I'm The Only Psychic In The Zombie Apocalypse

The afternoon sun sat low and orange over the police compound, and I sat with it, boots hanging off the lip of the rooftop, and Tikki snugly inside the shoulder pocket, watching the light stretch long shadows across a front yard I was about to drop into.

The wind pushed at my hood while below me, one building over, a thousand throats ground out a single endless roar that never stopped, only shifted pitch.

That was Nia’s old nest.

Four days she’d spent attracting infected to that building’s base, and they were still there, packed shoulder to shoulder around it, climbing over each.

I had already rigged the entire building with a very concerning amount of C4.

As for the stage of my next dance... the police station was across the street. Tall orange perimeter walls, a wide open front yard, and a biker gang dug in on the far side of it now, almost trapped there over four days of Nia putting round after round through their front windows.

The moment I had her dad and the four of us were clear, I’d blow the whole spread at once.

The noise alone would pull every infected in a dozen blocks. And the Credits rolling off that many kills at once would be their own small fortune, and while the entire district poured itself toward whatever remained of that building, we’d be rolling out the other side in the Cybertruck.

The plan was in place, and all I had to do was run it.

I had also radioed the penthouse before I climbed up here and given Kara, Nora, and Leo the whole shape of the next week.

Nia, the rescue, the supply run loop east, and the reason behind it.

Kara was, of course, not happy about it, but she understood the necessity.

But then again, my sitting around doing nothing for two weeks straight while the sprinters turned to shamblers was, in my humble opinion, pointless.

Two weeks parked in a penthouse for a man who could glide across a city like a superhero in a cape, while the timeline was folding in on itself, and the thread of variants arriving whenever... That in no way, shape, or form made sense to me.

I needed to be moving, stocking, and building the margins that kept all of us alive when the truly bad things showed up.

They had food for two weeks and then some. Leo would keep the firearm drills running while I was gone.

They’d be fine.

So with all of that squared, and Nia still down there somewhere, low and quiet, circling the compound toward the far side to set up her perch, I finally let myself do the thing I’d been looking forward to since the moment I returned the M110A2 to its rightful owner.

And that was cashing in that Custom Firearm Token.

The reward had been sitting in my quest log since the night I pulled Nora and Leo out of that university, and I’d been saving it, turning it over in the back of my mind for days, because a custom firearm through the System can be obscene, and the token meant I got exactly one of them for free.

And I couldn’t help but grin like a kid on Christmas morning.

Three years.

Three years of running whatever rifle I could scavenge off a corpse or trade a week of rations for, patching and cannibalizing rifles and making do, and now I finally got to build my own.

The M110A2 was Nia’s, always had been, right down to the crooked letters she’d carved into the receiver with a rusty shiv a lifetime ago.

This one was going to be mine.

My Excalibur.

The base was already locked in fom an hour of happy work back at the penthouse.

A Knight’s Armament SR-25 carbine, and I’d handled the fundamentals first, the way you square away the boring, load-bearing choices before you start dreaming.

A sling, because a rifle you can’t carry hands-free, is a rifle you can’t climb a ladder with.

A light clamped to the handguard, for the dark I knew was coming once the grid finally died.

A flared magwell so a reload under stress wouldn’t be an embarrassing fumble.

A perfect stock. And a full-auto switch because I had never once in my life regretted having the option to go brrr. Except this time, I was gonna go brrr on a battle rifle.

But the choice that would’ve made a purist’s eye twitch was the caliber this one would be chambered in.

Because unlike every other SR-25 or Nia’s M110A2, this one was going to be chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor instead of 7.62 NATO.

Which also meant I’d never see a single round of it anywhere in this country.

And that was a real cost. Total reliance on the System for every cartridge I’d ever feed it, because no armory, no gun shop, no dead soldier’s kit anywhere in the country was going to be holding 6.5 Creedmoor since the whole country ran on 7.62 and 5.56.

I picked it anyway because 6.5 Creedmoor fired from a 14.5-inch barrel hit exactly as hard as 7.62 NATO fired from a full 16-inch.

The same energy landing downrange. The same twenty-round magazine. Every ounce of the M110A2’s reach and stopping power, folded into a package the size of a stubby little CQB AR-15.

And up close, against the infected, it even did the M110A2 one better.

The narrower, faster round drove deeper and punched through more before it stopped. The recoil ran lighter too, so the rifle settled back onto target quicker, and my follow-up shot came a fraction of a second sooner, and in a hallway full of things trying to eat or shoot me, fractions of a second were the whole game.

M110A2 performance. Almost AR-15 handling.

The only price was the ammunition I’d have to conjure instead of scavenge, and that was a price I could pay forever without noticing.

