The [Territory Token] burned against Alex's palm. It didn't just pulse; it kicked against his nerves, syncing with the adrenaline in his blood.
Alex stood in the center of the 24th-floor ruin. Shards of glass framed the white void outside. Minus sixty-five degrees. The air didn't just bite; it flayed exposed skin like invisible razors.
He crushed the crystal.
"Activate."
No chime. No magic sparkle. A shockwave of heavy blue data blasted outward.
The force hit Luna. She buckled. Knees cracked against the floor.
THRUM.
The building's skeleton groaned.
Physics bent. On the floor, shattered glass hissed. It liquefied into silver streams, whipped backward, and snapped into the window frames. The liquid fused instantly into thick, translucent slabs.
The wind cut out. The roar died.
Grey drywall rippled like mercury. It hardened into dark, matte alloy. The temperature spike hit them like a physical blow—shifting from instant death to a sterile, survivable chill.
[System Notification] [Territory Established: Riverside Gardens, Unit 2401] [Defense Level: 1] [Ambient Temp: -10°C (Rising)]
Luna lowered her hands. She touched the wall. "Poly-alloy composite. Military grade." She looked at Alex. Fear mixed with a fanatical shine in her eyes. "You rewrote reality."
"Basic function." Alex checked his interface. "Set up the workshop in the guest room. I have trash to take out."
He walked to the security door.
Floor 23 smelled of stale piss, rot, and fear.
Seven shapes huddled near the stairwell. Layers of stolen duvets made them look like piles of dirty laundry. The "Fence-Sitters." They watched him bleed yesterday. Today, they waited for scraps.
Alex stepped out.
Silence hit the room.
He didn't speak. His armor still had dried blood in the seams. Level 4 stats radiated a heavy, suffocating pressure. A predator walked among sheep.
"New rules," Alex said. His voice rasped, dry and hard. "This building is mine."
He scanned the faces. Greasy skin. Sunken eyes.
"I need a corpse crew. Three bodies. You drag the dead from the lower floors to the perimeter. Build a wall. Pay is one bar, one water."
"One bar?" A man in a shredded suit stood up. The ex-VP. His lips were cracked and blue. "I'm starving! My gums are bleeding, Alex! You have a stockpile!"
"Work. Or starve." Alex rested his hand on his knife.
"Inhumane!"
A screech cut the air. Mrs. Halloway pushed through the group. Mink coat, tangled hair, face red with hysterical entitlement. The old HOA president.
"Neighbors! We're neighbors!" She jabbed a finger at him. "I babysat you! You little shit, you can't hoard this! It's illegal! The police will—"
Alex moved.
[Agility Check: Pass]
He blurred.
Fingers crushed her trachea. Crunch.
"Gah—!"
He didn't stop. He drove her backward. Boots skidded on concrete. He slammed her against the broken window frame at the end of the hall. The one hole he hadn't fixed.
The blizzard screamed outside.
"Alex! No! Don't!" The VP scrambled back. He tripped over his own duvet.
Halloway clawed at Alex's wrist. Her nails broke against the alloy bracer. Eyes bulged. Capillaries burst in the whites. "Please! I... I didn't mean... Alex!"
"You're loud," Alex said. "And expensive."
He shoved.
Gravity took her.
No cinematic scream. The wind just snatched her away. One second she was a frantic bundle of fur and noise. The next, white void.
[System Notification] [Threat Removed: Useless Mouth] [Tyrant Points +5] [Morale Effect: Terror]
Silence stretched in the hallway. Heavier than the cold.
Alex turned. He didn't look at the window. He looked at the VP.
"Three volunteers," Alex said. "Who wants to eat?"
Six hands shot up. Instantly.
"Good." Alex pointed at the VP. "You're foreman. Move the bodies. If I see one of you slacking, you join her."
[Subordinate Acquired: Temporary Labor Squad]
Alex returned to the penthouse. The air hovered near zero.
In the guest room, Luna had cleared the debris. Her portable workbench sat unfolded, tools laid out with surgical precision. She stripped wires from a broken drone she'd salvaged.
She ignored the scream from downstairs. In this world, questions got you killed. Value kept you alive.
"Boss," Luna said. She didn't look up from her soldering iron. "Temperatures are tanking. That armor? It's a coffin. It bleeds heat."
"You have a fix?" Alex leaned against the alloy doorframe.
"I have a design." She tapped a holographic schematic projecting from her wrist. A sleek, articulated chest piece rotated in the air. "Lightweight. Thermal lining. But I can't build it with scrap metal. Steel gets brittle at minus eighty. I need organic composites."
She turned to him. Grease smudged her cheek.
"The bugs downstairs," she said. "The ones you killed. Their carapace is designed for this hell. Harder than Kevlar, lighter than plastic. Get me the shells, and I'll make you a ghost in this snow."
Alex nodded. The Logic of the System. Monsters weren't just threats; they were resources.
"Prepare the extraction kit," Alex said. "I'm going hunting."
Luna jammed a cable into her battered tablet. She synced it to the quad-rotor drone resting on the rail.
"Need a target lock," she said. Her fingers blurred over the cracked screen. "Drop blind, and you freeze before you find them. Bird is away."
The drone's motors screamed. It dove off the ledge, plunging into the central atrium.
The tablet screen flickered. Grey concrete smeared into vertical lines. Floor 22. Floor 19.
"Signal's garbage," Luna muttered. "Reinforced steel is chewing the bandwidth."
"Push it," Alex said. "Floor 15. That's where the noise started."
The drone braked at the 15th-floor landing. Audio crackled—the hollow moan of wind in the shafts. The camera panned left.
The grey concrete vanished.
Thick, white ropes draped from the ceiling. Sticky silk coated the walls, sealing the apartment doors like a layer of diseased skin. The hallway looked like the inside of a gut.
"Thermals spiking." Luna tapped the screen. Red blotches bloomed on the overlay. "It's hot. Something's generating massive body heat."
On the screen, the silk vibrated.
The drone drifted forward. The camera motor whined, focusing on a black corner near the fire exit.
Movement.
A leg hooked around the doorframe. Segmented. Covered in coarse black bristles. Thick as a human arm.
"Pull back," Alex said.
"Controls locked! It's—"
The screen lurched. The drone didn't turn. It was yanked.
The camera spun. The white web smeared into a dizzying spiral. Then it stopped. Hard.
A face filled the frame.
Not human. A compound eye the size of a washbasin pressed against the lens. Thousands of hexagonal facets reflected the LED light. Below it, wet mandibles clicked. Thick, yellow fluid dripped onto the glass. Sizzle.
[System Warning] [Enemy Detected: Frost-Weaver Broodmother (Elite)] [Danger Level: High]
CRUNCH.
Static flooded the screen. High-pitched feedback squealed, then cut to black.
"Signal lost," Luna whispered. She stared at the grey fuzz. "It... it ate the bird."
Alex didn't flinch. He looked at the dead screen like it was a dinner menu. He tightened the straps on his gauntlet. The metal clicked loudly in the silence.
"Perfect," he said. "The armor is home."