The hallway outside his room was lit only by the dim red-tinged light filtering through the windows. Micklefield Hall was quiet in a way that felt almost eerie after the chaos of the night's siege. Without screams, monster shrieks, or any sounds of combat, it sounded almost peaceful. Just the creaking of old wood and the distant murmur of voices from various places in the building.

  John was about to head toward the back stairs when he noticed someone standing just outside his door.

  Jade.

  She was leaning against the wall opposite his room, her arms wrapped around herself, staring at nothing. She looked… terrible. Her dark hair was unkempt, hanging in limp strands around her face. There were dark circles under her eyes that spoke of zero sleep, and her grey eyes had a manic, feverish quality to them that immediately set off alarm bells in John's head.

  She was wearing just a red jumper and tracksuit bottoms. Without the plate mail, she looked small. Fragile, even. Nothing like the determined woman who'd wielded a machete in the apocalypse's early days.

  For several seconds, John just stood there in the doorway, unsure what to do. Jade hadn't noticed him yet, too lost in whatever thoughts were consuming her. He could probably just slip past her, head downstairs, avoid this entire interaction.

  But that felt wrong. Cowardly, even. And besides, she was clearly waiting for him. Had probably been standing there for a while, judging by how still she was.

  "Jade?" he asked warily.

  She startled violently, her head snapping around to look at him. Her eyes were wild for a moment before recognition set in. "John," she said, her voice hoarse. "You're awake."

  "Yeah," he said slowly, stepping fully into the hallway and closing the bedroom door behind him. "How long have you been standing there?"

  "I don't know." She laughed, a brittle sound that contained not a hint of actual humour. "An hour? Maybe four? Time's gotten weird. You’ve slept, right?"

  "Yes," he said slowly. "Felt like getting a proper nap in. Rest is… not ideal, in some ways."

  Some of the tension left her shoulders. "Right. Good. That's… that's good."

  An awkward silence stretched between them. John desperately wanted to just excuse himself and leave, but Jade looked like she was barely holding it together, and walking away from someone in that state felt like the kind of thing that would cost him more than just Aura.

  "Did you need something?" he asked finally.

  The question seemed to galvanise her. She pushed off the wall and rushed toward him. John instinctively took a half-step back before forcing himself to hold his ground.

  Jade stopped barely a foot away from him, close enough that he could see the tears gathering in her eyes, the way her hands were shaking as she reached out toward him before stopping herself.

  "I need your help," she said, her voice cracking. "Please, John. I need you to Enchant something for me."

  John blinked. Of all the things he'd been expecting her to say, that wasn't it. "Enchant something? What are you looking for, exactly?"

  "Something that can heal people. Like the bracelet you made for Sam, but… for other people? Something I can use to help people who are hurt. Please."

  She was practically vibrating with desperation, her entire body taut like a wire stretched to its breaking point. John had seen Jade upset before, had seen her traumatised and shaken after she'd been forced to kill that ninja ambusher. But this was different, somehow. Even that hadn’t seemed to push her to the edge of a nervous breakdown.

  "Jade," he said carefully, "are you… okay?"

  "I was useless," she said with a tremor in her voice. "During the siege. All those people dying, all that blood and screaming and I couldn't do anything. I just stood there, directing people, telling them where to go, but I couldn't actually help anyone. I couldn't save anyone."

  John frowned. He had a vague memory drifting through the foggy place his mind had been after the siege. "Doug told me you were vital for coordinating everything."

  "I don't give a fuck what Doug told you!" The shout echoed down the empty hallway, and Jade immediately flinched at her own volume, lowering her voice to something closer to a hiss. "I watched people die right in front of me, John. I watched them bleed out while I couldn't do a single thing to stop it. Do you know what that's like? To be completely, utterly powerless while people are suffering and dying around you?"

  Actually, yes, John thought, remembering Claire's death. Marian's death. Jade’s death, for fuck’s sake. But he didn't say that out loud.

  "Things only changed when Sam showed up and started handing out that healing bracelet you made for him," Jade continued, her words tumbling over each other. "Suddenly people who would have died were surviving. People who would have been permanently crippled were walking again. All because of something you made. Don't you see? If I had something like that, I could actually be useful."

  John stared at her for a long moment, really looking at her. At the desperation in her eyes, the way her whole body seemed to be begging him for this. He thought about her old System, about how it had revolved around causing pain to others, how much she'd clearly hated it, how relieved she'd seemed when she lost it after being revived.

  This wasn't just about feeling useful. More than that, he got the impression there was some part of her seeking… atonement? Some way to prove to herself that she could help people without becoming the monster her System had tried to make her.

  "Okay," John said quietly.

  Jade's eyes widened. "You'll—you'll do it?"

  "Yeah. Of course. I’d always been planning to give you Enchantments for that kind of stuff, once we were done with Watford." He was already pulling up his menus, scrolling through the available options. "Give me a minute to figure out the best combination."

