John teleported the three of them back into the messy hospital room Claire had been holed up in. There, with reluctance plain on his face, Curtis told their story.

"We were here for a checkup for Claire," he said grimly. "Leukemia."

They'd been right in the middle of an appointment when the sky had caught fire, and screams had risen in the distance. The monsters hadn't immediately swarmed the hospital, leaving enough time for people to wonder what was going on and for panic to set in as their systems started appearing. Scared people were stupid people, and small conflicts escalated, until the slaughter had taken place as Curtis had previously described it.

"Do you think I enjoyed that?" Curtis asked him with haunted eyes. "I was a normal fucking guy. A single father and a goddamn plumber. I hadn't been in a fight since I was fifteen before that went down."

Needless to say, the scene Curtis left behind after his half-mad rampage hadn't endeared him to those few others who'd also survived. Things had gotten worse, and Curtis, in his own words, had prioritised his survival and the survival of his daughter.

"Anyone who attacked me, I put down," he growled.

The monsters had arrived not five minutes after the fighting in the hospital had finally died down, and Curtis had not been prepared for that. They'd swarmed through, and, at that time, he hadn't possessed the ability to simply fly over them, or the strength to outrun the swarm.

Curtis choked on his words, unable to explain what happened next. But seeing Claire's sad expression as she cowered next to Curtis' sarcophagus, John understood.

"My system is all about rage," Curtis said, voice hollow. "Anger's always been the worst part of me. Got it from my own father, and he got it from my grandfather, to hear him tell it. All the bad things that have happened to me in my life can be traced back to losing my temper. I've lost jobs, friends, relationships." He swallowed, glanced at Claire, then lowered his eyes in shame. "So I was trying to be better. To be there for my daughter when she needed me most… And I failed." He looked at John, then, and the fire in his eyes rekindled. "I thought I'd lost everything, so I let the anger take me. I killed people. I killed a lot of people. I'm not going to pretend I was doing it with any kind of righteous goal in mind, I was just taking out my fury on the world. I didn't think anything of the little counter in the corner of my vision until it hit 100, and I got a new menu."

John arched an eyebrow at that revelation. If the counter was the same one as he'd gotten for slaying the portal eyes and absorbing their many, many souls, why hadn't he received a new menu of some kind? Was it because he hadn't killed those people and harvested 100 souls himself?

Or was this a case of the system dangling someone's deepest wish in front of their nose to lead them to a desired outcome?

Curtis continued, "There were options it presented. The points you get for killing people can be spent, just like the Rage points, or whatever yours are."

John ignored the implied question.

"One of them, at 500 points, was Revive."

There was a moment of silence. "Ah," John managed to say, quite eloquently given the circumstances. "So you killed five hundred people."

"I had to," Curtis said.

He didn't elaborate on how he'd done it, and John didn't ask him to. The apocalypse had only been going on for about four days, and Curtis must have got his daughter back in even less time than that. Killing 5000 people in that time was utter insanity, and John found he had no interest in learning the details of what lengths this man had gone to. Part of him understood, in theory, going so far for the sake of getting his daughter back.

Most of him just wanted to put his fist right through Curtis' skull.

Five. Hundred. People. Fucking hell.

"I can see the anger in your eyes," Curtis said mildly. "If there's one thing I can recognise, it's anger. And I don't blame you. Just know this: I'm not the worst person in town by a long shot. After I got more of a concrete goal and started caring about my own survival again, I mostly kept to the outskirts, moving around Bushey, South Oxhey, Holywell, Croxley Green, and Rickmansworth. There's people in the town centre who make the shit I did look tame, I promise you, and they've been going at it all this time."

"And I'll deal with them too," John said stiffly. "But you're first on the chopping block, and I'm struggling to see how I can possibly justify releasing you. Just because you're not the worst, doesn't mean you're not still a piece of shit."

"Any father would've done the same," Curtis said with unshakeable conviction.

He went on to explain how the system had followed through on its promise. When he had five hundred souls ready, the Revive was as easy as unlocking any other option from his menus. There'd been no fanfare, no elaborate Spell working. Claire had just appeared before him in a flash of light, no different than she had been the moment before the first insect sunk its pincers into her.

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Unfortunately, the cancer was still there. The girl had already died once due to the weakness her illness inflicted on her body rendering her unable to escape in time, and upon her return she didn't even have a system to offset that. She'd never even gotten the chance to figure out what her system had been based on. John had some guesses, but he possessed enough tact to know voicing them wouldn't be a good idea.

Regardless, though Curtis had gotten what he wished for more than anything, he now had a dependant to protect, and determination filled him.

