Almost being the key word.
Michael woke up o the smell of something hot and the sound of two people arguing quietly in his kitchen which was a combination of things that had not existed in his life since before the world ended and which his brain took a full five seconds to process as real.
He sat up and looked toward the kitchen.
Maya and Dr. Kang were standing on opposite sides of the counter in what was clearly a disagreement that had been going on long enough to develop structure. Maya had her arms crossed and Dr. Kang had an impatient expression and a frown.
"I'm just saying the protein bars should be organized by expiry date," Maya said.
"They are organized by expiry date," Dr. Kang said.
"They were. You moved them."
"I reorganized them by category first and expiry date second which is a more functional system."
"It was already functional."
"It was functional for one person. We have five people now."
Maya opened her mouth and then noticed Michael sitting up on the floor watching them and pointed at him. "Tell her."
Michael looked at the storage unit through the bedroom doorway and then back at both of them. "I have no opinion about this."
"You coward, you built the storage unit."
"And I fully trust both of you to organize it however you want."
Maya gave him a sharp look knowing he was trying not to involve himself in their ongoing argument. Dr. Kang looked quietly satisfied knowing the situation was resolved and she wouldn't have to push the matter more anymore.
He got up and checked the perimeter panel. It was steady at amber, nothing new outside since last night. The gate was holding and the pulse showed the lower floor signatures still doing their thing down on Floor 3, big and slow and not interested in coming up yet. He had been leaving them alone because going down to Floor 3 with what was sitting there felt like a different category of problem to everything they had handled so far and he wanted more before he tried it.
Sera came out of the bedroom a few minutes later and looked at the kitchen situation and at Michael and he gave her a small shrug that told her everything and she went to the viewport without commenting which was one of the things he appreciated about her.
"The street's clear," she said.
"Same as yesterday."
"There's a pharmacy two blocks east." She turned from the viewport. "I could see the sign from here. If it hasn't been completely stripped it could be worth a run."
Dr. Kang's head came up immediately. "Medical supplies?"
"Potentially. It might be nothing or something but it's worth the tr."
Michael pulled up the Blueprint Interface and checked his SP. He had nine hundred and forty after last night's lobby bonus had settled. The base was at sixty one percent Tier 2 and the next major unlock he needed was the watchtower which required materials he didn't have in storage yet. A pharmacy run could solve two problems at once, medical supplies for Dr. Kang and scavenged materials that reduced his shop spend on the watchtower build.
He looked at the gate blueprint sitting confirmed in his vision. The building was sealed which meant leaving meant opening it which meant the question of what was outside the building became relevant in a way it hadn't been since he had been running solo sweeps on his own floor.
"How far is two blocks in current conditions," he said.
"Ten minutes if the street stays clear," Sera said. "Twenty if it doesn't."
"And coming back?"
"It's the same. Maybe faster if we're running."
Maya had stopped arguing about the storage unit and was listening with her arms still crossed but her expression had shifted from annoyed to interested. "I want to come."
"No," Michael and Sera said at the same time.
Maya looked between them. "Excuse me."
"Your table leg is not even in the best conditions to walk" Michael said.
"I did fine on the upper floor sweep."
"The upper floors were cleared. Two blocks of open street is different."
She opened her mouth and he could already see the argument forming behind her eyes and he looked at her steadily until she closed it again. She did not look happy about it but she closed it.
Dr. Kang was already writing a list on the back of a ration pack wrapper with a pen she had gotten from somewhere. "Antiseptic, broad spectrum antibiotics if there are any left, bandages, pain medication, saline if we're lucky." She held it out to Michael. "In order of priority."
He took it and looked at it before turning to Sera.
"Twenty minutes," he said. "In and out."
She nodded and picked up her axe.
---
Opening the gate from the inside produced a sound that was quieter than he expected, a smooth mechanical slide that the blueprint had clearly accounted for, and they slipped through the gap and he closed it behind them and stood on the street outside his building for the first time in six days.
The city looked the same as it always did now. It was empty and grey an looked eerie because of how quiet and empty the streets were.
Cars stopped at weird positions which looked like they had been ran out of in a hurry by the owner. A shop front had it's two doors down with its glass completely gone and its interior shadowed and stripped. Somewhere further away the sound of something moving but distant enough not to matter yet.
Michael ran the pulse and got a clean reading for about a block in every direction. Nothing was close to them or moving toward them.
Two blocks felt longer on open street than it ever had before the apocalypse. His eyes kept moving without him telling them to, checking doorways and parked cars and the gaps between buildings and the upper windows of everything they passed because Crawlers went to high places and he hadn't forgotten that.
Crawlers would wait for prey in awkward places and suddenly jump their pray leaving them defenseless.
Sera moved beside him with ease like she had been built for such type of situation which made Michael curse under his breath.
She didn't rush and she didn't hesitate and she communicated entirely in small gestures, a hand signal for stop, two fingers for movement ahead, a tilt of the head for which direction.
They stopped at a car halfway down the first block because the pulse caught something moving in a building doorway twenty meters ahead. They waited and a single Rotter emerged from the doorway and shuffled across the street moving away from them and disappeared around a corner without ever turning their direction.
They kept moving.