  The Enchanting menu opened before him, displaying all his available Spells and Skills. He needed something for healing, which meant Biomancy was the obvious choice. But base Biomancy could only affect the user's own body. He'd already run into that limitation when he'd tried to help Claire.

  He needed to break that restriction.

  Medic and First Aid would help—he knew from experience that they’d modify the Spell to add practical knowledge that bypassed the need to fumble around learning how everything in the body worked.

  And to shatter the self-only limitation, he figured Limit Break was worth a try. The Skill was designed to push past natural boundaries, to exceed what should be possible. If anything could force a self-only Spell to work on other people, it would be that.

  John highlighted a necklace in his Inventory—something he'd picked up back at the farmhouse when he’d realised he’d need objects to act as conduits for his Enchantments, just a simple silver chain with a small crystal pendant. Nothing fancy, but it would do the job.

  -21,200 Aura

  His mana sphere pulsed in his chest, the sensation both familiar and still faintly uncomfortable. As soon as it was done, he released the Healer’s Necklace into his waiting hand, and immediately knew the Limit Break component had worked, to a degree. Just holding the necklace inserted its activation functions into his mind, providing him a mental switch that would let him view his own biology. But there was another instruction implanted along with the first: making skin contact with another person.

  It would work. It would let Jade heal people. And right now, looking at the desperate hope in her eyes, that seemed pretty essential.

  John held out the necklace. "Here."

  Jade stared at it for a long moment, not moving, like she couldn't quite believe it was real. Then, slowly, she reached out and took it from his hand. The moment her fingers closed around it, the crystal's green glow seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat.

  "I can…" She swallowed hard, her eyes filling with tears. "I can help people now?"

  "Yeah," John confirmed. "It'll be slower than if you were healing yourself, and it won't be as powerful as Level Up healing would be, but it'll work. You'll be able to save people."

  The first tear spilled over, running down her cheek. Then another. Within seconds, she was crying in earnest, one hand clutching the necklace to her chest while the other covered her mouth to muffle the sobs.

  John stood there awkwardly, completely out of his depth. He'd never been good at handling other people's emotions, and the apocalypse hadn't exactly given him time to improve in that area. Should he hug her? Pat her shoulder? Just stand there and wait for it to pass? Hugging Lily had seemed to go alright, but would Jade appreciate it the same way?

  "Thank you," Jade managed to gasp out between sobs. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

  "It's fine," John said, deeply uncomfortable. "You're part of the team. We help each other out."

  "I'll be useful now," she said, more to herself than to him. " I can actually do something good."

  She swayed suddenly, her eyes rolling back slightly, and John realized with alarm that she was about to collapse. He caught her by the shoulders, steadying her.

  "When's the last time you actually slept?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

  "I don't… I couldn't…" Jade's words were slurring now, the mania that had been keeping her upright finally giving out. "Every time I closed my eyes, I just kept seeing…"

  And she was a baseline human now, no enhancements to speak of. The night had been exhausting enough for the people who were enhanced. "Right," John said decisively. "You need to sleep. Come on."

  He guided her back into the bedroom he'd just left, one hand on her shoulder to keep her upright. She didn't protest, too exhausted to put up any resistance. The bed was still rumpled from where he'd been lying on it, and he steered her toward it.

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  Jade sat down heavily on the edge of the mattress, still clutching the necklace. "I'm fine," she mumbled. "Just need a minute…"

  "You need to sleep," John corrected. He pulled the blanket up over her as she lay down, her movements becoming increasingly sluggish. "Properly sleep, not just Rest. Your body needs it. Trust me, it’ll make you feel better."

  "Can't," she whispered, her eyes already starting to close. "Nightmares…"

  "Then deal with them when you wake up," John said firmly.

  Jade's only response was a soft mewling sound. Within seconds, her breathing had evened out, her body finally surrendering to the exhaustion it had been fighting off for god knew how long.

  John stood there for a moment, watching her sleep, feeling oddly protective. Given all she’d been through, that she was still functional at all was impressive.

  Now she has a way to help people without violence, he thought. Maybe that'll be enough to keep her from breaking completely.

