The estate was old enough to avoid the garish 1960s concrete look of most of the council housing in London. With huge cream brick walls in a

The estate was old enough to avoid the garish 1960s concrete look of most of the council housing in London. With huge cream brick walls in a Regency style and a spattering of trees, it had never caught Tanya's attention much. It was pretty enough she'd never scowled at it, but nothing special. Tanya had been past it dozens of times, normally on the way to Victoria Park, where she'd go to draw when she felt art block. However, there was nothing like the apocalypse to turn a normal midweek walk into a spectacle.

Tanya couldn't help but crane her neck to look absolutely everywhere. The adrenaline and thrill of being outside of the wards was coursing through her, and now that Adam was safe, she let herself revel in it slightly. Each new pileup of cars and graffiti tag was worth studying, and at this pace, she had plenty of time.

There weren't any bodies, she noticed.

Someone around here's been cleanin' 'em up.

Adam's breath was becoming more and more of a pant.

"You okay there?" Tanya asked.

He nodded, not bothering to speak.

They rounded the last corner, and Tanya saw the entrance for the first time. A wizened man sat by the entrance, polishing a bowling ball. In front of the block, a teen with light brown dreadlocks zipped along the pavement on a skateboard, doing tricks off the kerb.

The plant beds were the same as Tanya's area, greenery and flowers dwarfed by huge black monstrosities. Also like Tanya's, the buds had been clipped off.

As soon as the man spotted them, he ran towards them. Tanya braced herself.

I hope they don't mind strangers…

But his expression was one of care.

"Adam, my boy, what's all this bother?" he said, placing a hand on Adam's back. His moustache completely covered his mouth, vibrating like a cartoon character whenever he talked.

"Fought with mum," Adam strained to say. "Found monster."

"Oh dearie me, that's unfortunate."

Skateboard boy looped round to meet them and skidded to a halt. "You look like you've been shredded bruv, an' not in a good way."

Tanya hid her snort.

"Astute, Jamahl," quipped the bowling ball man. He was still lugging it around in his other hand. "Could you go fetch Lilian. Tell her to meet us in the Common Area."

Jamahal sped away. Tanya expected him to disembark to go inside the property, but he simply kick flipped up the front step and continued inside.

"And you are?" the man asked, not unkindly.

She dithered on wording. "Uh, Tanya. A friend of a friend."

"Well, a friend of a friend of Adam's is a friend of a friend of a friend of mine," he replied, placing his bowling ball into a bag over his shoulder. "I'm Clyde, head of the Residents Association."

He reached around Adam's front to shake her hand.

Inside, there were a couple of older ladies sitting at a table. They were both knitting. It took Tanya a moment to realise one had her hands in her lap, not touching the knitting needles at all.

"Oh, Adam!" cried the telekinetic knitter, her needles clattering to the table.

"That's a nasty cut!" added the other.

They both sped over, cooing over him like long-lost aunts.

That very quickly became a pattern. Each person they met would want to check on him, or ask about the monster for sending out a patrol, or ask thinly veiled interview questions about Tanya's reason for being there. She lost track of the names and faces.

"Don't crowd the boy!" Clyde said for the third time, ushering him through.

"There are so many of you," Tanya said, surprised and overwhelmed. This was more people than she'd seen since the apocalypse started.

"One entrance," Clyde replied, as if that explained everything.

"One entrance?"

Clyde nodded. "Most of Jamahl's group got Classes early, defending the front door. Since our higher-floor fire escape stairs broke, it's been our only entrance. We'd been petitioning to get it fixed, but, well, one of life's great miracles kept it broken."

They entered a first-floor flat that had been laid out as a common area. A large window to the right had some chairs lined up before it. The left wall was covered in bookshelves with 'take one, leave one' signs, and a few fold-out tables and chairs filled the rest of the floor space. It had the vibe of a town hall. Further into the flat, Tanya could see the bedroom had been repurposed into a game room with a pool table visible through the doorway, and another door, which she expected led to a bathroom.

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Clyde ushered Adam into one of the chairs in front of the window.

A new wave of citizens came over with the same concerned expressions.

"Taking over the common room folk!" Clyde exclaimed. "Yes, Lilian is coming. No, we don't need more hands on deck. Please clear the room!"

Tanya ushered them out of the room with a polite smile whilst Clyde helped Adam lift his leg onto a fold-out chair beside him.

Clyde continued his previous thought. "Many of the other blocks around here have three or even four entrances. They weren't so lucky."

Tanya's eyes were already locked onto the bathroom. "Should I get water? A cloth?"

Clyde shook his head. "Lilian will sort all that."

Tanya stood for another minute, but no one came in, so she sat beside Adam instead. Adam leaned his head against the windowsill, one hand grasping the back of the chair to steady himself at the strange angle he needed to keep his leg propped up.

A few more minutes passed. Tanya just studied the room until she was confident she could have painted it. The books were the most interesting; everything from the cringey romantic 'Alice's May's Tangled Web' books she'd been reading before the apocalypse to children's picture books. She was most fascinated by a series called 'A Poem for Every Minute' which filled an entire shelf.

"Our healing numbers are rather lacking," Clyde apologised.

"Oh?" Tanya asked. "But with so many people here…?"

