John knew the tension in those shoulders all too well.

  The man scanned the assembled resistance, head slowly panning from side to side. Over two hundred people, many armed, all exhausted but alert. A small army on his doorstep.

  Then his gaze lifted, finding John hovering a metre or two above the crowd, Dragon Wings spread wide, shadow-cloak billowing despite the lack of wind. The man's posture stiffened further, if that was even possible.

  This guy had a system like John's. Had to be. The outfit was too costume-like to be anything else. The posture too carefully maintained. The whole package screamed someone forcing themselves into a role that didn't quite fit, like wearing shoes half a size too small and pretending they were comfortable.

  Don't do anything stupid, John thought at him silently. Please don't make this harder than it needs to be.

  Because here was the thing: John didn't want to fight this guy. Didn't want to intimidate him, crush him, take what they needed through force. Not when he could see himself reflected in that too-rigid stance.

  They were both trapped in the same bullshit game, forced to perform for invisible judges who rewarded style over substance. The System wanted confrontation, probably. Wanted to see who would crack first, who would lose points by backing down.

  Well, fuck the System.

  John descended slowly, letting his wings carry him down with controlled grace rather than aggressive speed. He touched down on the tarmac ten metres or so from the entrance, far enough that it wouldn't seem like he was trying to flex on the guy or something.

  As his boots made contact with the ground, he dismissed the Dragon Wings with a thought. The obsidian appendages dissolved into nothing, leaving his back intact. The shadow-cloak billowed around him, covering up his quick dip into the Outfits menu to repair the back of his shirt. .

  "Let me handle this," John said through the Walkie-Thinkie. "Stay back. Don't interfere unless I specifically ask."

  "You sure?" Doug's response was sceptical. "We can handle this as a group."

  "I'm sure. Trust me on this."

  There was a pause. "Alright. Your call, mate."

  John took a breath, centred himself, and started walking forward. He kept his pace casual, unhurried, hands visible at his sides.

  The man in the doorway watched him approach, and as John got closer, more details resolved. Mid-twenties, maybe. Lean build, though it was hard to tell under all the leather and studs. The mohawk situation was starting to lose its structure. A thin, angular face with a prominent Adam's apple that bobbed as the man swallowed.

  And yeah, there it was: the slight trembling in his hands. Carefully hidden, buried under layers of false bravado, but John had spent enough time managing his own terror to recognise it in someone else.

  John stopped about three metres away. Close enough for conversation, far enough that it didn't feel like an invasion of personal space. He let the silence stretch for a moment, not in a power-play way, but just to let the tension bleed off a bit.

  Then he spoke, keeping his voice level and clear. "What's your name?"

  The man's throat bobbed again. His jaw flexed. When he spoke, his voice came out deeper than was probably natural, clearly forced into a lower register for effect. "Peter. But my enemies call me Crazy—"

  His voice cracked spectacularly on the second word of his name, jumping an octave mid-syllable.

  "—Pete."

  The silence that followed was excruciating.

  John was immediately hit with that vicarious mortification that came from watching someone else's social catastrophe unfold in real time. Behind him, he could hear the shuffling of the resistance members, the uncomfortable shifting of weight from foot to foot. Somebody coughed. Someone else whispered something to their neighbour.

  Crazy Pete stood frozen in the doorway. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, the gloves creaking slightly with the motion.

  Don't react, John commanded himself fiercely. Don't grimace or smile or even twitch. Don't you fucking dare.

  His own System would probably reward mocking the guy, would see it as a display of dominance or confidence or whatever bullshit metric it was using. But John wasn't going to do it. Wouldn't let himself become the kind of person who kicked someone when they were down, even for magical power points.

  Not when he knew so intimately how it felt to be on the receiving end.

  Instead, he activated Biomancy, that strange awareness of his own biology spreading through his body like a three-dimensional map. He found the muscles around his mouth, the ones that wanted to twitch into a grimace, and methodically relaxed them. Found the tension in his shoulders and smoothed it away. Even adjusted his breathing, keeping it steady and neutral.