The System had literal plasma weapons a few tabs over. Railguns that would punch a hole through a building. Gauss rifles, coilguns, arc-throwers, a whole catalogue of techno-magic nonsense I couldn’t have operated if you’d walked me through it twice.

So I scrolled past every last one of them without slowing down.

Because I was about to bet my life on this rifle, day in and day out, for however many years this second run lasted, and when your life rides on a tool, you pick the one your hands already understand.

Fancy and useful beat fancy alone every single time, and I’ve buried enough people who reached for the shiny unknown to have learned that lesson in blood.

Now came the parts that turned a very good rifle into an unfair one. And I went to the muzzle first.

The Universal Enhanced Suppressor- no hesitation, the same model I’d bonded to the M110A2.

Three consecutive shots under thirty decibels before it needed to cool, permanent barrel integration, the works. On a rifle built for quiet work in a loud apocalypse, it wasn’t even a question.

Then the optics, and this was where I had spent the most time back at the penthouse, scrolling and second-guessing, because the system-exclusive tab was where things got just as absurd as the System itself.

The whole list was obscene.

There was a scope that painted the glowing outline of a man crouched behind cover, so you could put a round through a wall you couldn’t see past and hit something you’d never laid eyes on.

There was one that ran thermal and predicted where a target would be a full second before he moved there, like a little ghost of the future hanging over the present.

There was also one that swept the space around you like sonar and drew the returns straight onto the lens.

One that let you tag a target and fed the mark into every linked optic in your squad at once, so four rifles could track one man, none of them could individually see.

Every one of them dragged a quiet ”damn” out of me while I read the description.

And I scrolled right past all of them.

They were either too flashy or too specialized. Maybe I’d use them for other specialized guns.

What I actually chose was far less exciting and worth a hundred times more.

A scope that, the instant I brought my eye to the glass, would show me a second red dot.

And that dot would tell me precisely where my bullet was going to land.

Below the scope ran a ballistic computation module that never stopped working.

Wind speed and wind direction. Humidity, air temperature and density. Range to target and the bullet drop over that range. Spin drift off the barrel’s twist. The literal rotation of the Earth beneath the flight path, the Coriolis pull that only a lifetime of practice ever taught a shooter to feel in his bones.

All of it, every variable that had ever turned a perfect hold into a clean miss, crunched in real time and collapsed into one small floating dot inside the glass.

A one-to-ten optic with the calculation module tucked in between the scope body and the mount, so the little computer never crowded the tube, which left just enough clearance up top to bolt on a canted sight.

Anyone on Earth could own this scope and become an elite sniper.

Then the handguard, and the piece I’d been quietly coveting since the penthouse.

An augmented-reality target designator.

Strip away the jargon, and it was an infrared laser I didn’t need night vision to see, because instead of running it through IR goggles, I’d need to run it through a pair of glasses that looked like nothing more than ordinary specs.

It threw a green aiming line down the barrel’s path that only the person wearing the glasses could see.

And unlike night vision, unlike IR, the glasses wouldn’t wash the world out or drown everything in green. My natural sight stayed exactly as it was, with one clean line laid over it that belonged to me alone.

I selected it with a grin already climbing up my face.

Then my eye caught the advisory line at the bottom, and the grin died a quick, undignified death.

The glasses were sold separately.

Fifty thousand Credits.

[...of course they are...]

So I’d just built myself a beautiful, invisible, one-of-a-kind aiming laser that I would not be able to use until I had a spare fifty grand sitting around to buy the pair of specs.

I dragged a hand down my face.

Bought the impossible toy and forgot it didn’t come with the batteries.

[Perfect. Absolutely perfect. But that’s a problem for another day...]

Shaking my head at my own idiocy, I assembled the nitty-gritty of it and hit finalize.

-Ding!

{

Centralized Resource Exchange and Distribution Interface Terminal (C.R.E.D.I.T.)

Firearm Customization Invoice

Platform: Knight’s Armament SR-25 Carbine

Factory Configuration:

14.5” Barrel

7.62×51mm NATO

Direct Impingement

Semi-Automatic

Factory firearm verified.

......

Requested Modifications

Barrel Assembly

Remove: Factory 14.5” Chrome-Lined Barrel

Install: 14.5” Heavy Contour Match Barrel

Caliber Conversion: 6.5 Creedmoor

Parts Cost: 975 Credits

Installation: 375 Credits

......

Trigger Assembly

Remove: Factory Two-Stage Trigger

Install: Geissele Super Select-Fire Trigger Group

Part Cost: 720 Credits

Installation: 120 Credits

......

Fire Control Group

Install: Automatic Fire Control Conversion

Configuration:

Safe

Semi

Automatic

Includes:

Automatic Sear Assembly

Modified Bolt Carrier Group

Selector Replacement

Reliability Verification

Parts Cost: 900 Credits

Installation: 450 Credits

......

