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CH2: Bloody start
🕑 Added 2025-05-24 21:07:11 +0000 UTCAfter Aiden slipped through the stairwell door, he descended one flight, the metal steps creaking faintly beneath his weight. The air grew colder and heavier with each level, the scent of dust, rust, and something fouler settling in. He was heading for the bottom floor—toward whatever waited in the shadows of the hospital's lower levels.
His grip tightened around the pocket knife at his side. It wasn't much, but it was better than being empty-handed. Down there, in the silence and the dark, anything could be waiting—walkers, looters, or worse. Still, he pressed on. This place had taken enough time from him already.
As Aiden reached the final landing, his boots slowed, footsteps growing cautious on the cold metal stairs. At the bottom stood a heavy door, paint chipped and rusted around the handle. He took a quiet breath, pressed his ear against it for a moment—nothing but muffled shuffling beyond.
Slowly, he pushed it open, the hinges groaning softly as dim, natural light spilled into the stairwell. Peering through the gap, he saw it: the hospital's front desk area, wide and eerily still, lit by broken windows and flickering emergency lights. Chairs were overturned, papers were scattered like leaves, and blood was smeared across parts of the floor.
Then he spotted them.
Five walkers, aimlessly drifting through the waiting room. Their skin hung in decayed folds, jaws slack, eyes milky and vacant. One bumped lazily into a broken vending machine, another dragged a mangled leg as it circled near the reception counter.
Aiden narrowed his eyes, silently pulling the pocket knife from his belt. He didn't have much—but he had silence, shadows, and a choice: fight, sneak, or turn back. While pondering, the System announced itself.
[Quest Alert]
[Kill all 5 Walkers in the room]
[Reward]
[20 Exp ]
[Bonus Mission]
[Kill all 5 walkers while not being detected]
[Reward]
[Skill: Stealth Level 1]
[Yes / No]
Aiden stood frozen in the stairwell doorway, his silhouette framed by the weak daylight spilling in from the shattered windows beyond. He watched in silence, eyes narrowing as he took in the scene before him. The five walkers moved in slow, disjointed patterns—aimless, unthinking. They hadn't noticed him yet.
He gripped the handle of his pocket knife tightly, feeling the cold metal press into his palm. The blade wasn't long, and it wasn't built for combat—but with the right precision, it didn't have to be.
This was the moment.
His breath slowed as he mentally marked their positions: one dragging its feet near the check-in counter, another limping around the center of the room, two near the toppled rows of waiting chairs, and one just beyond the broken reception desk. All distracted. All vulnerable.
"Alright," he murmured under his breath, barely a whisper. "Quest accepted."
He stepped through the door, letting it ease shut behind him with a soft click. Then he moved—low, quiet, careful. His boots barely made a sound against the scuffed linoleum floor as he weaved between abandoned furniture and debris. Every step was deliberate, every breath controlled.
He approached the first walker from behind—the one nearest the counter. It groaned softly, head bobbing as it swayed in place. In one smooth, practiced motion, Aiden rose just high enough to bring the knife across its throat. Not a full slice—just a hard, sharp stab into the base of the skull, right through the soft tissue. The walker jerked once, then collapsed silently to the floor.
Aiden caught the body, lowering it with care, eyes already locked onto his next target.
The second one was pacing clumsily near an overturned gurney. Aiden circled it, using the ruined reception desk as cover. He waited for the walker to turn its back, then slipped in, quick and quiet. Another stab—just under the skull and into the brainstem. The light in its eyes vanished in an instant, and Aiden let it slump gently to the floor.
"Two down. Three to go."
He moved like a shadow now, weaving through the wreckage with deadly precision. The next two walkers were close together near the broken chairs. Too risky to take head-on. So he waited, crouched behind a fallen display stand, and watched as one limped a few steps away from the other.
That was the opening he needed.
Aiden closed the distance in seconds. The third walker didn't even have time to turn before the blade pierced its skull. The fourth let out a dry moan as it noticed the movement, too slow. Aiden pivoted, darting forward and plunging the knife deep into its temple before it could raise its rotted arms.
The last body fell to the floor with a dull thud.
Aiden stood still for a long moment, listening—waiting. No growls. No footsteps. No alarms. Just silence.
He exhaled slowly, the tension easing from his shoulders. Blood clung to the blade and speckled his sleeve, but his hands didn't shake. Not anymore. He wiped the knife on the torn fabric of one of the corpses and returned it to his belt.
The room was clear. The threat was gone.
And Aiden was still standing.
[Quest completed]
[Bonus completed]
[Host has gained 20 Exp and a new skill: Stealth]
[Gained 10 Exp for killing 5 Walkers]
Aiden, after calming down he looked at his new skill he had acquired from the system, but Aiden had an idea of what this skill does in the name alone.
[Skill: Stealth Level 1] [
Exp 1/100]
+10% chance of being less likely to be noticed,
+10% Damage on sneak attacks
[Can be leveled up by using the skill]
With the last walker lying motionless at his feet, Aiden straightened up, rolling his shoulders as the tension slowly drained from his muscles. A small, quiet smirk tugged at the edge of his mouth—barely a grin, but it was there. Clean kills. No noise. No bites. For a man who hadn't wanted to get involved in anyone's story, he had just carved a neat little page into his own.
