System Reboot

Chapter Ten: Two Days

"You're actually going to trust him."

"I'm not trusting him. I'm using what he gave us." Dax knelt by Ray's leg, checking the stitches Priya had put in two days ago, the wound holding better than expected given everything since. "Those aren't the same thing."

Priya paced the length of the pharmacy's back room, arms crossed, tablet forgotten on the counter for once. "He runs purges, Dax. He's the reason half of Zone 3 doesn't exist as a functioning population anymore. And you're ready to walk four Zones on his word alone."

"I'm ready to walk four Zones because the alternative is sitting here waiting to find out what Harvest Eligible actually means the hard way." Dax stood, rolling his shoulder where the bite wound from Zone 2 had mostly healed into a dull ache. "You said it yourself. Two people flagged, both gone within a week. We don't have the luxury of skepticism right now."

"I'm not saying don't go. I'm saying don't hand him your trust for free. Men like that don't hand out warnings out of kindness. There's always a cost attached somewhere down the line."

"Maybe. Doesn't change what we do next."

Wren sat on an overturned crate near the door, quiet in a way that had settled over her since the alley, since hearing that the word stitched into her own Class notification had already killed twice. She hadn't said much on the walk back. Dax had let her have the silence, understanding it better than he wanted to.

"You okay?" he asked, crouching down to her level.

"Two people are dead because of a word I've got sitting in my own notification," she said. "How am I supposed to be okay with that?"

"You're not supposed to be okay with it. You're supposed to keep moving anyway. That's the only part that's ever really in our control."

She looked up at him, sixteen years old and carrying something no sixteen-year-old should have to carry, and nodded slow, the way she'd nodded through every hard thing since the Reset took whatever softer life she'd been living before it.

"Zone 6," she said. "That's four Zones from here. How long's that walk?"

"Depends on what's between here and there. Could be two days if the route's clear. Could be longer if it isn't."

"Marcus only gave us two days before his chain of command starts looking again."

"I know."

Ray shifted on the cot they'd set him up on, testing his weight on the bad leg and wincing hard enough that Dax reached out on instinct before catching himself.

"Don't," Ray said. "I already know I can't make that walk. Don't need you confirming it for me."

"You're staying here," Dax said. It wasn't a question, and Ray didn't fight it.

"Figured as much. Someone's got to hold this spot anyway, keep it from getting picked over while you're gone." Ray managed a thin smile, exhaustion and pain both plain underneath it. "I'll manage. Got worse care than yours plenty of times before the Reset even happened. This is practically a vacation."

"There's a stash of supplies under the second shelf," Priya said, some of the tension finally easing out of her voice now that the argument had run its course. "Enough to hold you a week if you're careful. We'll be back before it runs out."

"Or you won't be, and I'll deal with that when it happens." Ray's tone stayed light, but his eyes went serious for a moment, fixed on Dax. "Get the kid somewhere safe. That's the job. Don't let a warlord's guilty conscience or a cult's crazy theories talk you into forgetting that."

"Wasn't planning on it."

They spent the rest of the evening packing what little the pharmacy still had to offer, splitting supplies into three packs light enough to move fast with. Priya mapped the most direct route toward Zone 6 on her cracked tablet, tracing lines through territory none of them had crossed before, marking known danger points from secondhand rumors and half-reliable trade routes.

"Zone 3's mostly Vanguard territory," she said, tapping the screen. "We go around the edge instead of through it, adds maybe half a day but keeps us clear of anyone reporting back up Marcus's chain early. Zone 4's mostly unclaimed, should be quieter. Zone 5's the real problem. Heavy monster density, no faction controls it because nobody's managed to hold it long enough to try."

"And Zone 6 itself?"

"Almost no data. The Hollow Choir keeps to themselves, doesn't trade much, doesn't fight much either from what I've heard. Just watches the Zone and waits for whatever they think is coming." Priya set the tablet down, meeting Dax's eyes. "That's either good news or very bad news. I genuinely can't tell which yet."

"We'll find out when we get there."

Wren's HUD flickered faintly, and she blinked, focus going distant for a second the way it did whenever her Warden senses caught something worth noting.

"Countdown moved," she said quietly.

Everyone in the room went still.

"What do you mean, moved," Dax asked.

"The audit deadline. It's not the audit clock, though, I think it's something under it. It ticked down faster than it should have, like a few minutes just disappeared off the number without any time actually passing." She frowned hard, concentrating. "I don't think it's counting normal hours anymore. I think it's counting something else."

Priya was already reaching for her tablet again, alarm plain on her face. "That matches what I've been seeing in her notification data. The Harvest flag isn't static. It's live. Whatever it's tracking, it's accelerating."

Dax felt the weight of it settle over the room, heavier than the audit deadline had ever managed to feel, heavier even than Marcus's two-day warning.

"Then we don't wait for morning," he said. "We move tonight."

Nobody argued. Ray gave a rough nod from the cot, already settling in with what supplies he could reach, and Wren shouldered her pack with a steadiness that hadn't been there an hour ago, like the urgency had burned away some of the fear underneath it.

They stepped out into the dark together, the pharmacy's door closing behind them on Ray's quiet "good luck," and turned east toward Zones neither of them had ever crossed before, chasing a cult's half-mad theories and a warlord's guilty warning in equal measure, with a countdown ticking somewhere beneath the Grid's surface that none of them fully understood and all of them were now, unmistakably, running out of time against.