Darkness did not save him.
Kael had not moved since the thing outside had been pulled away by someone else's scream. He sat curled against the back wall of the maintenance storage room, knees to his chest, hands trembling in front of his mouth. Shelves crowded him from both sides. Across from him, the chair was still wedged beneath the door handle.
His breathing kept making him listen to the door.
He tried to let the air out slowly. Before he could finish, his chest pulled in another breath. It caught in his throat, loud enough that he pressed his hands closer and waited.
Nothing at the handle.
He tried again.
The blood was drying across his knuckles. Each tremor pulled at the stiffening layer until it cracked and shed small flakes. His skin was whole beneath it. Blood remained sticky in the lines of his palms, dark under his nails. He watched his fingers shake and tried to hold them still against one another.
Dust, bleach, old paper. With his hands so close to his mouth, he could smell the opened bodies too.
Outside, a shriek cut through the walls. A crash answered. Something wet dragged across tile. Someone called for their mother.
Kael kept his hands where they were.
A thin laugh rose through the noise.
For one second, Kael thought of Clara.
He pressed his eyes shut before the thought could become a face. The laugh was somewhere outside. He did not look for it.
For a moment, the noise thinned enough for him to hear his own breathing again. He listened past it, towards the door.
Then another scream came, and his fingers tightened over his mouth.
He no longer told himself to wake up.
When he opened his eyes, the notification was still there.
[Planetary Synchronization: 68%]
His hands shook beneath it. The letters stayed clear.
He had shut the door on the courtyard. The notification was still in front of him, here in the dark between the shelves.
He stared at the notification until his eyes burned.
Then a sound came from the door.
Small.
Soft.
Almost careful.
Kael stopped breathing.
At first, he thought it might have been the building settling. A pipe. A loose hinge. Some ordinary sound that still belonged to the world before.
Then it came again.
A scratch.
Not a knock.
Not a plea.
A nail drawn slowly along wood.
Kael's heart lurched so hard it hurt.
The chair wedged beneath the handle trembled once, then went still.
Another scratch followed, longer and lower, as if something on the other side was learning the shape of the door by touching it.
Kael's eyes widened in the dark.
No.
The handle turned.
Slowly.
The chair held.
Barely.
A soft pressure bent the door inward, then relaxed.
Again.
More weight this time.
The wood creaked.
Kael slid one hand down from his mouth and felt blindly across the floor. Dust stuck to his palm. His fingers brushed a broken cable, something plastic, a loose cap.
Nothing.
The handle twisted harder.
The chair groaned.
Then his fingers hit something thin, cold, and sticky.
He grabbed it.
A screwdriver.
Rusted along the shaft. The handle was tacky with old grease or something worse. The tip was narrow and dull, barely a weapon at all.
He held it anyway, like a blade. Like the last stupid proof that his hands could still choose something.
The door stopped moving.
For three breaths, there was nothing.
Then something inhaled on the other side.
Wet.
Patient.
The smell came through the crack beneath the door.
Rot.
Warm rot.
Breath dragged through meat.
Kael's stomach tightened. He raised the screwdriver with both hands. His arms shook so badly the tip drew small circles in the dark.
Please.
The thought did not know who it was begging.
The door slammed inward.
CRACK.
The chair jumped.
Kael screamed, but the sound broke in his throat before it became anything useful.
The door bulged around the handle. Wood bowed outward, splintered, then held.
Barely.
Move.
He staggered to his feet.
The room tilted. Pain flared in his ankle, already abused by the run, sharp and hot, but it held enough to hurt. Shelves loomed in the dark. Cleaning bottles glinted weakly. Coiled cables lay across the floor.
He looked for a way out.
There was no window. No second door.
Nothing obvious.
He turned too fast between the shelves and his shoulder struck something hard.
A panel.
Kael froze, then looked past it.
A few feet along the back wall, stacked supply boxes leaned against a collapsed shelf. Behind them, half-hidden in the dark, a metal shutter was set into the wall.
Not a window.
A delivery hatch.
The opening started only a few inches above the floor and reached almost to his chest. Narrow, built for supplies rather than people.
Maybe wide enough for him.
A control panel hung beside it.
Up.
Down.
Stop.
The door shook again.
BANG.
The chair scraped back an inch.
Kael lunged for the panel. His bloody fingers slipped over the buttons.
