Alyssa gasped hard, each breath cutting down her throat like broken glass. Every inhale scraped against raw, abused tissue, the air thick with dust and the sour stink of old chemicals. Her high heels clacked and slipped against the hospital tiles, the sharp sound bouncing down the empty corridor and chasing her own ragged sobs. Somewhere behind her, far back in the dark, Kurt screamed.

  His voice warped in the echo, stretched and shredded by distance until it sounded nothing like him at all. It still made her flinch, because her head knew whose voice it was even if her ears tried to pretend otherwise. She could hear herself over him, too, that thin, cracked wail of I'm sorry, over and over again, spilling from her mouth in a pitiful stream. The words blurred together, some swallowed by sobs that tore up out of her chest without her consent. The hallway seemed to tilt, walls closing in as the fluorescent lights flickered and hummed.

  She couldn't remember which way they had come. That was the worst part. Every intersection looked the same. Every hall stretched into the next like a copy of a copy, all peeling paint and stained tiles and cracked light covers. She tried to picture the path in her mind, the way they had walked in with the camera rolling and Kurt making some stupid little joke to calm her nerves, but all she could see now was his face when the thing landed on him.

  Her shoulder burned. The pain was a deep, clenching spike that ran from the joint down the length of her arm, every step making it throb. The limb hung almost dead at her side, fingers twitching uselessly. She knew, on some distant, rational level, that it was dislocated. Maybe worse. The tumble down the stairs had been a blur of impact and weightlessness, of a scream ripped out of her and the crunch of her body hitting each step. Something had given way in that fall. Now the arm simply bounced when her feet hit the floor, every jolt sending a fresh wave of agony through her.

  Her clothes were a mess. The neat blazer and skirt she had picked with such care that morning were torn and twisted around her body. Her collar had popped open, blouse hanging crooked, nylons ripped open in long ladders that exposed pale skin beneath. Blood had dried tacky on her legs and smeared across her sleeve. She could feel it trickling from the gash on her forehead, a slow, steady stream that crawled down her temple and into the corner of one eye. When she blinked, it smeared with sweat in a salty, coppery film that stung.

  Still, she ran.

  She ran because there wasn't anything else she could do. The halls stretched on in front of her, a narrow tunnel of sickly light and shadows. Her lungs burned and her vision pulsed, but then she saw something that broke through the haze. Doors. The big double set that marked the hospital’s front entrance. Beyond them, light, not the harsh fluorescent kind, but the softer glow from outside. The exit.

  She stumbled toward it, shoes skidding on the tiles. Her breath hitched in poorly timed sobs, each one breaking the rhythm of her steps. She could already see the van in her mind’s eye. Parked out front where they had left it, the radio sitting on the dash. All she had to do was make it there. Call it in. Get the police, the National Guard, whoever the hell would listen. They could save Kurt. They had to save him. They would drag that thing off him. They would put it down like a rabid dog. All she had to do was get out.

  Just get to the van. Get to the radio. Get help.

  She didn't see the man until his arms were already around her.

  Something hard and slick slammed into her side, spinning her off balance. For one dizzy instant she thought one of the creatures had grabbed her, that she was about to feel teeth in her neck. Instead, she hit a chest covered in scratchy plastic, the material rasping against her bare collarbone. Strong hands wrapped around her bad arm, wrenching it up and back. The pain was so sudden and sharp that she choked on her own scream, the sound strangled in her throat as her knees buckled.

  Another body crashed into her legs, sweeping them out from under her. She went down hard, her hip cracking against the floor. Then there were more hands, more weight, piling on top of her. Gloves squeaked against her skin. Someone cursed behind the muffling layer of a hood. The plastic and rubber of hazmat suits pressed in from all sides, sealing her in a cocoon of bright colored fabric and unyielding force.

  She screamed anyway. It didn't matter that it hurt, or that her shoulder felt like it was tearing apart. The sound ripped out of her as she thrashed, heel catching someone’s shin. She tried to rake with her nails, tried to bite, anything. A hand slammed into the side of her head, knocking it sideways into dirty tile. Stars burst across her vision.

  “Hold her legs.” A man’s voice, filtered and flat through a mask. Close to her ear.

  “I’ve got them.” Another answered. Her calves were pinned, ankles trapped in a grip that felt like steel.

  “Should we just deal with her?” A third voice, colder. The way he said deal made her stomach lurch. There wasn'thing uncertain about that tone. It was final. Permanent.

  “Negative.” A fourth replied, his voice different from the rest. Nasally, but unobstructed. “Lab’s short a subject. She’s a survivor. A witness. She's perfect.”

  Survivor. Witness. The words slid over her like oil. None of them sounded like anything she wanted to be.

  Something heavy dropped over her head. Rough fabric scraped the bridge of her nose and stuck to the blood on her forehead. The world vanished in an instant. No lights, no hallway, no doors, just suffocating darkness and the sound of her own ragged breathing. She thrashed again, panic flaring bright, but the hands held her in place.

  She felt the prick of a needle at her arm, a brief sting that barely registered through the pain already roaring in her body. Warmth followed in a slow rush, creeping up her limb toward her chest. Her thoughts began to blur around the edges. She tried to keep with them, tried to hold onto Kurt’s name, to remember his face, but it slipped away like something under water.

  Voices washed over her, distant and far away. “Get her to prep.” “Doctor’s waiting.” “… vitals look good…”

  The world smeared.

  Flashes of memory came next, disjointed and jagged. The sensation of cold metal under her bare back, sticky in places where something had already dried. Arms strapped down at her sides, legs bound at the ankles. The hum of machines around her, beeping in patterns that made no sense. A bright white light above that burned into her eyes whenever she pried them open.

  A face leaned over her sometimes. A man in a lab coat, mask covering most of his features, eyes hard behind his glasses. He spoke, but she could never quite understand the words. Drug names, dosage amounts, phrases about tissue response and cellular regression. It all blurred into meaningless sound. Whenever she tried to focus, the world tilted and spun as something burned its way into her veins.

  Pain lived in her, constant and shifting. Sometimes it was deep in her bones, a grinding ache that left her teeth chattering. Sometimes it crawled along her skin, as if her nerves had been peeled and laid bare. Sometimes it felt like fire in her lungs, every breath peeling them open. Needles pierced her arms, her chest, sometimes even the soft flesh of her stomach. Tubes pulled at the backs of her hands. There was a taste of metal and chemical bitterness on her tongue that never went away.

  She lost the days almost immediately, if there had even been days to lose. Time became a smear of lights and darks, of waking and falling, of blurry faces and clipped voices. A kind nurse’s hand wiping her brow. A muttered argument in the corner of the room. The cold press of a stethoscope against her ribs. At some point, she forgot what her own voice sounded like. She tried to ask where Kurt was, but the words fell apart in her mouth, and no one gave her an answer anyway.

