Morning did not so much arrive as stop refusing to exist. Kael woke to a gray that had measured itself against the curtains and decided to leak through anyway. He lay still, listening for the shape of the building. The hums, the clicks, the sighs - an orchestra of small decisions. The bell had not rung. His own breath sounded like an apology.
He sat up. The rug had printed a seam on his cheek. His first thought was water; his second was Mission #0001. The System sat in the same corner of his mind, waiting without impatience. A tool in a sheath. A list under glass.
He turned the crank lamp until his forearm warmed. He poured a measured cup of water and drank it without ceremony. He wrote the time. He did not open the curtains. He was not yet a man who required sunlight to be honest with himself.
He finished the inventory exactly, the way a line worker finishes a shift: completely, even if slight contempt walks with you to the gate. He weighed the open bags on a bathroom scale, scrawled numbers that would embarrass a mathematician but served a survivor. He stacked the cans by order of use, top to bottom: immediate, soon, later, hopefully never. He put the spoon back where the spoon lived. He cleaned the sink. He turned the inventory into a sheet of paper the world would have to argue with if it wanted to change his mind.
[System: Mission #0001 - Assessment]
Status: 100% complete.
Reward unlocked: Environmental Analysis (I).
The rectangle's letters sharpened. A panel expanded with lines like a schematics legend, not pictures - Kael liked it more for that.
[System: Environmental Analysis (I)] - Elevation: 3rd floor; unit surface 46 m2; street - facing windows (NE). - Structural notes: door frame tolerances poor; latch plate screws short. - Shared utilities: water (variable pressure), gas (active), electricity (intermittent). - Threat modeling: high density of unknowns; audio anomalies overnight in district radius 1.4 km.
Recommendations (priority order):
1) Replace latch plate screws with longer wood screws (>= 50 mm).
2) Secondary bracing for door: interior wedge at floor level.
3) Fabricate blackout for window gaps (cloth + tape).
4) Prepare Threshold Protocol for neighbor contact.
5) Establish Quiet Route to stairwell (if exit required).
Kael's pen moved before his doubts could. He copied the list to his notebook and added small shapes to translate words into hands: a sketch of a wedge, a top - down view of the door. He underlined 50 mm and wrote in the margin: find longer screws. He did not have longer screws.
He did have wood. He took the shelf board and shaved it with the dull kitchen knife, hating the inefficiency and doing it anyway. He sanded with a strip of rough sponge until the wedge slid under the door and bit the floor with a polite stubbornness. He tested the bell - silver note, then stillness. He adjusted the wedge. Another note. He smiled despite himself. Metal speaking briefly was proof the world still had manners.
He ate half a yogurt, deciding it was morning. He held the spoon in his mouth longer than necessary to remind himself that taste existed.
The hall was silent until it wasn't. A shuffle. A breath pressed against wood. The bell twitched and rang once, clean. Kael froze, spine longer than it should be. He set the spoon down without noise and stood two steps left of the door, out of line with the keyhole. He waited. He let waiting do the work.
A voice arrived, soft, using the carpet as a pillow. "Monsieur Kael? It's me."
Madame Bourdain. The neighbor he had refused to name last night so that he wouldn't be obligated to rescue a proper noun. The use of his name changed the air. Obligation entered through the vent like an odor.
"Madame," Kael said. He kept his voice low, as if sound were a liquid, and leaks were a kind of danger. "Are you safe?"
"I heard," she said, and did not say what she heard. Words turned small when they had to fit under a door. "Do you have water?"
Kael looked at his notebook. THRESHOLD PROTOCOL. He read his own notes and obeyed them, because the version of him that had written them had been less scared.
"I have some," he said. "I can slide a bottle. Do not open your door. Do not speak loudly."
He filled a plastic bottle halfway and slid it under the door, its cap off, sealed with a film of plastic wrap and a rubber band. He watched the neck disappear into the slot with a scrape.
"Thank you," she said. The sound had tears in it and an old woman's attempt to hide them for dignity's sake. "There was a man in the hall last night."
"I heard."
"He sang."
Kael didn't answer that. He had not heard singing. He had heard a sound that could have been singing if someone loved fear like a song. He decided that was close enough to yes.
"Stay inside," he said. "If you hear the bell two times, wait. If you hear it three times, it is me. If one long ring, don't answer. Don't answer for any long ring."
She repeated: "Three is you."
He could hear her drink. The small noises of survival sounded like childhood across a continent.
"Thank you," she said again, and moved away; the carpet returned to being a carpet.
