Chương 17: Parts of It

Cecilia slept three hours. Woke in the chair in her office. Still dressed. Dario had left a glass of water on the desk and a bottle of aspirin next to it. She took two, drank the water, and washed her face in the basin. She was the last to come downstairs. The lobby had changed again overnight. The folding table was gone. A new set of military cots had been arranged in rows, blankets folded. The shelter population had thinned—some had left, others had been integrated.

The ones who remained sat quietly in the shade of the marble staircase. They stood when they saw her. She nodded once and went on. The dining room was in session. Ruggiero sat at the head of the table with a coffee in front of him and a new bandage on his forearm. Bianca was on his right, reviewing a short list of intel reports Matteo had left behind. Dario sat on the left side near the window, looking bored and amused, which was his default state when there was work to be done but not immediately in front of him.

Cecilia went to the sideboard and poured herself a cup of coffee.

"How are they?" she asked, glancing toward the hall.

"Stable," Bianca said without looking up.

"Iris is handling them well. The Conti girl, Giulia, has already started asking about tools. The Ferreros are keeping to themselves, but they're cooperating."

"And Luca?"

"In the office next to Matteo's." Bianca turned a page.

"He's been reviewing all the night's data since 0600. He asked for more paper at 0730." Cecilia sipped her coffee. It was good, stronger than usual. Someone had adjusted the grinder. She looked at Dario. He smiled.

"What?"

"Thank you for the aspirin."

"Your health is one of our chief concerns."

"I'm sure." She took a chair opposite Ruggiero.

"What's the situation on the streets?" Ruggiero leaned forward.

"Quiet. The military is pulling back the visible patrols, trying to regroup. The ones who stayed out all night seem to have taken heavy losses. I've had two reports of units being overrun. The police are barely responding to calls. Civilians are either sheltering or moving in groups. No signs of the other group since last night." Cecilia nodded.

"And the creatures?"

"Fewer sightings since dawn," Ruggiero said.

"The night aggression seems to have stopped. For now."

"Until the next scenario," Dario said.

"I wonder what it'll be." Bianca glanced at him.

"Let me know when you've decided to wonder usefully."

"I could be the team bard," he said, unbothered.

"Morale is important."

"I'll beat it out of people," Bianca said.

"More effective." Cecilia let them argue. It was how they functioned. She looked at the list of reports on the table. Updates on known players, resource counts, building integrity reports. The organization was coming together in front of her.

"I want to go out today," she said. Ruggiero set his cup down.

"We should wait. Reconsolidate. Plan the next step."

"We can plan while we move," Cecilia said.

"The city is quiet now. The competition is doing the same thing we are: assessing the damage, gathering strength. I want to expand our search radius before they do."

"You want to take territory," Bianca said.

"First, I want to know what's in it," Cecilia replied.

"Then we'll decide what to hold. But yes, eventually. The System gave us Reputation as a reward for a reason. We need to decide how to use it."

"What about the cops?" Dario asked.

"Let them recover," Cecilia said.

"We're not their problem until we have to be. The police won't matter to anyone who can actually leverage the System."

"You talking about that NPC thing?" Dario leaned forward, interested now.

"That's a hell of a tactical advantage, if it holds." She spotted Luca coming down the hallway from the office suite.

"Let's ask our specialist." Luca stopped in the doorway, blinking at the room. Cecilia waved him in. He came to stand near the sideboard, shifting his weight like he wasn't certain he was allowed to sit.

"What you told us last night about NPC status," she said.

"The mechanical implications. Walk the room through it." Luca swallowed.

"Um, right. If the System is treating most of the population as NPCs, and if that includes military and police who ignored the registration window, then it means they're working with an invisible debuff. In game design, NPCs operate on a separate mechanical layer from player characters. Different rules. The implication, what I think the evidence suggests, is that the damage registers are different."

"Meaning?" Dario asked.

"Meaning an NPC's physical output lands at a different scale than a Player's. The same force that would seriously harm one entity produces a fraction of that effect against another."

"We saw it happen," Cecilia said.

"Police rounds hitting a creature and barely registering. Our rounds dropping it in a few shots. Explain that to them."

"It's like damage resistances or reduction built into the NPC tag. Maybe not for everything, but for interactions between System entities and non-System participants. Which includes anyone the System classifies as an NPC."

"So now we need to know two things. One, does it apply to every weapon? Two, is there any way around it?" Luca looked briefly relieved to be on firm ground.

