Chapter 2: Observable Reality
The creature stood in the silent street, its painted-on smile a terrifying beacon in the gloom. It did not move for a full three minutes. Jin, from his position in the darkened diner, remained perfectly still, his breathing controlled, his heart rate a steady sixty beats per minute. This was not a monster; it was a data point.
Finally, the milkman moved. It strolled casually to the diner's front door, its steps unnervingly silent on the asphalt. It didn't slam against the glass or roar. It reached out and gently, politely, tried the handle. The door rattled against its lock.
"Testing the primary defense," Jin noted internally. "No brute force."
"Hello?" a soft, friendly voice called from the creature, the sound clear through the door. "Seems to be locked. Little accident out here, could use a hand."
Vocal mimicry. Luring tactic. Grammatically correct, but the tone is flat, rehearsed.
The creature pressed its face against the glass, its eyes roaming the dark interior. Jin remained motionless in the shadows. The creature's gaze passed over his position without pausing.
Poor low-light vision? Or simply doesn't register static objects?
It then noticed the stone talisman hanging on the door. The creature's smile didn't falter, but it recoiled from the door as if it had received a mild electric shock. It tilted its head, studying the object with a flicker of something—not fear, but analytical curiosity. After a moment, it seemed to lose interest and ambled away, resuming its cheerful, silent patrol down the street.
The rest of the night was a long, cold lesson in horror. Jin didn't sleep. He remained at his post, a silent sentinel, using his binoculars to watch the town. He saw the other creatures—a woman in a 1950s dress, a grinning little girl, a man in a postal uniform—as they began their nightly ritual. They didn't swarm. They hunted. They would whisper to people from the darkness, using the names of lost loved ones. They would scratch at doors, softly at first, then with increasing violence. At one point, a blood-curdling scream echoed from the far side of town, abruptly cut short.
Jin simply made a note of the time and the approximate direction. The data was grim, but it was just data.
When the first rays of dawn broke the horizon, the creatures retreated. As if a switch had been flipped, they all turned in unison and walked calmly back into the forest, disappearing with the shadows.
A few minutes later, the town's doors began to creak open. The survivors emerged, their faces etched with the exhaustion and terror of another night lived. Boyd Stevens, his face grim, made his way toward the diner, expecting to find a traumatized kid.
He found Jin calmly disassembling his Glock 17 on a clean napkin, his custom katana resting on the table beside it. A small notebook was open, filled with precise, dense handwriting and small, hand-drawn maps of the town.
"You... you're alright?" Boyd asked, his voice rough with fatigue.
"My operational status is optimal," Jin replied without looking up. "I have questions based on my nocturnal observations." He slid the notebook across the table. "One: The hostiles do not employ brute force on secured structures unless entry is attempted. Why?"
Boyd stared at the notebook, then at Jin. "What?"
"Two," Jin continued, his voice a flat monotone. "Their vocal lures are sophisticated but lack emotional inflection. Has anyone attempted to record and analyze their speech patterns for weaknesses? Three: The talisman. It acts as a deterrent, but emits no energy I can detect. What is its mechanism of action? Is its effect psychological or physical?"
Boyd felt a dizzying sense of disbelief. This wasn't a survivor; this was an interrogator. "We don't know. We just know it works. We're trying to stay alive, not write a damn book about them."
"An inadequate strategy," Jin concluded, reassembling his pistol with a series of efficient, practiced clicks. "Passive defense in a high-threat environment leads to inevitable attrition."
Deciding he needed to assess the other new arrivals, Jin packed his gear. "The other liabilities. The family. Where are they?"
"The clinic," Boyd said, still reeling. "The boy's leg is bad."
The clinic was a scene of controlled despair. The boy, Ethan, was pale with pain on a cot. The mother, Tabitha, was pacing frantically, while the father, Jim, tried to reason with a tired-looking woman in scrubs. The daughter, Julie, leaned against a wall, her face a mask of anger and fear.
Jin entered the room and the conversation stopped. He ignored everyone and walked straight to Ethan's cot. He looked at the crudely splinted leg, his eyes narrowing.
"The splint is inadequate," he announced to the room. "The wound has not been debrided. Given the nature of the fracture and the unsterile environment, the probability of a fatal septic infection is over 80%."
"Who the hell are you?" the woman in scrubs, Kristi, snapped.
"A medical student with a clearer understanding of trauma care than anyone here," Jin replied coldly. He opened the trauma kit he'd brought from the Lexus. The contents—sterile scalpels, sutures, packaged antibiotics, and vials of morphine—made Kristi's eyes go wide.
"You need to irrigate and debride the wound, set the fracture properly, and administer 500 milligrams of amoxicillin every eight hours," Jin instructed, his voice leaving no room for argument. He handed her a sealed package. "Here. You can do the work or I can, but he will die if you continue with this sentimental hand-holding."
Julie stared at him, a fire in her eyes. This arrogant, cold man had just walked in and insulted everyone, but he had also brought the first glimmer of actual hope. She hated him for his arrogance and desperately needed his competence.
Jin, seeing Kristi hesitate, took charge. With a precision that was both terrifying and mesmerizing, he administered a dose of morphine, cleaned the wound, and began the grim, necessary work of saving the boy's leg, and his life.
After an hour of intense, silent work, Ethan's leg was properly set and bandaged, the boy finally resting under the effects of the painkillers.
Jin stood up, wiping his hands. He addressed Boyd, Kristi, and the stunned Matthews family, his voice cutting through the quiet room like a scalpel.
"My preliminary analysis of this location is complete," he said, his gaze sweeping over each of them. "This town is a controlled hunting ground. Your current survival strategy is passive, reactive, and mathematically unsustainable. You are all going to die here."
He paused, letting the weight of his words sink into the horrified silence.
"As of sunrise this morning," he continued, "I am implementing a new protocol. We are shifting from survival to threat neutralization. Your cooperation is not requested; it is required."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR MORE CHAPTERS, WRITE REVIEWS AND GIVE POWER STONE
THANK YOU