  Dead and alive. That was the only way she could think to describe it. Her body felt like a corpse that someone kept shocking back to life just long enough to suffer more. Empty, but somehow still aware enough to know that something was being taken from her, piece by piece. Not just flesh. Something deeper.

  Then one day, there wasn't anything.

  …and she was home.

  The cut had healed. She knew that much. When she stumbled out of bed, the wound was just a thin, pale line above her eyebrow, the skin tight and strange when she raised her brows. Her muscles ached as if she had run a marathon in her sleep. The sheets were twisted around her legs, soaked with sweat, clinging to her like seaweed. Her fingertips felt numb. So did the inside of her head.

  She lurched toward the mirror on instinct. It was the same cheap standing mirror she had bought from a thrift store two years ago, the frame chipped, the glass slightly warped. The woman staring back at her didn't look like someone who had just taken a nap.

  Pale. Bruised. The shadows under her eyes were dark and deep, purplish hollows that made her cheekbones look sharper than they really were. There were bruises on her arms, yellow and green and ugly. Another dark mark wrapped around one wrist in a band, like someone had grabbed her hard and not let go. Her lips looked bloodless, cracked at the corners. Her hair, usually brushed and styled just so, hung in limp, tangled clumps.

  For a long, terrifying moment, she didn't recognize herself.

  The eyes looking back at her were hollow. They felt like they belonged to a corpse, something dressed up and propped in place. She searched them for something familiar, some spark that would make it click, and all she saw was fear. Fear, and a drifting, empty confusion.

  What happened?

  The thought formed, but there wasn't anything to latch onto. She remembered work. She remembered coffee. She remembered sitting at her desk, tapping a pen against a notepad. The rest dissolved whenever she tried to reach for it. Like the moment just before waking up from a nightmare, when the details slithered away faster than she could catch them.

  There had been a corpse. She was almost sure of that. A body on a slab, or on a floor. Its eyes open. No, its eyes closed. No, that was wrong, that was something else. Had it taken someone she knew? Had it taken Kurt? The idea tugged at her, but it felt dreamlike, impossible.

  That was a dream, she told herself. It had to be. People didn't just vanish into labs and wake up in their beds with bruises they couldn't explain.

  Her stomach turned. She pressed her palms to the sides of her head, fingers digging into her temples. The pressure didn't do anything to help.

  Everything hurt, and she didn't know why.

  Alyssa’s eyes shot open.

  She sucked in a breath, chest hitching, heart pounding so hard it hurt. The ceiling above her wasn't the one in her apartment. It was a cracked, yellowing grid of old tiles, one corner sagging with the weight of moisture. A fluorescent light flickered weakly overhead, buzzing in a jittery rhythm. The couch under her back felt scratchy and lumpy, the fabric worn thin in places.

  The office smelled like dust, old paper, and the faint, green rot of encroaching plant life. She turned her head, taking it in. Once, it had probably been impressive. Shelves lined the walls, stuffed with books and binders, some still upright, others slumped over at drunken angles. A great mahogany desk dominated the center of the room, its surface buried under a layer of dimly glowing monitors, loose folders, and toppled picture frames. The carpets that covered the floor were threadbare in spots, their rich colors dulled and mottled with age. Plants had forced their way in here too; vines had speared through the drywall in ragged lines, dangling from the gaps between ceiling tiles and curling along the corners of the room.

  Across from the couch sat Red, the desk chair creaking under him as he worked.

  His SMG lay on the desk near an ancient desktop monitor, the old plastic case yellowed and stained. Beside it, a sleek, rugged laptop sat open, its modern lines and dark casing clashing hard with the rest of the room’s decay. A tangle of cables ran from the laptop into the gutted tower case under the desk, some spliced together with electrical tape. The armored man sat hunched in the chair, boots planted wide, fingers moving across the laptop’s keyboard with careful speed. The red lens of his helmet tracked across the old desktop monitor as lines of progress bars and copied file names crawled by.

  For a moment he seemed content to ignore her. Then she shifted, the old couch creaking under her weight, and his head turned.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  The words came out flat and metallic, the same sardonic edge she was starting to recognize even through the voice modulation. He looked at her for a beat, then turned back to the laptop, tapping another key. “You've been down for almost an hour after your… whatever that was. I was getting… worried.”

  She pushed herself upright slowly, the motion making the room sway. Her head ached, a tight, banding pressure that wrapped around her skull like someone had cinched a strap there. The dream clung to her for a heartbeat longer, slippery and sickening, before dissolving.

  “Yeah, I… I don't… know what happened,” she managed. Her own voice sounded rough, like she had spent the last several hours screaming. Maybe she had. She lifted a hand to her temple, fingers rubbing at the skin there as she tried to chase the fragments back. There was something there, just out of reach. Cold metal. That bright light. Kurt’s voice. “I saw the badge, and I saw… saw Kurt’s…”

  The rest stuck in her throat. She swallowed hard, and Daniel glanced over.

  “Kurt?” he prompted.

  She looked at him helplessly, eyes stinging. “He was… he was a… he was my friend. I remember that much.” The words came out slow, as if she had to assemble each one by hand. “He was… my co-anchor? Yeah… that… that's right. We were coming… here… to investigate.” Her head throbbed harder as she spoke, like someone was tightening that invisible strap another notch. “I came here to find out why… this place… I kept coming back to it. Something happened to Kurt. Something… something happened to me.”

  Her voice climbed with each sentence, strained and thin. Panic chewed at the edges of it until she sounded like she might start crying again without meaning to.

  “Don't overstress yourself. You're bleeding,” he said.

  She blinked, confused. “What?”

  He tapped a gloved finger lightly against the lower edge of his mask, near where his nose would be. She mirrored the gesture without thinking, fingertips brushing beneath her nostrils. Wetness met her touch. When she pulled her hand back, a red droplet clung to her skin.

  “Great,” she muttered.

  “Here.” He reached into one of his pouches and fished out a small wrapped pad of gauze, then held it out.

  She stood on shaky legs, the couch springs complaining as she pushed off. Her knees wobbled once before she found her balance and stepped over, taking the gauze. The wrapper crinkled loudly in the quiet office as she tore it open. She pressed the pad under her nose, the white already blooming pink, and sniffed carefully.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled.

  He nodded once and turned back to the laptop, attention flicking between it and the old desktop. Alyssa leaned in a little, curiosity tugging at her even through the fog in her head. The laptop’s display showed a series of file transfers crawling their way from an ancient directory tree on the other machine. Red had been pulling them one at a time, skimming each before sending it along. She watched a folder marked MEDICAL_LOGS finish copying, then disappear into a nested directory on his end.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Digging,” he said, closing another file window with a few quick keystrokes. “I didn't want to leave you alone while you were out, so I pulled you in here and got busy with this. It has been… informative.”

  “Yeah?” She shifted the gauze, trying to keep the blood from smearing down her lip. “Informative how?”

