Jack sat down on the grass.

  Not because he wanted to. Because his hip was turning his left leg into dead weight, and because twelve terrified people needed him to look calm, and a man standing over them with a piece of rebar and blood on his undershirt was not calm. It was threat. So he sat. Crossed his legs. Set the rebar on the grass beside him where everyone could see it and nobody had to think about it.

  The system scan behind his eyes was still there. A low hum, separate from the mana that saturated the air. Something vast, reading him page by page and getting confused by the table of contents. He couldn't do anything about it. He set it aside the way he'd set aside pain and fear and grief for a decade, in a box behind the operational part of his brain, and focused on the twelve people in front of him.

  "Okay," he said. "Show of hands. Who still has a blue box in front of them?"

  Nine hands. Three people didn't: Marvin, the woman in scrubs who was still working on his leg, and the Laborer, standing apart with his laptop bag and his carrying capacity and nothing else.

  "The box is a class selection prompt. It's going to show you options. Think of them like... job offers. Some are good. Some are garbage. The first one listed is always the worst. Scroll past it. Read everything before you commit."

  "How do you scroll?" one of the joggers asked. She was still shaking but her voice was clear.

  "Treat it like a touchscreen. Swipe up in front of your face. You'll feel stupid doing it. Don't worry about that."

  A beat of silence, and then nine people started waving their hands in the air, swiping at rectangles of light only they could see. Under different circumstances it would have been funny. One of the teenagers laughed, short and startled, and the sound broke something loose. The delivery driver grinned. Even Marvin opened his eyes.

  The dark-haired woman raised her hand. First time she'd moved toward the group instead of observing from outside it.

  "I have four options," she said. Her voice was low and precise. No tremor. "The first says Common. The other three say Uncommon. Is there a tier above Uncommon?"

  Jack looked at her. She'd been watching him through the entire attack. Now she was asking questions that cut straight to the decision architecture. Not "what does this do" but "what's the ranking system." She was building a framework before she chose. Jack recognized the impulse because he'd spent ten years watching Steve do the same thing.

  "Rare is above Uncommon," he said. "If you have one, take it. If you don't, pick the Uncommon that fits you best. What are the three?"

  She read them off without hesitation. "Scout. Analyst. Warden."

  "What's your gut say?"

  She didn't answer immediately, which told him everything. She wanted Analyst. She was testing whether he'd steer her somewhere else.

  "Take Analyst," he said. In the first timeline, Analyst classes had been undervalued for the first year and devastating afterward. Information warfare. Pattern recognition boosted by system assistance. The kind of class that made you dangerous in meetings, not just in combat. He didn't say any of that. "Trust the gut."

  She selected it. A faint shimmer crossed her skin, barely visible, and her eyes went unfocused for a full second. When she came back she looked at her hands, then at Jack, and her expression shifted by a degree he wouldn't have caught without the threat overlay. She was processing something. Cataloging.

  The delivery driver went next. His name was Ray and he had three Uncommon options: Bulwark, Enforcer, and Striker. Jack told him Bulwark if he wanted to protect people, Enforcer if he wanted to control crowds. Ray picked Bulwark before Jack finished the sentence. Good instincts. The man had planted himself between the group and the dead Grubhound with a tire iron he didn't know how to use.

  Sisters, the two joggers. Mira and Dana. Dana picked Healer without needing advice. Mira took longer. She had an Uncommon option called Riftwalker that Jack didn't recognize. Nothing from the first timeline. A butterfly, already. He told her it was a gamble and she took it anyway with a look that said she'd been making safe choices her whole life.

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  ? ? ?

  The teenager who'd laughed was named Cass. Seventeen. Skinny in the way teenagers are before their bodies decide what shape to commit to. While the adults deliberated over their class options, Cass had already scrolled through every screen twice and was bouncing on the balls of their feet.

  "I have a Rare," Cass said.

  The group went quiet. Even Marvin looked up.

  "What is it?" Jack asked.

  "Strike Adept. It says..." Cass squinted at something. "'Melee precision specialist. Damage scales with consecutive hits. Combo system unlocks at Level 5.' That sounds like a fighting game."