Buttstock Replacement

Remove: Factory Stock

Install: Magpul SL-S

Part Cost: 195 Credits

Installation: 45 Credits

......

Charging Handle

Remove: Factory Charging Handle

Install: Radian Raptor-SD Ambidextrous Charging Handle

Part Cost: 180 Credits

Installation: 23 Credits

......

Magazine Well

Install: Strike Industries Enhanced Magazine Well

Part Cost: 53 Credits

Installation: 15 Credits

......

Weapon Light

Install: SureFire M640DF Turbo Scout Light Pro

Part Cost: 540 Credits

Installation: 45 Credits

......

Sling

Install: Blue Force Gear Vickers Combat Applications Sling

Part Cost: 120 Credits

......

Offset Optic

Install: Aimpoint ACRO P-2

Configuration: 45° Offset Mount

Parts Cost: 900 Credits

Installation: 75 Credits

......

System Exclusive Components

Universal Enhanced Suppressor

Installation: Permanent Barrel Integration

Service Note:

Suppressor module permanently bonds to the barrel assembly.

Replacement of the barrel requires replacement of the suppressor module.

Part Cost: 60,000 Credits

Installation: 10,00 Credits

......

Predictive Ballistic Computation Module

Function: Performs real-time ballistic calculations and transmits corrected impact solution to compatible optics.

Part Cost: 37,000 Credits

Installation: 5,000 Credits

......

Variable Precision Smart Scope

Magnification: 1×-10×

Integrated With: Predictive Ballistic Computation Module

Function: Displays projected point-of-impact indicator after receiving ballistic solution.

Component Cost: 46,000 Credits

Installation: 2,000 Credits

......

Augmented Reality Target Designator

Function: Projects an aiming laser visible only through compatible C.R.E.D.I.T. Tactical Eyewear.

Compatible eyewear sold separately.

Component Cost: 54,000 Credits

Installation: 1,000 Credits

......

Precision Assembly

Includes:

Complete Rifle Disassembly

Receiver Inspection

Barrel Headspacing

Gas System Tuning

Trigger Calibration

Fire Control Verification

Suppressor Integration

Final Zero Verification

Accuracy Certification

Labor Cost: 2,430 Credits

......

Subtotal: 226,309 Credits

Custom Firearm Token Applied: -226,309 Credits

TOTAL DUE: 0 Credits

......

Advisory

Host currently does not own compatible C.R.E.D.I.T. Tactical Eyewear.

Augmented Reality Target Designator functionality will remain unavailable until compatible eyewear has been acquired.

Permanent suppressor integration prevents suppressor transfer between barrel assemblies.

Future barrel replacement will require the purchase of a replacement Universal Enhanced Suppressor module.

No warranty implied.

}

Two hundred and twenty-six thousand, three hundred and nine Credits.

For a single rifle.

That was more than every Credit I had ever earned stacked in one pile, and then some.

And the token ate all of it.

[God bless past me for saving this thing...]

I pulled the rifle out of the Inventory and into my hands, and every last Credit of that ridiculous invoice justified itself the instant its weight settled into my palms.

The quality control department immediately jumped down from my shoulder and began his through inspection.

Looking at his face, I could tell even Tikki agreed that the gun was a perfectly balanced bespoke piece of art.

The low afternoon sun ran along the receiver and slid off the finish like water. My off-hand found the handguard, and it felt less like gripping a new rifle and more like shaking hands with an old one.

I racked the charging handle, and the action ran buttery-smooth, the bolt carrier gliding back and slamming home with a clean mechanical clack that got me all doki-doki from inside and out.

I ran my thumb across the flared lip of the magwell.

Dragged a palm down the length of the suppressor.

Brought the stock into my shoulder and let my cheek fall to the weld, and it landed in exactly the spot I’d set it to, my eye dropping naturally into line behind the glass while the world snapped into crisp 1x clarity.

And there, hovering a hair off my point of aim, sat a second red dot, telling me exactly where the round would land.

But before I could test it out with a few shots, Nia’s voice came through the integrated comms in my ear pro.

”In position.”

”Got it.”

And the grin folded away, taking the whole warm afternoon with it.

I found her across the compound, on top of the apartment building on the other side, a small dark shape, peeking over the parapet, exactly like we planned.

”System... Twenty loaded mags for the SR-25...”

-Ding!

{Purchased and stored in the Inventory.}

I seated one into the flared well, and it went home clean and locked.

And with that, I racked the charging handle, let Awareness unfold out around me, twenty meters of that not-quite-sight, not-quite-touch filling in the roof and the air in every direction.

”Alright dude... Mission Mode~”

I walked back to the far lip of the rooftop, took three steady breaths, and ran.