  “Turns out our Dr. Sundaram was one of the medical heads here. He kept pretty detailed notes, and I've been running through them. Talking about what they were doing here, what they were testing.” Daniel tapped another command, and a fresh batch of files queued up for transfer. “No names, but it is clear that whatever this stuff was, it was supposed to kill cancer. All types of cancer.”

  “What?” The word popped out of her before she could stop it.

  She was no doctor. She had barely scraped through high school biology, but she knew enough to know that cancer wasn't some singular, simple thing. When her aunt had gotten sick back home, her uncle had spent months buried in medical pamphlets and library books. Pancreatic, they had said. A vicious one. The treatments were brutal, the prognosis ugly. She remembered hearing about different drugs, different protocols, different specialists. Everything tailored, nothing guaranteed.

  A universal cancer cure sounded like the kind of thing a quack would shout about on late-night TV.

  “That's what I thought too,” he said.

  The laptop chimed softly as the last progress bar filled. He hit a key, and the download spiked, ripping the rest of the accessible data in one fast sweep. The ancient desktop monitor flickered, lines of code stuttering, then went dark altogether with a sad little click.

  Alyssa blinked at the abruptness. “Did you just… kill it?”

  “It was dying already,” Daniel replied. He snapped the laptop closed and started unhooking the cables with practiced motions. “Sundaram got more and more vague as the testing progressed, but he wasn't happy with how things were being run. Apparently he started butting heads with the Admin, a guy named Lester.”

  “Lester?” Alyssa repeated.

  “Mmm.” He slid the last cable free and stuffed it into a pouch on his pack. “And wouldn't guess it, I've been finding info all over about one Dorothy Lester.” He straightened, sliding the entire laptop into his backpack. “Patient Zero.”

  000

  Watching him pack up the laptop, Alyssa’s mind grabbed onto that fact and held it tight, turning it over and trying to make sense of the shape it formed in her thoughts. For a moment she just stood there, one hand still pressed lightly under her nose to keep the gauze in place, and let the idea settle. A desperate man trying to save a loved one. A scientist with access to things no normal person should ever touch, walking step by step across a moral line he probably told himself he would never cross. From there it wasn't hard to picture him taking another step, and then another, each one a little easier than the last because the alternative was watching someone he cared about slip away. Enough steps and there wouldn't be any solid ground left under him. Just the fall.

  It made a sick kind of sense, if she thought about it long enough. Not the actions themselves, because nothing here was sane, but the shape of the path that led to them. A man trying to save his wife. Pushing farther, grasping at any thread in front of him, no matter how thin or how wrong. When someone was cornered by fear like that, the line between genius and madness probably became very easy to blur. She didn't know how much of what had happened here was intentional, or how much was the result of a man who had given up everything except the need to fix what he couldn't accept losing.

  Her hand trembled slightly as she lowered the gauze and breathed out through her mouth. She stared at Red’s back for a moment and tried not to think too hard about how close she had come to never making it out of whatever nightmare Sundaram and Lester had created together. Maybe they hadn't started as monsters. Or maybe they had. Either way, they made one.

  “So what now?” she asked finally, her voice steadier than she expected.

  He shrugged as if he had been expecting the question. “Now we head upward. Most of the files here, the secured stuff, required authorization from the Admin terminal. Two tier system. Without the decoder, most of what I pulled is just noise.” He sighed as he checked the P90, tapping the side of the magazine with his thumb. “Because it can never be easy.”

  Alyssa let out a short laugh, too tired to stop the bitter edge from coloring it. “Of course not. You said there were notes, though? Were there any clues there?”

  She hoped for something. Anything. A clue about the Axeman or about the thing puppeteering the shamblers. Or even just some hint about where they were supposed to go that didn't involve guessing. Even that hope felt heavy in her chest now.

  “There was,” Daniel said. He moved toward the door, hand on the frame as he narrowed his eyes down the hall. “The good doctor was here looking for something called T?RXR. Something Sundaram was working on before the place went sideways. Looks like he came back to find it.”

  “T?RXR?” she repeated.

  “It inoculates uninfected tissue and kills infected tissue. At least according to the notes.” He swept the hallway again before stepping out, gesturing for her to move. “And since the plants are all laced with the stuff…”

  “It’ll kill them,” Alyssa finished, “and anything connected to them.”

  “Exactly.” His tone didn't carry any triumph. Just grim acceptance. “No idea how he planned to deploy it. Might be more answers in the Admin terminal.”

  Gun raised, he moved left toward an overgrown stairwell. Alyssa followed close behind him, gripping her MP5 tight enough that her knuckles whitened. Her aim wasn't good and she knew it, every shaky breath reminding her that she wasn't a shooter and never had been. The full?auto setting terrified her, because she knew she couldn't control the recoil particularly well, but having the weapon in her hands still filled her with a thin, unwarranted surge of confidence. It felt like borrowed courage, something she clung to because the alternative was facing all of this empty?handed.

  The vines around the stairs had coiled thick as wrists around the railing, sagging from the overhead lights in long, slimy curtains. She tried not to step on them, though sometimes she had to. Each time she felt them shift faintly under her boots, as if something deep inside the plant twitched when touched.

  “Hold it,” Red murmured. “Contact.”

  Alyssa’s heart lurched. She tightened her grip and raised her weapon toward the upper landing. Red swapped his SMG for the shotgun in one smooth motion, the metal glinting faintly under the dying fluorescent lights.

  He peeked over the edge.

  Three thunderous blasts ripped through the stairwell. Even with her hands clapped over her ears, she flinched at the shock of it. Something heavy toppled down the steps. Alyssa stumbled back as a shambler rolled to a stop almost at her feet, its ruined chest spilling a foul-smelling slurry.

  Two more climbed into view on the upper landing.

  She didn't hesitate, much. She raised the MP5 and fired a short burst, the weapon bucking chaotically in her hands. She hit something because the creature lurched, fluid erupting from its abdomen before Red’s next blast took its head apart.

  The remaining one let out a wet hiss as its warped fingers stretched, vines snapping outward and coiling around the railing. It launched itself down toward them with terrifying speed.

  Alyssa stumbled, nearly falling backward down the stairs as her heel skidded on a patch of damp tile. She windmilled her free arm in a desperate attempt to catch her balance, breath catching in her throat. Before she could right herself, the vines snapped around her ankle, cold and slick against her skin through the shredded fabric of her hiking pants. They tightened with sudden, brutal force, squeezing hard enough that she felt her bones grind together, a sharp burst of pain lancing up her leg and into her hip. The pull dragged her down another half step, her knee buckling as the weight of the thing yanked her backward, and panic clawed up the back of her throat.

  Red’s boot slammed down on the creature’s arm, pinning it. The shotgun roared again. The impact shredded the limb into a wet spray of pulp. Alyssa fumbled for her pistol, yanked it free, and emptied the entire magazine into the creature’s head until it stopped moving.

