The next morning came with the usual groaning from outside, dead things that never slept and never shut up. He had gotten almost used to it by now.
Michael woke up on the living room floor feeling like his back was about to file a formal complaint against him. He sat up rolled his neck and checked his surroundings. His apartment was quiet and the barricade was still in place with grey light bleeding through the window covering. There were no sounds coming from the bedroom which meant Sera was either still asleep or being very quiet about not being asleep.
He gave his back one more moment of suffering then opened the Blueprint Interface.
The reinforced door was still the first thing on his list. His current setup of furniture stacked against a standard residential door worked fine until it didn't and he really didn't want to be around for the moment it didn't.
He dragged the blueprint over to the front entrance and checked the material costs. Eight steel plates, four iron bars and two bolt mechanisms which came out to around a hundred and eighty eight SP if he bought everything from the shop.
He had two thirty.
It was doable but barely and barely left him with almost nothing after. The shop had one very clear answer for how to fix that problem so he pulled up the daily quest.
[Clear The Floor — Eliminate all Rotters on Floor 6. Reward: 200 SP.]
Two hundred SP for six Rotters. Combined with what he already had that was enough for the door, a proper weapon, food for a week and still have change left over. It was a good reward. The only problem was he would be doing it with a kitchen knife which was considerably less good.
He was still thinking about that when the bedroom door opened.
Sera came out looking way better than she did when he last saw her. Her hair was pulled back and the scrape on her arm had been cleaned and wrapped with something from the bathroom cabinet. She already had the fire extinguisher in hand like she picked it up before she was even fully awake. Her eyes did their usual automatic sweep of the room before landing on him sitting on the floor staring at nothing.
"Morning," Michael said.
"Morning." She glanced around the apartment then back at him. "Nothing got in."
"Nothing got in."
She crossed to the kitchen and looked at the ration packs on the counter with a question she didn't quite ask sitting on her face.
"Help yourself," he said.
She took one and leaned against the counter eating with the kind of slowly. After a moment she glanced over at him.
"So. Build, it that still the plan?"
"Still the plan."
"You gonna tell me how exactly?"
Michael thought about that for a second. He wasn't ready to get into the system, the interface, the shop or any of it. Not yet. He didn't fully understand it himself and something about explaining it out loud to someone who had no reason to believe him felt like a conversation he needed more time before having.
"I scavenged some materials from the other apartments," he said which was not entirely a lie because he planned to do exactly that after clearing the floor. "It is enough to reinforce the door at least."
Sera looked at him for a moment with those sharp brown eyes that had a way of making him feel like she was reading slightly further into him than he was comfortable with.
"Just the door?" she asked.
"For now."
She didn't push it and just nodded and finished her ration pack and that was the thing about Sera he was already starting to appreciate, she knew when not to push and when to just let something sit.
"I need to clear the floor first," he said. "There are six Rotters still out there based on what I counted yesterday."
She looked at the fire extinguisher in her hand then at his kitchen knife on the counter then back at him with an expression that was somewhere between concerned and amused.
"Together?" she asked.
"Unless you want to wait here."
"I'm not waiting here." She pushed off the counter and adjusted her grip on the extinguisher. "Lead the way."
---
They moved through the hallway the same way they had the night before, slow and deliberate with every step placed carefully and every sound taken into consideration before moving past it. Michael had the pulse running in the background tracking the six signatures still scattered across the floor and he relayed positions to Sera in quiet gestures and low words that she picked up without needing them explained twice.
The first two went quickly. Sera handled one before Michael even reached it and he got the second from behind with more confidence than he had the day before. The knife was still embarrassing as a weapon but he was learning where to put it.
[+30 SP. +30 SP.]
The third and fourth were clustered near the far end of the hall and those went just as clean. Sera moved like someone who had spent years making her body do exactly what she told it to and watching her work next to him made him acutely aware of how much he moved like someone who had spent years sitting at a desk.
She was way more athletic than him and he couldn't help but sigh in frustration.
[+30 SP. +30 SP.]
There were two left and both signatures were coming from behind the door of apartment 604 which was sitting slightly open with darkness past the frame.
Michael stopped outside it and listened. There was the sound of movement inside, the Rotters where probably walking around aimlessly inside. He looked at Sera and held up two fingers. She nodded.
He pushed the door open.
The first one came immediately and he was ready for it this time, stepping to the side instead of back and catching it with his knife in it's throat while Sera moved past him for the second.
It was messy and graceless and he nearly caught an elbow to the face from a Rotter that had more momentum than expected but when it was over both of them were down and he was still standing.
[+30 SP. +30 SP.]
[Quest Complete — Clear The Floor. +200 SP.]
[Total SP: 430.]
Michael stood in the middle of apartment 604 with his chest heaving and looked at the notification sitting in his vision.
Four hundred and thirty SP.
He opened the shop before he had even fully caught his breath.
The fire axe went first, a hundred and twenty SP, and it materialized in his hand almost dropping it because of it weight.
It immediately felt more reassuring than anything he had been carrying up to that point. Then the reinforced door materials, a hundred and eighty eight SP, appearing in a neat stack against the hallway wall. Then food for a week and a basic first aid kit on top of that.
Sera had been watching him the whole time.
Not his face but at his hands. The way he had reached into nothing and come back with an axe.
He turned around and found her staring at the stack of steel plates and iron bars sitting against the wall with a raised brow.
"You said you scavenged," she said slowly.
"I did scavenge. Yesterday." He held the fire axe with what he hoped was a casual air. "I found some extra materials in one of the other rooms."
She looked at the stack. Then at the axe. Then at him. Her eyes gazed at him with extreme suspicion.
"That axe wasn't there this morning," she said.
'Stop questioning me if you want to live woman!'
"I found it just now."
"In an empty apartment."
"People leave things behind."
She stared at him for a long moment and he stared back and it was a perfectly reasonable stalemate between two people who both knew exactly what was happening and one of them wasn't ready to talk about it yet.
Then Sera looked at the first aid kit he was holding out toward her and the expression on her face shifted into something quieter.
"For your arm," he said.
She took it and stared at it for a moment then looked at him.
"Thank you," she said and the way she said it this time felt like she meant it more than the time she had said it in the hallway last night.
He turned back to the front door and placed the materials. The Blueprint Interface confirmed the deposit and the door assembled itself in a shimmer of blue light, three inches of layered steel slotting into the frame with a deep satisfying sound that he felt in his chest.
He heard Sera go very still behind him.
He patted the door once and turned around. She was standing in the hallway looking at where a standard residential door had been thirty seconds ago with an expression that had given up trying to be anything other than what it was.
"Michael," she said carefully.
"Yeah?"
"That door wasn't there this morning either."
"I know."
"And you're not going to explain it."
"Not."
She held his gaze for a moment and then something in her face settled, not satisfied exactly but willing to wait, which was more than he had expected and more than he probably deserved.
"Okay," she said simply and walked back into the apartment.
He followed her and somewhere in his vision a notification blinked.
[Bond Event: First Victory — Shared. +1 Bond Point — Sera. Current BP: 2.]