Jamie had fallen asleep at some point, the sight of a bedding and mattress store drawing her in like it held its own gravity. The human mind processes its waking thoughts while sleeping, and her first nightmares as a System-empowered individual were vivid. The ruinous experiences of the day before were compressed into a single scene.

A voice told Jamie the end was coming, and her family were calling for her help. A bright red light exploded behind her as she tried to run for them. Turning, Jamie saw a frowning sun holding her back and she cursed at it. She told the star she hated it for being so indecisive and slow. When it let her go, the darkness she fell into was full of biting, ripping, tearing monsters. All the while, her family screamed for her to save them. Floating in the dark, her family home was burning and Jamie struggled to reach it. As her hand closed around the front door, she heard herself scream.

Which was what woke her up. It took a conscious effort to stop the screams, turning and burying her face into the bed she had slept on. Unfortunately, when Jamie awoke, she didn’t even have the strange haziness you normally read about in books or saw in movies. She knew exactly where she was, why she was there and that things were not going to get better. The hate which had burgeoned the day before solidified into a mass of frozen anger which stole the warmth from her extremities.

She might have stayed in the bedding store if it weren’t for the piercing wail which cut through even her hard psyche. The night before had been spent ignoring such sounds while desperately keeping herself alive. She had spotted a few large groups of people who had banded together, but avoided them. They would just attract the larger monsters and get slaughtered anyway. Jamie had found her place as a lone hunter. There was no one left to care about in the world, after all.

That is, until she heard the woman crying out. Her feet were moving before she knew where the source was. “My baby!” Skidding to a stop in front of her, the loud woman threw herself into Jamie’s arms the second she realised Jamie was here to help. “My baby,” she repeated, over and over, “they took her.” It was all the woman could say, and Jamie didn’t blame her. There was blood covering the mother’s thighs. Her belly looked large in a way only very recently pregnant women were.

The freeze in Jamie’s blood grew more frigid. “My name is Jamie, I’ll help you. What happened? Who took her?” She asked, getting the woman to sit. She was unprepared for the following minutes of horror as she listened and tried to wrap her head around the story the mother, Kylie, told her. “Are you saying… this System or whatever took your baby?”

Kylie had been in labour when the countdown started. Home births weren’t terribly uncommon, but the people helping her had all abandoned her in the final moments. She had been forced to deliver the baby on her own. Mothers had been doing similar for thousands of years, but Jamie’s frozen heart hardened even more at the thought. Kylie had given birth after the countdown ended, not knowing the apocalypse had come with it.

Then, the System had shown Kylie a prompt she had barely registered as her newborn baby vanished from her grip. Jamie couldn’t even imagine the terror. The distraught mother had been begging for help for the last hour, but no one had come. That thought brought Jamie back to reality. It caused tangible damage to Jamie’s mental state to comfort someone else as she wrapped a fake smile around the ice in her heart and it appeared on her face.

“I think your baby is okay, Kylie.” It took a while to explain what Jamie knew, during which time Jamie moved the pair back to the bedding store which felt at least enclosed. Obviously, Kylie knew something was happening, but it was only when Jamie lifted the back of a small car off the ground that she accepted it was more wide-reaching than just her child. She had always been agile, but never hoped to be strong.

After explaining that there were literally monsters attacking people in places, Jamie gave her theory to Kylie. “You think the System has taken my baby to… keep it safe?” It made some kind of sense, at least to Jamie. A baby couldn’t grow in a place like this, and the power behind the System was insane. Creating monsters, creating magic? The whole world had gone crazy, and the most insane theories were more likely than others at this point. “So, how do I get her back?”

Kylie was larger than Jamie, not just because of the pregnancy she had endured, but her frame was bulkier by half. Yet, Jamie pulled the trembling lady to her feet, the taller woman felt willowy. Kylie’s brown eyes were like those of a scared doe as they stared into Jamie’s. Jamie felt a pang of guilt, but it didn’t even chip the ice at her core. It didn’t matter if it was a lie. “Get strong enough to protect her.”

Kylie screamed, and Jamie was whirling around quickly. A hulking figure emerged from between two houses and Jamie saw piggish, grey eyes lock onto their position. She didn’t hesitate. Everything about the situation was forgotten as Jamie drew her knives. Without the System’s attributes, she would have needed to keep the sharp things uncomfortably against herself somehow. Instead, she had found a block for kitchen knives yesterday and shoved it into a backpack. It definitely looked strange, but it was the best sheath she had found.

Besides the stomach of a monster, that is.

Kylie’s horrified screeching and panicky questions were distracting, so Jamie ignored them. The humanoid beast walking towards them was all pink skin and flabby muscle. After the events of the previous afternoon and evening, Jamie wasn’t intimidated by such things. Everything bled, after all. As she ripped open a gout of the precious crimson on the disgusting things leg, she didn’t avoid the splash. The gore hit her and for the first time that day, she felt heat.

