Chapter 41

Luke and Daniel looked at each other in shock.

“That’s–”

“Give me ten,” Daniel ordered, interrupting the other man. His mind was racing. First thing he needed to do was to ensure that they were not in immediate danger from below and then he could focus his attention upward. Parlay? That was…

Shocking? A blessing? A problem for later…

Daniel firmed his concentration.

Animal Sense.

The power spread out, but his awareness was focused downwards. He searched for a threat across floor fourteen and shivered when he sensed an Ultra. He had known it was there, of course, but in Animal Sense it always stood out so brightly, even if something felt wrong with the situation.

It was weird.

Animal sense was restricted in the information it presented, but something about this enemy didn’t feel quite right. Distorted, false… damaged?

Something else?

Strange forces were at play. Daniel knew that from the wider context of the situation. The ultra was alone, but there were five elites immediately outside the room. It was a subtle positioning thing, but they did not feel like bodyguards. If anything, it was the opposite. Protectors would face outwards to meet any external threats, but these were all focused inwards. Then one elite shifted forward, approaching the ultra. Something happened and then it threw itself backwards. It retreated… scared or bidding its time. It didn’t matter which way it went they were clearly at odds with each other.

Another victim of their glorious civil war but in the context of that news… That statement that the ferals wanted to negotiate meant he didn’t have time for this and Daniel had no doubts in his mind that they were ferals because if the creatures asking to parlay were mutated humans the scout would have known. Then the shock in the scout’s voice wouldn’t have been present. After all, they had Dave as an example; they knew mutated humans existed and had evidence that they could be a valuable part of the society that collectively they were rebuilding.

Beyond that, there were five other elites on the floor, a group of two and another of three. Those two groups also seemed to be in a standoff with each other. It was weird whatever the internal dynamics, the specifics of their personal conflict was letting them ignore the threat they must have heard coming down the stairwell. With the cacophony that his barricade, had made when falling down the stairs, every one of those ferals below knew the humans were coming. Hell, if ferals got an upgrade nose like what most animals possessed they should have smelt the fresh meat descending toward them, but despite that they did not come.

It was unnatural.

Curiosity was drawing him upward, but he pushed his consciousness downward for the sake of completeness. His mind flickering over the two lower floors and there was nothing threatening. No more ultras and the floor below them had moths in the corridor.

That was a problem for later. The fact they had not spread higher meant that they were contained.

With security guaranteed and Animal Sense still active, his mind went up. He could feel the two squads of fighters in the corridor and two more elite zombies pinned in the room.

Parlay it would have been an inconceivable idea if they hadn’t met Dave but animal sense did not allow him to distinguish between a mutated human and a feral. Dave had shown that. He wondered if this was the case of two Dave’s or one and a pet or whether they were both ferals?

The spell was running out, but it still had a few moments left. Once more, he focused on security, sending his mind down to the moths.

The entire floor eleven was flooded with moths except for a small group of zombies that were pinned in the far corner. Then Daniel’s almost physically flinched in surprise. A zombie was between floor eleven and ten and not where the access stairwell was.

It might not have been prudent, but he needed more information, so he allowed his power to keep flooding out. He might as well gather more information about the moth threat. It was new and unexpected.

Moths filled floor ten or at least the bits that his spell reached. The further down he got the smaller the area that was visible to him.

Then, finally, his consciousness reached floor nine.

He could only see about a quarter of the floor this far away from him, and the entire spell strained and wobbled and threatened to collapse.

Daniel pushed past that, trying to gather more information.

There was a mass of energy points.

Humans!

And Zombies.

They were almost next to each other.

What?

The thought was a momentary slip of concentration. Animal Sense burst like a bubble and then he was back in the stairwell with his temples pounding.

He winced. He had pushed his magic too far, and he had completely depleted his reserves.

Pain blazed through his head caused by the ice cream like headache that was as an ice pick through the brain. The pain consumed everything even pushing aside the incongruity of the situation. The parlay ferals, the ultra and the human zombie mix below all of them were worthy of attention, but he couldn’t even form words in his mind to express himself.