  The stairwell fell silent except for her ragged breathing, each inhale shaky and uneven as she tried to steady herself. The ringing in her ears pulsed in and out, dulling the world into a muted throb that made it hard to tell if she was breathing too fast or not fast enough.

  Red slapped in another magazine with practiced efficiency, the motion smooth and familiar in a way that made her envy the steadiness in his hands. Alyssa bent down to retrieve the MP5, her fingers trembling as they closed around the grip. The weapon felt heavier than before, its weight dragging at her sore muscles, but a quick inspection showed it was still intact. Somehow that tiny relief eased a fraction of the panic clawing at her chest.

  They pressed on together, climbing slowly through the slick, vine?infested stairwell. The damp tiles squished faintly under their boots, coated in a film of greenish residue that made every step feel uncertain. The air grew thicker with each flight, the sour reek of ruptured plant tissue clinging to her throat and mixing with a sweet, rotten undertone that made her stomach knot. It smelled like decay pretending to be perfume.

  She kept close behind Red, her eyes darting between the stairs above and the shifting tendrils around them. Every brush of a vine against her boot made her flinch, expecting another attack, another grab at her legs.

  Finally, they reached the third?floor door, the stairwell terminating there.

  Red pushed it open with the muzzle of his shotgun, and Alyssa’s breath caught in her chest.

  The floor was consumed.

  Walls of foliage covered the stairs behind them, the elevator beside them, and most of the hall in front of them. Vines thick as her arms wound across the ceiling. Mosses blanketed the tiles. Dozens of fleshy flowers, the same sickly pink and deep meat red she had seen earlier, pulsed faintly on the walls like living wounds.

  She swallowed hard. The smell was intense here. Sweet, rotting, humid.

  “Watch your footing,” Red muttered. “These bugs chew holes straight through the tile, and all this undergrowth hides every one of them.”

  She nodded. She didn't want to imagine falling into a nest of those things.

  They moved in tight formation, Red sweeping forward while she covered their rear. The hanging vines brushed against her shoulders, leaving streaks of sticky moisture on her jacket.

  ““The office is just around…” he started, his voice trailing off in a way that made Alyssa’s stomach tighten.

  Then he stopped. Not a slow, cautious stop. A hard one. Like someone had hit a switch.

  “What is it?” Alyssa asked, stepping up behind him despite every instinct begging her not to.

  Then she saw it.

  The center of the entire floor was gone.

  Not collapsed. Consumed. Eaten away by a massive trunk of fused roots and branches that punched straight through the hospital’s structure from roof to lower floors. It was a column of living, twisting mass as wide as a city bus, pulsing faintly beneath layers of bark-like tissue. The destruction was absolute. Rooms were split open like cracked eggs, ceilings torn into jagged ribbons, walls crushed and swallowed into the plant’s monstrous backbone.

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  Her heartbeat kicked into high gear, pounding so hard she could feel it behind her eyes. “We’re screwed. We’re completely-”

  Red held up a hand without turning, the gesture sharp and calm. “Give me a second.”

  He raised his right hand and made a series of small pinching gestures in the air. The lens of his mask flickered faintly, tiny HUD reflections she couldn’t interpret flashing across the green tint of his visor. His head moved in precise increments, mapping… something.

  She watched in silence, pulse thudding in her ears. She wanted to ask what he was doing, but the question stuck in her throat. She knew he wouldn’t answer. Red stayed focused and unreadable behind that mask, layers of gear hiding every thought. She wanted to ask him what he was seeing, what he was doing, but she didn’t have the breath or the energy to push for answers right now.

  “I’ve got a way around,” he said finally, lowering his hand. “We’ll have to detour through one of the labs. There should be an access corridor through… this door.”

  He pointed to a rusted, featureless maintenance door half-swallowed by vines.

  “Theoretically,” he added in a tone that made her wince.

  “Theoretically?” she echoed, because sometimes she couldn’t help herself.

  “Best guess. I can’t tell how much damage the plant's done to the building.”

  She exhaled through her nose. “Fantastic.”

  It wasn’t fantastic. It wasn’t even close. It was the kind of grim, dead?on assessment that made her want to laugh and swear at the same time, because of course the only honest answer here had to be the worst possible one.

  Red pulled a crowbar from a side pouch. Alyssa stayed focused on the door, steadying her breathing and pushing down the rising anxiety so she could keep moving. The rusted door barely put up a fight; the latch cracked loud and sharp, fragments of old metal hitting the floor.

  The hallway beyond looked less like a corridor and more like the last violent breath the hospital ever took. Gurneys lay overturned at crooked angles, wheels bent and squeaking faintly as if something had pushed them aside in a panic. Medical trolleys were half?crushed beneath coils of root and vine, metal frames split open like rib cages. Light fixtures hung from the ceiling by frayed wires, sagging like wilted petals, glass cracked or missing entirely, leaving exposed bulbs that flickered with a tired, dying buzz. The darkness ahead wasn’t just dim, it felt thick and unsettled, hanging in the air as a heavy, stale reminder of the chaos that tore through this place, lingering in every corner like a warning.

  Red flicked on his gunlight. The incandescent beam sliced through the murk.

  Something big skittered out of sight.

  “Contact!” he barked.

  The P90’s suppressed roar filled the corridor like a hive of angry metal bees.

  Alyssa spun, heart jerking into her throat, just in time to see the largest, ugliest insect she’d ever encountered rearing up at her. It was the size of her torso, its carapace glossy and ridged like polished obsidian, pincers snapping open with a wet, meaty click. Its tail arched forward like an earwig’s, curling with predatory intent.

  She screamed and fired. A wild burst, rounds peppering its shell. The creature squealed, a high, grating noise that made her skin crawl, and scurried up the wall in a horrifying blur of motion before vanishing into a jagged opening.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” she cried as she stumbled backward into Red.

  He fired twice more, the suppressed shots thudding against the enclosed walls as he tracked something behind her.

  “We’ve gotta get out of this hall!” he shouted. “Too narrow!”

  He grabbed her arm, firmly, almost painfully, and hauled her forward. Alyssa risked a terrified glance back just in time to see more of the creatures dropping from ceiling cracks, writhing out of wall gaps, skittering in chittering waves.

  Dozens. Maybe more. They poured out like the walls themselves were shedding monsters, a rolling tide of glossy shells and snapping pincers that turned the narrow hall into a death trap.

  Her stomach lurched hard, a sick roll of dread that made the edges of her vision blur. Her legs nearly gave out under her, wobbling as shock and adrenaline fought for control of her body. For a split second she thought she might collapse right there, swallowed up by the swarm closing in behind them.

  But Red was already moving, and she forced herself to move with him. They sprinted toward a door at the far end of the corridor, boots slapping against the tile, breath tearing in and out of her lungs. Alyssa reached the handle with shaking fingers and yanked, praying the damn thing would open and knowing it probably wouldn’t.

  “It’s stuck!” she shouted, her voice cracking with raw panic as her fingers slipped uselessly on the handle.

  “Move.”

