The pain radiated from his gut. It was like what he sometimes got just before a bout of particularly virulent food poisoning. Daniel knew it was a bad time to be lying there. The zombie might not have died, but he did not know what to do. It was not like he could force himself through the agony.

It was not food poisoning, as there was none of the rising nausea that would go along with this feeling; instead, it kept spreading. Abdominals, pectorals, glutes—it was travelling through his muscles. They spasmed as the wave passed, making him thrash on the floor. When it hit, his fingers were twisting in on themselves. Some of them felt like they were almost tearing themselves off.

Daniel wondered if this was the moment that he became a zombie himself. Was this what that thing he had just killed had experienced before it was converted?

Then the pain swept back into his chest area and vanished.

Ivey was by his side instantly. Her spear had dark blood on it. “I finished it,” she explained. “What happened to you?”

“My hands,” he croaked, holding them up and expecting to see them totally deformed.

They appeared normal. Confused, he flipped them over and prodded them with the opposite hand. They felt the same, though they still ached a bit in memory of what had happened.

“You fell over and looked like you were having an epileptic fit,” Ivey explained.

“There was a lot of pain radiating out from my stomach, then went through all my muscles. It felt like my hands and feet were being deformed into . . .” His head jerked toward the dead zombie.

For a moment, her eyes were unfocused before she nodded at some secret understanding and sat down opposite him. “Get up and sit,” she ordered. “And no peeking,” she complained, tucking her dress in once more.

“I didn’t.”

Another secret smile and then she then held out her hands. He knew what this routine was.

“Check your innate status.”

He did as instructed. Nothing had changed.

“Do a status check.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I think what happened was a consequence of absorbing the core, but we need to be sure.”

“Are they all going to be that bad?”

She disengaged her hand from him, looking annoyed for some unknowable female reason. He thought his question was reasonable. “If it is just upgrading an existing skill, which most cores will be, then the process is supposed to be painless, but if it adds a new skill to an existing tree, it will hurt a little, and if it creates a new ability, then the feeling is closer to torture. So”—she held her hands once more for him to take—“we need to confirm that you got a new ability, because if you did not then we really need to work out what caused the pain and fix it before it kills you.”

She smiled too sweetly.

“Sure.” Sighing, he took up the offer and thought about innate skills.

Once more, discrete sections in his brain heated, and then energy flowed all over his body. It went for a lot longer than last time, but nowhere near as intense. Last time, it had been like his head was going to burst into flames. This iteration, he felt the warmth, but there was no pain; it was just uncomfortable, mainly because it still felt like he was cooking his own brain, and apocalypse or not, that did not seem to be helpful.

The scan finished, and his head cleared. “By the way, don’t try that without me, as it might be more dangerous than you expect. Now check your status screen.”

Plant:

Power - ???

Utility - Wood Growth, Wood Strengthening, ????,

Special – Wood Sense???

Strength:

Power - ??

Utility - ?

Special - ???

Speed:

Power - ??

Utility - ?

Special -

Ivey had been right. The thought surprised him. He had got a new ability of speed and, at the cost of some pain, that was fine. What had she said? A new path would be like being tortured, which was what had happened. Three questions marks were interesting. He had been expecting one. He was curious, but decided to keep that to himself. It might be childish, but he wanted something that she did not know.

“You were right,” he mumbled.

“I was what?” A small, sunny smile was on her lips. Despite the shock of everything, the lack of food, water and bathing facilities, he was actually mostly enjoying himself. The simple reason was that they were winning.

“I got a speed ability,” he admitted.

“Good.” She smiled. “But we need to keep going.” She waved toward the room the zombie had come from.

“Let me.” The trap opened up easily for Daniel. It was weird being able to create hinges where he wanted them to be, the fact he could completely detach the solid frame away and then put it back into place and seal it so it was as if it had never moved.

Daniel hesitated before picking up the deformed, pathetic creature in front of him. Dead, it was pitiful. Its mutations could not have been comfortable. There were sores where the lobster claw joined the wrist, and the couple of section of hardened armour on its torso had similar damage where it merged with the normal human. This poor woman had been transformed into a monster and that process had stopped halfway, leaving her permanently twisted and presumably in a continual state of pain.

