Chapter 9: Crimson Road
Chloe's POV
The accept button was already pressed. The timer had started.
【Wasteland Survival Mission — Host's First Foray. Survive 120 minutes outdoors. Body must remain uncontaminated. Reward: Alpha Awakening Serum ×1. Failure: initial XP deducted.】
Last life, same mission, same serum. The Alpha Awakening Serum — the rarest thing the system ever handed me. One injection, zero mutation risk, any one of the twelve base abilities, pick your poison. And it doesn't lock out a second awakening down the road; your genes keep doing what they're going to do. I went out in the acid rain, completed it, came back, and pushed the needle into Brad's arm. Watched him awaken fire. Told myself he'd protect all of us.
This time, it's mine. And I already know which one I'm taking.
I closed the panel and walked toward Mara. "Can I borrow your phone? And where's Caleb?"
She hesitated for a second, then handed it over and pulled up the last text her son had sent with her other hand. "Gas station, corner of Elm and Seventh. The closed-down one."
I took the phone, tucked it into my jacket pocket, grabbed my bag, and headed for the door to the garage.
"Hold on—" Robert stood up from the couch. "You're going out there?"
"I'm going to get him."
"Then I'll go. It's too dangerous for you." He was already looking for his keys.
"Your Mercedes sits less than six inches off the ground," I said. "The water out there is acid. You drive into it, the undercarriage dissolves. You and the car both stay in the street."
His hand stopped.
Tyler was still standing where he'd been standing, phone in his hand, thumb frozen on the screen. "You? Going out to save someone?" His voice came out too loud for the room. "You sat right there and watched Aunt Sarah almost walk out the door without blinking. Now you've suddenly grown a conscience?"
"My Raptor's got acid-resistant modifications and high ground clearance," I said. "I can make it."
"That's not what I'm asking." He stepped closer. "Why do you even want to go?"
I looked at him. I didn't answer that.
Sarah had risen from the couch, worry on her face and something else underneath it — the pull toward the door. I spoke first, my voice dropping half a degree from what I'd used on Tyler. "Stay here."
"I could—"
"You can't."
I turned to Robert. "Keep her inside. If something happens to her—" I paused a beat. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
Robert held my gaze for a moment, then nodded.
I pulled the folding tactical rain cape from my bag, snapped it on in two seconds, sealed the neck, and went through the door into the garage.
The interior door connected to a short hallway. At the far end was a frosted glass side door that opened onto the yard.I glanced through it as I passed, and stopped.Sarah's flowers were all on the ground. Not blown over — collapsed, the way something collapses when the structure underneath it dissolves. The leaves had gone from green to yellow-black, like they'd been soaked in acid and left to dry and stepped on.
This wasn't mild.I pressed the respirator filter into the groove along the bottom of my mask, felt the seal click, and pushed into the garage.
The Raptor sat in the center of the bay. I got in, started the engine, and the roll-up door lifted. The crimson rain came in off the street.
The system chimed
【Invisible Savior Protocol triggered: Host's current action has been reclassified as objectively preserving the lives of Robert and Sarah Aldridge within 0 days. Reward: Mil-Spec Stimpack ×4.】
I braked at the threshold and held it for a second. Four people — Robert, Sarah, and the child she hadn't given birth to yet. The system had counted them together.
Wait. Why four? I ran the math again.Twins?
No time to think it through. I'd figure it out later.I let off the brake. The truck rolled into the rain.
The gate at the Kestrel Bluff exit was open. The guard booth was empty. The metal roof panel was already being eaten through, a rust-red hole spreading from the center like something burning outward from the inside.
I took the service road along the east ridge, staying off the main artery. The HUD showed Elm Avenue choked solid with red markers — standing water, abandoned vehicles, acid pooling in the low sections. I couldn't drive through that. But I could drive to it.
Half a mile from the gas station, the service road ended at a concrete barrier someone had dragged across the access point. Water lapped at the tires, already smoking where it touched the tread. I killed the engine, popped the rear hatch, and changed. 3M heavy-duty acid-resistant hazmat suit, CAT industrial wading boots, tactical mask already locked. Tactical rain cape over the top. I pulled a folding umbrella from the storage vault and opened it.