“Daniel?”

He jerked back into the present and massaged his brow with a groan.

Sluggish thoughts began to respond. What had been happening down below?

It was difficult to remember the details. The spell form had collapsed too quickly. Had the humans been next to the zombies separated via a battle line or already intermingled? Was it the second?

The humans last night via morse code had talked about being threatened by zombies. He had assumed at the time that it was the supers thoughts threatening them, but with the moths he was no longer sure that was the case.

Shit!

He tried to wrack his brain to recall what had happened. Hopefully, it was a battle line, and the humans had created a stalemate similar to the situation on floor twenty where the fighters, while unable to expand had positioned themselves to fight off an unlimited number of ferals. If it was the second option, which his fragmented memory suggested, it had been, and the ferals had already breached the defensive line. Then that meant they were in hand-to-hand fighting, which… well the implication was that Daniel wouldn’t get down in time to save them.

Luke was looking at him quizzically. “You’ve gone white. What’s happening?”

If they were in a life-or-death battle, then it was probably too late. He did not want to alarm Luke and have the other man push hard and risk people for what might be a loss cause. “It’s not important. I’m just confused.”

They stood in silence, but Daniel could see Luke’s mounting impatience.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not yet.” His mind was trying to understand what he had sensed. Whatever was happening was complicated. Two full floors of moths. That he could deal with and explained what this group of zombies had been fighting. How had they got out of the lift wells and fire stairs? Daniel stopped the thought. It didn’t matter. The most likely explanation was that it had been like that since day one. The wrong type of monster might have spawned and ripped open the doors, or a feral might have accidentally shattered a door that it shouldn’t have. Alternatively, humans could have acted and consciously opened up a door to provide a buffer between them and the ferals. Though if that was what they had been attempting, it had failed. The ferals were down with the humans, and they had been moving between the floors as well. Finally, there was the more imminent problem of the ultra on the floor below.

“Can you leave here? Or?”

Daniel shook his head to focus his mind and grimaced at the blaze of pain.

“Fair enough. I’ll deal with the negotiations.”

“Wait, not what I meant.” Daniel called out. “I… Yes I can leave. I don’t believe the barricade is under immediate threat. If we keep guards here… Then I can…”

“Everyone else stay here.” Luke ordered. “Daniel lets go.”

Luke took off at a jog and, regretting his decisions Daniel followed. The pain in his head and jogging translated to nausea, but he didn’t slow. He needed to be part of the coming conversation. Together they jogged up to floor fifteen with the ranged and melee fighters on guard duty split to let them through. The range of emotions Daniel saw in the teams on the stairwell was interesting. Hope, fear, relief and very little anticipation and excitement that felt weird to Daniel. He really wanted to know what ferals wanted, but most of the gathered fighters did not seem to care and were instead happy to let the ‘higher’ ups deal with the problem.

Once they were past the stairwell, Daniel turned to the woman archer who had brought them the message. “What happened?”

“We were eliminating them like normal. Then a towel on some piping got shoved out the door. We were stunned. Alex took over.”

With his head recovering rapidly, Daniel took the lead. He pushed ahead of the other two. “Parker?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait,” Luke called. “Daniel. How did you know which way to go?”

Daniel waved the question away. Luke already knew the answer and when he rounded the corner, he found two teams waiting in the corridor. There was a metal pipe and the towel in the middle of the corridor. “What’s happening?”

“I told them to throw the flag if they were intelligent.” Alex answered sheepishly. “Then we sent Fi to get you two.”

“Do we have an identification?”

Alex shook his head.

Unfortunately, he did not have time to go slowly. Daniel strode past the fighters.

“Hey,” Alex protested.

While Alex may have considered Daniel to be reckless, that stopped neither him nor Luke from falling into position behind him, ready to fight with them.

Daniel stopped two metres from the door. “You said you wanted to parlay,” he called out loudly but deliberately not yelling. “Come out. We need to get an identification on you?”

