Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

The door opened.

Electric white hair. Blue eyes. Nineteen years old in a night dress, standing in her own doorway like someone who had been expecting a different kind of rescue and was genuinely sorry about what had arrived instead.

She stepped back slowly.

"You shouldn’t have come," she said, and blinked once. A signal.

It was too late. Behind her, a shadow that hadn’t been there a second ago, and then a woman with a pistol.

"Get inside," she said.

I got in. The door closed behind me.

[Mary Stam. Shadow walking, Level 6.]

[Mira Kim. Dormant healer.]

I read it twice. Dormant healer. Not no ability. A dormant one. Which meant Kim had known. Which meant everything we had been told about this mission had been assembled from the parts of the truth that were convenient to tell us.

Mary Stam had blood on her white top, a wound she’d been living with long enough that it had soaked through. She gestured toward the bed with the pistol and I sat where she indicated, beside Mira, who pulled her knees to her chest and looked at me with the expression of someone who had been hoping for better news.

"Is this him?" Mary asked Mira, eyes still on me.

Mira hesitated. "Yes." 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Mary’s grip on the gun didn’t change.

"Your father said you’d be exchanged for a healer," she said. "That’s the deal."

Her father. The last piece clicked into place.

Mira Kim is not a random girl. Not a stranger in need of extraction. She’s Mr Kim’s daughter, held by a woman with a bullet wound and a level six ability, who had apparently decided that a healer was a fair trade for letting the girl go.

Kim had sent us in without telling us any of that.

Mira looked at me. "I’m so sorry."

"I told your father I wouldn’t kill you," Mary said, to Mira, without moving the gun. "I said I’d let you go when he sent a healer. Simple arrangement." She looked at me. "Are you a healer, boy?"

"Let her go first," I said.

"Don’t play games with me." The gun moved slightly. "Just answer me."

I looked at the gun. Then at the wound on her top. Then at Mira’s face.

"No," I said. "I’m not."

"What?" The anger in her voice had heat now. "Kim is playing games with me. I kidnapped this girl, I’ve been sitting in this room, and he sends someone who can’t do anything." She raised the gun. "Then why don’t I just kill both of you."

"I’m not a healer," I said, keeping my voice level, "but I can help you."

"How?"

"Let the girl go first."

"I’m not letting anyone leave this room," she said, "unless you give me an excellent reason."

In my ear, Kim’s man was saying something. Instructions, probably. I couldn’t give him anything back. The earpiece received but didn’t transmit.

She had a bullet wound. I had Purifier.

[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]

[Purifier operates on infection and corruption. Not wounds.]

Of course, I thought. Of course it doesn’t.

"I’m a charger," I said.

She stared at me. Then she laughed. The short, disbelieving kind.

"I can boost your ability," I said. "When you’re at full level you can walk out of this city. Get yourself to somewhere you can get medical attention." I held her eyes. "But the girl leaves first."

"You think I believe that?" The gun came up again. "The three of us are dying in this room."

"Test him," Mira said, quietly.

We both looked at her.

"He might be telling the truth," she said. The voice of someone calculating the only exit available and deciding it was worth the risk.

Mary Stam held the gun on us for a moment. Then she reached without looking and picked up the ability scan rod from the table beside her. She pressed it to the floor. Blue light rose.

I walked through it.

"Charger. Level ten."

The silence that followed had its own quality. I watched it move across Mary Stam’s face, the disbelief giving way to calculation giving way to something that was very close to hope. A charger, level ten, in a hotel room in the city.

"Charge me," she said. "Now."

"The girl leaves first."

"I can’t—"

"I’m a prime charger," I said, cutting across her. "I charge through intimacy. Not proximity, not touch. Sex." I looked at Mira, then back at Mary. "Unless you want an audience."

Silence.

"Okay," she said. "Okay."

I helped Mira up from the bed. She was shaking slightly, the specific tremble of someone who had been afraid for a long time and hadn’t been able to put it down yet. I hugged her. Brief and steady, the kind that says you’re okay, you’re about to be more okay.

"There are two people at the end of the corridor," I said quietly. "Don’t tell them what happened here. Tell them I’m safe and coming soon."

"Yes." Barely a whisper.

"Can you keep my secret?"

She looked at me. Something moved across her face that was more than just agreement.

"Yes," she said.

She opened the door and was gone. Mary closed it. I stood in the room with a woman who had a gun and a wound and a level six ability she’d been running on depleted for long enough that the desperation had calcified into anger.

Miss Brown knew, I thought. She sent me into this room thinking I was a healer. Knowing that whatever happened in here, my ability was the solution she was banking on. She just hadn’t told me.

She’d have to answer for that later.

"Well?" Mary said, impatient, gun still in her hand.

I looked at her. The wound. The gun. The days she’d been stuck in this room watching her shadow walking drain down toward nothing. I didn’t feel sorry for her exactly. She had kidnapped a nineteen year old girl and pointed a pistol at two people who hadn’t deserved it.

But I was going to help her anyway. That was the job.

And I’m not going to be gentle about it, I thought. She earned rough.

"Put the gun down," I said. "You won’t need it."