The Core pulses in my hand like a second heartbeat pressed against my palm. I should secure it by pocketing it but my fingers won’t open and I do not have time to argue with them.

  Tenth Street, I hit the sidewalk and turn west, putting buildings between myself and the park. Sightlines matter now, cover even more. Distance matters most of all.

  Zigzagging through alleyways, I force myself to continue even as my breath turns to exhaustion. The desperate push of one foot in front of the other, then another. Slowing for a bit before full tilt sprinting again. For the Threat Hierarchy overlay still paints the air behind me in a dulling crimson.

  Eventually the color fades enough for me to think about the park. The wrongness I felt walking through it. No birds, no monsters, no looters picking through the Driving Club despite weeks of supplies sitting in the open. Clearly every creature in the area had decided that the territory was not worth entering and even my fellow survivors had drawn the same conclusion.

  And I had gone in anyway. Followed a golden thread to a clearing. Fulfilled a quest and killed something beautiful that did not run.

  The scream comes again.

  Whatever owned that park, I took its mate from it. The System hadn’t offered a name, a threat assessment, any of the clean data it usually provides. Just a scream echoing off the Atlanta skyline.

  It wasn't a mistake, the doe offered herself. A trade, voluntary on both sides.

  But whatever is coming wasn’t a party to that negotiation.

  I keep moving west.

  The distance helps, it shouldn’t, but it does, helping my breathing to steady. The crimson at the edge of my vision continues to fade from arterial to merely threatening. Enough that I can slow to a walk. As sprinting through Midtown will attract attention I cannot afford.

  Finally I manage to pocket the core. The warmth bleeding through fabric, pressing against my thigh. The feeling brings about an unusual amount of calm.

  The creature, whatever it was, had come in fast. It was clear it hadn’t needed to patrol because nothing else dared enter. True Apex predators don't worry about trespassers. They worry about each other.

  I feel something warping my mind, the concept of me running forever. Changing clothes, swimming through a river, coating myself in ash and gasoline and the blood of monsters. The notion that none of it would matter. For something itches at the back of my mind, an invisible thread that seems to flow back the way I’ve come.

  I took something irreplaceable from something ancient. There was going to be a cost associated with it and that was the point.

  I needed time that was clear, time to examine this Core. Time to understand what the Pocket Sanctuary blueprint actually required to function. Time to build something between Lily and the thing I provoked.

  The problem with time is that it's the one asset I can't generate, borrow, or steal. Time moves at one speed and the creature behind me moves at another and I cannot balance the two.

  So I need to rebalance the scales.

  I stop at the corner of Tenth and Juniper. Look south toward Peachtree. Twelve blocks, I could be there in twenty, checking on Lily by twenty-five. Explaining to Sofia why I'm covered in cold sweat by minute twenty-six.

  Leading whatever owns Piedmont Park directly to my sister's door by minute twenty-eight.

  Everything that matters, bundled into one indefensible position.

  I turn west instead.

  Toward denser streets. Toward the part of Atlanta where survivors clustered in the first week because humans are herd animals and herd animals seek their own kind when the world ends. The logic is simple, cold, hell even for me. The same mode of calculations I used to run on trading floors when the numbers mattered more than the names attached to them.

  I cannot hide my scent, but I can dilute it. I can create noise in the signal between us.

  I move west on Juniper, past boarded storefronts and burned-out restaurants. Past a church where someone has strung razor wire across the entrance. Someone's written REPENT in spray paint across the doors. The R is backwards and yet none of it matters because they are clearly gone. All that is left is fear and bad spelling and a church full of people who had thought razor wire would save them from some System that never cared about them anyway.

  But nothing saves you from the inevitable coming of time even when you hole yourself up. You just make yourself more expensive to kill and hope the predator finds easier pickings elsewhere. But eventually another predator comes along.

