---
After deciding to settle on the first floor, Jin began organizing the supply move.
Water was too heavy to carry in bulk, so they left most of it in the original room on the seventh floor. But the rice, flour, canned goods, medicine—those couldn't stay behind. Nathan's promise not to touch their old room meant nothing if someone got desperate enough.
For now, the building still had supplies. The group had been methodical, clearing floors and stockpiling what they found. But no one could predict how long that would last.
So the supplies came down.
Jin, Mark, Lisa, and Simon made two trips, their Summons guarding the stairwell between loads. Backpacks bulging with rice, bags of flour slung over shoulders, boxes of canned goods carried two at a time.
The other survivors watched.
They emerged from their doors when they heard movement, standing in doorways, watching the four figures haul supplies down from the upper floors. Jin saw the looks—envy, hunger, something close to resentment. But no one moved to interfere. Fidex's bulk filling the stairwell was deterrent enough.
Most of the survivors on the first floor didn't have Summons. They'd survived the first night by hiding, by running, by being lucky. The Crimson Book marked their hands, but they hadn't killed. Hadn't contracted.
Two or three hundred pounds of rice and flour. Medicine. Canned goods. All of it went into Jin's room, 7101, with smaller caches in Mark and Simon's rooms as backup.
When the last bag was stacked, Jin closed the door and stood in the silence, listening to the building settle around him.
---
Across the building, Josh was doing his own inventory.
He'd taken his people up the moment Jin's group came down. If Jin had cleared the upper floors, there might be something left—a room overlooked, a closet not fully searched. His Summons needed to eat. His people needed to eat.
But room after room was empty. Cabinets open, drawers pulled out, anything useful already gone.
"Wasted effort," Greg muttered behind him. His face was sallow, his mood worse. His Summon's arm was still healing, the wound from Fidex's claws knitting slowly. "They stripped it clean."
Josh shot him a look. "They came down alive. That means they had the means to clear out the supplies. We'd do the same."
Greg's jaw tightened, but he didn't argue. He was thinking about the arm, about the four‑armed corpse that had taken it so easily. "How'd he get that thing so strong? Four arms, metal skin—there's something he's not telling us."
Josh's eyes narrowed. He'd been thinking the same thing since the moment he saw Fidex. If Jin knew something, some secret about making Summons stronger, that was information worth having.
"Don't talk about it here," Josh said quietly. "We find an opportunity. Get close. Ask the right questions." He paused. "Carefully."
Greg nodded. "Got it."
They moved up to the sixth floor, searching the rooms Jin's group had already cleared. It was pointless—there was nothing left—but Josh needed to be seen working. Needed to remind Nathan's people that his group pulled their weight.
They were about to head down when a sound stopped them.
A soft click. A door closing.
Josh's head snapped toward room 7502. The door was closed, but the lock was broken—a hole in the wood just above the handle. Through it, he caught a glimpse of movement. White fabric. Someone shifting back from the door.
He raised a hand, signaling his people to stop. His Summon moved up beside him, its claws extended.
"Come out," Josh called, his voice hard.
Silence. Then a trembling voice from inside. "Don't—don't kill us. We don't have anything left. Someone already took everything."
"Open the door."
Another long pause. Then the door cracked open, revealing a man with glasses, his face pale, his hands shaking. Behind him, a woman hovered near the back wall, her eyes wide.
Josh recognized them. The couple from the sixth floor. The ones who'd tried to bargain with Jin and refused to pay the cleaning fee.
"What are you doing up here?" Josh demanded.
"Hiding," the man said. "We've been hiding. When the fog came, we locked ourselves in. We heard things in the hallway, but we didn't open the door. We didn't—"
"Food. Water. You have any?"
The man's face went tighter. "Gone. We ran out yesterday. We were going to try to go down, but then we heard people in the hallway and we thought—"
Josh cut him off with a wave. His mind was already calculating. Two more mouths to feed. Two more bodies that couldn't fight. Worthless.
But then his eyes caught something—a door at the end of the hallway, chained and barricaded. The fifth floor. Room 7504.
"What's in there?" he asked.
The man's eyes darted toward the door, then away. "Nothing. We don't know. We haven't—"
"You're lying."
Josh walked toward the door, his Summon following. The chains were new. Heavy. The door itself was scarred with claw marks—deep gouges in the wood, the kind that came from the inside.
He pressed his ear against the wood and listened.
Movement. A slow, rhythmic shifting. Breathing. Something alive in there. Something that wasn't human.
He stepped back, a slow smile spreading across his face.
"Greg. We're going to need to talk to Nathan."
---
Downstairs, Jin was making his own rounds.
The first floor hallway was narrow, the doors close together. 7101, 7102, 7103—his group's rooms. Next to them, a door that opened sometimes, two young women in their twenties peering out before hurrying back inside. Original tenants, Jin guessed. They'd been on the first floor when the fog hit, survived by hiding.
Further down, the room the security team had claimed. Two or three of them rotated through, always keeping someone close to the lobby entrance. The door at the end of the hall was barricaded—sofas stacked against it, the lock reinforced.
Jin walked toward the lobby. Frank was on duty, a younger guard named Zack beside him. Both looked tired, their uniforms rumpled, dark circles under their eyes.
"Jin," Frank said, straightening slightly when he saw him.
"Frank." Jin reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes—something he'd picked up during supply runs. He wasn't a smoker, but he'd learned quickly that tobacco was currency now.
Frank's eyes lit up. He took the pack, passed one to Zack, and tucked the rest into his jacket. "You're too kind. What do you need to know?"
"The barricaded room at the end of the hall. What's in there?"
Frank exhaled smoke, his expression souring. "That's where we put the bodies. The Zombies we kill, the people who didn't make it—we toss them out through that room. There's a balcony, drops straight down to the back alley." He shrugged. "Can't leave them in the halls. Rot would kill us faster than the monsters."
So that's why Jin had seen bloodstains but no bodies. They'd been disposing of them.
"If you're worried about the smell, you could move upstairs," Frank added. "Plenty of empty rooms now, anyway. No telling how long this lasts."
Jin didn't respond to the suggestion. He was thinking about the bodies. About fusion material. About what it would cost to use it.
He changed tack. "Is there a doctor here?"
Frank blinked. "Someone hurt?"
"No. Just asking."
Frank shook his head. "No doctors. There were some people hurt the first day. They just had to tough it out."
Jin thought of the woman on the sixth floor, the one who'd hidden from the fog. No doctor meant she'd have to survive on her own.
He asked a few more questions, getting a sense of how the survivor group operated. Nathan was the nominal leader, with the security team backing him and two or three other Contract holders. Josh had about six people—the barbecue crew, Frank called them, former street vendors who'd stuck together when the fog fell. The rest were unaffiliated, twenty or so people who hadn't killed, hadn't contracted, and were running out of food.
For now, there was still enough to go around. The security team rationed what they found, gave extra to people who helped with clearing or corpse disposal. But Jin could do the math. Twenty‑seven people. Limited supplies. No way in or out.
Conflict was inevitable.
He thanked Frank and walked back toward his room, his mind turning over what he'd learned. The body disposal room was a resource, if he chose to use it. The unaffiliated survivors were potential allies, or potential problems. Josh was a threat, already calculating, already looking for angles.
And somewhere on the fifth floor, Simon's son was chained in a locked room.
Jin paused at his door, looking back at the lobby. The fog pressed against the windows, gray and patient.
Tomorrow, they would clear the second and first floors with Nathan's people. After that, they'd go outside.
But first, he needed to talk to Simon about the fifth floor.
---
End of Chapter 14
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