- Take the opportunity to apply your skills every time.

  - A sharpened knife cuts better than a full one.

  - Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes "less likely to scream like a cartoon character when chased by zombies."

  ---

  Gail called it a “training exercise.”

  I called it “getting groceries but with bonus violence.”

  We’d been given a rundown part of Cleveland, mostly untouched by the bandits, and apparently swarming with just enough zombies to keep us sharp, but not enough to get us dead. Comforting.

  Alex was unusually excited. She practically skipped down the broken street, dodging shattered glass and burnt rebar like it was a sidewalk. “This one,” she said, pointing to a half-standing electronics store. “This place has high-end gear. I can smell it.”

  “You can smell circuits?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Not literally,” she said, then paused. “Actually… maybe a little.”

  I made a mental note: ask fewer questions.

  The store was half-looted, shelves upturned, scorch marks on the far wall. But the back room was sealed with a heavy-duty electric security door that somehow still had power. A red light blinked faintly next to the panel.

  “I got this,” Alex said, brushing her bangs aside with her wrist and cracking her knuckles.

  She set down her bag, pulled out a screwdriver, and crouched in front of the panel like it was a puzzle box and she had a personal vendetta.

  I leaned on a shelf, keeping watch through a cracked window. A Variant—fast, twitchy, vaguely human—darted into view from down the street. “Company,” I muttered.

  Alex kept working.

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  The Variant bolted. I tensed. “Alex—”

  “Almost done,” she said.

  I charged it as it lunged through the window.

  We collided. I grabbed a broken broom handle off the floor mid-roll and jammed it into its neck. It screeched, clawed, kicked. I twisted, kicked it off me, and grabbed a standing fan, still plugged in. With one motion, I slammed the heavy motor end into its face. The motor sparked hard, and the Variant jerked backward in surprise.

  It spun toward Alex, who was now halfway inside the panel.

  I shouted.

  Too late.

  The Variant body-slammed her straight into the electric box with a loud crack—the sound of live current and surprise.

  Electricity sparked.

  Alex screamed.

  Or… she would have.

  But instead she growled, face twisted in irritation more than pain.

  And then she shot the Variant at the temple. Twice. Fast. It dropped like a bag of bricks.

  I blinked. “Are you okay?!”

  She stood, smoking slightly, her hoodie scorched at the shoulder. “I’m fine. That hurt… but not like hurt-hurt. More like… Tuesday.”

  I ran over. “You just got launched into a live electrical box.”

  She shrugged. “College lab. I used to get shocked a lot.”

  “A lot?”

  “I wasn’t the best at grounding wires.”

  She turned back to the panel like it didn’t almost fry her and fiddled with it a bit more. “Give me two minutes.”

  I watched her from behind. She wasn’t twitching. Not burned. Not even shaken. Her fingers were flying like she was playing piano on cocaine.

  What the hell was that?

  Two minutes later, the door clicked open.

  Inside? Treasure trove. Pre-apocalypse drone kits, solar chargers, two working laptops, an entire shelf of still-sealed flashlights, and—miracle of miracles—a functioning minifridge full of preserved MREs.

  “Dibs on the cheese tortellini,” I said.

  She snorted and tossed me a flashlight. “That was fun. Let’s do another one.”

  “Fun?” I gestured at the Variant corpse behind us.

  “Okay, mostly fun.”

  We made our way through a few more buildings, taking turns with close calls and clever entries. I discovered I could catch a metal pipe mid-air and fling it with scary precision into a zombie’s leg. Didn’t even think about it. Just did it.

  “That’s, like, your thing,” Alex said as I helped her hop over a half-collapsed wall.

  “What, pipe-throwing?”

  “No, like… picking stuff up and just—using it. Your brain does… something. Like it’s buffering a combat patch mid-fight.”

  I scratched my head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s adrenaline.”

  “You dodged a ceiling tile, elbowed a zombie in the neck, grabbed two wine bottles, smashed its knee with one, and then used another to jam its mouth shut.”

  “It felt natural.”

  She laughed. “That’s not natural, Elliot. That’s cartoon choreography.”

  I didn’t argue. Just accepted the weird feeling growing in my chest. Like something deeper was shifting in us. I wasn’t as clumsy as I used to be. And Alex… Alex was a little bit terrifying.

  She wasn’t just good with tech—she sensed it. At one point she walked past a wall and said, “There's power under there.”

  “Seriously?” I said.

  She kicked a loose panel. Behind it, a still-lit emergency light buzzed softly.

  “Just a hunch,” she said.

  I nodded slowly. “You sure you’re not like, actually an electric Pokémon or something?”

  She smirked. “If I say yes, you’d just make Pikachu jokes.”

  “Wrong. I was thinking Jolteon.”

  She grinned. “I’ll take it.”