  He adjusted the blanket one more time, making sure she was covered, then quietly slipped out of the room and closed the door behind him. Jade needed rest, and he needed to find the others and figure out what the hell they were doing next.

  ~~~

  Finding Doug and the others turned out to be easy enough. All John had to do was follow the sound of voices and the faint hint of activity to the courtyard between Micklefield Hall and its outbuildings.

  The moment he stepped outside, he was struck by how many people were there.

  When he’d finished with Watford, there had been maybe fifty survivors total. Now there were easily over two hundred. They filled the courtyard and spilled out onto the surrounding grounds, a sea of faces that John didn't recognise.

  And every single one of them seemed to be staring at him.

  The effect was visceral. His stomach clenched, his heart rate picked up, and he had to resist the urge to turn around and go right back inside. All those eyes on him, all that attention focused on his presence. It was his worst nightmare made manifest.

  +10000 Aura

  The notification popped up, and John realised with grim amusement that at least some of these people thought he looked intimidating or cool or whatever when he wasn’t even fucking doing anything. Small comfort when he felt like he was about to be sick.

  He forced himself to keep walking, adopting the same casual, unhurried stride he'd perfected over the past week. Shoulders loose, head up but not too high, hands in his coat pockets. The picture of calm confidence, even if internally he was screaming.

  +8000 Aura

  +5200 Aura

  +6000 Aura

  The gains kept rolling in as he crossed the courtyard, and John couldn't decide if that made things better or worse. Better because hey, free points. Worse because it meant people were definitely watching him, forming impressions, judging.

  Just get to Doug, he told himself. Have a conversation, get away from all these people as quickly as possible.

  Doug was standing near the edge of the courtyard, talking with a small group of survivors. He spotted John approaching and said something to the others that made them disperse, giving John a clear path to him.

  "Morning, sleeping beauty," Doug said with a wry grin as John reached him.

  "Morning," John replied. "What's the situation?"

  Doug's expression sobered. He gestured around the courtyard at all the new faces. "Your plan to form a resistance is going unexpectedly well, I'd say."

  "We can't exactly claim credit for the swelling numbers," John said, uncomfortable. "We didn't go out and recruit these people. They just… showed up."

  "Because you saved them," Doug pointed out. "They would've died out there if you hadn't intervened. The fact that you didn't personally invite them doesn't change the fact that you're the reason they're alive."

  "The resistance saved them," John insisted. "Everyone did their part."

  "Wielded overwhelming magical power to annihilate thousands of monsters?" Doug's grin was somewhere between amused and exasperated. "Flew around on dragon wings raining destruction down on anything that moved? Single-handedly turned the tide of multiple battles? Yeah, real team effort there, mate."

  +4000 Aura

  John scowled at the notification. "I'm not trying to take all the credit."

  "I know what you're trying to do," Doug said gently. "And it's admirable, really. But you need to understand something, John: whether you like it or not, you're the face of this resistance. You're the one these people see as their saviour. Pretending otherwise just makes you look falsely modest."

  Before John could formulate a response to that deeply uncomfortable truth, he spotted Chester and Lily approaching. Chester looked remarkably well-rested for someone who'd spent the night fighting off monster hordes, and Lily's strawberry-blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail that made her look almost professional.

  "Morning, John," Lily said brightly. "Where's Jade?"

  "Sleeping," John said, grateful for the subject change. "She was exhausted. I told her to get some rest."

  "Good," Chester mumbled. "She looked rough last night. Like, really rough."

  Doug nodded in agreement. "We all could use a proper sleep, honestly. But first, we need to talk about next steps."

  "Agreed," came a new voice, and John turned to see Sam approaching. The martial artist still wore his white robes, and the healing bracelet John had enchanted for him glowed faintly green on his wrist. "The current situation is not sustainable."

  "Was thinking the same thing," Doug said. He looked around at the gathered survivors, then back at the core group. "If we get hit with another shitshow like the last one tonight…"

  "We'll be fucked," Lily finished bluntly.

  "Eloquently put," Doug said with a dry smile. "But yes, exactly. I think we might need to move."

  "Move where?" Chester asked, sounding worried. "I mean, leaving could be even worse, right? More hordes could catch us out in the open. At least here we have a somewhat defensible position. Walls, a manor house, actual buildings."

  "It's hardly a fortress," Lily pointed out. "The sight lines in the surrounding countryside aren't great. Too many trees, too many blind spots. And the walls are in rough shape. Half of them crumbled during the siege."

  "The walls were never the main defence," Doug said. "The main defence was John obliterating everything that came at us. But we can't rely on that forever."

  "We never intended for this to be a permanent base," John said. "This was supposed to be a temporary stop. Somewhere to organise, establish some kind of hierarchy, get people sorted into groups. Then we'd move on to somewhere more defensible."

  Doug nodded in agreement. "The question is: do we move now, or do we risk staying here another night or two?"

  John found his gaze drawn to the horizon, toward where the black hole usually manifested over Central London. It wasn't there right now, but he could practically feel its absence, like a missing tooth his tongue kept probing.

  "It's going to get worse," he said quietly. "The sieges, the monster waves. It's absolutely going to get worse."