Kael closed his eyes. He had given away water at 09:14 by his notebook's lie about time. He wrote it down. He underlined "one long ring = no" three times. He found it absurd that a ritual could manufacture safety, and then he felt safer.
[System: Note] - Threshold Protocol initiated. - Social stability improves survival metrics. - Resources impact projected by - 2% (acceptable).
He almost laughed. The idea that his life could be converted to percentages, that kindness could be priced - if the math worked, who was he to reject math. He put the pencil behind his ear and felt suddenly like a worker on a scaffold, someone who had a job and could fall. Both facts were true at once.
He opened the bathroom cabinet and scowled at his lack of screws. There were hooks for pot holders, wall plugs he had never used, a tape measure, the kind of things people buy when they think the world will remain exactly as it is until they decide to change it on a Saturday. No screws long enough to bite a frame and mean it.
He wrote: SCREWS, and circled the word. He wrote: when? He wrote: later. He drew a triangle next to later to tell himself that later had a point.
He walked the apartment once more with the System open, looking at his home through the panel the way a surgeon looks through a scope. The rectangle labeled objects as if naming them pulled cables between them. Door - weak. Window - leaky. Water - mapped. Food - structured. Energy - fragile. Security - improvised. It did not insult him by saying good job. It gave him a list so he could improve himself and pretend that was the same as being safe.
He made the blackout cloths for the window gaps by sacrificing two old t - shirts and his pride about owning them. Tape, fold, tape again. He wished briefly for a sewing kit and then wondered if he could make one from the guts of a notebook and two needles he didn't own. The System, to its credit, did not suggest sewing. It suggested cutting smaller pieces so the tape would have less reason to fail. He obeyed.
A new block slid into view, blue - gray and squared, a paragraph that looked like a warning label.
[System: Advisory - District Conditions] - Multiple fire sources along industrial corridor. - Police/emergency response density: low. - Audio signatures (non - verbal, collective) detected in 3 clusters within 1.2 - 1.8 km. - Civilian broadcast traffic decreasing; repetition increasing.
Conclusion: Probability of civil authority restoration (24h): < 12%. Recommend: Maintain Level I confinement; prepare for Level II.
"Level II," Kael said softly. "What's Level II?"
The System did not answer with a definition. It answered with a shopping list no store owned anymore.
[System: Level II preparation] - Water: minimum 40 L interior storage. - Food: 30 days ration (single adult baseline). - Energy: battery bank / manual generation ratio >= 1:1. - Sanitation: waste isolation plan. - Social: minimum 2 allied units; secure communications (low - light). - Mobility: exit kit (silent), route A/B to stairwell and roof.
He wrote: LEVEL II, and the words looked like religion.
He ate the second half of the yogurt because a man intending to reach Level II didn't waste dairy. He placed the love of strictness next to the acceptance of being human and allowed them to make an arrangement.
The building reminded him that other people existed by producing a voice he did not know. Not a neighbor's voice. A different kind. Too clean. It came from the stairwell and used the legal language of someone who wanted you to think they were allowed to be there.
"Residents," the voice said. It echoed into the grate of the door. "Please remain in your units. This is for your safety."
Kael felt his body wanting to go warm with relief at the cadence of authority. He denied it that heat. Authority is a sound. Safety is a measurement. He kept the System open and stood to the side of the door again, because so far nothing had happened twice that wasn't worth repeating.
He didn't answer. No one else did either. The hallway listened for applause and didn't get it.
The voice tried again. "If you are injured, cough loudly three times."
No one coughed. Somewhere on the second floor, a door chain slid, clinked, thought better of itself. The voice waited long enough to be annoyed and then moved on, its shoes stating a case to the stairwell, down and away. Kael exhaled, counted to twenty, and then wrote down the words in his notebook as if transcription could keep them from changing shape. Authority had been the wrong size. It had bounced off the building.
He cooked oatmeal in a small pot with a monk's seriousness, turned off the gas the instant the bubbles argued, and ate it by the window without looking out. He allowed himself the luxury of two almonds from a jar that had pretensions. He chewed them with the loudest part of his soul.
He opened the System and asked a question without words. The rectangle understood enough to give him what he wanted: work.
[System: Mission #0003 - Quiet Route]
Objective: establish a silent path from apartment to stairwell and back.
Constraints: minimal light, minimal noise, minimal time.
Steps:
1) Map interior obstacles under low light;
2) Prepare "carry set" (water, light, tool, cloth);
3) Test door - wedge, board, bell - for rapid re - seal;
4) Reconnaissance to stairwell threshold (do not open stairwell door);
5) Return and record timings.
Reward: Context Audio Filter (I).