  Red didn’t hesitate. He stepped in front of her, bracing his stance as he pressed the shotgun’s muzzle against the lock. The blast thundered in the narrow corridor, deafening and violent. The entire door shuddered under the impact, the locking mechanism exploding outward in a spray of warped metal shards. The door jerked inward on its hinges, swinging open with a screech.

  They stumbled through in a chaotic tangle of boots and adrenaline, Alyssa nearly tripping as her momentum carried her several steps into the darkened space.

  Red threw his weight into the door, slamming it shut just as something slammed into the other side with bone?rattling force. The frame buckled instantly, bowing inward with a deep, sickening groan that echoed down the hall like the metal itself was being crushed in a vise.

  “That won’t hold!” Alyssa yelled, her voice rising with a sharp edge of fear as the door groaned behind them.

  Red braced a shoulder against the buckling frame for a split second, testing it, feeling the old metal strain against the force battering it from the other side. The door was rusted through in places, its hinges warped from age and the earlier shotgun blast. The wood around the lock had already splintered once, and the compromised metal flexed in his grip like something tired of holding together.

  He felt it bow again, harder this time. No chance. Not even a little.

  “This way!” he barked, pushing off the failing door and breaking into a sprint down the connecting hall. There was no hesitation in the movement; the decision was instinct and experience rolled together. That door was done.

  They ran, boots hammering the floor. Behind them, the door let out another sharp crack. Something punched a limb through the splintering metal, then another, tearing through the weakened surface as if it were thin cardboard. The frame groaned and tore, chunks of rusted metal clattering against the tile.

  Cold fear clamped down on Alyssa’s spine, the kind that made her breath stutter and her steps falter for half a heartbeat before she forced herself onward.

  “Go!” Red snapped, already reaching for his belt. “Frag out!”

  He pulled a grenade, popped the pin with a sharp clink, and hurled it back toward the collapsing doorway.

  They sprinted. Alyssa heard the grenade clatter across the floor, then-

  Whump-crack.

  The explosion tore through the hall. The shockwave slapped the air out of her chest. Heat washed across her back, and the screeching of the insects turned into wet, popping detonations as their bodies ruptured under the blast.

  A strong hand hooked under her arm and hauled her upright as she stumbled, dragging her forward with a firm, urgent pull that cut through her disorientation. Her boots skidded over the tile as she tried to keep her footing, breath sawing in and out of her chest.

  She didn’t know if she screamed or laughed. Something tore out of her anyway, a raw, broken sound born from panic and adrenaline and the sheer shock of still being alive. It echoed in her ears, thin and strained, the kind of noise a person made when their body reacted faster than their mind could keep up.

  Red didn’t slow. His grip stayed steady, guiding her forward until the two of them slammed through the reinforced laboratory door. The heavy panel rocked on its hinges as they barreled inside, the metal rattling under the force of their entry.

  Red shoved the door closed behind them with a sharp, final clang, cutting off the echo of skittering limbs and the fading hiss of scattering earwigs.

  The world went quiet again, or as close to quiet as this place ever got. Alyssa stood doubled over, gasping for air, her pulse hammering hard enough to make her vision pulse. Beside her, the steady, mechanical cycle of Red’s shotgun reloading filled the space, each click and clack grounding her just enough to remember they had survived the last thirty seconds bay the narrowest of margins.

  000

  Gasping for air, Alyssa gripped her knees, her breath shuddering as the sound of Red swapping magazines for the shotgun filled the space. The two of them stood at the threshold of the laboratory, the door they had slammed behind them still vibrating faintly from the force of whatever had survived the blast outside. Alyssa forced herself upright, biting back a groan as her ribs protested. When she finally looked up, really looked at the space they had thrown themselves into, her breath caught all over again.

  The lab was enormous.

  It stretched across most of the third floor, a yawning chamber broken into segmented work areas by half-collapsed partitions and rows of damaged equipment. Even with the ceiling lights flickering weakly overhead, she could see just how advanced the place had once been. Glossy white countertops ran the length of several stations, each one littered with beakers, shattered test tubes, and rusted clamps. A pair of centrifuges sat toppled on their sides like dead animals, their casings cracked open to expose tangles of ruined wiring and rust-bitten components. Farther in, she spotted what remained of a high-end spectrometer, its sleek metal housing warped where roots had punched through the floor beneath it, turning the machine askew.

  Vines crawled over everything.

  Thick cords of plant matter wrapped around support pillars and clung to old monitors like parasitic limbs, tugging them free from their mounts. Moss blanketed portions of the tile, forming uneven patches that squished underfoot. Dozens of cables that once connected machines to wall panels now hung in snarled curtains, many ripped from their sockets with enough force to leave the plastic charred. The sterile white tile she would’ve expected in a medical facility was gone beneath a layer of discoloration and organic growth, turning the whole place into a strange, hostile blend of decayed technology and invasive life.

  Against the far wall sat several large machines she didn’t recognize at all.

  They were bulky, armored-looking devices, built from dark metal and heavy glass, the kind she imagined belonged more in a military bunker than a hospital. One was covered in a collapsed metal grating, its reinforced casing buckled inward as if something massive had slammed into it. Another hummed faintly, a dying electrical pulse flickering through a cracked interface screen. The last one, partially swallowed by vines, had a row of glowing indicators that blinked irregularly, their once-precise rhythm now stuttering like a failing heartbeat.

  Half a dozen caged storage cabinets lined the wall near those machines.

  Each one was padlocked, the metal housings boxed in by heavy crate-like frames that looked welded in place. Rust had chewed through several of the locks, leaving orange streaks running down the bars. The cages themselves were corroded and bent, gaps wide enough for Alyssa to spot rows upon rows of glass vials inside. Hundreds of them. Clear tubes, frosted tubes, all crammed together with labels so long and chemical-heavy that none of the names had fewer than five syllables. Whatever they were, none of them looked remotely safe, and every single one was probably years past expiration. One cabinet had been ripped open entirely, the door lying several feet away with deep grooves carved into the steel, as if claws had shredded through it. Inside, broken vials glittered among dark stains Alyssa didn’t want to identify.

  The floor was a mess of tangled roots, loose cables, broken furniture, and scattered pieces of chemistry gear. Three entire workbenches had toppled over, their drawers spilled open across the moss-covered tiles. Tubing snaked through the debris, some filled with cloudy residue that pulsed faintly when her light passed over it. A rolling chair lay overturned in the middle of the room, one wheel still spinning weakly in an eerie, slow rotation.

  But none of that was the worst part.

  What made Alyssa’s breath hitch in her throat was the presence of the bodies.

  Five of them.

  All men, at least from what remained, dressed in the same mismatched blend of tactical gear and outdoor kit that she and Red had been running into since this nightmare started. Their padded vests and armor plates were cracked under massive force, the same distinct setup she now recognized from the earlier encounters. Backpacks lay discarded nearby, slashed open and torn apart, contents spilled across the floor in the same chaotic spread she’d seen on the lower levels. Weapons lay near their hands: a sidearm here, a broken rifle there, a knife snapped clean at the midpoint. Some had faded patches on their sleeves, the same unofficial markings she’d glimpsed before.