There was a pause, and an arm was stuck out. It was unfortunate looking, sort of what he would have expected to see on an orc, green and thick skinned.

“Not feral.” Alex confirmed grimly.

“Come out. We know you’re human.” Daniel called.

They saw movement, then an obvious hesitation, and the zombie came fully out. Green skin, thin arms, but a muscular chest and lower body. Dull gunmetal coloured fur covered its head and cheeks and seemed to go down into the chest. Not that he could tell through the too tight jumper it was wearing and then finally a large pair of shorts. No shoes because it had the splayed claw feet that most of the ferals possessed. The exposed skin including under the fur was the same colour as the arm. Then Daniel’s eyes got a good look at its face. It had a prominent lower jaw that stuck out so far the lips couldn’t close. It was not one of the helpful mutations, or even the situationally useful it was just plain bad. Daniel felt sorry for whoever this was. The change looked a rougher one than Dave’s and he wouldn’t be surprised if he was in permanent pain.

Finally, Daniel forced himself to make eye contact expecting to observe pain filled demon eyes. That was not the case. The orbs that looked back to him were human even if the iris was a paler green than he had observed before. Yet the shade was not so artificial that pre-event he would have immediately dismissed as being produced by a contact lens. It could have been natural though more than a little unusual.

Daniel said nothing and the eyes meeting his appeared terrified.

“You don’t have to fear us.” Daniel told the creature quietly. “We have someone like you in our group. A lighter grey fur than you, completely hairy. He has a twelve-year-old daughter and is currently upstairs looking after one of who got hurt.”

The eyes listened to what he was saying. Registering each word. He felt foolish to have been monitoring that. Of course, his words would affect him. Its life was, after all in his hand.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Alex hissed at Daniel. “We need to test them. Mutated human person, put your hand on your head.”

The person complied.

“Right hand.”

The zombie did nothing.

“Good,” Alex smiled. “Just testing.”

“That was mean.” Luke said. “Some people under stress might struggle with their left and right.”

“And if they had got it wrong, then their response to that being pointed out would tell us more than any of these other tests.” Alex openly studied the feral. “Hold your arms out straight, jump, do a squat. Say something.”

“Boogra,”

“Is this necessary?” Daniel asked.

“Yes,”

“Can’t you see that he?” Daniel changed his tone to show it was a question. “She,” Daniel quickly corrected in response to the head shake. “Is terrified.”

“I need to prove to myself that the label was right. That she,” Alex stressed the gender. “Was not feral.”

“Other person,” Daniel called out, projecting his voice once more. “Come out.”

The mutated girl crossed her arms.

“No?” Daniel guessed the meaning of the strong signal.

She nodded.

Poor girl or woman. Daniel almost wanted to cry for her, but first they needed to establish what was happening.

“Your companion is a feral?” Luke asked abruptly.

She nodded and then crossed her arms.

“Yes, no,” Luke mused. “You think your companion might be feral?”

The arms were crossed firmly.

“I hate charades.” Alex complained.

“Me too.” Daniel agreed. “But right now, we need to deal with it. English is obviously not possible.”

Tamara stepped forward to stand next to them and Daniel noticed that the mutated human girl relaxed slightly in response.

“I’m confused.” Luke admitted. “Were you objecting to the word feral?”

She crossed her arms.

“What did I say?” Luke asked himself. “Yes, but not a feral. But you don’t think your companion is a feral and you understand the word…”

What Luke muttered made no sense, but she nodded in any case.

“Excuse me,” Tamara said suddenly. “Were you trying to communicate that your companion under system identification is flagged as a feral, but is not?”

The mutated girl nodded furiously in response. The gap between her top and bottom teeth might have been as wide as three centimetres. There was no way she could bite anything now.

“So it is your companion.” Luke started.

Tamara put a hand on his shoulder and caused him to stop talking. “Do you have an identification skill?” She asked.

This time instead of crossed arms the mutated girl she shook her head.

“Why are you certain that your companion is not feral?”

She pointed straight down.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Luke spluttered in confusion.

“I don’t know.” Alex said.