"Guess I've still got it," he muttered to himself.
Wasting no time, Aiden began moving through the hospital lobby with a scavenger's eye—deliberate, methodical, focused. Now that the area was cleared, it was an opportunity. And in this world, opportunity was survival.
He started with the fallen walkers. Kneeling beside each body, he rummaged through what remained of their belongings. Two of them had ratty old travel backpacks—lightweight and half-rotted, but still holding scraps of useful gear. Inside one, he found a pair of energy bars, still sealed in faded plastic, and a dented can of some sort of fruit drink. Expired? Probably. Drinkable? He'd take his chances.
The second yielded even less—just a cracked lighter, some soggy bandages, and a crumpled ID badge from when the hospital still functioned. Aiden kept the lighter and tossed the rest. He moved to the desk area next, crouching low to rifle through drawers, backpacks, and half-emptied purses left behind in the panic.
Behind the front desk, something caught his eye: a large, military-style tactical backpack, half-buried under a pile of jackets and broken office equipment. The zippers were intact, and the frame looked solid. He tugged it free with a grunt and gave it a quick inspection—no tears, no bloodstains, and most importantly, big enough to carry a serious haul without drawing too much suspicion on the streets.
It even had side pouches and a reinforced back panel.
"Now that's more like it," Aiden muttered, slinging it over one shoulder to test the weight. It fit well—tight against his back, comfortable, built to last.
With his new pack secured, he began a proper sweep of the room. There were remnants of chaos everywhere—overturned chairs, blood-smudged walls, shattered display screens, and half-eaten vending machine contents scattered across the floor. He moved through it all with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this too many times before.
A gym bag by the corner waiting bench gave up two more energy bars and a bottle of water. Another purse near the window had a miniature first aid kit—some gauze, adhesive tape, and a sealed antiseptic wipe. He stored everything carefully, organizing by type, balancing the weight in the backpack as he worked.
A crumpled fast-food bag under one of the chairs still held a vacuum-sealed protein snack, the kind you'd eat on a hiking trail. It wasn't gourmet, but it was calories—and in this world, calories were currency.
By the time he was done, Aiden's backpack had a respectable supply of basic provisions:
4 energy bars (various brands)
2 fruit drinks (questionable taste, but liquid nonetheless)
1 sealed bottle of water
Mini first-aid kit
1 half-used lighter
1 protein snack
A small roll of medical tape from the nurses' station
And his trusty pocket knife, now tucked into an easy-access side sheath
He zipped the bag shut and stood up, glancing once more around the lobby. The silence had returned, but it felt different now—like something had shifted. He had taken control of the space, claimed it, even if just for a few minutes. No alarms, no gunfire, no desperate group to drag him into drama. Just him and the quiet hum of survival.
With a deep breath, Aiden adjusted the backpack on his shoulders, rolled his neck, and turned toward the hallway leading out of the lobby. The hospital had more to offer—and who knew what waited beyond its crumbling walls?
One step at a time. Supplies first. Questions later.
Aiden adjusted the straps of his newly filled backpack and let out a slow breath, eyes scanning the ruined lobby one last time. The hospital had been a tomb—silent, suffocating, and stale with the lingering stench of old blood and rot. He'd gotten what he could, but the weight in his chest wasn't just from the supplies.
He was sick of this place.
The peeling walls, the dim flickering lights, the ghostly quiet—it all pressed in around him like a coffin. The longer he stayed, the more it felt like the building was trying to keep him there, like it didn't want to let go.
"Enough," he muttered under his breath. "Time to move."
With practiced steps, he made his way toward the exit—double doors shattered inward, glass crunched beneath his boots as he stepped through. Daylight poured in, harsh and pale against the dark interior. The sudden openness of the courtyard should have been a relief, but instead… it stopped him in his tracks.
What lay before him was worse than anything inside.
Rows upon rows of body bags.
The entire courtyard was filled with them—lined up in grim, meticulous order like a forgotten mass grave. Hundreds, maybe more, stretching from the entrance to the gates. Some were zipped shut. Others had been left open by scavengers or time, revealing glimpses of what lay inside—decayed faces frozen in agony, broken limbs curled inward, nameless and rotting.
Aiden stood motionless at the threshold, the wind tugging gently at his coat. The buzzing of flies filled the air, thick and oppressive. Somewhere in the distance, a crow called out, the sound sharp and cruel in the silence.
He took a slow step forward, careful not to disturb the scene more than he had to. His boots slid slightly on the slick concrete, darkened by fluids that had long since soaked into the ground. He could see tags still attached to some of the bags—names, numbers, diagnoses. This had once been an organized response. A quarantine zone. Maybe even hope.
Now it was just death. Forgotten. Rotting. Proof that the world hadn't just broken—it had bled out.
Aiden's jaw tightened. He wasn't the type to pray, and he sure as hell wasn't the type to cry. But he paused all the same, letting the weight of it settle on him. Then he adjusted his grip on the backpack, stepped over a collapsed stretcher, and moved on—careful, quiet, and cold-eyed.
There was nothing left for him here. Just ghosts. And he didn't intend to join them.
