I stared at the card, feeling it in my hand. Static Shock had already so much for me, and it was a no-brainer that having any cards equipped and ready for use was a good thing. And this one, well, it worked even when you weren’t using it.

 

I tapped at it and got ready to learn the skill.

 

Learn Chance 100% (Card Special) Would you like to study this skill now? Y/N

 

I chose yes. Numbers tumbled about within the center of my vision despite the impossibility of their failure and I almost laughed when I saw them end at 99. That would have failed for any other card.

 

But not for this bad boy.

 

To the Victor! successfully learned!

 

The physical card itself materialized in my hand, and my side panel immediately opened to a series of empty boxes. In the upper right-hand corner of this screen there was the number 8(14) in deep, bloody crimson.

 

Not only that, I started to hulk the heck out, gaining thirty pounds of muscle in a second, my abs tightening, my back arching, and me screaming out in shocked pain.

 

I got a massive headache from, I assume, the sharply increased intelligence, and for a few seconds I was just a puddle of agony. Then it all stopped.

 

And a series of notifications pinged in my side-eye. I opened up my character sheet to check it out.

With that out of the way, I let myself focus on climbing the first flight of stairs, getting a feel for the space and rhythm of it, then switching my attention back over to see what kind of card was waiting for me.

 

My card number now read 16(22). I stared at it in wonder. The +3 passive skill and the +2 card points from that card had added another 50% to his skills potential. And the rest of those skill bonuses had me feeling like he was maybe a little over the top.

 

A feeling that he welcomed. I clenched a fist and smacked it into my other hand, feeling the extra power in the blow. That smarted.

 

We were almost to the elevator when the blast hit. I didn’t even bother to turn back and check.

 

The programmer, Doctor Kevin Brightley, he’d said he didn’t have much longer, and he’d been right. We were far enough away to feel a bit of the heat, and have our clothes ruffled by the remnants of the shockwave, and we probably looked rad as hell, but we knew what had happened.

 

People who thought they had targets on their backs often were.

 

To the credit of my crew, though, none of them flinched. Even Patches seemed to know the lay of it all.

 

“So what are we going to do now?” Eric Joel asked as we waited. I stretched and yawned. It’d been a hell of a first day in the apocalypse.

 

“You are going to take a shower. I’ll set you up with an apartment since I apparently get to pick one. Not sure how safe they are, though, since Doctor Kevin just got annihilated by a missile. What a day.”

 

Eric leaned against the wall. “And what about the people? Seems like they all get to come back in, yeah?”

 

Patches nuzzled me from knee level and the bell dinged, the doors sliding open to reveal its unoccupied interior. We entered and I selected the first floor.

 

“Yeah, we’ll bring them in, and we’ll keep them protected. Make this boss fellow come to us if we can, or maybe take out a few more goons if we can.”

 

Eric Joel cocked his head. “I was a goon not long ago. Maybe you can use that golden tongue of yours to win a few more over, not have to kill everyone.”

 

I chuckled. Eric didn’t have a clue of the game mechanics governing his behavior, nor the outstanding luck of my computerized rolls in those last few desperate situations. I’d talk where I could, but I wasn’t going to rely on it as my prime requisite.

 

Besides, I just got a nice juice up from Doctor Kevin. I felt like I could better afford to break a few heads now that I had the card. It made me wonder what that Big Hero class was all about. And what taking over the borough would entail.

 

My skills were mostly with the military gear that I’d trained with, so I’d stick with rifles, grenades, maybe even missiles as much as I could depending on their availability. That was the stuff that kept me alive in the desert. And I figured it’d go a long way to keeping me alive here too.

 

The elevator dinged, kicking my thoughts on my ass, and bringing me back to the present. We got off, entering into a grand lobby whose decor reminded me of those 1930’s black and white movies with the rich gents and snobby ladies.

 

It was a lot more grandiose than the place where I’d first met Eric Joel. And it was chock full of people, confused and scared, milling about without any sense of order.

 

“Hey, everybody, what the hell? I thought we told you all to get out of the building?”

 

Strange thing is, I didn’t remember at that moment if I’d actually said just that. It was all a sort of desperate martial blur. But those words were as good of an introduction as any.

