The hum of the floodlight was the new sun, a steady, artificial thrum in the deep dark. Leo lay on his back, listening to the quiet sounds of sixteen people trying to forget they were trapped in the bowels of a dead city. A soft rustle of shifting bodies. A muffled cough. A quiet, shuddering sob, quickly shushed. The sounds of his new responsibility.
I'm the guy who has to fix this. The words echoed in the quiet space of his skull. An absurd, arrogant, terrifying declaration. He wasn't a fixer. He reset passwords. He told people to reboot their machines. The System gave him a title, but it hadn't changed the core truth of who he was: a man profoundly out of his depth. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, the pressure a dull, grounding ache.
When he opened his eyes again, the small community had stirred. Chloe was at the center of it, a natural project manager. She had organized a small group to sort their supplies, her voice a low, steady murmur of instructions. Rations. Water discipline. A designated latrine. She was building a tiny, fragile civilization in the dark.
Ben, predictably, had established a tech corner. He had the Core wired to the wall, a small constellation of phones and batteries plugged into a makeshift charging station. He was deep in conversation with a young woman—a former network engineer—their faces illuminated by the tablet's glow, speaking a language of data packets and latency.
Maya was gone. Leo sat up, alarm cutting through his exhaustion. He spotted her a hundred feet down the tunnel, just at the edge of the light, a solitary figure practicing slow, deliberate movements with her knives. She was mapping their territory, testing the acoustics, learning the feel of the space.
Arthur approached, his face etched with a sleepless, analytical worry. He held out a small piece of a protein bar.
"You missed the distribution," he said.
"Thanks." Leo took it. It tasted like chalk and obligation.
"I've been running projections," Arthur said, his gaze distant. "Our odds of long-term survival in this tunnel… they're not good. Less than nineteen percent over the next seventy-two hours."
Leo stopped chewing. "Why?"
"Your Idle Process theory," Arthur confirmed. "My class… it confirms your logic. The longer we stay here, the higher the probability of a high-level 'purge' entity being dispatched to our location. The Skitterers were a random encounter. The Leech was a scavenger. The next thing will be a hunter. Sent specifically for us."
The cold data of it was more terrifying than any roar. They were on a cosmic death timer.
"So we move," Leo said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes. But where? And how?" Arthur gestured toward the huddled survivors. "We're not a fast-moving fire team anymore. We're a refugee column. Our mobility is crippled."
"Meeting. Everyone. Five minutes." Chloe's voice cut through the air.
They gathered in the center of their island of light.
"Okay," Chloe began, her voice steady. "Arthur and Leo have confirmed it. Staying here is a death sentence." A murmur of fear rippled through the survivors, and she quickly held up a hand. "But we're not going to panic. We're going to make a plan. Ben?"
Ben stepped forward with his tablet. "The network map is still active. The goblins are still on the fifth floor. But… they're not idle. They're patrolling. Setting up… something."
"We need to know what," Maya said, her voice a low growl. "We're blind. We need intel."
"A scouting mission," Arthur said. "Small team. Minimal risk, maximum information gain. The probability of a four-person team successfully reaching the fourth floor and returning is… sixty-eight percent."
"Just sixty-eight?" Chloe asked.
"Too many unknowns on the fourth floor," Arthur admitted.
"I'll go," Maya said immediately.
"You'll need an analyst," Arthur said, looking at Leo.
The thought of going back up there, of walking back into the nightmare, made his stomach clench. But he saw the faces of the survivors, their desperate eyes. Sixty-eight percent. Better than the nineteen percent they had if they did nothing.
"I'm in," Leo said, his voice firmer than he felt.
"And you'll need a guide who can calculate the risks on the fly." Arthur tapped his own chest. "My skill… it works best on the ground. I can find the path with the highest probability of success."
Maya studied him. "You can fight?"
"I can run," Arthur replied without a trace of shame. "And I can tell you which direction to run in."
"Fine," Maya nodded. "Leo, Arthur, and me. We leave in one hour. We go to the fourth floor, see what the Taskmaster is up to, and we come back. No heroics."
A plan. A terrifying, risky plan, but a plan. As the group dispersed, Leo felt a hand on his arm. It was Sarah.
"I heard you're going back up," she whispered. She held out a small, heavy fire extinguisher. "I… I know it's not much. But my class… is [Support]. My only skill is [Encourage]. It… it gives a small, temporary boost to morale." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "It's not a weapon. I can't fight. But I can do this."
She looked at the huddled group. Chloe was organizing watch shifts. Ben was showing two younger survivors how to maintain the power connections. They weren't a refugee column. They were a community. They were all finding their roles.
Leo looked from Sarah's terrified but determined face to the dark, waiting tunnel. Arthur's numbers were cold. But Sarah's gesture… that was a variable the Strategist couldn't quantify. And maybe, just maybe, it was the one that would make all the difference.