"We can test both. The System's combat rules are probably tied to the source of the effect, not the target. A Player's shot, whether from a pistol, rifle, or even a thrown rock, lands with full mechanical weight. An NPC's shots don't."

"Even if the weapons are identical?" Ruggiero asked, his voice a low rumble.

"Yes."

"What about explosives?"

"Probably the same. The System is likely reading the attacker's status when resolving the effect." Luca paused.

"But I don't have a controlled comparison. Everything so far is observational. I need to verify it."

"We already have the monster corpse," Dario pointed out.

"Take a gun off the wall, shoot the body."

"What about a person?" Bianca asked. Luca paled slightly.

"That's a harder test. Ethically, it would require a volunteer." Cecilia pushed her coffee away.

"I'll handle that." The room went quiet. They'd seen her do this kind of thing before. They didn't like it any more now than they had the last time. Gonzaga came in with the wariness of a man who understood that being summoned by name meant he was either in trouble or about to be asked to do something difficult. He looked at Cecilia, then at the others, and settled into a careful stance near the table.

"Sidearm," she said.

"You have it?" He touched his hip.

"Yes, boss."

"Good." She looked at him for a moment.

"Gonzaga, when the class window closed, did you register?" A beat.

"No. I didn't know what to pick."

"That's what I thought." She stood and moved her chair three paces into the open space near the window.

"I want to start with your knife. Then the sidearm." His brows drew together.

"What's the target?" She sat in the chair again.

"Me." He didn't move. She watched him put it together. The slow dawning realization that he was being asked to attack her.

"Cecilia," Ruggiero said. He kept his voice even. She ignored it. Gonzaga swallowed.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea, boss."

"No," Cecilia agreed.

"I don't think it is. But you've always done your job well, and I want to confirm something before the next scenario. So you'll do what I'm asking." He stared at her another second, then nodded once and reached into his jacket. He drew his knife from a hidden sheath. A solid utility blade, serrated spine, a grip that wouldn't slip with blood on it. Bianca stepped closer. Dario folded his arms, watching carefully. Cecilia stayed still, her hands on the chair.

"I need you to actually mean it. Draw the blade and try to cut me. Upper arm. If this works the way I think it does, the damage won't be serious. If I'm wrong, the doctor is one floor up." She held his gaze.

"Can you do that?" He hesitated, then rolled his shoulders and raised the blade.

"You trust me enough to let me take that swing?" Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Yes." That seemed to be the tipping point for him. Whatever he'd needed to hear. Whatever he had to convince himself of. He crossed the distance and drew the blade across the outside of her upper arm in a clean slash. She flinched as it hit. But there was no tearing sound. No hot rush of blood. The blade had landed with barely more force than the tap of a finger. Her sleeve was cut. Her coat had been sliced through. But she'd felt pressure, not pain, like someone had pushed on her with the palm of their hand.

There was a white line on the skin, no bleeding. Gonzaga stared at his blade as if it had betrayed him.

"What the fuck?"

"Again," she said.

"Harder." Gonzaga set his jaw and drew the blade back across the same line, properly this time, like he intended to open her up to the bone. Again, the impact was soft, almost dull. It didn't break the skin. Cecilia looked at the two parallel cuts in her sleeve and nodded once.

"Alright. Now the pistol."

"Boss," Ruggiero said.

"That's enough."

"Once more," she said to Gonzaga.

"Shoot my leg. Center mass if you have to." Gonzaga's face had gone pale. He shifted his grip on the knife, then lowered it slowly.

"I'll use the leg. If this doesn't work... I don't want to be the one who killed you." He took out the sidearm. A Beretta, well-kept. Matteo had bought those for the senior guards after they had problems with a rival crew a few years back. It was a good gun. Reliable. Gonzaga racked a round into the chamber. He stepped back six paces and aimed at Cecilia's right thigh. She didn't flinch this time. He pulled the trigger. The crack of the shot rang through the room. She heard something skid off the floor behind her.

There was pressure against her leg, but no explosion, no tearing. A flat shock that traveled from impact point up to her hip resonated there for a moment, then faded. No pain. No blood. Ruggiero was already on his feet, moving toward her before she had time to acknowledge the shot. Bianca's hand had gone to her blade, her eyes cutting between Gonzaga and the door. Luca looked like he was trying to become one with the sideboard. Cecilia held up a hand to stop them.