Tamara stilled them again. “I’m asking the questions. Were you with non-mutated humans?”

She jumped up and down in excitement. The enhanced strength that went with her transformation almost had her hitting the roof.

“Was it a large group?” Tamara asked curiously.

She nodded even more vigorously.

“I wonder if it was the group on level nine?” Daniel speculated out loud.

The mutated woman took two quick steps toward Daniel. “Bool bar bay.”

Instinctively, Daniel’s replacement club came up. “Hold.”

The woman flinched and covered her eyes as she cringed backwards. They all heard bows being drawn.

“Stand down,” Luke yelled.

“What’s she asking?” Daniel asked the others.

“I don’t know.” Luke admitted.

Tamara shook her head, and the mutated woman ignored them picked up the pipe with the flag without getting any closer to them. She started tracing letters.

“O, K?” Daniel read.

She nodded and pointed down.

“Are your companions okay?”

Despite her disfigurement, he could see human excitement.

“We don’t know.” Luke told her. “We come from above, but we’re trying to reach them today.”

“There are some humans alive on level nine. I only noticed a few, but I couldn’t see very far.” Daniel lied by omission not wanting to risk outside pressure attempting to force them to speed up.

That information cheered her up.

“Is the other zombie.” She looked confused and internally Daniel berated himself for his stupid tongue. “Is your companion safe to be around other humans?”

She nodded emphatically.

“I want to be very clear of this. Would you bet your life on that?”

She nodded again and flashed her teeth.

Daniel hesitated. “A mate of mine owned a dog. Best dog, safest dog ever, he trusted it but it was a rottweiler and one time when his brother was over we’re not sure what happened but that dog snapped and bit him. Fifteen stitches and the dog had to be put down. I don’t like saying this, but are you sure your companion is safe?”

She nodded.

“If you’re vouching for him it means you’re responsible and if he snaps, you’ll be blamed.”

She responded by dashing into the hotel room. The other zombie did not come into view, but it was clear she was hugging it.

“We don’t have to kill him.” Daniel said. “Even if he’s dangerous. We can restrict him to this floor.”

She crossed her arms. Then wrote on the floor. “S. A. F”

“He is safe.” Alex finished the word for her.

Daniel turned to face the group behind him. “Weapons down,” he ordered. “No matter what. I’m in control.” Then he turned to the woman. “Let’s see him.”

She hesitated and then made the come here gesture to the person in the room.

A zombie stepped out. A hulk with the blond yellow fur. Its arms were held up in the classic response if a gun was pointed at you. I don’t have a gun and I’m not threatening posture.

“Feral.” Alex hissed.

“Even if the system says that it doesn’t look like it,” Daniel said quietly. The woman pointed at him and nodded furiously. “Do you understand English?”

The hulk, an actual system tagged feral nodded.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this. Hold up three fingers.”

The hulk looked at its hand and all of its fingers shut. Then it brought the hand in front of its chest and covered up two fingers with its other hands.

“You can’t bend your fingers individually?”

The hulk nodded.

Daniel turned to the woman. “Is he as smart as you?”

There was hesitation, and then she shook her head slightly.

“Rarag.” The hulk pushed her lightly, and she changed from a shake to a nod.

Daniel smiled at the attempt at levity. “I don’t think now is the time for jokes.”

She used both arms to pretend to be embarrassed by covering her face.

“So you’re smarter, but he’s as smart as a normal human.”

The woman nodded and then poked the hulk like she was mocking him. Then, to make it clear there were no issues she stepped up and cuddled the gigantic creature.

Animal sense.

A couple of zombies were close to his barrier. “I need to go.” Daniel said abruptly. “We need to get information quickly. Will you object to being split up?”

They hugged each other tighter.

“It will only be while we get the information. It’ll work better if you’re in separate rooms. Please.” Reluctantly, they stepped away from each other.

“Learn what you can. I think we’re going to need it.” Then, with the task delegated he sprinted back to the barrier. While he was pretty sure it would easily hold against the two zombies approaching it he wanted to make sure.