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The monster squealed like the pig it shared an evolutionary line with. Stumbling on its cloven feet from the pain, Jamie didn’t let up. The creature was too large to let it get a foothold in the fight, so she didn’t. The ensuing fight was savage, and Jamie was immensely pleased with herself as it finished. The monster, which she learned after looting, was apparently called an orc. A club and some actual gold coins appeared on the ground, which Jamie collected. Better than the loot was the experience. When Jamie defeated a monster, the warmth which flowed into her was even more intense.

Ding! Level up! +5 Attribute Points.

“We have… to be brutal,” she panted, hating that she felt like it was an excuse for the violence. Kylie looked at her in horror, yet nodded all the same. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed the blood when it was dry, but Jamie was once again dripping with the warm liquid. She placed three points into Recovery, enjoying the ambrosia flowing through her veins as she did so. The remaining two points she placed into agility before looking over her gains.

Character Window

Name

Jamie Baker

Race

Earth Human

Title

None

Level

6

Health

55/55

Mana

0

Attribute Window

FP:0

Strength

10

Recovery

7

Resilience

8

Dexterity

6

Agility

7

Perception

6

Power

0

Regeneration

0

Command

0

Jamie was pleased when Kylie didn’t flinch away as she proffered one of her knives towards her. Kylie looked interestedly at the club, though. A bit heavy for her now, but Jamie just shrugged and “It wasn’t that thing…” Kylie mumbled, dragging the heavy chunk of wood to one side. Jamie tilted her head. “I didn’t scream because I saw that thing. There was a popup.”

The fire in the mother’s eyes was intense. “The System gave me a quest. It’s just like you said. Reach level ten and I get a reward. Is that how I get stronger?” Gaze firm, she was steeling herself on the blood which dripped from the quickly cooling knives. They would be cold again soon, Jamie lamented. She didn’t speak, absorbing the last of the heat. She simply nodded. “Let’s go then,” Kylie said, hefting the club onto her shoulder.

Jamie’s stomach gurgled and she grimaced. Kylie noticed and the pair of them went back to her flat and collected supplies. After the loud chaos which dominated the day before, the eerie quiet was almost as troubling. Despite that, the act of stripping through the other woman’s house created a bond. It was impossible not to see the signs of the expectant mother towards her baby, and Jamie took on some of the fury from the theft. They ate food together quietly. They cried together before leaving the flat behind. There was a kinship growing between them, though Jamie didn’t share what the System had taken from her. She still couldn’t accept it herself. Maybe she, too, would get a quest which returned her family to her. Blood on the grass.

Perhaps not.

With vitriol burning in her throat, Jamie took Kylie hunting. For good or bad, it didn’t take long before they found their next fight. This one wasn’t as clean as the orc fight, but Jamie was more distracted. A pack of goblins were trying to break into a butcher’s shop where a man with a cleaver desperately tried to keep them away. The confusion and disappointment on the man’s face as the two women approached almost made Jamie turn away.

Blood on the grass. A goblin standing over a body.

The crimson veil fell over the world as she ploughed into the group. Kylie was unable to keep up, and so unable to take advantage of the falling bodies. By the time she arrived, she faltered when faced with angrily rising goblins. “Do you want to be strong or not?” Jamie demanded, forgoing her knives and just smashing the goblin against the nearest wall. The thrumming sound of blood in her ears grounded her. The next sounds were a frustrated shout and a heavy impact.

Injured from her rush, one of the goblins Jamie had pushed over wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way. It turned into paste under the club, the weapon taller and wider than the creature it killed. The pair of women were covered in scratches and bites by the time they finished off the last goblin. Jamie looked around, worried their battle had brought other dangers, but saw none.

Only then did the man in the butcher’s shop unlock the door. He began to talk but Jamie told him to shut the fuck up and thankfully he did. She could feel herself getting lost in the new narrative of the world. Survive. Kill. Deal with the problem in front of you and then move on. It was a bitter pill to swallow. Kylie was vomiting to the side of the carnage, so Jamie left her alone for a moment. “Are you coming?” Jamie demanded of the man she had silenced. His mouth opened and closed a few times before he timidly nodded.

“Fine. You’ve got five minutes.” Jamie’s mind was racing, but each train of thought led to the same destination. Wandering wasn’t the way forward. They needed to get some kind of safety. Unwelcome, a thought of Grant came to mind. This is how he would do it…

He would find a base, work from there and protect as many people as he could while doing it. Jamie couldn’t bring herself to care about them in the way he would, but she could get a group of people working together. She could do that much. Her eyes were locked on the largest building in the area. “That’ll do,” she nodded.