  "Pete," John repeated, his tone giving nothing away. "Alright. I'm John."

  Pete's eyes darted over John's shoulder, scanning the resistance, and John could practically feel the gears turning in his head. Trying to figure out the play here. Trying to decide if this was a trick, if John was setting him up for something.

  "Are you alone here?" John asked.

  It was meant as a genuine question, an attempt to gauge the situation. Were there other survivors in the building? People who might complicate things if a fight broke out? Or, perhaps more optimistically, could contribute in the battles to come?

  But Pete tensed like John had just insulted his mother. His eyes widened fractionally behind his round shades, and John saw the exact moment the question landed wrong. Because it could be interpreted differently, couldn't it? Not "are there others with you" but "are you here all by yourself" with the subtext of you pathetic loner.

  Shit.

  "I've got a thousand super strong allies hidden away inside," Pete growled. "They're just waiting for my signal."

  Through his Soul Specs, John could see into the nearest rooms, the ones closer to the building's perimeter. Silver souls would show up, human survivors waiting in ambush or hiding in terror. He saw nothing. Just empty space and scattered furniture and the detritus of abandonment.

  Oh god, John thought. This poor bastard. He has so little practice playing the persona.

  The internal cringe intensified, became almost painful. He had to actively fight to keep his face from showing it, using Biomancy to manually control his facial muscles before they could betray his sympathy.

  "Liar!" A voice called out from the resistance crowd behind John. Female, sharp with accusation. "I can see through the windows. There's nobody in there!"

  Pete's face went from red to pale in an instant. Panic flashed across his features, raw and undisguised for just a moment before he tried to wrestle it back under control.

  He swallowed hard. "They're invisible right now. All of them. It's a special ability. You can't see them because they're, uh, they're cloaked."

  "I have thermal vision," the same voice called back, now laced with incredulous disbelief. "There's no heat signatures. Nobody's in there."

  Please stop talking, John thought desperately at whoever was shouting. Please, for the love of god, just shut up.

  "That's because…" Pete's voice climbed higher despite his obvious efforts to keep it low. "Because the invisibility works by teleporting! They're in another place right now. Another dimension. But they can teleport back at any time, and they will if you try anything!" He straightened, trying to reclaim some of the lost ground. "Not that I'd need them anyway. I'm powerful enough to take on a thousand enemies by myself. I've got skills you couldn't even imagine."

  "Oh, come off—"

  John held up his hand, and to his mild surprise, the person in the resistance actually stopped talking. He kept it up for a moment longer, making sure the message was received, then lowered it slowly. His eyes never left Pete's face.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Pete," John said quietly. "We're not here to fight you. We're not here to take anything by force. We're here because we need a place to regroup. A lot of our people are exhausted. Many are injured. We just need somewhere safe for a little while."

  Pete's jaw flexed silently. His hands trembled at his sides.

  John continued, keeping his tone level and reasonable. "The way I see it, we've got a situation here that could go a few different ways. We could fight. You'd probably do some damage—" He saw Pete's eyes widen slightly at the implicit acknowledgment of his strength, "—but ultimately nobody wins that scenario, not really."

  He paused, letting that sink in.

  "Or," John said, "we could negotiate. Work something out where both of us get what we need. Where powerful people like us don't have to be enemies. We can work together instead of wasting energy fighting each other while the real threats are all around us.

  "We just want to use the Royal Suite as a staging ground. Just temporarily. A place for the resistance to get our bearings. Once we're settled, we're going to start clearing out the airport. The terminals are packed with monsters, thousands of them. That's the real fight. That's what we need to focus on."

  Pete's expression had changed, the panic receding slightly.

  "And maybe," John added, "we could use someone who knows the layout. Someone who's already survived here for a while. Someone who might have information we need."

  Pete's eyes searched John's face, looking for the trick, for the angle. John kept his expression open, honest. He wasn't lying. He genuinely did want to work with this guy, if only because the alternative would make John feel like a piece of shit.

  Finally, Pete spoke. His voice had lost some of its artificial depth, settling into something closer to what John assumed was his natural register. "You... you really just want to use it as a staging ground?"

