Kenneth's voice still echoed faintly when Raven pressed the cold metal of her Beretta against his temple. He hadn't even finished laughing.
The smile on his face faltered only slightly when he saw her arm move. Then everything stopped.
"Pew."
The silenced shot rang like judgment. Kenneth's skull cracked sideways, and his body fell in a single, graceless heap to the floor. The look of surprise never left his eyes.
Raven didn't flinch.
She turned, raised her Beretta and calmly fired three more times. The security guard, still slouched on his bench in the corner, barely had time to stand. A single bullet punched into his forehead, followed by two shots to his chest. He dropped without a word, his heavy body slumping sideways, propped up grotesquely by the wall and the bench behind him.
She lowered the gun and exhaled slowly.
"Even in this new life," she muttered, "my trigger finger is as good as ever."
She stepped over Kenneth's body with casual disdain, glancing down at his glassy, vacant stare.
"You were clever, Kenneth. But being clever only gets you killed faster. Especially when you open your fat mouth about it."
The glass office door opened as Raven entered. The room was clean, overly modern, lined with steel and plastic furniture. A large balck desk dominated the space, its surface filled with monitors streaming surveillance feeds from every corner of the Ecospark. To the right, a tall stack of cash wrapped in rubber bands practically begged for her attention.
She ignored the money.
With three shots, she destroyed the hard drives beneath the main surveillance terminal. Sparks danced briefly as plastic and silicon hissed after being shot. Then she moved to the computer, fingers on the keyboard as Raven hacked into the backup surveillance storage system. The cloud database lasted sixty seconds before she wiped it out.
When she finished, she looked back at the cash and curled her lip in disdain.
"A few million dollars… good for kindling. In four days, it'll be worth less than used toilet paper."
She turned her attention to a reinforced steel door embedded into the back wall. Thick steel hinges. A biometric scanner. Digital keypad. Raven crouched and summoned a flathead screwdriver from her system space, prying the keypad cover off in seconds, she then connected a loose cable to her phone.
The screen lit up.
[Access port linked. Override in progress.]
Twenty seconds later, a green light flashed.
The vault door clicked open with a hydraulic sigh. Cold air and the scent of metal rushed out. Inside was wealth of a different kind. Stacked gold bricks, gleaming silver bars, slabs of platinum, and tangled coils of copper wiring filled the room like a dragon's hoard of jems.
She walked inside slowly, letting her fingers trace the smooth edges of an unmarked platinum brick.
"Metal. This is Real wealth."
Not for trade. Not for show. But raw, metal resources. The perfect building blocks for a Technomancer.
"Most people hoard food," she murmured. "Kenneth hoards precious metal. Idiots overlook this stuff in the end times. But not me. Kenneth is probably one of those precious metal hoarders. But the idiot probably never realized where the hell do you cash gold in if things go south."
A sudden flicker passed through her vision, a system notification.
[Apocalypse Ascendancy System Notification:] RARE METALS ABSORBED. STORED IN FABRICATION RESERVE. WORKSHOP CONSTRUCTION MODULE UNLOCKED. AWAITING PLACEMENT IN SANCTUARY.
Raven's expression didn't change, but inside, she felt a spark of satisfaction.
It was time. She could finally build.
She gave the vault one last sweep, absorbing every ounce of metal into her System Space before exiting the office. Her Silenced Beretta vanished back into her inventory, its job complete.
Back on the main shop floor, she raised her hand and mentally tagged each major item worth salvaging. The system shimmered faintly with each confirmed absorption.
Multi-weather solar panels (Next-Gen Photovoltaic)
Micro hydroelectric generators
DIY wind turbine kits
Lithium iron phosphate batteries (Tesla-style)
Honda EU2200i inverter generator
Champion Dual Fuel 3400W model
Jackery Explorer 1000 portable station
Goal Zero Yeti solar arrays
Hand-crank emergency phone chargers
Bi-directional vehicle inverter kits
Smart microgrid controllers
Fast-charge cable converters
Heat-insulated portable power packs
Every piece of technology vanished into the system space ready for future use.
EcoSpark Solutions was stripped bare in less than three minutes.
Only bodies and blood remained.
Raven stepped outside into the cold sunlight, wind biting softly at her coat as she crossed the parking lot. The Ironhowl X4 sat where she'd left it. Still bright, and ready to crush zombies soon enough.
She checked her phone. 1:00 PM. January 6th.
There was still daylight left. Still ground to cover.
Sanctuary could wait its time to hit a priority target that no one would ever expect.
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