"I'll do whatever it takes," Curtis said with conviction. "I'll protect her. Make sure she survives all this. Somewhere out there, there has to be some bastard who hates people so much that healing them would cause them as much mental anguish as having to deliberately lose my temper does for me. I'll find them, and I'll get them to heal Claire."

"And along the way, you'll get as strong as you need to protect her, no matter who else's lives you have to ruin, and even end, to do it," John finished for him.

Curtis' face twitched in a nod, the sarcophagus still restricting his movements.

John closed his eyes and sighed. "You remember you're meant to be convincing me to spare you, right? Telling me you're willing to be completely ruthless and run roughshod over anyone else isn't exactly helping your case."

"I think I have you figured out, kid. You're desperately searching for an excuse to spare me, becuase you'd feel awful if you left Claire all alone without me. You'd feel obligated to take care of her yourself, I reckon, but you really don't want to do that."

John grimaced. He wasn't wrong. Executing a man, murderer or not, with his daughter right there seemed beyond the pale. Especially since he'd then be asking the girl to travel with his group for her protection, since to do otherwise would be condemning her to death too. She didn't deserve to pay for the sins of her father.

"Pretty sure you're not from Watford, either. Definitely weren't here when this bullshit all started, at least, or you wouldn't have needed to ask me half the shit you have." Curtis paused, frowning. "What's it like out there, outside town? More of the same?"

"Not exactly," John said.

He gave an abridged version of what he'd been through, and how things were generally working out in London, where things were geared much more towards PvE than PvP. Watford was almost certainly not the only place where people fought each other, but at this time it was the only place he knew where the system and monsters were working together to specifically encourage it.

"Fact of the matter is," John concluded eventually, "you didn't need to kill people to make yourself strong enough to protect her. Look at me. I've been exclusively killing monsters to level up, and I beat your arse like a drum. It was hardly even a challenge."

"You said it yourself, though," Curtis said through gritted teeth. "The system is encouraging it, here. I haven't left the Greater Watford area since this all started. How was I meant to know things would be different elsewhere?"

"There's literally dozens of portals in town you could have used to level up."

"And leave Claire alone for hours, never knowing when the monsters are going to come through?"

"You could have—"

"Enough of this shit! I did what I did. It's done. I know it was horrible, and in a just world I'd be given a thousand death sentences for it. It'll haunt my dreams for as long as I live. But I'd do it a thousand more times for her."

A few heartbeats of silence passed. "Again, it really feels like you're not understanding the assignment," John said wryly. "You're meant to be convincing me, Curtis."

"Of what? We both know you're not going to kill me."

"And now you're getting really close to triggering my contrarian side. Are you actually trying to get me to kill you? Do you think you deserve to die after all as some kind of atonement, and this is a weird, roundabout way of seeing it happen?"

Curtis gave him a blank expression. "I don't think you have it in you. Not like this. It takes a lot to kill another human being, stranger. Right now, you're disgusted by me, you're full of righteous indignation at my actions, but you're in control. You're thinking rationally. Only the most cold-blooded bastards can kill a man in that state, and that's not you."

"So really you're just gambling with your life."

Curtis said nothing.

Heaving a great sigh, John crossed over to the window. The burning sky was a constant growl in the background, leaving the world without even a moment's peace and quiet. It was hard to think straight with that noise. Maybe that was the point. Another psychological trick to nudge the survivors of Earth into making more entertaining decisions.

Bastards, he thought, glaring at nothing.

Could he really condemn someone who had so blatantly been manipulated into his horrendous deeds? The man couldn't be absolved of all blame, not by any stretch of the imagination, but the fact remained that he'd been set up by a system that specifically wanted him to kill, giving him a motivation and goal that few people would have been able to turn away from. No doubt, there were thousands of people out there right now with similar stories playing out, all around the world.

At the same time, he also had to acknowledge that the man was dangerous, and it seemed like he would shamelessly continue to be. He couldn't see any way to extract a genuine guarantee that Curtis would take no more lives.

But he's right. I don't want to kill him. I don't want to have to take over care of his daughter, who'll absolutely no doubt hate me for it. When I decided to come to Watford, I told myself I was prepared to have to take a life, if it was in defence of any innocents still lingering here from the murderers rampaging around.

And now here's a murderer and an innocent.

John didn't know what to do. He wished Doug and the others were here so he could fade into the background while they discussed the moral implications and practicalities in depth. He wished this decision was on someone else's hands. He wished a decision like this didn't need to be made at all.

Luckily, it seemed something or someone out there was inclined to answer his prayers and give him an excuse to delay the decision a little longer, if in a rather roundabout manner. When he saw a group of five armoured people turn the corner at the entrance to the hospital's grounds, he wondered if the system had nudged this outcome into being.

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