Lucas turned his gaze to his mum. Really, she talked about the system? Even a casual mention was more than he’d expected from her.

  She shrugged as he met her eyes. “To be honest, I just mentioned it in passing. Debbie brought it up. Besides, from what you’ve said, Vincent can do the same thing.”

  So that was it. Just a passing comment, but she’d clearly misunderstood something. His system-given Words and armament were nothing like Vincent’s—or Isabelle’s, for that matter. And he suspected Debbie’s abilities would prove just as different.

  “Then what happened?” he said, turning his attention back to the woman.

  She nodded. “I accepted one of the three classes it gave me. I’m an [Iron Champion],” she said.

  That was an interesting name for a class. Lucas shifted back in his seat. She was being very forthcoming with this information, though he supposed she had no reason to lie about anything.

  After all, as far as she was concerned, she was in the presence of people she trusted and who hopefully trusted her. Though Lucas didn’t doubt that if she found out about how his mum truly felt about her, Debbie might not have been so open.

  “Once the class was activated, I got an ability known as a Word,” she said, this time leaning her head back a little and meeting Lucas’s mother’s eyes. “The Word allowed me to survive, and for a time—” Her voice dropped. “Protect the others.”

  “Others?” Lucas asked. “I didn’t see anyone else with you when you came.”

  A feeling of dread slowly wormed its way into his gut. Had Vincent already got to them? The man was charismatic, and even Lucas couldn’t deny that, but surely someone—or most people—could see through that veneer of trust that he was trying to put on.

  “That you didn’t.” Debbie continued. “They died when we tried to leave the restaurant. See, my word allows me to increase the hardness of my skin, allows me to defend myself, but it does nothing for those around me. There’s only so much I can do with my sword and shield. If the wolf pack wishes to get around me, well, that’s just my luck, isn’t it?”

  Debbie’s eyes dropped, and she rested her hand on the table, the wood creaking as she began thumbing at her palm.

  “Either way, I fled that place, and after some time, I recognised these streets. Hopeful, I followed them, and eventually they led me here. And colour me surprised when I smelt food, saw a grill, and even witnessed people casually chatting. Just a street over, there’d been nothing but silence. Bodies, or at least parts of bodies, littered the floor, with smears of blood covering the street. Yet on your street, people were having a barbecue. Sausages, burgers, steak.”

  “It was Vincent’s idea,” Lucas’s mother spoke up.

  Debbie narrowed her eyes. “I got a look at the man. I don’t like him.”

  “You too?” Lucas’s mum said, eyebrows raised. Was it really so hard to see the man for the snake he was?

  But for once, Lucas was happy to see that his mother was actually considering things. Because when these suggestions or feelings came from him or Isabelle, she dismissed them. Simply because her age supposedly meant she knew more about people and who to trust.

  Even knew more about the world, too. That idea should have gone out the window as soon as the apocalypse started. Even before that, the world had changed. The blue blight had ravaged society, and this apocalypse was just more of a last step than an actual full-on cataclysmic collapse. Though with the earth shifting, he was probably putting it a bit lightly.

  “Anyway, he put the entire neighbourhood at risk, and that’s my main reason,” Debbie continued. “This isn’t some misguided feeling. I just—I don’t like that kind of approach. I know you’ve been into your prepping videos, Melina, and surely even you could have seen that his actions were reckless.”

  “But he dealt with the wolves and the boar. He fought them off,” his mother said, her pitch rising a bit. “Hell, even Lucas and Isabelle can fight them off. It’s safe… for now.”

  “But they aren’t the only creatures. They aren’t the only Blightkin.”

  “You mean the firecrows?” Lucas asked, raising a brow. Those flyers were annoying but not really much to write home about.

  “If only. No, there are other types.”

  As she said the words, Lucas drew a blank. He had seen no other Blightkin so far, so he couldn’t fathom exactly what she was referring to.

  “I didn’t fight it myself, but I saw it tear a man apart. He even had a gun from who knows where. But the bear—I don’t know its actual name; the only thing that came to mind was a bear—charged right at him and clamped its jaw around his waist, ripping him apart. To be honest, if it were not for my class, I don’t think I would have been able to stomach it.”

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  “Your class?”

  “Ah, yes. The classes and their effects on people. I assumed you knew that...” She paused. “I assumed your class had changed you. As you can see, I’m a little different.”

  “I just thought it was the trauma,” his mum said, blushing a little as she stepped back, leaning against the kitchen counter. “I mean, it would make sense with the things you’ve seen.”

  Debbie frowned, considering his mother’s words. “There was probably a little trauma to it. I can’t quite say. I feel—” She grabbed at the air, probably not sure of the words to use. “But other than that, it is because of my class. It has changed me on a certain level. The iron within its name… it has made everything colder, clearer, hard.”

  Debbie’s gaze dropped back to the kitchen table, and her fingers began drumming. “It’s a strange thing to have this understanding within me. These Words, I don’t know.”

