The apocalypse: I can copy any talent

# Chapter 2: The Scouting Team's Invitation

"Name's Han Xue." The sharp-eyed woman stopped close enough that I had to tilt my head back to hold her gaze. "I run scouting and recon for this shelter. As of thirty seconds ago, so do you."

"Nobody asked me if I wanted the job."

"Nobody asks the guy with an uncapped talent anything." Han Xue's smile didn't reach her eyes. "They just recruit him before somebody smarter does."

Behind her, Mei raised a hand like she was back in school. "If he's in, I'm in. He kept me from becoming dog food two hours ago. I'd like to return the favor."

Han Xue's eyes flicked to Mei, assessing. Something in her expression eased—barely. "Fireball talent, level two. Decent control under pressure. Fine. Both of you. Briefing in ten minutes. Gear up."

"Wait—"

"Ten minutes, Copy-boy." Han Xue walked away without looking back. "Clock's running."

**[SYSTEM: Faction Alliance Established - Scouting Team (Han Xue)]**

**[Note: Alliances with stronger Awakened increase survival probability by 340%.]**

"You could've mentioned that part before she walked off," I muttered.

**[SYSTEM: I could have. Watching you flounder is occasionally entertaining.]**

I decided once again that I hated the System.

---

The gap in the outer fence was barely wider than a doorway. Reinforced with scavenged rebar and a padlock that looked like it was doing most of the actual work.

Beyond it: the city.

Or what used to be the city. Streets cracked open where smaller rifts had bled violet light before sealing themselves shut. Storefronts dark. An ambient wrongness in the air that hadn't been there a week ago.

"Rule one." Han Xue checked the strap on her combat knife with the ease of long habit. "Anything bigger than a car? We run."

"Rule two—"

"Anything smaller than a car, we assess before we engage."

"Rule three—"

"Let me guess." I kept my voice flat. "Don't die."

"Rule three is don't get *me* killed." Han Xue's eyes were ice. "Your survival is a nice bonus."

Mei snorted quietly beside me. "She's warmer once you get to know her."

"Is she?"

"No." Mei shook her head. "But it's nice to hope."

We moved through the ruined streets in a loose triangle. Han Xue on point. Mei and I trailing at angles she'd assigned without explanation.

Twenty minutes in, we found our first target.

A mutated stray, mid-sized, faster than any dog had a right to be. Prowling a collapsed convenience store for scraps.

"Class-one." Han Xue's voice barely carried. "Good training target. Copy-boy—you're up. Try not to embarrass the team."

I raised the dead cop's pistol. Breathed the way the copied instinct told me to breathe. Fired.

The round caught the creature in the shoulder before it finished turning.

It shrieked. Staggered—then lunged not at me, but at the nearest moving target.

Mei.

Her Fireball caught it at close range. The creature dropped in a burst of singed fur and smoke.

Han Xue watched the whole exchange with no visible reaction. Her version of approval, I was learning.

"Adequate." She gestured at the corpse. "Copy-boy, get close. I want to see if there's anything worth taking off it."

---

The creature's corpse smoked faintly on cracked pavement. I crouched beside it out of morbid curiosity, resting a hand against its foreleg.

**[SYSTEM: Talent Detected - Enhanced Agility]**

**[Copy Successful - Efficiency: 10%]**

**[Slot 2/3 Occupied]**

I nearly fell backward. "Wait—I can copy from *animals*?"

"You didn't know that?" Han Xue's eyebrows rose slightly—the most surprise I'd seen from her yet. "Copy talents are rare. Most assume they only work on other Awakened. If yours works on mutants too..." She trailed off, calculating behind her eyes. "That's a much bigger deal than I estimated."

"Great." I flexed my hand. Something in my legs felt different—not dramatically, not yet, but present. Like a held breath I hadn't known I was holding until it released. "More people wanting to own me. Exactly what I was hoping for."

**[SYSTEM: Two active Talent slots occupied. Marksmanship 14%. Enhanced Agility 10%. Recommend field-testing Agility before relying on it in combat.]**

Ten percent of a mutated stray's speed wasn't nothing.

It might, someday, be everything.

---

Three streets deeper into the ruins, Han Xue crouched at a corner scanning for movement.

The ambush hit.

Not mutants.

People.