  She crouched near the closest corpse, swallowing against the bile rising in her throat. The man’s arm was missing from the elbow down, the shredded stump wrapped in dried vines that had grown over the injury as if trying to claim him even after death. His face was gone. Something had torn it away with savage precision, leaving behind only the raw, sunken ruin of bone.

  Red approached another body, shifting a toppled metal cart aside with his boot. He didn’t need to speculate or voice anything; the torn gear, and the way the corpses had been ripped apart made the situation painfully clear.

  Alyssa stepped closer despite herself, her breath hitching as the damage came into full view. These weren’t the fast, brutally precise kills they’d passed downstairs. Up here, the destruction was vicious, wild, and far more violent.

  One mercenary had been split open from shoulder to hip, his armor plates peeled apart like someone had forced their fingers through reinforced Kevlar. Another had both legs crushed flat, the bones shattered and the muscle pancaked as if something massive had stomped through him. A third had been hurled into a workstation hard enough that the impact had caved in half his ribcage and splintered the bench behind him. Every corpse had dried vines creeping across the wounds, the plant life slowly claiming whatever the Axeman had left behind.

  “It was him,” Alyssa whispered, hugging her arms around herself.

  Red didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The Axeman’s signature was all over the room.

  She glanced at another mangled body, swallowing hard. “They were trying to help Sundaram, weren’t they? They got this far and…” Her voice cracked. “They didn’t stand a chance.”

  Red swept the shadows, his visor tracking methodically across corners, under benches, through the gaps between overgrown machinery. He pushed aside debris with the toe of his boot, checking for movement, ensuring nothing breathed beneath the wreckage. The Axeman wasn’t subtle, but he wasn’t slow either. If he was nearby, they’d have seconds at most.

  They searched the bodies quickly.

  Alyssa kept her eyes away from what remained of their faces as she went through their gear. Some of it had taken a beating from time and the environment; fabric was stiff with dried grime, metal was spotted with rust, and a few pouches tore when she tugged them open. Even so, not everything was a write-off. She managed to pull together a small collection of usable 9mm and a few shotgun shells.

  They pressed deeper into the lab.

  Alyssa tried to take it all in without letting her imagination run wild. The scale of the equipment here was staggering. Even half-destroyed, she could see Umbrella’s fingerprints on everything: the branded cold-storage units that looked like they belonged in a classified bunker, the proprietary cable ports meant for hardware she was sure didn’t exist on any public market, and the kind of armored biocontainment rigs that had to cost more than her entire station’s annual operating budget. Whole lines of machines, each the size of a small car, sat bolted into the foundation. Even cracked open and half-choked by vines, their reinforced housings and insulated tubing screamed price tags that only a corporation like Umbrella could shrug at. This wasn’t a small research space. This was a major facility, built with money poured in by the truckload.

  Dedicated clean-water systems, independent air cycling lines, backup generators sealed in glass rooms, and diagnostic interfaces that had to be cutting-edge when they were installed. Entire budgets had gone into these machines, and entire teams of scientists had lived in this room, running experiments that required obscene funding and equipment most universities would never even see. And now it all sat here, gutted, decayed, and swallowed by the ruin around it.

  And all of it had been abandoned.

  “It’s insane…” Alyssa whispered. “Just leaving this all here. The cost alone...”

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Red said. “Whatever they were really trying to do here died with the hospital.”

  A loud squeak startled her as Red pushed open the far door, its hinges shrieking in protest. He swept the hall beyond with the shotgun before motioning her through.

  Daniel felt the burn of the last fight settling deep into his muscles, that familiar heaviness that warned him he’d been running hot for too long. He swept the lab with one last measured look, cataloging what they’d picked up, what they’d burned through, and the uncomfortable truth that his ammunition reserves were thinning out faster than he liked.

  The P90 was down to its last magazine, with nothing else in the tank for it. The Saiga was doing better, that infusion of buckshot giving him something to fire as the slugs started to disappear, but that was still a concern. He’d burned through a lot of bullets, but the end was in sight. In truth he’d taken the time to swap out some of the specialty magazines, to fill them up with more buckshot. It was effective enough against the zombies but the bugs were less so, but it was what it was.

  Alyssa kept close behind him as they entered the next hallway, her breathing still uneven but steadier. She was holding together. Barely. But she was holding.

  From where they stood, Daniel spotted three pods down the hall, the bulbous plant sacs pulsing faintly like diseased organs. Four or five shamblers tended them, hunched and swaying with that awful, puppeted precision.

  “Alyssa, be ready to run.”

  He said it low and sharp, the kind of warning that cut straight through her panic and settled heavy in her gut. She didn't argue. She tightened her grip on the MP5, trying to steady her hands even as sweat and adrenaline made her fingers slick. Her legs still shook from the stress and the fear, and she forced her weight forward to keep from collapsing.

  Daniel thumbed the mag release on the Saiga, caught the buckshot magazine, and swept it into a pouch in one smooth motion. A fresh mag came up from his belt. The click as it seated into place was sharp enough to make her flinch. She let out a ragged curse when her eyes caught the pods ahead, too many and too close together, each one swelling and flexing like something inside was pushing to get out.

  “God… okay… okay…” she whispered, breath shaking despite her effort to hold it steady.

  Daniel didn't answer. He already had the shotgun locked into his shoulder, planted and ready. The first blast hit like a physical shockwave, a deep concussive bark that shoved the air out of her lungs. The corridor burst into searing white light as the incendiary shell detonated. Sparks sprayed out like a thrown handful of burning metal, washing across the nearest pod and the two shamblers beside it.

  The pod went up immediately. Its skin ballooned, blistered, and tore open, belching black smoke that crawled along the ceiling in a thick sheet. The shamblers staggered under the flare, sparks clinging to them for a moment before dying against the wet membrane slicking their skin.

  “Shit,” Daniel muttered as he shifted targets and fired again.

  Alyssa forced the MP5 up, but the flare had punched straight into her eyes like a camera flash. Her vision smeared white. She blinked hard, blinked again, willing her eyes to clear before something got close enough to tear her apart. Her chest hitched with a broken breath as she cursed herself.

  “Come on, Alyssa… move…” she whispered, more plea than command.

  A shape lurched out of the smoke ahead. The nearest shambler dragged itself forward, its head tilting at an angle no human body should manage. She turned, found the blurred center mass through the last haze of white, and fired in a short, frantic burst. The weapon punched into her shoulder. Rounds tore into its torso, shredding soaked cloth and vegetal tissue, but the thing didn’t slow.