“Do you want me to give a prayer?” Ivey asked.

He startled.

“Are you religious?” he asked back, more to capture his thoughts.

“My parents were.”

“Then no. It’s just hard looking at her.”

“Then don’t,” Ivey said, bring a sheet from the middle room and throwing it over the dead creature. The human hand had an extra finger coming out of the wrist. It had not been visible earlier. The engagement ring still got to him. She had someone who loved her, somewhere.

Killing her was for the best. In the mutation sweepstakes, she had drawn the short straw while courtesy of Ivey, he had avoided them altogether.

He hefted the body, and he found it easy. A combination of her being light and his enhanced strength, he knew. When he reached their starting room, he did not just dump the corpse but instead took the time to put it carefully down next to the bugs.

“We need the core,” Ivey said beside him.

“How?”

“Like this.” She calmly pulled the sheet off and cut a hole in the creature’s chest.

He recoiled. It was too close to defiling the dead for him to be comfortable with it.

“Don’t be such a wimp,” she told him. “I did worse at university.”

She reached into the chest through the gap she had created and fished out another core. He felt immediately unwell. He had swallowed one of those cores.

Daniel sat abruptly on the bed.

The world was rocking, and he wanted to collapse on the floor.

Ivey was abruptly hovering next to him. “Are you nauseated?”

He squinted up at her. “Yes,” he answered. The smell of the bugs was suddenly affecting him, and Ivey had not replaced the sheet on the zombie, and that blood cut she had made drew his eyes. His stomach spasmed, and he swallowed the bile.

“Look out the window,” Ivey instructed. “Fresh air is better, but . . .”

He assumed she shrugged. There was not any fresh air to be had, short of knocking out the entire window.

At her urging, he stumbled over to the window and then, on his knees, looked out, forehead pressed against the slightly cooler glass, with the squealsh from the sweat that had beaded on it.

Daniel did as instructed, staring out across the bay and not concentrating on anything in particular. The smooth water calmed him slightly. There was internal pressure to look at the body, but he ignored it. They should have moved into the other room, but his legs had felt too weak.

A shape moved in the water. His brain struggled to process the image. It was a long way away, and he tried to put a reference frame over the top of it.

Ivey was moving around behind him, and his mind finally interpreted what he was seeing.

“God!” He slid off his knees to collapse on the floor, conveniently unable to see the ocean. Whatever was out there had been huge! Larger than a modern ship and gliding under the surface of the ocean. Completely organic.

What else is out there? he wondered. A patch of blue sky filled his vision, and he focused on that. There were specks on the horizon that felt too large to be real. He ignored them. A wet cloth was placed on his forehead.

“It is hard to hear,” Ivey told him. “But you need to toughen up.”

The words dug their way into him. She was right; there were monsters much more deadly than the zombies. They needed to toughen up. He looked at the mutated human and shivered.

“How can you just?” he asked.

“I am a nurse,” she reminded him. “Disgusting is part of the job. Come on, let’s go into the other room. We should clean this.” She still carried the core. “And then you can have it as soon as possible.”

“I don’t know. It made me blank out in the pain. If that had happened at the wrong moment . . .”

“It won’t,” Ivey said dismissively. “This one”—she held it up and he sort of wished she had not, as it still had dark blood on it—“was clearly speed. It will help you.”

“But the blackout.”

“The pain is from incorporating the core and it only happens when you are safe.” She touched her head to show special knowledge. Part of him hated she had access to stuff that he didn’t, and the rest was immensely grateful.

“The zombie was still alive when...”

“It was mortally wounded and trapped, and I could kill it pretty easily.”

“But—”

“We—” She almost shouted the word, but stopped herself before getting too loud. She shot an alarmed look at the door. “We need to get stronger.” She finished far softer than before. “According to what I am reading, you won’t incorporate the cores in dangerous situations.”

“How can we trust?” He tried to find the words to express his view, thinking about this source of knowledge she apparently had. If it betrayed them, then they were in a lot of trouble.

“Because if we can’t, we will not survive.” She hesitated. “Have you looked out the window?”

“Yeah, I saw the monster in the bay.”

Ivey was cleaning the core with her washcloth. “They are not just in the bay.”