 

“There was this robot!” a man yelled.

 

“A giant robot!” added another.

 

“It fired a missile at the building, and it was coming this way,” rumbled Jack. He was ushering people behind a makeshift barricade that I had no doubt had been his idea and subsequent construction. “Then it took off through the city and just kinda faded from what I could see. But we stayed ready for ‘em in case more came.”

 

“Good man,” I told him.

 

Everyone else, seeing someone who seemed to be in charge, starting blurting words at me and I blanched. A bunch of scared civilians gabbing at me was not my specialty. I felt the old darkness rising up in me, started feeling that lost rage of mine barrel outwards.

 

Luckily Patches knew my flareups. Was trained to know them. He barked at the crowd, growling and slavering, and they shut the hell up.

 

I cleared my throat and reaching down to pat Patches on his head, letting the anger simmer subside.

 

“Hey, all, I’m not good with everyone yelling at me like that. Be happy Patches here knows that, or else there could have been trouble.”

 

I watched them all give each other confused looks. I knew those looks too well, and my brain struggled to get ahead of the problem.

 

“I served overseas, been in a number of tangles, and I’ve gotten me and mine through all of them. Just listen to me, stuff your dicks back into your trousers, and we’re gonna be okay.”

 

There was some murmuring, but the looks had stopped. This was the right way to go about it.

 

“The thing about stuff like this is that it isn’t ever near so bad as it looks. I’ve always found that, if we work together and get to know each other all at the same time, well, you end up with a fixed situation.”

 

Some of them nodded. I looked over the crowd. They weren’t all humans — there were a few dwarves, a couple of elves, maybe a halfling. And I figured at least half of them were NPCs. The ones that weren’t would have levels and cards slots, like me. They had essentially commando-like potential in this game system because of it.

 

An idea rose in my head. All of us together as a unit, me and the other players grinding for experience points to make ourselves super tough. We could dominate this place, maybe, and take out the monsters. It wasn’t so different from where they came from at the beginning anyways.

 

Just more advanced.

 

Just because it was an apocalypse didn’t mean it had to be a dystopia. They could make this game livable.

 

One step at a time.

 

“Yeah,” I muttered under my breath, looking them all over.

 

Regular missions, attempts at XP farming, check into crafting, and see if maybe these nanobots would let us make stuff on our own.

 

I saw the people there still staring, still watching, and I snapped to the present.

 

“So, I guess what I am saying is, go back to your homes. If they got torched or broken, we’ll figure out a place for you to go. And when you have everything all set up and good to go, I need you all to come back here so we can set up guard shifts, rotations, hell a command structure. Humina humina.”

 

So many of the people in the crowd held vacant stares. Shell-shocked eyes unable to quite figure out what I was on about.

 

I sighed. That was another thing I was used to. The way I talked, the way we all talked in the service, it tended to confuse civilians.

 

Whatever. They’d be back and then we’d figure it all out. For the time being, I was going to check out that new apartment, get Eric Joel showered, get Patches some grub, and get myself a combat nap.

 

Because I sure as stuff deserved it.

 

Heck, I’d give my old apartment to some other human because I was starting to get the feeling that before too long, I’d need Eric Joel to stick around and keep guard.

 

Couldn’t go wrong with a guard cat and a guard dog, could I?

 

I gave the crowd a wave. “Go back home. Be back here in two hours. That’s an order and if anyone has a problem with me giving orders, talk to me about it then. I’m bushed.

 

“Oh, and dibs on the elevator. The rest of you can paper rock scissors to figure out who gets to go next or whatever.”

 

We got in the elevator, paid, and rode it back up, getting out into the lobby/atrium area where I’d met Eric. The American anthem was playing on the TV while I saw the cool wave of gray goo being met with force at the Capitol Building.

 

There was something tragic about it, seeing the red, white, and blue still fluttering in the air and knowing it wasn’t set to be up there much longer. I wondered what flag would replace it, if indeed any.

 

Soldiers had erected sandbag defensive positions and were firing gouts of flame all along their perimeter. Helicopters were blasting the waves of goo with missiles, jets were dropping bombs, tanks were firing their main guns and in the rockets’ red glare I saw that the flag was still there.