He hit the up arrow.
Nothing.
"Come on…"
He hit it again.
The panel clicked.
The shutter groaned.
A metallic screech tore through the room, long and shrill, cutting through the dark like glass across nerves.
Too loud.
Far too loud.
Everything in the hall would hear it.
Kael flinched.
The thing outside the door answered.
A shriek scraped through the wood.
Neither human nor animal.
The shutter began to rise.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
Metal teeth climbed into the wall one grinding notch at a time. A blade of grey light cut across the floor, touched Kael's shoes, and crawled towards the blood on his hands.
The light was cold, white, almost surgical.
For one absurd second, he thought of the pharmacy ad.
EAT CLEAN. LIVE LONGER.
Then the next impact hit the door.
BANG.
The chair cracked.
Kael stumbled back, caught himself against the wall, and slammed the button again, as if violence could make the motor understand urgency.
The shutter crawled higher.
A hand burst through the door.
Not a full arm.
A hand.
Grey skin split over swollen knuckles. Nails blackened, too long, curved at the tips. It forced itself through the broken wood and felt the air, opening and closing, searching.
Kael backed away.
The screwdriver shook in his grip.
The hand struck the chair.
The chair shifted.
The door opened an inch.
An eye appeared in the crack.
Red.
Wet.
Focused.
Kael's breath died.
The thing pressed its face against the opening. Skin tore against the splinters. It did not care. Its mouth stretched around the splintered edge, teeth grinding, lips peeling back as if pain had become irrelevant.
A low gap had opened beneath the shutter.
Barely high enough to crawl.
Kael dropped to his knees and shoved boxes out of the way. Metal cans rolled across the floor. A bottle of bleach split open beneath his hand, and sharp chemical fumes stabbed through the rot. Cold liquid washed across his palm, the sting following a moment later.
He barely noticed.
The door behind him cracked again.
The chair gave way.
CRACK.
The door flew open.
Bodies forced their way in.
Too many.
They jammed through the frame at once, shoulders slamming into shoulders, jaws opening, eyes filmed red and white. Limbs caught on the doorframe and bent the wrong way. One fell, was stepped on, and kept crawling with its spine twisted like rope.
The room filled with hands.
Kael threw himself flat beneath the rising shutter, head first, belly to the floor. He pushed his head and arms through, the screwdriver clenched in one fist.
His chest scraped over the lower frame. Above him, the shutter's rising edge pressed against his upper back.
Too low.
He went anyway.
For one second, he was stuck between the frame and the shutter.
The motor ground on, lifting the edge across his jacket. Cold air hit his face from outside, wet and open.
Beyond the hatch, a narrow loading ledge clung to the wall. Just over a metre below, a dented supply container sat shoved against the building.
Behind him, claws scraped at the wall. Breath rasped. Teeth snapped. Wood splintered under weight.
Kael clawed at the outside ledge with his free hand. His fingers slipped on rain-slick metal. He pulled, bracing the fist that held the screwdriver against the lower frame.
His ribs dragged over the edge, and pain cut across his side, bright and immediate.
His shoulders cleared the shutter. His chest slid onto the narrow ledge, hips and legs still inside.
Something caught his trouser leg at the calf.
A claw. Hooked in the fabric, clear of his skin.
The grip closed.
Kael kicked.
The grip held.
He braced his free forearm on the ledge, twisted, and drove the screwdriver back through the gap behind him.
He did not aim. He only struck.
The tip sank into something soft.
A scream exploded from the thing inside.
He hauled himself sideways on his free arm.
The claw tore loose, taking a strip of fabric with it. His leg jerked free, sweeping his calf across the sharp, exposed side of the metal hatch frame.
Heat opened down his calf.
Kael bit down on his own cry so hard his teeth hurt. He dragged himself forward another inch. A trailing fold of his jacket caught on the rising shutter and tore.
Hands slapped the wall behind him.
Fingers brushed his shoe.
A mouth snapped shut close enough for him to feel the air move.
Kael kicked again.
His free palm and the heel of his other hand found the wet lip of the ledge.
He tried to brace his weight on it.
There was not enough metal.
For half a heartbeat, he hung over the courtyard.
Then gravity took him.
He fell.
He hit the dented supply container shoulder-first.
BOOM.
Metal buckled under him.
Pain burst through his shoulder.