  She gritted her teeth and hauled her aim upward, forcing the MP5 to stay steady even as her arms trembled. She squeezed the trigger again, pouring every ounce of panic, pain, and raw instinct into the burst. Three tight rounds slammed into the creature’s jaw. The impact tore bone apart in jagged shards, ripping through the swollen plant tissue underneath. A wet burst of pulp sprayed across the wall, and the shambler collapsed mid-step with its legs folding under it like snapped branches.

  Daniel’s next shot hit a pod farther down the hall dead center. The incendiary shell ignited the membrane in a fast, searing wash of flame that forced the pod to split open along its seams. Smoke poured out in thick curls, but before it even finished peeling back, two shamblers surged through the heat and debris, drawn by movement and noise rather than deterred by the fire. One barreled forward on uneven legs, half-lit by the dying flare, its arm smoldering where the heat had scorched it. The other pushed past the collapsing strips of membrane and lunged straight at Daniel, sap hissing from small burns across its chest as it closed the distance with jerking, hungry steps.

  These creatures weren’t anything like the husks they’d fought downstairs. The ones below had been dry and brittle, their movements sluggish, their bodies held together by whatever scraps the plant could still drain from it's walking seedbed. The shamblers up here were completely different. Their limbs were swollen and heavy, packed with wet growth that bulged under their skin.

  Daniel burned through the last of the Dragon’s Breath with tight, controlled shots. The hallway strobed with harsh light, each flare cutting deep shadows through the tangled, hanging roots. The sparks clung to the shamblers for an instant before dying against the moisture slicking their bodies. Only the pods reacted, their membranes catching fire in long, curling streaks that split them open under the sudden heat.

  “Back to the lab!” he snapped, his voice tight with urgency.

  Alyssa jerked her attention toward him, understanding immediately what he meant. They weren't holding this hallway, not with the pods swelling behind the shamblers. They fell back in a rough, hurried rhythm, each step driven by necessity rather than coordination. Alyssa matched his retreat as best she could, boots slipping on the sap?slick tile while they worked to keep even a few feet between themselves and the mass of shamblers pushing hard up the hallway.

  They had barely crossed half the distance to the lab when the ceiling above them gave a low, warping groan. Daniel stopped short, tilting his head just enough to catch the sound. “Alyssa, above!” he warned.

  Before she could look up, the ceiling split with a sharp, rolling crack. The tile and drywall overhead tore apart along long, jagged seams as the infection’s growth ripped downward through the floor above. Vines punched through the gaps in a violent rush, dragging clumps of drywall, wiring, dust, and broken metal fixtures with them. The impact hit the hallway like a collapsing lung, filling the air with debris.

  Three shamblers dropped through the opening almost simultaneously, their bodies hitting the tile in wet, staggering impacts. The fall didn't slow them. They clawed upright with twitching, frantic motions and immediately cut off the path back to the lab door, hemming Daniel and Alyssa in between the advancing horde and the new arrivals.

  Alyssa screamed as one landed almost at her feet. It hit the tile on hands and knees with a heavy, wet thud, its movements jerky and uneven as it dragged its head up to face her. Its jaw hung slack, petals of a half?formed flower pushing between its teeth where the infection had split the flesh. Thick, rootlike growths writhed from the back of its throat with each ragged breath, the stems flexing as if trying to anchor to the air itself. It reached for her, dragging itself forward with jerking, unnatural movements, its fingers clawing at the air as thick strands of plant tissue writhed beneath its torn skin. Alyssa’s pulse spiked as the shambler closed the last few feet between them, its slack jaw splitting wider, petals of infected growth trembling with each ragged breath. Before it could latch onto her, Daniel fired, the blast of buckshot slamming into the creature with enough force to rip away half its torso in a single thunderous instant. What remained of its body folded violently against the wall, sap and shredded tissue painting the tile in a heavy splash.

  There was no pause. The rhythm of the fight shifted as a new threat surged to life. The remaining pods along the hall began to pulse in slow, dreadful unison, each beat rolling through the air as a deep, wet thudding that vibrated in Alyssa’s teeth. The sacs heaved, their membranes straining like overfilled lungs as something inside pushed against the thinning skin. One bulged outward sharply, the silhouette inside twisting with an almost frantic urgency.

  “Oh, come on…” Alyssa gasped, her voice breaking under the weight of exhaustion and disbelief. She barely managed to raise her weapon as the pod split open with a slick tearing sound. A corpse spilled out in a loose, boneless collapse, its body slapping wetly against the tile before twitching, twitching again, and dragging itself upright with jerking motions that made her stomach turn.

  The first shambler lunged out of the nearest split pod, still slick with sap, its limbs jerking as if it hadn't quite figured out how to move them yet. It came on fast anyway. Alyssa dragged her sights up and fired. The first burst blew out its teeth in a spray of broken bone. The next tore through the flowering mass in its mouth. The last round punched through the back of its skull and it dropped mid?stride, crashing to the floor and skidding on sap and blood.

  Another stumbled free from a pod farther down the hall, using the wall for balance as it shoved itself upright. Daniel stepped forward and fired. The slug hit it square in the face, crushing bone and plant growth together and blowing out the back of its head in a wet arc that painted the doorway behind it.

  A third shambler dragged itself free from a half?collapsed pod near the wall, its membrane still clinging to its shoulders as it lurched into the open. Alyssa heard the wet scrape of its hands across the tile a heartbeat before it slammed into her side, the weight of its half?formed body knocking her off balance. Thick vines wrapped around her shoulder, tightening like a crude harness as the damp, reeking mass of its upper torso pressed in close. The pressure sent a bolt of hot pain down her arm, sharp enough to make her cry out.

  Her pulse spiked. She twisted hard, boots slipping on the sap?slick floor as she fought to wrench herself free. Panic and momentum did the work her strength couldn’t. She dragged the MP5 around between them, the barrel catching on the shambler’s collarbone as she shoved upward with everything she had. Her finger found the trigger, and she held it down. The burst tore through the side of its skull, shredding the half?grown flower bud blooming from its mouth. Sap, bone, and plant tissue sprayed backward as the creature collapsed in a loose sprawl, the vines around her shoulder snapping away as its weight fell.

  She hadn’t even regained her footing when another shambler rushed Daniel from the side, the corpse breaking from the shadows between two pods. Its arm lashed across his ribs in a glancing swipe, scraping along the plates of his vest and sending a sharp jolt through his torso. The force slammed him into the wall, knocking the air from his lungs. The creature dropped its weight toward him immediately, clawing for leverage as vines forced under the gaps of his collar, straining to pull itself closer.

  Daniel let out a strained, furious sound as he twisted his hips and slammed the Saiga’s stock into the side of the creature’s head. The blow landed with a heavy crack that staggered the shambler and loosened its grip. He didn’t hesitate. He drove his knee into its midsection to break its balance, then tore himself free and brought the shotgun up in a tight arc. Instead of aiming for the skull, he fired a slug straight through its sternum. The impact ripped through the thick, swollen mass of growth inside its chest, blowing out a ragged spray of sap and tissue. The creature sagged forward as the structure holding it upright collapsed, crumpling in on itself before sliding down the front of his vest and hitting the floor in a wet heap.

