glancing at the [Corrupted Data Fragments] Leo had placed on the desk, his eyes alight with a feverish curiosity.
Chloe, on the other hand, was all business. She had found a first-aid kit and was methodically checking their supplies. "Okay. So. We have a prisoner, no food, no water, and the world is apparently ending. What's the plan?"
Leo leaned against the console, the throbbing in his head finally subsiding to a dull ache. "The plan?" he echoed. "I don't have a plan. The plan was 'don't die.' I'm still working on that part."
"We need to get out of the city," Chloe said, her voice firm. "Find somewhere defensible. But we can't just walk out there. We saw the monitors before they went out. It's a warzone."
"The components…" Ben murmured, picking up one of the data fragments. It shimmered under the office lights. "This isn't just… loot. It's raw. The code is unstable. If I could find a stable power source, a clean interface… maybe I could compile it. Make something."
Before Leo could ask what in the world he was talking about, a new sound cut through the relative quiet. Not the shriek of an alarm or a human scream. It was a rhythmic, wet crunching sound, followed by the high-pitched squeal of a goblin. It was the sound of a fight. And it was right outside.
The three of them scrambled to the shattered lobby windows, peering out from behind the cover of the reception desk. The street outside was a mess of abandoned cars and refuse. A pack of five goblins was swarming something, or someone. And then they saw her.
She moved like a dancer. A deadly, efficient dancer. While they had been fumbling and hiding, this woman was fighting. She held two simple kitchen knives, but in her hands, they were a blur of silver. She didn't use brute force. She sidestepped a clumsy swing, the goblin's club whiffing past her ear, as her left-hand knife darted out to open a throat. She spun, using one goblin's body as a shield against another, and stabbed backward with her right hand without looking. Each movement was precise, economical, and lethal.
A nameplate, a brilliant, almost radiant blue compared to Dave's, hovered above her head: [Maya, Dual Blademaster Lv. 7].
Level seven.
Leo's stomach turned to ice. He was level two. She was on a completely different plane of existence. She finished the last goblin with a clean, brutal scissoring motion of her blades to its neck, then stood for a moment, breathing evenly, her eyes scanning the street. She was not panicked. She was not terrified. She was… working.
Then her eyes found the shattered entrance to their building. She saw them peeking over the desk. Her expression was unreadable. With a calm, deliberate pace, she walked toward the entrance, knives held loosely at her sides.
"Get back," Leo whispered, pulling the other two away from the window.
A moment later, she stepped through the broken glass doors, her boots crunching softly on the debris. She was tall, with a lean, athletic build and dark hair pulled back in a practical ponytail. Her eyes, a sharp, intelligent gray, took in the scene at a glance: the wrecked lobby, the dead goblin, the three of them huddled in the security office doorway.
"You did this?" she asked, her voice calm and even. She gestured with one of her knives toward the chandelier wreckage.
"I… helped," Leo said.
Her eyes swept over them, a quick, dismissive assessment. She saw Ben's wires, Chloe's stapler, Leo's distinct lack of anything resembling a real weapon. She was not impressed.
"There are more of them moving this way. A larger group," she said. It wasn't a warning; it was a statement of fact. "This position isn't defensible for long." She started to turn away, clearly having written them off as liabilities. Another group of helpless survivors to be ignored.
"Wait," Leo said, his voice louder than he intended.
She paused, looking back at him over her shoulder. There was no pity in her eyes. Only pragmatism. "You can't keep up. You'll slow me down."
"You need us," Leo blurted out.
A flicker of something—annoyance? amusement?—crossed her face. "Oh yeah? What for?"
He had to prove it. Now. He couldn't tell her about his class. He couldn't explain the code. He had to show her. He focused on the kitchen knife in her right hand, the one that had just dispatched five monsters with brutal efficiency. He activated [Inspect Element].
The code was more complex than the pipe's, but the lines he needed were there.
He met her gaze, his heart pounding. "The knife in your right hand," he said, his voice steady, channeling every bit of IT support confidence he'd ever faked. "It's a decent carbon steel blade, but the handle is cheap plastic. There's a hairline fracture in the tang, right where it meets the hilt. You can't see it, but the Durability is at 7/15. In another, maybe, three or four fights, that blade is going to snap off the handle."
Maya froze.
Every bit of her cool, detached demeanor vanished, replaced by a sudden, intense stillness. Her gray eyes narrowed, studying him. Slowly, deliberately, she lowered her gaze to the knife in her right hand. She turned it over, running a thumb along the hilt, her expression unreadable. To anyone else, the knife looked fine. But she knew. Maybe she'd felt a slight give in it. Maybe she'd heard a faint creak.
She looked back up at him, and the dismissal was gone. In its place was a sharp, calculating intelligence. And a hundred questions.
"How," she said, her voice a low, dangerous whisper, "could you possibly know that?"