Rebate King: I fed them to rule the apocalypse

Chapter 3: Broken threshold

The rain over Mapo-gu didn't wash away the stench of rotting meat; it just made it heavy, pressing the smell deep into the cracked asphalt of the narrow alleyways.

I stood paralyzed for a few seconds, staring into the thick, gray mist where Raven had vanished. The heat from my shotgun’s explosive blast was still sizzling against the damp brick walls, vaporizing the falling drops into a thin ghost of steam. *“They were already dead before the sky broke.”* Her parting words looped in my head like a broken record, cutting deeper than the actual cold.

"Hey," a raw, trembling voice cut through the ringing in my ears. "Hey! Are you... are you going to kill me now?"

I turned slowly. Inside the cramped cargo bed of the overturned Daewoo Labo delivery van, Sarah Jenkins was curled into a tight ball, her arms wrapped fiercely around her knees. Her dark hair was plastered across her face, but her wide, bloodshot eyes were fixed entirely on the smoking 12-gauge in my hands. In a country like South Korea, where civilians don't even touch handguns, a broke guy suddenly conjuring a military tactical shotgun and shooting literal fireballs wasn't a savior. It was a terrifying anomaly.

The blue interface flickered, hovering right beside her trembling shoulder.

**[Target: Sarah Jenkins]**

**[Trust Level: 1% (Extreme Paranoia / Terror)]**

"If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't have wasted my food or a shell," I said. My voice sounded flat, completely stripped of the panic I should have been feeling. The cold, logical part of my brain was cementing itself, overriding my old civilian self. "Get up. We have to move."

"I can't!" she shot back, her voice cracking into a desperate sob as she pointed a shaking finger at her right ankle. It was badly swollen, purple bruising already blooming beneath the mud. "I can't run! Just... just take whatever is in that box and leave me. That's what you want, right? You used me as bait!"

I stepped closer to the van. She flinched violently, pressing her back so hard against the metal framework I thought it might pop a rivet.

"If I wanted bait, I’d leave you out here to scream so I could shoot whatever crawled out of the gutters," I said, leaning over the edge. I grabbed the massive wooden crate that had materialized from the system’s rebate and dragged it closer to the opening. "Open it."

She hesitated, her breathing shallow, before reaching out with pale, dirt-caked fingers to pry the heavy lid back. Her breath hitched. Inside were rows of pristine, vacuum-sealed MREs and heavy-duty plastic jugs of crystal-clear water. In a city where convenience stores had been picked bare down to the shelves within the first six hours of the collapse, this crate was worth more than a luxury high-rise apartment in Gangnam.

"Take a jug and two packs," I ordered, tossing a heavy canvas backpack—another system reward—onto her lap. "Stuff them inside. Now."

"Where are we even supposed to go?" she whispered, her hands shaking so badly she could barely open the zippers. "The radio before the grid went dark said the subways are flooded with those things. The Mapo Bridge is completely blocked with burning cars. There’s nowhere safe."

"There's an old underground dry-storage market three blocks from here," I said, keeping my eyes scanned on the mouth of the alley. "The entrance is narrow and the doors are heavy iron. We can fortify it."

"And then what?" Sarah looked up, a sudden spike of anger mixing with her terror. "We just sit in a hole until we starve? Until whatever that... that crimson-eyed thing was comes back to finish us?"

"Then I find more supplies," I replied coldly. "And you keep alive. Pack the bags, Sarah."

She froze, her entire body stiffening. She dropped the MRE pack she was holding. "I never told you my name."

A chill went down my spine. I closed my mouth, my mind scrambling. *Damn it.* The system interface showed her name in bold blue text, and in the adrenaline rush of the fight, I had let it slip.

"You... you're with them, aren't you?" Sarah’s voice dropped to a horrifying, hollow whisper. She scrambled backward, ignoring the agony in her ankle, her eyes flashing with a desperate, feral light. "The people who started this. The ones who changed the sky. You knew who I was before you even slid that water to me!"

**[Warning: Target's Trust Level is dropping below critical threshold!]**

**[Current Trust Level: 0.5% (Severe Psychosis / Imminent Break)]**

"Listen to me—" I started, reaching out to grab her arm to calm her down.

"Don't touch me!" she screamed, swinging the iron crowbar I had gifted her earlier. The heavy metal bar whistled through the air, catching me completely off guard. The blunt end clipped my left shoulder with a sickening thud.

Pain flared through my arm, forcing me to drop to one knee. Before I could recover or activate my *Perception Acceleration*, Sarah tumbled out of the back of the van, dragging her useless leg across the wet asphalt, weeping hysterically as she tried to crawl toward the main street.

"Help!" she shrieked into the pouring rain. "Someone help me! He's one of them! He's—"

A sound cut her off.

It wasn't the rhythmic clicking of a single Lurker. It was a synchronized, deafening chorus of clicks, followed by the sound of wet, heavy flesh slapping against the walls of the high-rise buildings above us.

I looked up. The overhead power lines were shaking. Emerging from the thick fog on the roofs of the adjacent buildings were dozens of pale, emaciated shapes. The scream had drawn them. The entire sector was awake.

Sarah stopped crawling, her face turning completely white as she looked up at the ceiling of flesh and claws descending upon the alleyway.

Suddenly, the red interface in my vision flashed a violent, blinding gold, forcing a massive block of text directly over my sight.

**[Ding! Hidden Condition Triggered: Target trust has entered 'Negative Absolute' zone while under active threat.]**

**[System Hidden Feature Unlocked: System Core Selection initiated.]**

**[System Notice: Sarah Jenkins has been identified as a 'Carrier'.]**

My breath caught in my throat as a high-pitched, metallic screech echoed from the rooftops, but it didn't come from the monsters. It came from Sarah.

She gripped her head, her fingers digging into her scalp so hard blood began to leak through her nails. Her eyes rolled back, glowing with a faint, flickering blue light that mirrored my own system screen.

"I can hear them..." she muttered, her voice layering into a strange, horrific echo that didn't sound human. "Ethan... I can hear them calling me."