  The Georgian Terrace rises ahead. It’s an old hotel with post WW1 architecture, built when Atlanta still believed it would become the Paris of the South. The lobby used to smell like furniture polish and old money. I walked through it once, years ago, looking for a bathroom during some school trip I can't remember the details of. The sort of place Lily would have loved to see if we had ever been from a family that was invited to charity galas.

  But the closest she would have ever gotten growing up was from our parents working catering. Dad worked three jobs. Mom worked two. Lily and I learned early that some doors were locked from the inside.

  The System doesn't care about locks though, or invitations. Or any of the careful social architecture that kept people like us on one side of the velvet rope.

  The System just wants to know if you can survive.

  I angle toward it.

  Sneaking around the entrance, then hooking around the Fox Theatre which rises on my left. I find a grand old movie palace, moorish arches and minarets that have survived everything Atlanta has thrown at it. People will have gathered there too. Landmarks attract survivors the way shiny Bloomberg terminals used to attract interns. Something about wanting to be near the thing that feels important.

  I keep moving, west on Ponce de Leon, then north for a bit toward the North Avenue area. The scent of cooking fires reaches me from somewhere nearby. The sound of voices and the noise of humans existing in proximity to one another.

  Good. The more the better.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  My firm had a term for what I was doing, negative externality. When your profitable position creates costs that someone else has to pay.

  My firm made a lot of money from creating negative externalities. Pension funds that took losses so the firm could take gains. Retirement accounts that bled out slowly while our algorithms extracted basis points from their corpses.

  I told myself it was the market. I told myself everyone knew the rules. Anything to stomach the damage of bringing home a paycheck that could fix my whole families life.

  I'm telling myself the same thing now. Different market, same rules, same guy making the same excuses while other people pay for his positions.

  The difference is that back then, the cost was money.

  So I think about Lily instead. The hand squeezed. The sign she made with tired fingers.

  Big Brother.

  My legs keep moving, west again on Ponce de Leon. Then southward towards where a cluster of stadiums sat.

  And the knowledge that my effort in buying time may just be the reason all of us yet survive our fate.

  "The Red Cross gets them every time." Darnell held up a bottle of oxycodone, shaking it like a maraca. "The old lady on the third floor practically handed me her whole stash. After I told her I was here to evacuate her to Memory U Midtown."

  Fee laughed from behind the concierge desk, stuffing protein bars into a duffel bag filled with loose candy. "What'd you tell her?"

  "That the helicopter was coming. That she should wait on the roof." Darnell pocketed the pills. "She's probably still up there."

  They all laughed. The Georgian Terrace lobby had seen better days; shattered glass from the front windows crunched underfoot, and someone had dragged furniture into barricades that hadn't held. The staff had clearly ditched hours in, but the hotel had catered to guests with money, and money meant supplies. The kitchens were stripped, but the rooms still held treasures, medications, batteries, even the mini bottles of alcohol. They’d found a duffel bag, too, full of camping gear some tourist family never got to use.

  Marcus stood near the entrance, watching Peachtree Street through the gaps in the ruined windows. Morning light fell across the pavement in golden sheets. Nothing moved out there. Nothing had moved for the twenty minutes they'd been finishing up.

  That should have been comforting. It was to them. But it wasn't to Marcus.

  "Marcus!" The fourth looter, a heavy guy everyone called Tank, dropped a case of bottled water near the growing pile. "Are you gonna help or just stand there?"

  "I'm watching."

  "Watching for what? It's daylight, man." Tank gestured at the sun streaming through the windows. "Nothing hunts in daylight."

  "You don’t get it…"

  Fee snorted. "Here we go."

  "We're a mile from Piedmont," Darnell said, not looking up from his sorting.”We’re here at noon, the sun shining overhead, with clear sightlines in every direction." He finally glanced at Marcus. "Whatever you think you saw out there, it wasn’t real. So relax and take it easy, pop a couple of these pills and help us finish off this growler."

  Marcus didn't move from the window. His eyes tracked north, toward the park he couldn't quite see from this angle. Toward the park that used to be his home, "You don't know what I saw."