"We didn't often need to attempt to heal people with our method," Clyde began, staring off into the distance like he was telling an old war story. "The idea was by a man from the 4th floor who had been in the military. The bottom floor was mostly sharp items on broom handles, with a few of our fittest as scouts on the ground. A couple of floors above were ranged weapons, and then even higher up still, we had droppers."

"Like Marjorie?" Tanya asked.

"Exactly. She was the first to get her Class here doing it."

Adam had sat up now, listening to the retelling.

Tanya crossed her legs, getting as comfortable as she could on the plastic seats. "What sort of Classes do those make?"

"Pierce Guard is our most common. The bottom floor got some Shank Adepts and Splinter Monks too."

Tanya was enthralled. This was more Class names than she'd heard in a long time.

"Higher up we got mostly Gravity Brawlers and Balcony Bombers," Clyde continued.

Tanya leant forward. "And the guy who came up with all this?"

"Warlord," Clyde replied. "Those directly under him—a couple of other military guys or those with a knack for the planning—they got Commandwright or Formation Architect."

"Woah," Tanya breathed. "So what do you both do in all this?"

"I got my Class before this started," Adam croaked. "So I mostly did that. I dropped things with mum sometimes."

Clyde poured Adam a glass of water from a jug on the table. "Ah, that's a fun story actually. I was a dropper, but I never got my Class doing it." He poured a glass of water for himself and Tanya too.

"Thanks." She took a sip, but the moment the water hit her throat, she gulped it in two.

"We'd prepared everything for monsters on the ground," Clyde said. His eyes lit up, and he gesticulated until Tanya could almost see it. "It was all about the long game. Slow and steady on the bottom floor, swapping people out if they got tired or injured. On the higher levels, you'd have three or four alternating what they'd drop, and it was mostly older kids hunting through flats for what could be dropped…" he shook his head. "So many arguments about heirlooms."

"And after dropping?" Tanya prompted, curiosity peaking.

Clyde held up a finger. "Aha, I never said I stopped dropping. I just didn't get my Class doing it. You see, the thing with this plan was, it was only ever built for monsters on the ground."

"Fucking hell, some of them fly?" Tanya asked. She shivered from the top of her spine down.

"You've never seen one? Nasty buggers. Their only saving grace is that they seem to be solo fighters."

"Like the kangaroo one that got me," Adam said between sips.

Clyde tsked, shaking his head at the description. "Nasty buggers," he said again.

"So this flying one?" Tanya said.

"It came out of nowhere whilst I was dropping, and it was trying to get in. We had all of Mrs Green's kids in here—we know better now, of course—but we gave dropping to a lot of single mothers because they could bring their kids, thinking it was safe up there." He took a deep breath. "So this bird monster is trying to get in, and all I can use is what's in my hands, which at that point is one of my bowling balls. I'd finally given in and donated them to the effort. So I just throw it."

Tanya couldn't help herself. "And?"

Clyde grinned. "Bowler."

"You're shittin' me!"

He shook his head. "Managed to take its head clean off in one shot. It hit the ground so fast it splashed the building."

"Telling that bird story again, Clyde?" a woman asked from the doorway.

Clyde sighed happily. "It never gets old."

The lady snorted. "To you, maybe."

She appeared to be in her forties or fifties, with dark blonde hair in a long bob. Most of the blonde was dyed highlights, Tanya could tell because of the mixture of brown and grey roots growing through. She was very normal looking—the kind of woman Tanya wouldn't have looked twice at out on the street before all this.

The lady saw Tanya looking. "Lilian," she held out a hand to shake. "I was a nurse before all this. Someone got infected with that darned black goop stuff, and working out how to disinfect them got me Otherworldly Physician."

"One case and you manage to skip all of medical school," Clyde joked.

"Wish I could shove it in my old science teacher's face, that's for sure," Lilian sighed. She must have seen the confusion on Tanya's face because she then added, "One of those women shouldn't be doctor types."

"Oh," Tanya said. She'd forgotten that even used to be a thing.

"Now, Adam, let's have a look here," Lilian said, crouching next to his leg. Her eyes shimmered with gold as she looked, reminding Tanya of some sort of medical droid. "Very recent. Good. That makes my job easier."

Lilian hovered her hands over Adam's leg, and the golden sheen returned to her eyes. Unlike Adam's, it didn't take away her iris or pupil, just colour it all like through tinted glasses. Bit by bit, the black sludge from the monster changed into a thick, honey-like substance.

"This bit might hurt slightly. It'll be over quickly," she said.

Lilian then pulled on gloves from her pocket and manoeuvred it around whilst it seemed to set. By the end, it looked like solid amber. Satisfied, Lilian sighed, flopping backwards to sit on the green carpet and wiping her brow.

Tanya waited to speak until afterwards, in case distraction would mess it up. "What in the world just happened?"

"Purify," Lilian declared, pulling her gloves off. "It allows me to change that monster muck into a substance that seems like a more potent aloe vera kind of thing."

"What does it do?" Tanya asked, already wondering if she could reproduce it with a tattoo.

"Speeds up healing—I see that look in your eye, and it's nothing crazy though. My current theory is maybe 20% faster."

Tanya noticed Lilian wobble slightly as she stood. "Heavy on Attributes too?"

Lilian laughed. "Very. I barely get through two simple healings a day."

Tanya's mind was racing, already working out how she could help her.

"What Attribute—and what level are you?"

Lilian looked hopeful. "Are you a healer?"

"Sorry, no. I'm a Tattoo Summoner, but I think maybe I could help."

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