Loot Smells Like Blood

Ayana POV

Four flights up, and my legs had quit.

Not tired. Gone — weightless and stupid the way they are in a dream, so that every step had to be argued for. Stamina sat at 41 and dropped a point every eight steps, and I counted because counting was the only thing holding me upright.

My hands were shaking. Both of them, a fine tremor that got worse whenever I gripped the rail.

Below us, the dragging sound came again. Slow. Steady. It stopped whenever we stopped, as though it were being polite.

"Don't stop," he said.

"I'm not stopping. I'm counting."

"Count in your head."

The landing on the fifth floor had a fire door and three of them.

Knee-high. Grey strands moving under the surface like something swimming. No faces. No heads, really — just a shape that suggested a dog, if you were generous, and a mouth that opened too far.

They came up with the last flight in a rush.

The first reached for Jarek and he took it apart with one hand — a twist, a snap, and it came open into loose threads that hit the floor and faded.

The second came at me.

I did not think so. That's the honest version. Everything I'd watched him do left my head and I stood there with my palms up like I was being arrested.

It jumped.

I moved. Left, sideways, wrong — my shoulder hit the door frame and its mouth closed on the air where my throat had been — and then I put my boot through it.

Not a kick. More of a stamp. It dropped and came apart under my heel and made a sound like a wet cloth being wrung.

The third never got to me. He was already past.

He put his hand between my shoulder blades and pushed me upright.

"Breathe."

"I am breathing."

"You were holding it." He crouched over the mess on the landing. "You don't dodge like that again. You went left into a wall."

"You were busy."

"I was watching."

"Same as last time," I said, and it came out harder than I meant, and he had the decency not to answer.

The loot came off the last one.

It didn't come from my chest. Out of the floor where the strands had faded, a flat rectangle stayed behind — bone-white, no thicker than a playing card, wet along one edge.

I picked it up. It was warm.

SKILL CARD (UNRANKED).

REWARD: 1 CLAIM ONLY.

I turned it over. A thin spiral marked the back, and the spiral kept moving when I didn't look at it directly.

"Card," I said.

"I see it."

"Unranked. One claim."

"Then claim it," he said, and did not move, and did not reach, and I understood after a moment that this was him being careful.

The strangers arrived while I was still holding it.

Two men and a woman, out of breath, one of them limping. They had followed us up. Which meant they had heard the creatures and come anyway.

The woman got there first. Sixty, maybe, coat tied at the waist, one shoe missing.

"Please," she said. "Whatever that is. My son's on the floor below, he can't walk, I need—"

"Shut up, Marie." The limping man pushed past her. He had a length of metal in one fist and his knuckles were white on it. "Give it here."

"You're not going to hit me."

"I hit people for less."

The third man hadn't spoken. He stood on the flight below with his hands in his coat pockets, doing sums behind his eyes. Then he smiled, and the smile was very good, and I trusted it less than the metal bar.

"Nobody's taking anything," he said. "She found it. She keeps it. Fair's fair."

Fair's fair.

I looked at the card. Then at the panel above it.

REWARD: 1 CLAIM ONLY.

Claim.

I read it again. Then I read it properly, the way I read a route that doesn't smell right.

The word was claimed. Not share. Not give. Not transfer. Every other message that day had used whatever word it needed — reach, proceed, maintain, linked. This one had four words and a number, and the number was doing all the work.

One claim. Which meant there was no mechanism for anything else. No handover. No charity. No fair's fair.

The System had built a world where the only thing you could do with a reward was take it, and the only question was who got there first. Then it had put a witness on the landing to make sure it hurt.

"Claim it," Jarek said. Quiet. To me.

"He said she should keep it."

"He's lying."

"I know he's lying."

"Then claim it."

I claimed it.

CLAIM REGISTERED.

RECIPIENT: AYANA.

COST: REDISTRIBUTED.

The card cooled against my palm and then passed through it, and the landing lit grey.

Marie made a sound. Smaller than a scream. Her panel dropped from 68 to 12, her knees folded, and she sat down hard on the concrete with one hand flat beside her and no air going in or out.

The limping man's bar fell from 40 to 5. The metal hit the floor.

The liar got a grip on the rail and stayed upright by stubbornness alone, and his smile had come off entirely.

"What did you do," he said.

"I didn't—"

COST DISTRIBUTED ACROSS NEAREST UNLINKED PLAYERS.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION.

I looked at Marie. She was crying, and she had one shoe, and her bar was red, and she would not look at me.

"Marie. I didn't choose—"

She turned her face to the wall.

SKILL ACQUIRED: ROUTE SENSE.

RANK: F.

PASSIVE. READS PATHS, WORDING, AND INTENT.

Behind my eyes, something turned over like a key in a lock. The shape of knowing, without the knowing itself. The same feeling I get on a bad route, except now it had a name and a letter and it was mine.

"F," I said.

"Everything starts at F." He was watching the dark at the top of the flight, not me. "It goes up."

"How far?"

"Far enough to matter."

Then the fire door opened behind us, and the floor stayed put while the map tilted.

The minimap in the corner of my vision redrew itself. Corridors slid. Walls closed. The flight we'd come up with folded away.

ZONE REACTING.

THREAT RESPONSE: PAIRED UNITS TARGETED.

SHELTER NODE RELOCATING.

The dragging sound rose again. Louder. Joined by another. Then a third.

"Up," he said, and this time I moved first, and I was three steps clear before the anchor pulled and I understood I'd already started acting like we were one thing.