  "That's right," John confirmed. "We clear the monsters, we make the airport safer, and then we can all benefit from that. Better for everyone."

  Pete looked like he was chewing on the inside of his cheek, thinking hard. Then his eyes unfocused slightly, and John recognised that look too: the internal System interface, checking something.

  After a long moment, Pete's focus snapped back to John's face. His expression had shifted again, become harder, more guarded. But there was also a spark of genuine interest.

  "You have a plan?" Pete asked.

  John allowed himself a small smile. "I have the beginnings of one. Could use some local knowledge to fill in the gaps."

  Pete stood in the doorway for several more seconds, tension radiating from every line of his body. John could practically see the internal debate happening, the System pulling one way while common sense pulled another.

  Then, finally, Pete's shoulders dropped a fraction. Not a full relaxation, not by any stretch. But a micro-surrender, at least.

  "Alright," Pete said. "We can... negotiate. But I'm not just giving you free rein. This is still my territory, and any of my invisible allies could show up at any moment."

  "Of course," John said gravely, as if that were a completely reasonable statement. "I wouldn't expect anything less."

  Behind him, he could feel the resistance's collective confusion. Through the Walkie-Thinkie, Doug's mental voice pressed into his awareness.

  "Sure about this, John?"

  "Later," John sent back firmly, glancing at Doug over his shoulder. "Trust me. Just... let me handle this."

  Doug gave a nod, expression unreadable.

  John turned back to Pete, who was still standing in the doorway, looking slightly shell-shocked by how this had all played out.

  "I..." Pete swallowed hard. "I'm very territorial. Like a dragon. I don't like people in my space."

  "I completely understand," John replied, and he meant it. "Total badasses like us, we need our own territory. Can't have people stepping on our toes all the time. Bad for our tempers."

  +400 Aura

  Pete blinked at him, clearly trying to figure out if John was mocking him. John kept his expression absolutely sincere.

  "You're really going to clear out the terminals?" Pete asked, and his voice had lost all pretence of artificial depth. It was young, uncertain.

  "That's the plan," John confirmed. "Start with the areas closest to here, work our way outward. Make the airport defensible. Turn it into an actual stronghold instead of a monster-infested deathtrap."

  Pete's eyes went distant again. When he refocused, his expression had changed completely. The mask had dropped, or at least lowered significantly. What John saw now was a young man, scared and alone, looking at what might be his first genuine chance at not dying alone in this airport that he’d seen in days.

