The ration block possessed the density of fired brick.
It tasted of pulverized sawdust, weevil casings, and baked ash. Theron did not chew. Chewing required saliva he could not spare. He broke the block against the rusted iron tire of a broken supply cart, placed the jagged fragments at the back of his throat, and swallowed them dry. The edges scraped his esophagus all the way down.
His biological stomach received the mass with a dull, aching cramp of gratitude.
The ring on his left hand responded with immediate, violently cold revulsion.
[ Organic material rejected. Nutritional value: Null. ]
[ Host framework degradation paused. Hunger remains unmitigated. ]
Theron closed his eyes. The freezing rain had finally begun to fall, sharp little needles of ice that hissed against the dying campfires. He stood perfectly still in the shadow of the cart, letting the cold water wash the taste of old blood and ash from his mouth.
The parasite did not want sustenance. It wanted essence. It wanted the kinetic energy of life.
He opened his eyes. The pale text faded from his vision, leaving only the bleak, miserable reality of the scavenger camp. He had three iron chits left in his pocket. Enough to repeat this miserable ritual for three more nights. He turned away from the ration tents and began the walk back to his shelter.
Calling it a shelter was a generous interpretation of architecture. It was a rotting canvas tarp strung between two splintered stakes at the absolute edge of the encampment, where the mud gave way to the frozen, rocky incline of the valley wall. It provided no warmth. It merely redirected the wind.
Theron walked with a measured, deliberate gait. He did not favor his bruised ribs. He did not hunch his shoulders against the freezing rain. Predators looked for anomalies in the herd. Weakness was an anomaly.
He smelled them before he saw them.
The scent of unwashed bodies was ubiquitous in Oakhaven, but this was localized. Stale sweat, the sharp tang of fear, and the unmistakable metallic odor of poorly maintained iron. They were waiting just beyond the perimeter of the firelight, near the narrow gap between two collapsed supply tents that Theron had to pass through to reach his tarp.
Two silhouettes.
Calculations, Theron thought. The machinery of his mind engaged instantly, bypassing the luxury of fear.
The one on the left was taller, but his posture was slouched. A chronic back injury, likely from hauling corpses. He held a wooden club. The one on the right was shorter, broader, and kept his right hand hidden behind his thigh. A concealed blade. They had likely seen him leave Silas's pavilion. Four iron chits was a fortune to men who had already traded their boots for a drink.
Theron did not break his stride. Stopping would confirm he had spotted them, triggering the ambush prematurely.
He stepped into the gap between the tents. The mud here was ankle-deep and thick as mortar.
"Drop the pouch, rat," the taller one rasped, stepping out from the shadow. He didn't raise the club. He held it low, ready to sweep Theron's knees. "Silas gave you four. We take three. You keep your teeth."
Theron stopped. He stood precisely out of range of the club's maximum arc.
Three days ago, the math would have been incontrovertible. Two grown men against a starving nineteen-year-old boy. He would have dropped the chits, taken a beating for the insult of existing, and spent the next three days hunting rats to survive.
But three days ago, his bones were brittle glass. Three days ago, he did not have an extra unit of structural density woven into his muscle fibers by a parasitic artifact.
Theron looked at the taller man. He did not look at the man's eyes. He looked at the man's clavicle.
"No."
The word was flat. It contained no bravado. It was simply a statement of revised geometry.
The shorter man lunged.
It was a crude, desperate movement. He brought his right hand around in a wide, sweeping arc, a rusted iron shiv aimed directly at Theron's stomach. A vector of sheer desperation.
Theron did not step back. Stepping back in deep mud compromised balance.
Instead, he stepped inside the arc.
He brought his left arm up, the forearm blocking the attacker's wrist. The impact should have bruised Theron's bone, sending a shockwave of pain up to his shoulder.
It didn't.
