Chapter 31: Surge
The clatter of iron-shod hooves on Washington Street was beginning to thin out as dusk settled over the river.
After settling the daily pay with the crew, Ricky instructed Arthur and Frank to take both wagons and the draft teams down to Reinhardt’s livery barn on Barrow Street. The horses were rubbed down, given fresh water and oats, and locked in their stalls for the night.
Ricky climbed the creaking wooden stairs of their new building, his boots clicking softly against the pine steps until he reached the fourth-floor loft.
The three small rooms on the top floor were still dusty, but they were taking shape. During the quiet hours of the afternoon, Ricky had pulled a few items directly from the System Shop—two thick, soft cotton mattresses, crisp white linen sheets, heavy wool blankets, and two sets of clean, period-accurate wool trousers and shirts for himself and Marek.
He didn’t have to worry about the expense. The total cost from the Ledger Shop came out to less than a dollar.
Ricky walked into the small side room he’d designated as their bedroom and office, closing the heavy pine door behind him. The air smelled cleanly of fresh cotton, cedar, and the faint, sweet trace of candle wax. He sat down on the edge of his new mattress, testing the weight. It gave softly under his thighs—a massive upgrade from the bare floorboards of Commerce Street and the dusty cardboard of the old produce warehouse.
He pulled his leather order notebook from his vest, checking his numbers.
Across the overall gross sales of their routes, combined with the daily payouts from his discipline quests, his system balance was sitting comfortably at $906.00. The vast majority of that wealth hadn’t even come from the hardware or flour markups—it had come from the steady, mechanical daily workouts he completed every single morning at three-thirty. Twenty dollars a day in 1910 was an absurd sum of money, accumulating quietly in his invisible vault.
Ricky closed his eyes, summoning the System interface.
[ FOUNDER’S LEDGER — CHARACTER SHEET ]
Tier 1: Steam & Steel Era (1900–1914)
Strength: 15
Agility: 15
Vitality: 20
Intelligence: 10
Perception: 15
Available Attribute Points: 92
Ricky stared at the floating blue numbers.
He hadn’t touched his attributes since the night he allocated eighteen points right before the fight with Martin’s Gopher collectors in the alley three weeks ago. Since then, his natural Strength had ticked up by three points and his Vitality by two—a direct result of his relentless daily discipline quests and the physical toll of hauling heavy drayage crates.
His eyes lingered on the number hovering at the bottom: 92 Available Points.
He had hoarded them out of caution. In a world where every eye on the block was watching for anything out of the ordinary, suddenly doubling his Agility or Strength would make him move or hit with freakish, unnatural power. If he threw a punch that launched a grown man twenty feet into a brick wall, people wouldn’t just be afraid of him—they’d start calling him a monster or a circus freak.
His gaze shifted to Vitality.
Vitality didn’t make your muscles bulge like iron cannonballs, nor did it make your legs move like lightning. Vitality was internal. It controlled stamina, cell regeneration, bone density, disease immunity, and sheer physical endurance.
Survival, Ricky thought, his modern mind weighing the cold reality of 1910 Manhattan.
In this century, there were no antibiotics, no modern trauma bays, and no clean emergency rooms. A stray stiletto blade from a Duster scout, an infected scratch from a rusty nail, or a sudden bout of pneumonia could put a man six feet in the dirt in a week.
He looked around the empty room. Marek wasn’t back yet. The Polish boy had gone with Arthur and John toward the money order office on Christopher Street to send another payment back to his family in Galicia.
Ricky’s expression softened slightly at the thought of Marek.
When they had first started taking in real silver from Bleecker Street, Ricky had offered Marek a fifty-percent split of the profits. But Marek had adamantly refused, shaking his head until his cap nearly fell off. The Polish boy insisted on keeping only twenty percent, saying that three or four dollars a day was already more money than his entire village in Poland saw in a month. He didn’t even know what to do with that much silver, other than sending it home for Sofie’s medicine. Marek had even insisted that thirty percent of the profits go directly into a "company capital" fund for future wagons and horse feed.
Ricky had let it be, but in his chest, he viewed Marek as a younger brother. Back in Georgia, Ricky had an older brother and a younger sister, but he and his sister had never been particularly close. Marek was different. They had slept on the same cold floors, shared the same hot potatoes, and dodged the same gang clubs. Marek was his family in 1910.
Ricky stood up, walked to the heavy oak door, and slid the iron bolt into place. He turned back toward the bed.
If push comes to shove, Ricky thought, I need to make sure I can take a hit and keep standing.
He sat back down on the soft mattress, crossing his legs. He focused his mind on his character sheet, eyeing the 92 available points. He wasn’t going to dump all of them, but fifty points into Vitality... that would take his baseline from 20 to 70. More than three times the natural human limit.
During his very first upgrade weeks ago, adding just four points to Vitality had triggered a sudden, deep warmth in his chest that eeaed his throbbing joints. Dumping fifty points all at once was completely uncharted territory.
Ricky took a deep, steadying breath, letting his lungs fill with the cool cedar air of the room. He laid flat on his back, gripping the edges of the mattress with both hands.
Confirm. 50 points into Vitality.
The moment his mind locked the choice, the floating blue numbers vanished.
For half a second, nothing happened.
Then, Ricky’s eyes widened in sudden, absolute shock.