He did not argue with the idea that leaving the apartment for the hallway could be called staying inside. Thresholds were places where language cheated. He prepared the carry set: half a liter of water, the crank lamp, the dull kitchen knife (which he hated more every time he touched it), a rag. He put on his shoes because bare feet are a bad idea in a world breaking dishes.
He looked at the door and knew that the next five minutes would be the most complicated five minutes of his new life so far. He pictured the hallway as a neutral zone, as if the war were elsewhere and not in the places where air moves freely. He tucked the pencil behind his ear again, a joke to himself that had turned into a tradition, and unhooked the bicycle bell. He loosened the belt from the table leg. He slid the wedge sideways to loosen its bite but left it in place. He undid the lock, the chain, the second lock he had added at some point not to be safer but to feel like a person who adds locks.
He opened the door two centimeters. The hallway air touched his face. It smelled like dust and old warmth, like a library that had learned shame. No voices. He widened the door until the wedge's nose stood in the way like a polite soldier.
He stepped into the hall and kept one foot inside the apartment, because you do not abandon sovereignty before you know if the land next to yours has wolves. The carpet swallowed sound with a professionalism he admired. His door closed with a breath. He set the wedge into travel mode - angled so a toe could push it home in a second - and tested the bell line to make sure it didn't trail into the hall like a tether to a fish the sea could eat.
He walked to the stairwell door. Seven steps. He counted them for the benefit of fear. The door was steel, painted the color of institutions. The handle was lever - style, which he hated because it forgave fools. He placed his hand near the lever and did not touch it. He leaned and listened.
Something breathed on the other side. Not human. Not mechanical. He didn't know how he knew, only that the sound treated air like a toy. It moved in short, curious bursts, as if the lungs behind it had not been taught manners. Kael stepped back. He let fear swell until at last it owned him and then narrowed it down to the width of a corridor. He measured the distance back to his door with his eyes and then with his memory, and they agreed.
He returned with the same steps in reverse. In, wedge, belt, bell. He wrote: stairwell breathing (curious, uneven). He wrote: avoid. He wrote: investigate later (Context Audio Filter).
[System: Mission #0003]
Status: complete.
Reward unlocked: Context Audio Filter (I).
The new module slid into his attention like a lens. When he focused on a sound, a pale fringe appeared around it, and the System annotated the edges: frequency range, repetition, source confidence: low/medium/high. When he turned his head, the fringe shifted like a painted halo. He had to close his eyes for a second because the fact of it made him feel like he had just been given permission to understand.
He tried it immediately. He held his breath and listened to the apartment. The fridge compressor hummed in a band his ears had already filed as harmless; the System labeled it LOW VARIABLE, DOMESTIC. A pipe ticked in the wall; INTERMITTENT, THERMAL. The outside sirens cut a long tooth into the spectrum; DOPPLER, MUNICIPAL. The building's transformer buzzed like a monk with a throat problem; 50 HZ PRIMARY, STABLE.
He breathed again. The System refused to label breath, which he appreciated. Some things should not be data.
He ate a piece of bread hard enough to threaten his gums and drank more water than the morning deserved. He wrote the ratio of consumption on the margin as if numbers could prevent desire. He did not trust desire. Desire had a poor safety record.
He considered the roof. The idea of sky pressed a pressure point in his skull. He wrote ROOF ACCESS and the System rewarded the thought with an overlay: - Key likely with maintenance or in storage cage area. - Risk: line of sight from nearby buildings. - Benefit: radio, wind, assessment.
He wrote: not today. He underlined not and accepted the quiet shame of being sensible.
He spent an hour on sanitation, a word that had acquired the charm of a superstition. He lined a bucket with bags, layered absorbent paper, wrote down a rotation schedule nobody would inspect. He separated trash that smelled like food from trash that only smelled like living. He tied knots with a grim little flourish. He thought of all the kings and soldiers and saints who had never done a noble thing their entire lives that did not involve a bucket, and he felt, briefly, not alone.
On the television - muted again, used like a fish tank - images scrolled of a highway with cars at mathematical angles across it. A person stood on the median and waved politely to nobody, then lay down as if remembering something at last. Kael turned the television off because the pictures were negotiating with his brain and he had promised the System he wouldn't do that.
He tested his quiet route a second time, not because the System had asked, but because repetition was a currency he wanted to be rich in. This time he carried nothing but himself. He paused at the same seven steps and watched the stairwell door like an animal watches a bush. The breathing on the other side had stopped. He didn't believe in miracles and so he believed in traps. He returned, patient as a stone returning to the riverbed.
