A hidden survivor realizes she's being watched by a man riding a monster; he locks eyes with her, then rides away. A nearby clash reveals two crippled Tier-I mutant zombies flagged as subjugable and ordered killed. At a raider camp, a child shouts to her father, 'I want this one!' as the group argues about feeding a captured creature to their men and whether a baby girl could be eaten. One person instead detects the infant's unusually pure energy—stronger than any Sigma-tier corestone they'd absorbed in a past life—making the baby an unexpected prize and leaving her fate unresolved.