Apocalypse: Every Woman I Invest In Makes Me Stronger

Aria’s boots hit concrete and she almost went down. The room was wrong. Warm. Lit. It smelled like fruit syrup and clean water, not dust and the sweet rot that lived in the Museum halls. The iron rod was still in her fist. She turned, lost.

”Aria?”

Her head snapped around so fast her neck hurt.

Elena was standing a few meters off, coat half-buttoned, hair a mess, eyes already wet. For a second neither of them moved. Then Elena ran like the floor might disappear if she didn’t get there first.

”Aria!”

The rod rang when it hit the ground. They collided hard enough to stagger. Elena’s arms locked around her. Aria got a fistful of coat and didn’t let go. Neither of them managed a real sentence. The crying came out ugly, breath hitching, faces shoved into shoulders. Aria could feel Elena shaking. She was shaking too.

Lana’s shoes slapped the concrete.

”Mommy!”

Aria’s knees went. She dropped and dragged the girl in, and whatever she had been holding since the python took Vincent came loose all at once.

”Oh, sweetheart. Mommy’s here. I’m here.” Her voice cracked on the second one. ”I missed you. God, I missed you.”

Lana mashed her face into Aria’s chest. ”I thought you were dead.”

”I thought I wasn’t going to see you again.”

They stayed like that. Elena knelt in beside them, one hand on Aria’s back, the other in Lana’s hair, crying without trying to hide it. Nobody told them to stop. There wasn’t a point. Days of not knowing had just ended, and the body needed a minute to believe the eyes.

When the worst of it thinned, they sat on the floor and talked over each other. Where they’d slept. Who hadn’t made it. The supermarket. The crocodile. Grandma. Vincent’s name came up and Aria had to stop, and Elena didn’t push. Every few minutes somebody started again. Ethan stayed by the wall with the sword and let them have it.

Elena got up eventually and caught his sleeve. Her eyes were still red. She kept her voice down.

”Can you give her a Core?”

He looked at her. His face didn’t move. Inside, it did. He’d been trying to figure out how to put a Core in Aria’s hand without it sounding like a deal. Elena had just handed him the excuse.

He glanced past her. Aria was on the floor with Lana in her lap, eyes swollen, still half somewhere else. Gratitude paid. The will to keep a kid alive paid. Grief was a coin toss, and she was sitting in it.

Elena caught the look. Something in her face changed. She leaned in.

”I’ve noticed.” A flick of her eyes toward Aria. ”The women you give those to. They’re always beautiful.”

He didn’t answer.

She bit her lip. ”Is that why?”

Still nothing. She took the quiet as a yes.

”It’s the end of the world,” she said, almost practical. ”If you want her with you, I’ll talk to her.”

He stared. He hadn’t expected her to walk that far. Fixing it meant naming the system, and he wasn’t doing that in a room with a kid ten feet away. He looked at the wall.

Elena nodded like they’d agreed.

He crossed over and pulled a green Core out of storage. It lit his palm, pale and steady. ℯ

”Aria. This is yours. It can wake an ability.”

She looked up. Then at Lana. She’d heard enough to know what was being offered, and that offers in this city usually had a second page. She didn’t move for a few seconds. Then her fingers closed on it.

”Thank you.” She looked at her daughter, and the grief pulled tight into something harder. ”Whatever I have to do. As long as she lives, I’ll do it.”

The Core sank into her hand.

[Gifted: Green Core. Female target. Beauty Score 97.]

[First gift. Base Return unlocked.]

[Aria Vance, 36. Beauty Score: 97. Rarity: 99. Base Return: 90x.]

[Emotional fluctuation: Gratitude. Will to survive.]

[High-Reward Bonus triggered.]

[Return: SSS-Rank Matter Restructuring. Break down non-living matter and rebuild it. Three uses a day. Fused.]

[Aria Vance awakened SS-Rank Plant Symbiosis. Link to nearby plants. Sense ten meters. Move roots to defend. Cooldown: 7 days.]

Ethan stared at the notice until it faded. SSS. And not a polite one.

The iron rod was still on the floor. He picked it up and focused before he could talk himself out of it.

The metal shivered. Then it stopped being a rod. Not a snap. More like it forgot the shape. It came apart into a cloud of bright specks, iron dust hanging in the shelter light, turning slow. The specks drew in. Found an edge. Compressed.

The rod was gone. A sword sat in his hand. Long. Narrow. The edge looked mean.

He ran a thumb along the flat, careful. A grin got out before he could stop it.

”That’s ridiculous.”

Weapons, if he wanted them. Locks. Doors. Plate. Tools. Anything that had never had a pulse. He didn’t even know where the list ended.

Aria was in a different room entirely. She reached for a pot of vines Rose had been using to practice. Her fingers brushed a leaf.

The vines moved.

They curled her wrist, climbed, and settled into a green bracelet, tight and gentle, leaves ticking against her skin. She stared at it. Something opened behind her eyes. Not words. Not quite a thought. A presence, close and green, aware of the room in a way she hadn’t been a minute ago.

”I can feel them,” she said. Her voice was small.

Elena stepped in. ”Feel what?”

”The plants.” Aria touched a leaf with two fingers. ”They’re alive. They’re... here.”

For the first time since the storage room, grief wasn’t the only thing on her face. Wonder sat there too, stunned and a little afraid of itself.

Then the pounding started.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The sound came thin through the link Ethan still had on the Museum hall, frightened and close. Everyone in the shelter went still. The grin died on his mouth.

A girl, high, breaking.

”Aria! It’s bad! Third, fourth, and fifth are coming up! They want the food! All of it!”