  Jack's throat tightened. Strike Adept was a real class. A good one. In the first timeline he'd watched a woman with that class take apart a raid boss in under two minutes through a combo chain that broke every scaling curve the system offered. The woman had died in year six, crushed under a collapsing fortification Steve had ordered held past its limit.

  "Take it," Jack said. His voice came out rougher than he intended. "Take it right now."

  Cass grinned and tapped the air. The shimmer that crossed their skin was brighter than the Analyst's had been. Cass looked at their fists and clenched them and unclenched them and said, "Holy shit, I can feel it. Like... electricity. Not electricity. Potential. Like my hands know something they didn't know five seconds ago."

  One of the other teenagers, a heavyset kid named Marcus, punched Cass in the shoulder. "You always get the good shit." Marcus had picked Uncommon Sentinel, a defensive class, after Jack told him it synergized well with group play. The third teenager, a girl named Priya who hadn't spoken since the attack, was still staring at her blue box. Her fingers were trembling. Jack would get to her.

  The woman in scrubs finished with Marvin's leg and came over. Her name was Grace. She already had a class. "I selected during the attack," she said, unapologetic. "Medic. Uncommon. It gave me a skill called Triage that highlights the worst injuries. Marvin's leg lit up like a Christmas tree."

  "That was the right call," Jack said. First-life combat medics were the backbone of every surviving settlement. Grace had self-selected into the most valuable support class available, under fire, without guidance. He filed her as someone to watch.

  ? ? ?

  That left Priya, who was hyperventilating.

  Jack got up. His hip punished him for it, a sick grinding sensation that said something in there had torn, not just bruised. He walked over to Priya and sat down next to her in the grass. The ground smelled like dirt and dry October and, underneath, the faint copper thread of the spawn fluid drying on his undershirt. Close enough to talk. Far enough not to crowd.

  "What's your name?"

  She shook her head. Not a refusal. Just a system-overload response, the brain shutting down non-essential functions. Soldiers did it. Refugees did it. Jack had done it once, in a flooded parking garage in Memphis with thirty bodies floating in the dark.

  "That's fine. You don't have to pick a class right now. The prompt will wait. You're safe here, and nobody is going to make you do anything until you're ready."

  She looked at him. Sixteen, maybe. Eyes red, lashes wet. "Those things ate a man," she said.

  "They didn't get anyone here. And they won't. Not while I'm sitting right next to you."

  Priya's breathing slowed by a fraction. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and left a smear of dirt across her cheek. She didn't pick a class. Jack didn't push her.

  When he stood up, she was watching him again. But her expression had changed. The assessment was still there. She'd watched him kill monsters with a concrete chunk and a length of rebar. Now she was watching him sit in the grass with a scared girl and talk about nothing until the girl could breathe.

  The woman caught Jack looking back and didn't flinch.

  "You haven't told us your name," she said.

  "Jack."

  "Elena." She paused. The pause was calculated, not hesitant, the kind of silence a person uses to give weight to what comes next. "What class did you pick, Jack?"

  Ray stopped adjusting his grip on the tire iron. Cass stopped flexing their new fists. Grace looked up from Marvin's bandage.

  Jack's class prompt was still hovering at the edge of his vision, untouched. The system scan was still running behind it, that deep patient hum that had been going since the moment the blue boxes appeared. He hadn't so much as opened it.

  Because he already knew what was there. Two options, side by side. One familiar and insufficient. One redacted and unknown. And the scan that was taking too long was still running.

  "I'm still deciding," he said.

  Elena's eyes moved across his face the way she'd moved through her class options. Systematic. "You told everyone to read carefully before choosing. That was thirty minutes ago. You haven't opened yours."

  Ray straightened up. "She's right. You told us to scroll, to take our time. But you haven't even looked."

  Twelve faces turned to Jack. He'd killed the monsters, known about the blue boxes before anyone should have, talked them through the worst thirty minutes of their lives with the steadiness of someone running a drill he'd rehearsed. They were looking at him the way the first timeline's survivors had looked at people with answers. The look that came right before the word 'leader' attached itself to someone whether they wanted it or not.

  In the distance, something howled. Low, drawn out, and coming from multiple directions. The second wave was closer than twenty minutes.

  Jack picked up the rebar and stood.

  "We need to move," he said. "I'll explain later."

  He didn't explain later. Elena watched him not explain and said nothing, and the saying nothing was louder than the howling.