  The others all turned to look at him. John kept his eyes on the distant skyline, putting his thoughts into words.

  "I reckon the System has latched onto the idea of a resistance," he continued. "It's seen that we're gathering people, organising them, building something. And the System loves drama. It loves conflict and struggle and forcing people into impossible situations. The last thing it wants is for us to hole up in some random manor house out in the countryside where there are no portals nearby."

  "You can't know that for certain," Chester said, but there was uncertainty in his voice.

  John turned to look at him. "I don't have some kind of System insight ability or anything. But I can look at how the System has behaved so far, assess the situations it's contrived to set up, and extrapolate from there. It doesn't do subtle. It doesn't do easy. It creates challenges designed to push people to their limits."

  "And right now," Lily said slowly, understanding dawning in her eyes, "the challenge is the resistance. The System wants to see if we can overcome the trials it throws at us."

  "Exactly," John confirmed. "Which means it's probably going to keep throwing bigger and bigger waves of monsters at us until we either move or get overwhelmed. It'll herd more survivors to us, force us to deal with larger numbers, make the sieges progressively more intense. It's the same pattern we've seen everywhere else. It escalates."

  Doug's expression had gone grim. "We need a bigger base," he said. "One that can actually handle these numbers. One that provides more opportunities for the kind of conflict and growth the System seems to want."

  John nodded slowly. The M25 plan. It had been his original idea, back at the start of this whole mess. Circle around London on the motorway, clearing portals and gaining strength, until he could make his way to Dagenham and find his family.

  But now the plan had to evolve. Now he had responsibilities. Two hundred people depending on him, whether he wanted them to or not.

  "I have an idea," John said.

  All eyes turned to him once more.

  "Well, I wasn’t the first to come up with it. I remember Alissa mentioned it first: Heathrow," he said. "It's massive, and it's exactly the kind of location that would have high portal density. Multiple terminals we could potentially secure, plenty of space for a huge group, and it's right on the M25 route I was planning to take anyway."

  "An airport," Chester said, sounding slightly incredulous. "You want to set up a base in an airport?"

  "Think about it," John said, warming to the idea. "Multiple buildings we could use for housing. Open areas we could turn into defensive positions or training grounds. The runways would give us perfect sight lines for spotting incoming threats. And if we can secure even one terminal, we'd have a fortress that could actually handle the numbers we're dealing with."

  "It would also have a fuckload of portals," Doug said, though he sounded more intrigued than concerned. "And monsters. Lots and lots of monsters."

  "Which means lots of opportunities for people to level up and get stronger," John countered. "The System wants conflict? Fine. We give it conflict. But on our terms, in a location we choose, with actual defensive advantages instead of just hoping for the best in a countryside manor."

  Sam had been quiet through this whole exchange, but now he spoke up. "It is an ambitious plan. Clearing an entire airport, even partially, would require significant strength and coordination."

  "Good thing we have both," John said. He looked around at the assembled group, including some of the nearby survivors who'd been eavesdropping on the conversation. "I can clear portals. That's my speciality. And everyone else can help secure the areas we've cleared, set up defences, organise the survivors into proper teams. Get people gathering reagents, and I can Enchant items to scale up our collective power. It's doable."

  "It's also insane," Lily said, but she was smiling. "Which probably means it's the right call, given everything else that's happened."

  "When would we move?" Chester asked.

  "Soon," John said. "Today, if we can manage it. The longer we stay here, the worse the sieges will get. Better to move while we still have the strength to do it."

  Doug nodded slowly, his eyes distant as he calculated possibilities. "Heathrow's what, twenty miles from here? Bit less? We'd need to organize people into groups, assign scouts, figure out a route that minimises exposure to monster-heavy areas…"

  "And we'd need to be ready to fight our way in once we arrive," Sam added. "It will not come easily."

  "Nothing worth having ever does," John said. It sounded like something a protagonist would say, and sure enough:

  +7000 Aura

  He felt a small surge of satisfaction at that, quickly followed by the familiar self-directed cringe at having actually said something so cheesy out loud. But whatever. The System ate it up, and right now he needed all the Aura he could get if they were really going to attempt this.

  "Then it's decided," Doug said. "We make for Heathrow. I'll start organising people into travel groups, figure out who has what powers, get the hierarchy sorted out properly."

  "I can scout the route ahead," Lily offered. "My falcon can cover a lot of ground quickly, and I can get a bird's eye view of where the monsters are concentrated."

  "I'll help coordinate the defensive groups," Chester added. "Make sure we have enough people watching our flanks during the journey."

  Sam simply nodded, his agreement implicit.

  John felt something loosen in his chest, some tension he hadn't realized he'd been carrying. They had a plan. A real plan, not just "survive the next attack." Something to work toward, a goal that actually made sense in the context of the madness the System had created.

  And more importantly, it was a plan that would take him closer to Dagenham. Not physically, necessarily, since it was quite literally in the opposite direction from his home, but closer in… spirit, he supposed. One step at a time.

  Sophia, Mum, Dad, Nana, he thought. I'm coming. I promise. Just need to get everyone settled first.