THE LAST 100 DAYS

Burning Proof

Chapter 9: Burning Proof

"Don't shoot! I'm not one of them!"

The man stumbled through the pharmacy's side door with both hands raised, soot on his face, one sleeve burned to the elbow. Pete's pipe came up. Marcus's crowbar came up faster.

"Stop right there," Marcus said. "Name."

"Cole. Cole Brandt. I walked four miles to find you." He swallowed. "Your fire's visible from the overpass. Someone's cooking."

"We're not cooking," Dana said. "We haven't lit anything since Tuesday."

Cole glanced at the dead candle on the shelf. Then at Pete's pipe. Then at the toddler.

"Everybody's wrong about what's out there," he said. "It's not just monsters. I can show you."

"Show us what?" Pete snapped. "You're a liar or a corpse."

Cole lifted his right hand, palm up.

A flame bloomed above it. No lighter. No fuel. It simply *was*, bright and orange, bending the shadows across the shelves.

Nobody breathed.

"That's a trick," Pete whispered. "That's a trick."

The fire grew to the size of a fist. Dana's son reached toward it. She snatched him back so hard that he cried.

Cole closed his fingers, and the flame vanished.

**[SURVIVOR CLASSIFIED: AWAKENED.]**

Ethan froze. The line hadn't appeared for him. It had appeared *over* Cole, hovering in the air like a name tag, visible to everyone in the room.

Dana gasped. "I can see it. I can see it!"

"So can I," Marcus said slowly.

Ethan stared at his own window, still pale and patient in the corner of his sight.

**[CLASS: UNAWAKENED.]**

*Seven days. Two evolved kills. A clock that goes up.*

*And I'm still unawakened.*

The thought sat in his stomach like a swallowed coin.

"How?" Marcus demanded. "How did you do it?"

"I almost died." Cole's voice shook. "Three nights ago. A thing cornered me in a parking garage, and I was sure I was done. Then my hands got hot. It burned. It burned *everything.*" He looked at his palms. "The window said Awakened. It said I'd earned it."

"Earned it how?"

"By surviving enough." He shrugged helplessly. "That's what I think. Maybe the System pays people who live through the worst."

*That's not what happened to me.*

Ethan's mind ran the sequence. Time Harvest hadn't come from surviving. It had come from *killing.* From the beast under the concrete. A different trigger, a different door.

Marcus's eyes slid to him. Ethan kept his face still.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Marcus murmured.

"I'm tired."

"You're always tired." Marcus held his gaze a beat too long. Then, quietly, "When you're ready."

He walked away. Ethan hated how much that hurt.

---

By nightfall, the pharmacy had stopped being a hiding place.

News traveled faster than the monsters did. A woman with a split lip arrived at dusk, then a father with two teenagers, then a pack of six strangers carrying a stretcher. Every one asked the same question.

"Is it true? Is there a man who makes fire?"

Cole never asked to be a symbol. But he stood in the doorway for two hours, lighting candles with his bare hands, and watched the room change.

Faces that had been gray all week suddenly looked alive. Someone laughed. Somebody else wept.

"We're going to be okay," a man whispered. "If one of them can do it, we all can."

*Or none of us can,* Ethan thought. *Or only the ones the System picks.*

By midnight, the whisper had a different shape.

"He should lead," said a heavyset man named Garrett, jabbing a thumb at Cole. "Obviously. Look at him. He's the only one here who can actually *fight.*"

"I'm not a fighter," Cole said, backing up. "I just..."

"You're the strongest thing in this room," Garrett said. "And the rest of us need to eat."

"Eat *what?*" Dana said. "The food's rationed."

"Then maybe it shouldn't be rationed *equally.*"

The room stilled.

Ethan felt it in the back of his skull, the cold, familiar click of a pattern locking into place. He'd seen it the first night with Pete. Fear looking for a hierarchy.

*It's starting.*

"Stop," Marcus said. His voice carried like a gunshot. "Everybody listen. Right now."

"Why should we?" Garrett shot back.

"Because in forty-eight hours, this room will have sixty people in it, and the first person who reaches for a can they didn't earn will start a war."

"Who made you boss?" Garrett demanded.

"Nobody. And nobody's making Cole boss, either." Marcus turned. "Ethan. Paper."

Ethan blinked. "What?"

"You write things down. Write this."

Ethan pulled out the soaked map, flipped it, and scrawled as Marcus spoke.

*One. Food is divided equally. Children and wounded first.*

*Two. Watches in four-hour shifts. Every adult takes one.*

*Three. No one is turned away at the door unless they're bleeding in a way we can't treat.*

*Four. Nobody leads by being strong.*

"Nobody leads by being strong," Garrett repeated, sneering. "That's a cute rule."

"It's the only one that matters," Marcus said.

Slowly, grudgingly, hands rose around the room. Not unanimous. Not warm. But enough.

Ethan tucked the page into his jacket and felt the weight of it, one sheet of soaked paper against sixty frightened people.

*How long before someone with real power decides it's just paper?*

In the back corner, Cole sat alone, staring at his own hands. A faint orange glow pulsed beneath his skin, brighter every time he blinked.

"Ethan," he whispered. "It isn't stopping."

Smoke curled from his sleeves, and the wooden shelf behind him began to blacken.