"I'm fine." Ruggiero crouched in front of her, his eyes moving over her leg and the floor, checking for injury.

"Rug," she said, "I'm fine." She looked down. The bullet had punched through her trousers and stopped. A perfect circle in the black fabric. No mark on her skin except a pink oval where the round had pushed against her thigh. She tapped it and felt the slight ache of a bruise forming. Gonzaga let out a long breath and lowered the gun. Luca spoke from the corner, his voice almost breaking.

"I think we can call that conclusive." The rest of the morning passed in preparation. Cecilia changed into an undamaged jacket, the one she'd taken the shot still hanging in her room, and met with the senior team in the office. Ruggiero and Bianca were in the middle. Matteo standing at the window with his hands behind his back. Dario near the door.

"It's confirmed," Cecilia said.

"Anyone who didn't register before the deadline is now significantly less effective in combat. That means the military can't help us. The police can't help us. The average citizen can't defend themselves, and they won't realize why. This changes the power dynamic entirely. Turin belongs to the Players."

"Not just us, though," Dario said.

"Other crews figured it out too. There could be a dozen small gangs right now deciding they can take whatever they want."

"The military and police have enough ammunition and firearm to even things out somewhat," Cecilia said.

"But you're right. The key will be the concentration of Players. The more we gather, the stronger our edge."

"If people find out they're less capable because they didn't pick a class, panic will spread fast," Matteo said.

"Once trust collapses, the whole city becomes unstable. We'll have riots on top of the creatures."

"Let it burn," Ruggiero rumbled.

"People who aren't useful don't deserve to be protected. The city won't die because we didn't coddle the weak. It'll die because the wrong people were making the calls." Dario smiled at that, but Cecilia knew better.

"That's a quick path to being alone at the end," she said.

"We protect who we can. We control who we need. The rest can choose which side they prefer." Matteo nodded.

"That's the practical balance."

"Speaking of which," she said, looking at Ruggiero and Bianca.

"Gear up. We're heading out in twenty. Dario and Matteo stay here and keep operations running." They went out in three vehicles. Two armed vans and Cecilia's car, with Bernardo at the wheel. The streets were quiet, but not deserted. Civilians moved in small groups, keeping to the shade and the buildings. They stared at the vans as they passed. Some of the staring was fearful. Some of it was curious.

Most of it was the same hollow look people had on day three of any crisis—the grim expectation that something had gone permanently wrong and was going to keep getting worse before it got better. Cecilia was fine with all of it. Fear made people pliable. Curiosity made them predictable. Resignation meant they wouldn't fight when the fences went up. They left the Quadrilatero and turned west toward Corso Francia. The street had the bones of money in it.

The facades were clean, the ironwork on the balconies still polished from when people cared about appearances. It was a part of town the Leonellis didn't control outright, but where they had influence. Influence was enough. The military position was in the center of a wide avenue, just before the underpass. Two armored vehicles sat abandoned in the middle of the road, doors open, engines dead.

Bullet holes marked the front and sides, clustered in patterns that said the creatures had come at them fast and from angles the soldiers hadn't expected. Cecilia got out of the car and walked toward the nearest vehicle. Bianca and Ruggiero followed, two paces behind, keeping sightlines clear. Behind them, the rest of the team remained alert by the vans. There was blood on the asphalt, old enough to have gone dark brown. No bodies. Someone had removed them, or the creatures had taken them.

Neither possibility was encouraging. She peered into the cabin of the first vehicle. Empty. The radios were dead. A map of Turin was spread across the dash, marked in grease pencil. Notations about safe routes, fallback positions. She reached in and took the map. Back in the car, she studied it while Ruggiero and Bianca cleared the area. The military had been trying to hold a central location, then retreating under pressure.

Their map was a mix of solid intelligence and guesswork, a little like Matteo's notes the morning before, but sloppier. They hadn't understood how the creatures worked. Their safe zones had failed. She turned the radio channel and called to the head van.

"Nino. Take four people, secure the north side buildings. Keep weapons low. Find whoever took the bodies if you can. Call in before you escalate." A short crackle.

"Copy." She switched to the second channel.

"Bianca, roof positions. Quick sweep. We stay alert until we know what's left here."

"On it." Cecilia waited in the car, the map across her knees. Ten minutes later, Bianca called back.

"Roofs are clear. Civilians in the windows, watching. No threats." Cecilia got out again and walked to Ruggiero. He stood by the back of the armored vehicle, watching the underpass.