  So tell us again." Fee's grin was all teeth. He abandoned the concierge desk and hopped onto the marble counter, legs swinging. "Come on, Marcus. The magic deer story. Tell it again."

  "It's not…" Marcus cut himself off, taking a deep breath before exhaling. "Forget it."

  "No, no, no, I want to hear it." Fee looked at Darnell. "Don't you want to hear it, Darnell?"

  "I've heard it." Darnell zipped up a duffel bag and moved to the next. "Twice."

  "But Tank hasn't. Not the full version." Fee gestured at the big man. "Tank, you want to hear about the monster deer that attacked a bunch of rich ducks in broad daylight and killed thirty armed people in like five minutes?"

  Tank paused his sorting to look at Marcus. "Thirty people?"

  "Twenty-eight," Marcus said quietly. "And it didn’t happen like that, it was faster."

  Fee cackled. "Faster. It was faster, he says."

  "Twenty-eight," Tank repeated. He set down the water case. "That's a lot of bodies."

  Marcus didn't look away from the window. "That's what they thought would save them. The Driving Club had a couple multi-millionaires and had stockpiled enough firepower to take half the city. They had generators, medical supplies, and the head chef of Bacchanalia. They had everything you could want when the world ends…"

  "And you had what?" Darnell asked. "Golf cart keys?"

  "I had eyes." Marcus finally turned. "I watched the thing hunt before it ever came for us. Two weeks of watching it take down prey in the park. Driving everything out."

  "Deer don't think."

  The fifth looter, a wiry woman named Sash who'd barely spoken all morning, glanced up from her inventory. "Those rich ducks had guns. Real guns too, not the scavenged shit we keep finding."

  "They had everything." Marcus still hadn't turned from the window. "ARs, auto-shotguns, battle rifles. Somebody even had a Sako TRG. They'd been fortifying too, a couple of members had kept sandbags and barricades in storage. And they set up round-the-clock watch rotations."

  "And ‘your’ deer got through all that." Tank's voice was flat.

  "It's not a deer. It’s not my…"

  "You said it had antlers." Fee laughed.

  "I said…" Marcus finally turned. His face pale despite the warm morning light. "I said it was like a deer. The way a tornado has wind."

  Fee made a spinning motion with his finger. "Poetic, they teach you that in golf cart school?"

  "The red cross trick." Sash looked at Darnell. "You ever tried it at Piedmont's rich duck club?"

  "Yeah… It didn’t work. They stayed in their little fortress. But you know what isolation does to people… makes them crazy. Makes them think deer are dangerous." Darnell shrugged.

  "They were safe." Marcus said. "Until three days ago."

  "Three days ago was Tuesday," Tank said. "Tuesday was sunny. Clear skies all day. It’s well established that nothing hunts in daylight, let alone attack without provocation while the full sun in the sky."

  It's the UV." Sash said, pulling a cigarette from her pocket and lighting it. "Breaks down something in their skin. I heard it from a guy who used to work at the CDC."

  "That's bullshit." Fee shook his head. "It's their eyes. They can't see right when it's bright out. They're like bats."

  "Bats aren't blind, dumbass."

  "You know what I mean, they're sensitive. They get overwhelmed. They have that eco-mo-cation."

  Tank grunted. "I heard the System just turns them off. Like a schedule. Spawn at night, sleep during the day. Order to the world. Yin and yang and all that jazz."

  "Balanced for who?" Darnell snorted. "The System doesn't give a shite about us. Energy is all that matters and monsters harvest their energy from the darkness. Sunlight drains them. That's why the strong ones live underground."

  "My girl is a chem major, thinks it's the temperature." Fee was warming to the debate now. "Cold-blooded, all of them. They need the night air to regulate or they overheat."

  "Kassy also thinks the System is a government experiment."

  "I didn't say she was smart."

  Sash shrugged. "Whatever the reason, daylight's safe, Marcus."