Chapter 79 Serious Injuries

Chapter 79 Serious Injuries
Nathan was on his feet, uninjured. He was standing over the second Hunter's body with his blade in his hand and his chest heaving, looking at what he had done with the expression people got the first time they killed something at the level of a Hunter — not guilt, not satisfaction, something more complex than either. Ava was moving through the perimeter, checking angles, the submachine gun up, making sure nothing else was inbound. Professional. Clean. I looked at the Hunter bodies. The drop pools were already visible — the System's way of marking what the kills had yielded. I went to the nearest one. System Coins, a stack. Two Treasure Orbs — one Yellow, one Orange. I stood with the Orange Orb in my hand for a moment. In the original timeline, the first Orange Orb I had found had been at week six. Eleven days in and we had already crossed into that territory. The acceleration was real. I pocketed both Orbs and went to the second Hunter. More Coins. Another Yellow Orb. A small, flat object that resolved when I picked it up into a skill book — physical, tangible, the system's delivery mechanism for technique data that would burn into the user's knowledge base when they activated it. I read the cover. High Speed Movement — Level 1. I put it in my pack. The promotion notifications hit me while I was still crouching. Two of them, back to back. The system registering the Hunter kills and the accumulated experience from the fight and from the morning and from the eleven days of consistent engagement since Veilfall. Level twelve. Level thirteen. I felt both — the physical shift of the system updating my baseline, stronger than the lower-level promotions, the body adjusting to a more significant recalibration. My breathing changed. The pain in my ribs was still there but slightly less immediate. The system was compensating at the cellular level, beginning the repair process that higher levels accelerated. I allocated the stat points to Vitality. All four of them. I needed the recovery speed more than I needed the offensive gains right now. A warm current moved through my body. Small. Not a cure. But something. I stood up. --- "Ryan," I said. He looked up from the truck wheel. I crouched beside him and put my hand on his left side, careful. He winced once, hard, and held still. "Two or three ribs," I said. "Nothing displaced. You'll breathe shallow for a week." "Great," he said. His voice was rough. "Can you walk?" He pushed off the wheel and stood. It took two attempts. But he stood. "Yeah," he said. I looked at Ava. "Is the perimeter clear?" "For now," she said. "But the gunfire will have drawn everything in range. We have maybe ten minutes." "Enough." I turned to Nathan. "Help Ryan into the truck. I need to get Kira's shoulder." Nathan moved without a word. --- Kira was sitting on the truck's running board when I came to her. She had her right hand pressed against her left shoulder, holding the joint in place while she waited. "This is going to be fast," I said. "I know," she said. "Do it." I put my left hand on her upper arm and my right — wrong, damaged, but usable for this — against the shoulder joint. I checked the position once, confirmed the angle, and reset it. The sound was brief. Kira made no sound at all. She went white for about two seconds and then came back, blinking, her jaw tight. "Better," she said. "You need Elena," I said. "I need to get in the truck," she said. "Elena is an hour away. I'll survive an hour." She was right. I helped her into the passenger seat and closed the door. --- I got into the driver's side. The engines were running. Ava had started the other two trucks while I was dealing with Kira. She had read the situation and acted on it without being told. I keyed the radio. "Ava. West bypass, same route we came in. You lead." "Copy," she said. The trucks moved. I drove with my left hand on the wheel and my right hand resting useless in my lap. The pain was a constant pressure now — ribs, hand, the back of my skull where it had hit the road — but pain was information, not incapacitation. I had functioned through worse. Through much worse. Kira looked at me from the passenger seat. "Your hand." "Three bones, probably," I said. "The system's working on it. By tonight I'll have partial grip back." "And the ribs?" "Same story." She was quiet for a moment. Then: "How many times have you been this hurt?" "More than I can count," I said. She looked out the windshield. The road was clear. The residential bypass stretched north ahead of us, the worst of the zombie density falling behind us as we moved into the lower-population outer suburbs. "Tell me about the Orbs," she said. "What did we get?" I told her. The Yellow ones, the Orange one, the skill book. She was quiet while she processed it. "Orange Orb at day eleven," she said finally. "Yes." "In your previous loops." "Week six," I said. "First Orange was week six. Earliest." She held that information with the seriousness it deserved. Not panic. Just clear-eyed calculation. "Then the timeline is compressing," she said. "Yes." "Which means the Hive is advancing faster too." "Yes." She looked at her hands. "Then we need to get to Sacramento faster than you planned." "Yes," I said. "We do." She nodded once. Then she closed her eyes — not sleep, just the management of everything she was carrying physically — and leaned her head back against the seat. I drove north. The bypass was clear for another kilometer. The highway approach was twenty minutes beyond that. Sacramento was waiting. The cost of getting there was tallied in cracked ribs and broken bones and a dislocated shoulder and two Hunter bodies on a road south of the city. It was worth paying. It was going to have to be.