"Well, well." Bo Hai's voice carried from the mouth of an alley. Iron Skin plated across his forearms. Flanked by two other shelter survivors I recognized from the bunk rows—opportunists who'd figured out fast that the old rules didn't apply anymore. "Heard the great Han Xue took Copy-boy scouting. Figured I'd come see what the fuss is about."

"This isn't your patrol route." Han Xue's hand drifted toward her knife. "Turn around."

"Funny thing about patrol routes." Bo Hai's grin made my stomach drop. "Commander Osei doesn't actually know you took her best scout and a fresh Awakened outside the wall without full clearance, does she? I could mention it. Or..." He shrugged, easy and cruel. "I could just settle things myself. Out here. Where nobody's watching."

"You're threatening us over a *grudge*?" Mei's voice cracked with incredulity.

"I'm settling a score." Bo Hai's eyes locked on me. "Copy-boy made me look stupid in front of the whole shelter. I don't forget that kind of thing."

Behind him, something large shifted in the ruined store at the alley's end. Drawn by raised voices and the smell of the earlier kill.

Bo Hai didn't notice.

I did.

"There's something behind you," I said.

"Nice try." Bo Hai stepped forward, plated fist rising. "Save the tricks for someone who—"

The mutant came through the storefront's broken window in a spray of glass and rusted shelving. Twice the size of the stray we'd downed earlier. Jaws already wide.

It wasn't aiming for Bo Hai.

His two flanking allies scattered the instant the glass shattered. They left him standing closest to the thing's charge, his smug expression only half-collapsed into panic.

"Move!" Han Xue shouted, knife already out. Too far. Too slow.

Mei's Fireball needed half a second of charge time she didn't have.

I didn't think. I *ran*.

Copied Agility answered a call I'd never tested. Legs moved faster than they had any business moving. I closed the gap between myself and Bo Hai in a blur that startled even me.

Shoved him sideways—hard enough that the mutant's jaws closed on empty air instead of his throat.

We went down together in a tangle of limbs. I twisted. Raised the dead cop's aim on pure adrenaline. Put three rounds into the creature's exposed throat before it could recover its lunge.

It crashed down half a foot from where Bo Hai lay.

He stared up at me wide-eyed. Like he was seeing me—actually seeing me—for the first time since the rift opened.

**[SYSTEM: Combat Application Confirmed - Enhanced Agility Efficiency Increased: 10% → 13%]**

**[Marksmanship Efficiency Increased: 14% → 17%]**

**[Note: Host has now saved the life of an antagonist. Recommend evaluating whether this was strategically necessary or simply a character flaw.]**

"Little of both," I muttered, breathing hard. Still straddling the space between Bo Hai and the smoking mutant corpse.

Bo Hai scrambled backward. Iron Skin plates retracted as the adrenaline drained. For once, no smirk anywhere on his face.

"You—" His voice cracked. "You just saved my life."

"Don't read too much into it." I stood, offering a hand he didn't take. "Mostly I just didn't want to explain to Commander Osei why I let you die on an unauthorized scouting trip."

Han Xue crossed the alley at an unhurried pace. Sheathed her knife. Looked at the mutant corpse, then at me, with an expression that had fully abandoned its earlier flatness.

"Two Talent slots active." She shook her head, almost to herself. "One from a corpse. One from a live mutant mid-combat. Both improving under pressure in real time." A pause. "Command was right to worry about wasted potential. They just picked the wrong direction to worry in."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning..." Han Xue's mouth curved—the first genuine smile I'd seen from her. "You just became valuable, Zhang Wei. And people in this new world do very inconvenient things to protect valuable assets."

Behind her, Bo Hai was still staring at me on the ground.

Past the fear, past the humiliation, something else was surfacing in his expression.

Calculation.

I filed that away next to the growing pile of things about this new world that made my skin crawl.

**[SYSTEM: Host Status Update]**

**[Slots: 2/3 Occupied]**

**[Marksmanship: 17% ↑]**

**[Enhanced Agility: 13% ↑]**

**[Warning: Faction tensions escalating. Recommend Host maintain strategic ambiguity regarding Talent limitations.]**

We walked back to the shelter in silence. Han Xue on point. Mei watching our six. Me somewhere in between, replaying the fight in my head, feeling the new efficiency settling into my muscles like something that might actually keep me alive.

Behind us, the ruined city hummed with the low, wrong vibration of the rifts.

Ahead, the shelter gates opened to admit us—and Commander Osei was already waiting.

---

## End of Chapter 2