Free Web NovelChapter 2: Fifteen Days
{
[Centralized Resource Exchange & Distribution Interface Terminal (C.R.E.D.I.T.)]
Name: Niklaus Abernathy
Status: Normal
Stats:
Physiological: 1× Baseline Human
Cognitive: 1× Baseline Human
Skills: Telekinesis
Credits: 0
Tabs: [Shop] | [Inventory] | [Crafting]
}
The status screen floated in front of me, bright and clean and absolutely real, while Tikki sat in my lap, purring against my stomach, while the morning sun came through the curtains like nothing in the world had ever gone wrong.
I had been sitting on the edge of my bed for some time now. Long enough that the adrenaline had finished crashing and left behind a strange, hollow stillness, long enough that I had read the status screen approximately forty times, still half not believing that this was actually happening.
I have read the isekai, the regressors, the system apocalypse, all of it, and now here I was, sitting in my actual bedroom, having regressed with an actual system floating in front of my actual face, and I could not stop my hands from shaking.
I looked at the [Telekinesis] line.
Then at my phone on the pillow beside me.
Then back at it, and focused, the way I’d read described across a hundred different novels, reaching out mentally, imagining a thread between intention and object.
Nothing happened for a long moment.
Then the phone slid about two centimetres across the pillow, and the moment it did, a piercing pain crashed into my head, right between my eyebrows, as though a nail was being hammered.
I instinctively pinched the bridge of my nose hard, hissing through my teeth while the migraine bloomed outward in slow, nauseating pulses.
[Gotta level it up somehow, I guess. But the point is... it works! I can actually move shit with my mind!]
My hands were shaking where they held Tikki, and Tikki noticed, lifting his head and looking up at me with big limpid eyes.
"Mea?"
Looking down at him, a warmth that I had so desperately wanted to feel again began spreading through me.
"I’m fine, bogger. More than fine, actually." I let out a short, rough chuckle.
He stared at me for one more second with the solemn judgment only cats can summon, then bit my hand in a full, committed, get-off-me-then bite, followed immediately by both hind legs kicking against my forearm.
I let go on reflex, and he jumped down to the floor, trotted across the room, leapt onto the desk, and began aggressively licking himself clean.
I stared at him, feeling a twitch developing in my eyebrow before settling on a deep sigh.
[Know what, fine... I’m just glad the little bogger is alive.]
A dark memory surfaced before I could stop it, the early days of the outbreak, the group’s flank suddenly swarming with infected, everyone moving and shouting and shoving, my grip slipping from Tikki’s plastic carrier while two survivors grabbed my collar and dragged me backward while I kicked and screamed.
I remembered sneaking back later to only find the carrier torn wide open and soaking in blood
[That’s not gonna happen this time.]
I watched Tikki settle into a dignified loaf on the desk and identified the first mistake I had managed to identify in the last however many minutes of staring at a floating status screen.
And that mistake was keeping Tikki in a cage.
He was a male calico, which was already a biological rarity, but that wasn’t what made him special.
The special part was the intelligence in everything he did, the way he tracked movement and read rooms and made decisions.
He was smart enough to ride on my shoulder during bike rides.
Smart enough to go still and silent when I did. Smart enough to understand the seriousness in my voice when I called his name.
If I hadn’t put him in a carrier that day, he would have escaped, and knowing Tikki, he would have found me again.
I was not making the same mistake twice.
[Alright...] I looked back at the status screen and took a breath. [Umm... system?]
-Ding!
{Yes?}
[Holy shit, it works.]
-Ding! fгeewebnovёl.com
{Confirmed. Your cognitive faculties appear to be functioning within normal parameters. Marginally.}
[Rude...but, okay.] I squinted at the floating text. [I got some rewards, right?]
-Ding!
{Affirmative. Start-up rewards are stored in your inventory.}
I felt it at the same moment the notification appeared, a peripheral awareness at the edge of my mind, like a door I had never noticed before.
I reached for it, and the inventory grid opened beside the status screen, ten slots in a two-by-five panel, four of them filled with two matte-black injectors, two stacked magazines, and a gun.
I pulled on the gun slot.
And the very next second, a Springfield Armory Operator 1911 appeared in my hand, no shimmer, no fanfare, it was just suddenly there.
The full Government-size frame finished in a flat Cerakote black, the match-grade barrel threaded at the muzzle, the VZ G10 grips under my fingers, the whole thing carrying the weight of something built to do exactly one thing.
I turned it over once and checked the chamber on reflex.
With another thought, the Wilson Combat magazine appeared in my left hand, the ten-round flush-fit running .45 ACP.
I seated it with clean movements built through three years of doing just that in active combat against both humans and infected.
[Would’ve preferred a Glock 20. Higher capacity, hits harder. But then again... better than nothing.]
"System," I said out loud, looking at the inventory panel, "That storage seems... kinda small?"
-Ding!
{Clarification: Identical items stack up to ninety-nine units per slot. A single slot can contain an object as large as a commercial transport vehicle.}
I leaned forward and gripped the edge of the mattress, feeling my breathing climb up. "Does that mean I could store... a house in one slot?"
-Ding!
{Negative. Structural foundations permanently affixed to the earth’s crust cannot be stored. The terminal prohibits real estate theft.}
I stared at that last line for three full seconds.
[Of course it has a sense of humour...]
Sighing, I looked at the two black injectors. "What about the enhancers?"
-Ding!
{As the nomenclature implies. The Physiological Enhancer augments physical capacity by 1.5× baseline. The Cognition Enhancer augments cognitive capacity by 1.2× baseline. Note: the administration process is painful.}
[Yeah, duly noted.] I reached for my phone while I asked about the most insane thing I got. [And telekinesis... how do I level it?]
-Ding!
{Usage and practice. The skill functions analogously to musculature. Consistent load-bearing application produces hypertrophy. Disuse produces atrophy.}
[Huh... no mana stuff, it seems...] I thought as I looked at the date on my phone screen.
October 15th. 8:07 AM.
And I immediately let out a long, slow breath, as every weight I had been carrying in my heart for the past three years lifted.
I had two weeks before the outbreak begins.
And that was more than enough time.
Storing the 1911 back into the inventory, I started toward the bathroom, because by month six of the last timeline, toothpaste had become a luxury barter item and hot water had become a memory, and I was going to enjoy both before I injected two mystery juices into my body and started building a survival plan from scratch.
I was two steps from the door when-
-Knock-!-Knock-!-Knock-!
And before I knew it, I was already moving sideways with my back against the wall, my hand already clutching the gun and racking the slide, eyes wide, every muscle pulling tight, and my heart slamming hard.
And then the rational part of my brain caught up with the obvious.
[Classic PTSD...] I sighed, sending the gun back into the inventory.
My instincts still hadn’t caught up with the dream come true. After all, death was what usually followed noises like these.
As I looked at the door, my shoulders still refused to relax because-
[It’s 8 AM. And there’s only one person who knocks on my door at exactly 8 AM.]
