We all sat at the kitchen table while the little zombie girl Elsa sat on the side playing with a toy truck. If you didn’t look too close, you would never assume she was a zombie. The delicious food placed on the table had me shocked again by my luck. Who would have guessed Melissa’s mom could throw down three gourmet meals every single day?

“Before we start. I’d just like to thank Akiko again for preparing breakfast for all of us. I know it must be hard to make food for so many people and would like to acknowledge her effort.” I got a few half-hearted thanks as Vicky mumbled to herself. “It’s my food she’s using, but whatever…” I start pulling out a few of the cores. “These are zombie cores, pulled out of a zombie's head. It seems like it can jumpstart when you gain your power.”

I rolled one over to Melissa. She goes to pick it up and freezes after touching it. Her power was one of the strongest, it took her almost a year after the apocalypse started for her to gain hers. It was thought that the time it took determined the power, or at least showed that the power was of a higher quality than the ones earned earlier. As someone with a power gained near the very beginning, I could attest to that fact. Storage, by itself, was a very weak power.

She possibly had the biggest shift to her appearance of everyone else who changed. She was a little on the chubby side still, but just by touching the core, it looked like she had lost some weight. Ellen(red-headed plant controller) was still bedridden. The biggest difference was that it would have taken her weeks to be up and about after the surgery, but she could already use the bathroom by herself.

It would have been a week or two of being bedridden and a week or two of needing to be careful, but she would be mostly recovered by the end of the week. That level of healing was common, but I think it also had something to do with her power. It was a higher-tier support power than mine, it meant that she might already be one or two times stronger just by unlocking her power.

Unlocking her power almost a year before, she would naturally help her grow even more powerful than she was in that previous world. As terrible as zombies were, ten percent of the US population would die from this flood, another twenty from the blizzard immediately after, and fifty percent would be dead by the end of the first year. At the ten-year mark, less than five percent of the US population would be left.

The lives lost at the hospital that would have survived until the ten-year mark were probably in the double digits. The lives saved by strengthening the powered people around me could result in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives being saved in the long run. That was just the thing, there was no stable survivor camp, no attempt to rebuild beyond making the lives of the leaders of a survivor base better.

All the good people died in the first few years; the only ones left were the selfish. You had to be when you didn’t know where your next meal would come from. The weather destroyed all large-scale farms and killed most of the animals. An egg from a chicken or a mouthful of cow's milk were luxuries only the top members of a survivor base could indulge in. That wasn’t going to be the case this time around.

“We also have to talk about the elephant in the room.” I roll a core towards Vicky, and she doesn’t move to touch it. I wasn’t sure how a non-powered person would react to touching a core, and was curious, but even now, she didn’t want to touch them at all. “Vicky… Why don’t you want powers?” She looked away, which was hard to do because the room was full of people. I ask. “Since you don’t want powers for some reason, what about this enhancement liquid?”

I pulled out a syringe and rolled that toward her. She looked more curious than standoffish… So it had to do with the powers then. I couldn’t think of any reason someone wouldn’t want a power, but some people thought more emotionally than I did. She might have viewed it as me caring more about the power she would gain, and that I didn’t care about her. It more than likely had something to do with her previous boyfriend, though.

The enhancement liquid would stop her from ever gaining a power, but it did boost her body to about double what it would be without the liquid. She rolls it around before muttering again. “I… I don’t know. This is all just too fast.” Oh, that makes sense. A normal person doesn’t just follow a guy to his cult mansion like Jade; they get really upset when things change, and things are changing very rapidly right now for her.

I smile before saying. “It’s fine, take your time to decide. I still have these cores to hand out if anyone wants their powers unlocked. Also, does someone want to take a core to Justin? Would help with his broken legs.” I rolled a core over to Lissa, but she couldn’t absorb it. She was stronger than a normal human, but could no longer use her power.

I was about to say we’re done here and get to eating, but I pinged my power as I hadn’t checked a few of the people yet. My eyes went wide when I realized that Akiko was a powered. I hadn’t scanned her family but just assumed Melissa was the only powered in her family. Her little brother wasn’t, nor was Alicia. “Uhh… Akiko is also a powered. Do you?” I rolled a core over to her, and she just looked confused.

She looked at it curiously before going to pick it up. Her body locks up for a moment, and the fork with a piece of hashbrowns stuck on the end drops out of her hand as she snaps out of it. She got a little smile on her face and looked at me as I asked. “So? What power did you get?” “Hmmm… I clean things around me.” My eyes went wide. “Holy shit! You got cleansing aura!?”

I practically jumped out of my seat as I remembered there were kids in the room at the table. “I-uh, I meant holy crap…” She had a happy smile on her face before it dropped, and I saw the color drain from it before she shouted back. “No! Then everything you said was real!? Melissa was… Alex is going to die!?” Alex was in the room with us. “No, he’s not going to die.” I said it as matter-of-factly as I could. There was a chance, but it was negligible with doctors and me around.

Her screaming scared the fuck out of the two kids though… Who weren’t looking all that good now that I actually got a good look at them. Alex had an uncharacteristic frown on his face while Alicia had a sheen of sweat on her forehead. “That’s not good. How long have both of you been sick?” Before he answered, Alex leaned to the side and threw up.

“S-since… Yesterday night I had a fever.” God damn it! Why didn’t either of them tell me? I looked at both of them, the sickness you could get from the virus was as small as a few sneezes or as terrible as heart failure, or similar symptoms to Ebola. They both got lesser sicknesses, but both would keep getting sicker and sicker until they died. I think Alicia might have survived the initial hospital death and then succumbed to the fever afterward.

I looked at them as I pulled out two vials of the power activation serum and two more vials of the enhancement liquid. The doctors didn’t eat breakfast with us, they were living in the basement of the mansion… Well, I say basement, but the basement was still bigger than most other houses. “Come on. We need to go to the doctors in the basement.”