[System: Proposal - Mission #0004, Fabrication (I)]
Objective: build a simple door brace and a window blackout frame using available materials.
Materials suggested: shelf wood, towel rod, belt, tape, cloth.
Reward: Fabrication Tree unlocked (I).
He did not know if he loved or hated the fact that the System had a tree. He pictured a branching diagram where competence reproduced like ivy. He measured the towel rod against the door, the belt against the rod, the rod against his annoyance. He built a brace that wouldn't stop a battering ram but would humiliate a shoulder. He framed a blackout for the largest window and checked the edges for light leaks with the lights off, using the crank lamp as a star around which the room's darkness revolved.
He sat and let the room assemble itself around him. Door. Brace. Wedge. Bell. Window. Blackout. Water. Food. Medicine. Energy. Sanitation. Quiet route. Threshold protocol. The list acquired gravity until it felt like a small planet, and he, a satellite with chores.
He allowed himself to think of Nox - Yann - just once. He pictured the coil of cable over the man's shoulder, the way he walked like a question that dared the floor to be uneven. He pictured a map across the roofs with chalk marks only the two of them would recognize. He pictured the bell ringing twice and did not let the picture reach his hand.
The afternoon thinned. The city's screams became a background habit. The fire changed color as it found new things to love. Kael checked the gas, the water, the plastic wrap over the bottle he would not touch again. He cleaned the spoon and set it in the place where it could be reached even in the dark.
[System: Advisory - Anomaly] - Audio cluster shifting; pattern analysis suggests mimicry. - Note: refrain from responding to calls using your name. - Update Threshold Protocol: name - use = high - risk trigger.
He wrote it in big letters and then smaller ones beneath it, rehearsing the truth into his hand. Names, he understood now, were handles anyone could use to pull you open.
The building produced the opposite of a miracle. A knock. Three polite taps at his door. Not the bell. Not the long ring he had defined as no. He stood and felt the old doors of the previous life swing apart inside him - the door where people knocked and asked to borrow sugar; the door where friends dropped by; the door where packages went astray and neighbors laughed. He closed those doors and faced the current wood.
"Kael?" A voice, male, the warmth of it calculated.
He did not answer. He placed his palm to the door and the door kept its secrets like a friend who knew when to shut up.
"Kael, it's the building manager," the voice said. "Open up, please."
Kael didn't laugh because laughter makes noise. He wrote on his notebook instead: manager died ten years ago; new one never learned my name. He stepped left, out of line, and remembered the mimicry note so hard that it hurt.
The voice tried again. "Monsieur Kael." The pronunciation improved, as learning does when the teacher is fear. "We're doing a welfare check."
He coughed, three short coughs, as if obeying a rule he hadn't been told to obey. Silence from the hall. Then a sound that might have been breath and might have been learning.
The footsteps went away at last. He waited the new length of a minute and then another. He wrote: mimic at door. He drew the stairwell door and put an X through it like a teenager decorating a notebook. He wiped his hand across his face and found sweat he did not feel he'd earned.
Evening built itself from poorer materials than morning. He ate something that didn't deserve the word dinner and pretended he had made a choice instead of a concession. He turned the crank lamp and forgave it its weakness. He tightened the belt around the door brace and forgave it its strength.
He opened the System and it gave him a final kindness: not a mission, not a warning - an audit.
[System: Day 0 - Audit] - Inventory complete (Food, Water, Medicine, Energy) - Threshold Protocol established - Quiet Route mapped - Fabrications: wedge, brace, blackout (I) - Anomalies logged: stairwell breathing, mimic name - use - Social: neighbor contact stabilized - Next: acquire screws (>= 50 mm), improve knife, find radio (low - drain), identify water fill opportunity (roof tanks?)
Kael read the list twice. The checkmarks scraped something sweet across his nerves. He closed the System and the rectangle obeyed. He lay on the rug again, not because he believed it was comfortable, but because tradition now had therapeutic value.
Night ripped the city down and up again. The building kept its own counsel. The bell did not ring.
He let the dark count him out. He thought one long thought about a door that would not open until a future where he had more than a wedge and a belt to negotiate with it. He imagined a line of doors in a line of buildings and a line of people inside them learning a new etiquette for breathing.
He told the ceiling the same sentence as last night, but with a revision because a man is allowed to update his beliefs. "We do not need to be brave," he said. "We need to be correct, and to repeat correctness until it looks like courage."
The sentence folded itself into the weave of the rug. The world continued to be unpersuaded by either. He fell asleep anyway, not from peace, but from math.
Outside, the city practiced saying his name.