"Anything?"

"No. Whatever hit them left."

"And didn't stay to eat the soldiers." He glanced at her.

"Your point?"

"These creatures hunt. When the fight is done, they're gone. They don't scavenge. That's not an instinctive behavior."

"You're saying they're intelligent."

"Enough to have tactics," she said.

"Or to act like they do." Ruggiero considered that.

"Then we can't expect them to behave like animals."

"No."

"And we don't know how many are still in the city."

"No." He shook his head once.

"I'm going to enjoy killing them." Cecilia didn't smile, but she was tempted.

"Salvage as much as we can. Everything we bring back is equipment we don't have to make. We'll bring the vehicles back later."

"I'll handle it." Nino came out from a building to the north with a handful of people behind him. Three men, one woman. None of them looked like they'd had a good day.

"Boss," Nino said.

"They want to talk to you." Cecilia turned. The first man stepped forward. Mid-thirties, brown skin, short beard, dressed in the tattered remains of a security uniform. The name tag said Boris. He looked at her with the steady exhaustion of someone too tired to be afraid.

"I'm the supervisor for this block," Boris said.

"The military left yesterday. Said there was a new safe zone north of the city. Then those... things came. Some of my people ran. Some tried to fight. I took the ones who stayed down here."

"Down where?" Cecilia asked. Boris gestured toward a smaller building half a block over, a storefront converted into apartments.

"The basement. The manager there had the only door with a heavy lock." Cecilia looked at the building. It wasn't what she would have chosen, but it had been good enough for one night.

"Do you have food?"

"Enough for today. The manager had stockpiled supplies."

"And water?"

"A few days' worth. But we're not the only ones down there. There are families. Civilians." She looked at him. He was military, or close enough to have learned the habits of it. He'd kept his people alive, which made him useful. And the fact that he'd kept them in one place was even better. She could move an organized block of civilians. She couldn't move scattered refugees.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Paride Boris. I used to be with the Polizia." He glanced toward the dead vehicles.

"Obviously, I'm not anymore."

"Obviously." She stepped closer.

"Well, Paride, my name is Cecilia Leonelli. I'm offering protection in exchange for cooperation. If you and your people want to live under my rules, you'll have food, water, and shelter. If not, I'll wish you good luck." He stared at her, then his eyes flicked to the two vans, and the guns he could see, and then back to her. She watched his mind move through the situation. He hadn't been stupid enough to die the night before. He wouldn't be stupid now. His jaw tightened, but his eyes didn't shift away from hers.

"I've heard about you."

"Of course you have."

"Is it true what they say?"

"That depends on what they said." He hesitated.

"That you took out the Angelis last year."

"Yes."

"And the Morellos."

"Yes."

"That you run the Quadrilatero now."

"Yes." She waited.

"Is there a problem?" He looked around at the ruined street. At the bloodstains. At the lack of anything resembling authority beyond her own people.

"No problem, signorina."

"Call me Miss Leonelli. The other titles get heavy." He almost smiled. A good sign.

"What are your terms?" She laid it out.

"Everyone moves to one of my properties before sundown. You report to my officers. You carry no weapons unless I give you permission. You follow orders without delay. If any of you violate any of this, the penalties are... consistent." She kept her eyes on his face.

"I'm not the government. I don't need to keep voting blocks happy." He took it without flinching.

"And in exchange?"

"Your families eat. They sleep in beds. If there's a problem, someone like me will handle it. When things become stable, I may offer other arrangements, but those come later. Normalcy is what we build, not what we start with. Is that acceptable?" It was a long speech for her. Usually she left those things to Matteo. But people were easier to read face to face than through intermediaries. Boris had the look of someone who needed to see her in person. He thought about it.

Behind him, the woman with the others was watching her too, pale under her hair. One of the men whispered something, and she elbowed him without taking her eyes off Cecilia. Finally, Boris nodded.

"I'll talk to the others. They'll want time to think. But I'm in. I saw what happens to people on the streets."

"That's wise." She turned back to the cars.

"My men will escort you to the transfer point. When your people are ready, we'll bring them in." She paused.

"And Paride—" He looked at her.

"You may have been a policeman once. You're with the Leonelli family now. Make sure the people coming with you understand that."

"I'll tell them." He didn't sound thrilled. That was fine. Enthusiasm was rare and untrustworthy. She'd rather have obedience.