His confusion was immediately met by a response of four chip packets and a dancing mouse.

Are they all dead? Daniel sent back.

An image came to him. Crystal clear, it was the Professor having fallen face first into a trap. Its wavy, eccentric hair was distinctive and from this angle looked human.

Then a pause.

And another image. It was Ice and a normal zombie, both mangled by a side and roof trap, respectively. Then a final one. This was further up the stairwell and was right on the landing. It had almost made it before treading on the final false step.

His field of death had worked, and the zombies were cleared.

“They are dead,” he called out now that he had visual confirmation.

“Yes!”

“Wow.”

Tamara was beaming at him, her ball of electricity vanishing. Daniel’s knees felt weak. The plan had succeeded and none of them had almost died.

“Twenty-three floors to go.” She had meant it as part of a pump up, but it had the opposite effect on Daniel. That was an awful lot of hard work, given how difficult clearing this first floor had been. It was weeks stuck here and maybe longer if their enemies were getting smarter, as Ivey suggested.

“Woo-hoo,” he yelled with a fist pump, trying not to dampen everyone else’s mood, because if they looked too closely at his face, they would see his despair.

To think that yesterday reaching the ground level would have just been thirty seconds in an elevator, and today it would take weeks. The time it took hardly mattered; it was not like he had any pressing engagements elsewhere, and his farm was probably gone if the number of monsters in this building was any indication.

What they needed to do was to treat this like a strategy game. Turtle down, consolidate their position, ensure they had access to both food and water. Run missions to save people where it made sense and then slowly expand till they could escape.

“Good job,” Ivey said, walking over to him and breaking his reverie. “Now we need to turn this off”—she gestured at all the traps—“process the bodies, contact the people downstairs, and then turtle till tomorrow morning.”

“We need to think longer term,” Daniel said cautiously.

“We have been,” Ivey assured him. “Tamara has been generating water.”

Daniel looked at the girl and she shrugged as if to say It is not much. Nothing too exciting. “I create ice and leave it in sinks,” she explained in response to his continual stare.

“And we have been preparing the non-combat classes to understand that this is going to be a long process.”

“Great.”

Ivey nodded at him.

Daniel broke eye contact and expanded his awareness into the plant network he had created. A trap in the stairwell switched to a disarmed status without him doing anything, and he smiled in satisfaction. She was a good mouse, though from a brief glimpse of bodies he had seen, he guessed the zombies had just been stupid, and Priscilla was claiming kills she was not entitled to.

If he was a hungry mouse who had discovered chips, Daniel knew he would do the same.

Just because it was instinctive, he used Animal Sense on the floor above and below. There had been no change. Daniel’s mind went through his to-do list. Turn off traps, process bodies, get chips for Priscilla, escort the women to incorporate the level of survivors below into their society, improve defences and then plan the next military operation.

Till they got out of this death trap, Daniel suspected that was going to be the story of his life.

“You look sad,” Tamara said to him. Ivey had left to tell the others of their success.

“Just resigned,” Daniel admitted a little tiredly. The adrenaline of the fight and the flop of an ending left him a bit off balanced.

“To what?”

“How long this is going to take and how much work I have to do.”

She sat down beside him, leaning back against the wall.

“I will help.” She flashed a grin at him.

“With your lightning?”

“I can do more than that?”

“What? Give me a massage?” Daniel instantly wanted to take the words back and then disappear into the carpet when annoyance flashed over her face. Then her face unexpectedly transfixed into a smile.

“I can do that,” she volunteered, the moment of awkwardness from his foot in mouth covered up. In moments, she was rubbing his shoulders. “But you will need to give me a foot massage later, in payment.”

“It was a joke.”

“Blah.” She kept massaging him. “No take backs. You owe me a foot rub already.” They sat in silence for an extended period. “More seriously . . .” She lowered her voice. “I know all of this is on you and I will help where I can.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why? It is true.” Priscilla was suddenly on his lap and he patted her while continuing to turn off the traps. One after the others.

“Ivey doesn’t share your view.”

“Then she is an idiot,” Tamara shot back. “There were sixteen of them. Myself and Dave contributed to killing two of them, which means you and your traps killed fourteen. On this floor. You killed them all with an assist on one.”

“No, Ivey helped on a couple of the earlier ones.”

“Whatever, you get my point.”

“It is hard.”

She patted him on his head. “I know, but my massages always make thing easier,” she teased.

There were sounds of a door shutting from near their rooms, and Tamara pulled her hands back and sat down next to him.

“I will support you.”

Ivey, Jayden, Alisha, Hua Chua, and Dave walked around the corner.

“Is it done?” Ivey asked.

“Almost,” Daniel assured her.

“We are a community now,” Ivey declared. “Loot gets shared. All the leather, skins, claws, and teeth go to Aisha, and the cores will get split between you and Dave.”

“No,” Daniel said before he realised it, he was back on his feet.

“What?” Ivey challenged him.

“No,” he repeated defiantly. Tamara was right; this was his hard work. “I get first choice on all the loot.”

“That is ridiculous—it is a team effort,” Ivey blustered.

“Not really,” Tamara pointed out.

“I will be reasonable,” Daniel assured them. “But currently I am the best weapon we have, and my club”—he hefted it to show them—“is our second best.”

Dave and Tamara were good, but his club so far had been responsible for more kills. Without it, they would all be dead, and Dave, while he was nice to have as part of the team, was not a figurehead.

“It is just a club,” Ivey argued by rote as she seemed predisposed to do.

“No, it is not. It is something more.”

“What do you mean?” Tamara asked with sudden interest.

What could he say? That it was alive? That it was magical? They would not believe that. “It is much more than a club,” he told them somewhat lamely, trying to come up with the words to express what he had accepted internally. Somehow, this chunk of wood had become more than its components.

“Can I?” Tamara asked, holding her hand out.

“What?” he asked in confusion and defensively.

“Can I hold it? I have a spell I can cast to identify what it is, to see if it is magical.”

She could? Maybe Tamara could confirm that he was not crazy. Daniel handed over the club.