Oakhaven people don't carry umbrellas — the city gets rain nine months out of the year and somehow turned not minding it into a point of pride. But my grandfather's first rule was: if you have a tool, use it, don't tough it out with your body.
【Radar Instinct】.
【Duration: 3 hours. Cooldown: 3 hours. Active bonuses: low-light vision enhancement, acoustic positioning, obstacle edge highlighting within 3-kilometer radius.】
It kicked in immediately. Through the rain curtain, I could see the gas station forecourt three blocks down — a figure crouched by the pump housing. Further out, the gridlock on Elm: a man crouched behind a Chevy bumper, burn patterns clear on his hand. Five hundred meters out, someone crying in Spanish. Glass breaking. A horn stuck open. All of it layered and distinct.
The low-lying stretch of Elm Avenue was pooling red. Asphalt blistering, bubbles forming and breaking. Traffic locked solid.
I took the inner edge of the covered walkway along the commercial block, one hand against the wall.
By the time I'd covered three blocks on foot, I heard it — heavy metal impact, then a horn held down without letting up. Just cursing. A dark gray Audi A7 forcing its way out from the far edge of the gridlock, ramming forward. The roof seam had already been eaten through. The driver had to be burned by now. Past a certain point, pain leaves you with one thought only.
The Audi hit the Jeep in front of it. The Jeep got pushed into the pickup beside it. The pickup's gas cap wasn't on right. The collision threw a spark.
Two seconds before the blast, I turned and dropped low against the inner wall of the walkway.Glass and metal fragmented outward. Car alarms triggered in a chain. Screaming from multiple directions.
Three seconds. Confirmed clear. Stood up. Kept walking.
I pulled out Mara's phone.If Caleb was still out there somewhere in this, it was the only number he'd pick up, and I wasn't going to be the one who left his mother unable to answer. It also meant I had a phone nobody in Oakhaven was watching yet.
I registered an account on the way — username "Aunt Martha," profile picture a stock illustration of an American country grandmother I pulled off Pinterest. I typed the caption while I walked.
*"⚠️ Crimson Rain Hazard Alert from Aunt Martha
⚠️ Y'all, I am not a scientist, I'm just a lady who's lived in Oakhaven 52 years and I am telling you what I just saw with my own two eyes. Two blocks from Kestrel Bluff a car blew up. Blew UP. This rain is reacting with something — fuel, gas fumes, I don't know. Please do not rev your engine while you sit in it. Please put the lighter away. Please stay where you are and seal your doors and do not go out in this. I'm praying for every one of you. — Aunt Martha, Oakhaven resident, 52 years"*
Posted.
The system responded almost immediately. 【Invisible Savior Protocol triggered! Reward: Nano-Stim ×47… ×63… ×118…】
Past three hundred within five minutes. I muted the alerts and kept the counter running in the background.
I sent a few more posts — the toxicity of the white vapor rising off bodies and debris, the short-term protection a basic plastic rain poncho could buy, what to do if your eyes started burning. Every post, the counter ticked up. I didn't stop to look at the numbers. I kept moving.
The coordinates off the phone brought me to the covered forecourt of a shuttered gas station at the corner of Elm and Seventh.
Caleb Keeler was sitting next to the pump housing, knees drawn up, head down. He heard my boots in the water and snapped his head up — his face had blisters where the rain had hit it, three burns on the back of his hands seeping fluid, nothing irreversible yet.
He saw my mask and his eyes came up. "My mom sent you? Take me to the hospital — Oakhaven Medical Center is three miles, just three miles—" His voice had gone rough, throat irritated.
"Main roads are all jammed," I said. "The low sections have acid pooling. A regular vehicle drives in, the undercarriage goes."
Something in his face broke apart. "Then figure something out — the people at that place you're staying, Kestrel Bluff, someone has to—"
He was trying to get up, reaching for my arm.
A shadow cut in from the side. A hand came down and held his wrist in place.
"Don't."
I raised my head slowly.
Olive-green shell jacket. Those hands. That stance.Brad Danforth.
He was standing two steps behind me and to the right, one hand on Caleb's wrist, half-face waterproof mask on, eyes on me.