 

My heart soared even as my soul wept. The boys weren’t giving up. Despite how hopeless it all was.

 

The music stopped, replaced by a voice I knew all too clearly. POTUS.

 

“My fellow Americans. It is with a heavy heart that today I say good-bye to our great and powerful nation. We have persevered through a great many calamities over the course of these centuries. And I pledge to you that we will fight to the end. Munitions and especially flame have proven effective against the nanobot onslaught, and maybe, with enough time and preparation, other nations can use this knowledge to successfully defend their shores. But it is over for us. This nanobot disaster has proven too much, too unexpected, and too powerful for us to defeat.

 

“To any Americans tuning in, watching from your viewscreens or archaic televisions, I wish you luck in your futures, however those may unfold. I’m given to understand that many of you are held hostage by the cities themselves. I can only say that we will do everything in our power to help you, but first we must ensure our own survival. America has always been a nation of individuals, and now more than ever that ethos will be put to the test. You may feel alone, but we are with you. Good luck and may fortune see us safely out of this crisis.”

 

Following this the feed cut to a panel of slack-jawed pundits and newscasters. For several long moments, none of them had anything to say about the president’s words, or the chaos they’d just seen on live television. I’d had combat training and I got it.

 

“Let’s go get us some beauty rest.”

 

I showed Eric to my place and got the shower working so he could wash off that godawful stink. After reviewing the other apartments, I just gave him my place. He reacted with wide-eyed, innocent amazement that gave me a smile. Like I’d just produced a quarter from behind his ear and he was eight years old.

 

I was beginning to like the big cat man, even though he was an NPC… who also kind of knew he was an NPC.

 

Down the other side of the hall, further from my apartment, the hall opened out into only two much larger apartments. These were some VIP stuff: recessed living room bigger than the entire apartment I’d woken up in, kitchen with island, walk-in closet with clothes that appeared to be my size, and also a full complement of clothes for a lady.

 

The closet also contained something called the Seams Perfect, and from what I could gather, its job was to take any piece of clothing that didn’t fit you, and make it fit you. It did this by scanning your body… and then nanotech magic ensued.

 

I didn’t bother past the body scan part. After I inserted the first dress I’d come across, a larger dress came out. The Seams Perfect then showed me what I’d now look like wearing the stretchy Little Black Dress, which was a truly shocking sight given how much chest, arm, and shoulder hair was visible. It also hugged the hips and showed off a sizable bulge.

 

“You flatter me,” I told the machine. “Thanks but no thanks.”

 

The bedroom had a sleep pod with an item descriptor on its side that read SleepSmooth Beauty Rester, Guaranteed to erase your wrinkles while you sleep! Also try out our tanning bed and massage chair options!

 

And dominating the back wall was a California-sized bed that looked like something out of a Princess and the Pea bedtime story. It could easily have laid three of me side by side.

 

I laid down into it, letting out a grateful sigh, and noticed more notifications in my sidebar. I opened it up.

 

Achievement Unlocked – Guildmaster

 

You have succeeded in convincing others to follow you. Look at you go! As the leader of a Gaming Guild, you may now issue commands and build structures. But be warned — these options will only remain available for as long as you retain your PC following.

 

I smirked. Not a problem. I could handle this. I saw that a whole new button had appeared next to my character sheet with a futuristic crown on it. When I tapped at it, it listed this building (Goji Tower East) as my stronghold, and several other buildings nearby as under my control. I only had the residents who lived here, all blue and colorless, with [Basic Worker] in brackets next to their names. The only two who  weren’t labeled Basic Worker were Eric Joel [Muscle] and Jack [Negotiations].

 

This was a lot to unpack. I set it aside, checking the next notification

 

New Quest Unlocked! Ready to work.

Get those workers moving. Give five of them tasks. Of course, it’s always better to maintain morale by assigning tasks in person, but in a pinch, you can command your peons with this menu.

Reward: +100 xp, +1 random common card

 

I shoved that aside as well. First, I’d get a quick combat nap. Then I’d take care of whatever the hell this all was.