  Debbie fell silent, and Lucas empathised with her. The things these words could do were indeed astounding, and every one of them carried a meaning so unique that it was hard for him to guarantee that having the same words as someone else would even give you the same effect.

  ????ˊ? ·?? ? ? ? ??· ??ˋ???

  The next day, Lucas sat on the couch in the front room with Apollo’s wet tongue lapping at his hand. He shifted on the couch absentmindedly as his mind moved to yesterday.

  It had been a calmer day, certainly calmer than the first, yet people had still died. Richard was likely among them. Lucas wasn’t sure exactly how to feel about that, because he really hated the man. He’d made every shift Lucas was on a living nightmare, constantly asking him to go this way, go that way, fetch this, do that—overall just being a right pain in the butt. But did that mean he deserved death?

  Apollo let out a low whine, and Lucas perked up, realising the dog was there again. He reached a hand forward, stroking its fur.

  Sunlight slanted through the broken window, cutting sharp angles across the front room. Where it touched the scattered glass on the floor, the fragments practically caught fire, throwing colour across the walls and ceiling. Blue, green, gold. Dust motes drifted through the beams, lazy and unconcerned, turning the air itself visible. It would have been beautiful if it weren’t a firm reminder that a flameback wolf had done this to kill him and his family.

  He’d gotten most of the offending material off the couch, so they could use it again. Not that anyone would sit comfortably in a front room with its window blown out, but for now, it was the little things that counted. Little things would be the only things they could actually take solace in going forward, because nothing big—at least good anyway—would be coming for some time.

  As he sat there, the familiar sound of the garden gate creaking open caught his attention. Apollo perked up at that, his ears twitching at the sound. With a grunt, Lucas pushed off the couch, his trainers crunching across the glass as he moved over to the window. The thumping of steps in the hallway sounded a moment later, and his mum was already moving to beat him there.

  Though it didn’t surprise Lucas when he came face to face with the man from the first day—the one who’d said he wanted to take his son to the hospital, who he’d given the medical supplies to. His face had grown a bit more scraggly since the day prior, barely having had time to shave, given everything going on.

  “Hello there,” he croaked, scratching awkwardly at his chest.

  Lucas raised a hand at him, and the man nodded, going to speak. But before he could, the front door swung open with a sharp clink of the door latch slamming against wood.

  “Can I help you?” Lucas’s mother’s voice echoed into the house, and Lucas cringed a bit. From her tone, she was clearly not pleased to have a visitor. Not this early.

  Lucas’s attention drifted to his watch, which he’d found tucked away in his sock drawer yesterday. Ten in the morning wasn’t exactly early—if anything, it was a bit late in the day for anyone with a proper job. But after yesterday’s excursion, he wanted to give Isabelle some time to rest before they went out again.

  “Yes,” the man began stammering, his gaze shifting to Lucas, then back to his mother, who Lucas could not see from this angle. The poor man probably wished that he were having this conversation with Lucas instead of an angry woman at this time in the morning. “It’s um—I need some help,” he finally said, clearing his throat. “It’s my family, see. We’re low on water, and we didn’t even get to drink much yesterday.”

  “You didn’t?” Lucas’s mother’s tone dropped. “I’m pretty sure I saw you yesterday at the barbecue, enjoying a beer or two, didn’t I?” A deep shade of red crept up the man’s neck. “I’m pretty sure I even saw your partner come out a few moments after you went back in, and she also had a drink.”

  “Well, you see…” A sheepish grin slipped onto the man’s face. “That was beer. You can’t expect us to give a child beer. He needs—”

  “He needs… what?”

  For a moment there, Lucas thought his mum would going to say, better parents. Which probably wouldn’t be a bad assertion. After all, what kind of parent went to a barbecue during the middle of an apocalypse while their child was at home supposedly needing help after an injury?

  Sure, society had fallen apart, and there wasn’t a hospital anywhere near—even if there was, there was no one to staff it—but the point still stood. His priority should have been his child. Yet, in those few moments where they tried to cling back to some form of normality, they put the child lower on their priority list.

  “He just needs some water. Please.” The man’s tone became softer. “I—we fed him yesterday, and that was good, and it’s thanks to people like you.”

  “I was just doing my part, okay?” Lucas’s mother snapped, sounding none too pleased by the forced compliment. “If you want to go thank someone, you can go across the street and thank Vincent.”

  A twinge of annoyance sparked in Lucas’s chest. Why was she sending him to Vincent? He was just going to use the man as part of his grand scheme to lord himself over this part of the neighbourhood and probably the rest of the town, establishing a society in which he would be the only one who ruled.

  Lucas had no interest in power exactly—but he could see where Vincent’s path led. It would lead straight to corruption and straight to suffering. People’s focus right now should be on surviving, and that was not Vincent’s goal.