  More pods pulsed along the hall, their membranes straining and shuddering. Alyssa could see fresh shapes pressing against the thinning skin, the outlines of hands and faces pushing outward. Her breath stuttered. “Red, they're not stopping!” she shouted, voice thin with disbelief.

  “I know!” he cut back.

  He dumped the empty mag and slammed in one of his last Dragon’s Breath magazines, then brought the shotgun back up and sighted along the hallway.

  Alyssa shifted to the side, putting her shoulder to the wall and drawing a bead on anything that moved between them and the nearest pods. One shambler stumbled free, half formed and dragging a dead leg. She stitched a burst across its upper chest and throat, knocking it backward and pinning it to the floor in a twitching heap. Another tried to pull itself over the bodies, using the tangled limbs like a ladder. She snapped its head back with a short, brutal burst, rounds punching through the flowered mass sprouting from its skull.

  Daniel focused on the pods. He fired at the furthest one first. The shell spat a sheet of burning metal that washed across its membrane. The surface blistered, blackened, and split under the sudden heat. He shifted his aim and fired again, then again, walking the sparks along the line of pods. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Each shot punched out in a roar and bathed the infected growth in searing light.

  Under the sustained fire, the pods began to give way. Heat sank deep into the rubbery skins until they curled and split, seams opening in twisting lines as the shapes inside sagged and pulled loose. Fluid hissed and steamed where it spilled out, running down the walls in thick ropes. Chunks of plant mass tore free at the weakest points and slid off the walls and ceiling in heavy clumps that hit the floor with wet, meaty thuds. The air in the corridor thickened into a damp, suffocating heat that clung to Alyssa’s face with every breath.

  Two shamblers that had been reaching toward them were caught under the worst of it. Fire ran along the vines threaded through their limbs, crawling into the root mass holding them upright. They shuddered once, twice, and then collapsed, the light fading from their eyes as the growth inside them burned through.

  The last intact pod at the far end gave out with a harsh, sagging tear, its upper half peeling away from the ceiling. What remained of its interior slumped out in a steaming, ruined mass, the vines above it scorched into brittle, curling strands.

  Silence crept in slowly, broken only by the crackle of dying flame and the occasional pop of sap boiling inside charred roots. Smoke drifted through the hallway in low layers, carrying the overpowering stink of scorched plant tissue overlaid with something uncomfortably close to roasted meat. Alyssa gagged as the taste settled at the back of her tongue and refused to leave, each breath making it worse.

  She lowered the MP5, her arms trembling. “Holy shit… holy shit…” she whispered.

  Daniel swept the hall once more, making sure nothing was still moving in the haze of smoke and drifting ash. Only when he was certain the last of the shamblers had stopped twitching did he lower the shotgun a fraction, his voice rough from the lingering burn of the smoke. “That looks like the last of them.”

  Spent casings littered the floor. Brass and plastic crunched underfoot. Alyssa stared at them, only then realizing she'd blown through three magazines without meaning to. Her forearms ached. Her wrists throbbed. Her shoulders felt heavy and raw.

  She staggered and caught the wall for balance.

  Daniel turned toward her and spotted the thin line of blood trailing from her ear.

  He took a step forward, shotgun still in hand, and Alyssa pushed herself off the wall to follow on unsteady legs. The hallway tilted for a moment and she swayed, catching herself with a hand against the cracked plaster. The last of the gun smoke and burned sap made the air feel thick, and every breath scraped along the raw edges of her lungs.

  “Easy,” he said, his voice dropping a little. He watched her carefully as she straightened up again. She tried to wave him off, then reached into one of her pockets with fumbling fingers.

  “I’m fine,” she muttered, even though the words came out thin and shaky. She dug out a green herb packet with clumsy determination, tore it open with her teeth, and choked down the bitter, grassy taste. It hit her system like it always did, not a rush, just a slow easing of the worst edges. The pounding at the back of her skull dulled enough for her to breathe without wanting to throw up.

  Daniel frowned behind the mask. That was when he saw it properly. The blood at her ear wasn’t just a smear. It had formed a thin, dark line that traced down along her jaw and into the collar of her jacket.

  “Shit,” he breathed. He hadn't thought about how many times she’d been right beside him when the shotgun went off, among a dozen other things. “Alyssa-” he started.

  She lifted a hand and motioned at her ears, cutting him off before he could get the rest out.

  “I can kinda hear,” she said, her voice a rough rasp. “Just… hold on. The ringing’s clearing up.” She winced as she spoke, like each word tugged at something inside her head. “That was loud,” she added, with a strained, humorless little laugh that died almost as soon as it left her mouth.

  “Do you have anything for your ears? Plugs, anything?” He asked.

  She shook her head once, then again a little slower. “No. Didn't think I need anything like that,” she said, breath still uneven.

  He swore under his breath and filed it away with a mental note to fix it later. That didn’t help her now. One of the older shooters at the range had shown him something, a bad workaround that Barry had warned him against afterward but admitted was better than nothing in a pinch.

  Daniel crouched beside the scattered brass and shoved it aside with his glove without giving any of it a second look. He flipped open the top flap of his medkit and dug through the supplies with quick, practiced motions until he found what he needed. A small packet of cotton balls came out first. He tore it open with his thumb and pinched out two of them, rolling each one between his fingers to pack them down into dense little plugs. Once they were tight enough to actually sit in an ear canal without falling apart, he held them out to her.

  “Put these in your ears,” he said. “They won’t do much, but they’re better than nothing. Might keep you from blowing them out again if I have to let the shotgun sing up close.” He paused for a second, then added, “If we find anything better, we’ll swap it out.”

  “Story of my life,” Alyssa muttered.

  The herb did its work slowly, smoothing the worst of the ache and taking the edge off the throbbing behind her eyes. Her ears still felt raw, each heartbeat pulsing there, but she could hear him well enough when he spoke again.

  “Can you move?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Doesn’t mean I wanna, but yeah. Pull me up, Red?” She asked as she blew out a breath and adjusted her grip on the MP5.

  Daniel just chuckled as he helped her to her feet.

  They moved together down the last stretch of hallway, boots crunching over spent shells and charred plant matter. The vines here were thinner, more like a skin over the walls than the suffocating mass they’d fought through below. Every few feet, Alyssa glanced at the doors they passed, reading faded placards and half?ripped signs, until one nameplate finally caught her eye.

  Administrator.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  Daniel nodded once. They approached in cautious lockstep, weapons up, the silence pressing in around them now that the gunfire had finally stopped. Alyssa could hear her own breathing inside the mask, hear the dull thump of her pulse in her injured ears.

  She met the red lens of his mask for a second. He gave her a small, wordless nod.

  Together, they raised their weapons, and Alyssa turned the handle. The Administrator’s office door swung inward, and they stepped through.