His newly reinforced musculature absorbed the kinetic energy like damp earth absorbing a dropped stone. It felt entirely disproportionate. The attacker's eyes widened, a momentary flash of absolute confusion as his momentum was halted by a boy who should have crumpled.
Theron didn't pause to marvel at his own anatomy. He pivoted his hips, driving his right fist in a short, brutal, horizontal line directly into the shorter man's throat.
There was no cinematic crack. Only a wet, muffled crunch of collapsing cartilage.
The shorter man dropped the shiv. His hands flew to his neck, his eyes bulging as his airway flattened. He fell backward into the mud, a wet, choking gargle bubbling past his lips.
The taller man froze. His brain failed to process the sequence of events. The starved rat had just dismantled his partner in two seconds.
Theron turned his head. His amber eyes locked onto the taller man.
"The math has changed," Theron said quietly.
The taller man swung the club. It was a panicked, overcommitted strike, aimed at Theron's head.
Theron ducked, the heavy wood whistling through the freezing rain an inch above his scalp. As the man's momentum carried him forward, overbalancing his bad back, Theron stepped into his guard. He reached out with his left hand—the hand wearing the iron ring—and gripped the front of the man's filthy tunic.
Theron pulled downward, hard, while driving his right knee upward.
The impact of bone against the man's face was a sickening, hollow thud. The man's nose shattered instantly, blood exploding outward in a dark mist. He collapsed like a puppet with severed strings, groaning weakly in the mud, his hands clutching his ruined face.
Silence rushed back into the gap between the tents, broken only by the hiss of the rain and the desperate, wet wheezing of the suffocating man on the ground.
Theron stood over them. His knuckles stung slightly. His breathing was elevated, but his heart rate was already beginning to decelerate.
Then, the ring woke up.
It didn't pulse with warmth this time. It burned. A searing, agonizing heat that sank directly into the marrow of his finger.
[ Viable organic essence detected. ]
[ Host framework requires immediate stabilization. ]
[ Consume. ]
The air around the suffocating man began to shimmer. It was the same faint, ghostly mist he had seen rising from the dead lieutenant. But this man wasn't dead yet. He was dying. The essence was frantic, vibrating with the terror of a failing biological system.
Theron's left hand twitched. The fingers curled inward, a spasming, involuntary reaching motion toward the dying man.
The hunger that ripped through Theron's stomach was no longer a dull ache. It was a cavernous, roaring void. His mouth watered, his salivary glands suddenly producing a thick, sweet liquid that tasted faintly of copper. The voice of the ring was not in his ear; it was in his spine.
Consume. If he reached out, if he let the obsidian shard touch that mist, he would drain the man completely. He would take his life, his warmth, his microscopic fraction of vitality. He would become a monster standing in the mud.
A monster is just an organism with an unacceptable diet, his cynical, practical mind whispered.
Theron looked down at his trembling left hand. He forced his fingers to uncurl, fighting the rigid, unnatural tension of the parasite's command. He grabbed his left wrist with his right hand, his grip tight enough to leave bruises, and forced his arm down to his side.
"No," Theron gritted out through clenched teeth.
The pain in his finger spiked, a sharp, punishing flare of agony from the denied artifact.
[ Warning. Framework deterioration imminent. ]
"Let it deteriorate," Theron hissed, his amber eyes completely cold.
He stepped over the dying man. He stepped over the weeping man with the shattered face. He did not look back.
He walked the remaining fifty yards to his canvas tarp, his left arm burning with a phantom fire, his stomach screaming for the blood he had just left behind. He crawled beneath the freezing, damp fabric, pulling his knees to his chest to conserve whatever pathetic heat his body could generate.
He had survived the night. He had defended his resources. He had discovered the terrifying efficiency of his new strength.
But as the pale text flickered out in the darkness of his shelter, Theron realized the true cost of his survival. The enemy was no longer the freezing rain, the brutal overseers, or the desperate scavengers.
The enemy was stitched to his own bone.