  "Okay," Pete said.

  ~~~

  An hour later, the Royal Suite hummed with the low din of two hundred people trying to settle into a space designed for maybe fifty at most—though, admittedly, those fifty would have been VVIPs who demanded an entire room each, before all this.

  The resistance had spread throughout the building, filling every available room, hallway, and corner with bodies and gear. It was cramped, it was chaotic, but it was shelter, and for people who'd been marching for hours with a monster horde at their backs, they would’ve taken far less.

  John stood in what had once been the main lounge, a sprawling space with floor-to-ceiling intact windows that offered a panoramic view of the tarmac and terminals beyond. The furniture had been pushed aside to create a central gathering area, and maybe twenty people had assembled.

  Pete stood near the windows, his ridiculous outfit looking even more out of place in the swanky, high-class surroundings. But he'd stopped trying to maintain that aggressive posture, had let his shoulders drop into something more natural. He still looked nervous, kept glancing at the assembled crowd like he expected them to turn on him at any moment.

  John had taken a position near the centre of the room. Doug, Lily, Chester, and Jade formed a loose cluster to his right. He knew barely half of the names of the rest of the people here; Vincent and his comrades, plus Daniel’s trio. The rest were unknown to him. He’d have to put the work into memorising everyone, if only so he didn’t have to go through the awkward interactions that came with not knowing someone’s name even though you’d already been told several times.

  "Right," Pete said. His voice came out higher than he probably intended. He cleared his throat, tried again. "So. Yeah. I was here for a flight. To America. There's this convention in San Diego, it's like Comic-Con but specifically for—" He caught himself, seemed to realise nobody cared about the convention details. "Anyway. I was here. Terminal 4. Waiting for my flight."

  He paused, his eyes going distant with the memory.

  "Then everything went to shit," Pete continued, his voice dropping quieter, haunted. "The sky started burning. People started screaming. And then the monsters just... appeared. Everywhere. In the terminals, on the tarmac, on the planes that were taxiing. Some of them fell right out of the sky, these huge things that crushed planes like they were made of cardboard."

  His hands clenched at his sides, his gloves creaking.

  "The ones in the air were the worst. I saw a plane trying to take off, trying to get away from it all, and this... thing grabbed it. Just reached out of the burning sky and pulled it up. I don't even know what it was. Too big to see properly."

  The room had gone completely silent. Even people who'd lived through their own apocalyptic nightmares were gripped by Pete's account.

  "People died," Pete said flatly. "So many. Maybe tens of thousands, if you count everyone who was in the air when it happened. The terminals became slaughterhouses. Monsters everywhere, hunting, killing. I saw... I saw things I'm never going to forget."

  Pete's mouth snapped shut. He stared out the window for a long moment, something vulnerable flickering in his eyes.

  "There were other survivors," he said finally. "People I'd been working with. We stuck together, tried to fight our way through. But we got separated. There was this huge pack of flying monsters, and we had to split up to get away from them. I ended up running here, to the Royal Suite, because it was close and I remembered seeing it when I arrived."

  His voice got quieter.

  "I've been here for days. I kept telling myself I was going to go back out there, find them, help them. But I..." He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

  You were too scared, John filled in mentally. You've been hiding here, terrified, and your System probably punished you for it every single day.

  "I don't know if any of them are still alive," Pete finished.

  The silence that followed was heavy with shared understanding. Everyone in this room had lost people. Everyone had moments where they'd made the choice to run instead of fight, to save themselves instead of helping others. Survival in the apocalypse was built on a foundation of guilt and compromise.

  "You said you spent time in Terminal 4," John said, breaking the silence before it could become overwhelming. "What's the situation there? Any idea about portals?"

  "Portals?" He let out a short, bitter laugh. "You can't walk ten steps in the terminals without coming across a portal. I'm only barely exaggerating. Terminal 4 alone had dozens of them. Blue ones, green ones, a few yellow ones. All of them spewing out monsters.

  "The entire airport is a nightmare. Every terminal is the same, far as I could tell. Portals everywhere, monsters swarming through them. The underground connections between terminals are even worse. Narrow spaces, no room to manoeuvre, perfect ambush territory."

  John processed that. Dozens of portals. Thousands of monsters. And they were trapped here, surrounded by even more monsters on all sides.

  "Alright," John said. "Here's what we're going to do."

  He moved to join Pete at the windows, looking out at the apocalyptic landscape.

  "First priority: we secure our immediate area. The hangars and cargo buildings to the west and south of here. We clear them out completely. If necessary, we destroy them entirely. We need clear sight lines and no places for monsters to hide close to our position. We’ll put together a team from our big hitters for that."

  He paused.

  "Second priority, though really it’s pretty much the same priority as the first: we organise properly. Set up proper defences here at the Royal Suite. Establish watch rotations, secure our supplies, make sure everyone's armed and equipped as best we can manage. We're going to be here for a while, and we need this place to be a genuine fortress."

  "And third…" John fixed his gaze on the distant bulk of Terminal 4. "We start clearing Terminal 4. Portal by portal, room by room. We're not going to rush this. We're not going to take unnecessary risks. But we're going to take back this airport, one piece at a time."

  He turned to face the assembled crowd.

  "This isn't going to be easy. This isn't going to be quick. But we've survived everything the System has thrown at us so far. We're going to survive this too. And when we're done, we're going to have a real stronghold. A place where people can actually be safe."

  +8000 Aura

  The resistance stared back at him, faces showing varying degrees of hope, fear, determination, and exhaustion. But nobody argued.

  They'd follow him. For better or worse, they'd follow him into this nightmare.

  John just hoped he hadn’t led them to their deaths.