His hand locked around the screwdriver hard enough to hurt.
His ankle twisted beneath his weight. A sharp pain ran up his leg.
Kael rolled off the dented lid and dropped to the ground.
For a moment, he could not move.
Rain touched his face.
Or blood.
He did not know.
He gasped.
The first thought came without triumph.
Alive.
Still.
The word meant less each time.
The courtyard trapped him differently now. Not through walls, but through distance, smoke, and bodies running in every direction only to find teeth at the end of every path.
For a second, Kael almost missed the room.
Then something roared across the courtyard.
Kael froze.
Slowly, he lifted his head.
Windows burned with orange light. Smoke crawled along the university walls. Sprinklers spat weak arcs of water over blood-slick stone. Above the roofs, the black drones circled through the haze, their lights blinking uselessly over the massacre.
It was no longer chaos.
This was feeding.
Monsters dragged people down in groups. Students fought with chairs, fire extinguishers, broken glass, bare hands. Some fell and rose wrong. Some killed, and something changed beneath their skin. Some stood frozen with weapons in their hands, staring at what they had done as if waiting for the old world to punish them.
Across the smoke, Kael spotted another side entrance beneath a flickering emergency light. He fixed on it because any single point was better than looking everywhere.
A man staggered towards him through the smoke. His shirt was torn open. One arm dangled nearly free at the shoulder. His face was white with shock, mouth moving before sound came out.
"Help me…"
Kael stared at him.
His hand twitched towards the man and stopped.
The man reached out.
"Please—"
A mass dropped from a ledge overhead.
Heavy, black-veined, too broad across the shoulders, with a mouth split almost to the ears.
It drove the man into the ground.
Bone cracked.
The voice ended in a wet cough.
The creature lowered its head and ripped into him.
Kael pressed himself against the container, both hands clamped around the screwdriver.
His teeth chattered.
Cold had nothing to do with it.
A howl tore from the hatch above him.
The storage shutter shook.
A body forced itself through the opening.
Then another.
They were coming through.
One creature slipped, fell, and landed badly on the stones.
CRACK.
Its legs folded under it.
It screamed, dragged itself upright with both arms, and kept moving.
Another hit the container lid where Kael had fallen seconds earlier.
BOOM.
The metal caved deeper.
Kael flinched away.
He pushed off the container.
Move.
His body hesitated.
Move.
It obeyed poorly.
He limped from cover, every step sending fire up his ankle. His calf burned where the metal edge had opened it. The emergency light above the side entrance flickered ahead through the smoke.
Too far.
Still the only shape his mind could call an exit.
The way ahead kept breaking apart in smoke and bodies.
Near the fountain, a woman swung a metal bar at something crawling towards her. A few steps beyond her, a boy dragged himself across the stones without one hand. Further away, a student stood over a crushed skull, sobbing while pale light crawled under his skin.
The woman swung again.
"Back off!" she screamed. "Back off!"
A massive hand caught her by the face.
For one second, she remained standing.
Then the hand closed.
Her scream vanished behind a wet collapse.
Kael turned away too late.
He still saw enough.
His stomach clenched.
Nothing came up.
There was nothing left in him to vomit.
Behind him, the creatures from the storage room dropped into the courtyard one after another. They moved without formation. They needed none. The slaughter drew them all the same.
One lunged at a student.
Another attacked a monster already feeding.
A third crawled across the stones until something larger tore it in half.
The courtyard tore itself apart around him.
Kael staggered backwards and nearly lost the line towards the side entrance.
The screwdriver remained in his hand, small, rusted, almost insulting.
But his fingers would not let go.
I have to move.
The thought arrived without strength.
I have to survive.
But where?
Every direction had teeth.
Every path moved.
Then the air tightened.
Kael felt it before he saw anything.
A pressure built behind his eyes. A cold line ran down his spine.
The screams did not stop.
But something beneath them did.
The notification appeared in the centre of his vision.
[Planetary Synchronization: 82%]
For a moment, the courtyard blurred around it.
The blood, the fire, the rain, the hands reaching through smoke. All of it became background.
The number remained.
Kael's heart struck once.
Hard.
Then again.
The rules were still arriving.
Ahead, between him and the side entrance, a half-formed body dragged itself through the blood.
Small.
Wounded.
Still moving.
Kael's fingers tightened around the screwdriver.