In which Kyle wants to swap places with Zofia, and Aiden counts the times he's let himself down.


Chapter 14

Legacy


2017


With very little else to do, Kyle had picked up a new skill since he'd had himself stuffed into the GRE's glass box. A totally practical one. Very useful. World-changing, even.

Origami.

Paper cranes, to be precise. A classic.

On a day when he'd felt that itch to be a vandal, he'd picked up a book, torn out a fistful of pages, and turned them into neat squares. Then, channelling that vandal energy into something productive, he'd rummaged around in a dusty box stashed in the back of his mind, pulled out folding instructions, and gotten to work.

And, ta-da, here we were: a Crane folding cranes.

Hilarious.

Please shut up.

Sighing, Kyle slid off his pillow and stretched out his legs, unavoidably sticking his heels out into the chilly air. Great, right? Tall people problem number fifty-seven or so: Evil Science Lairs do not stock reasonably long bunks.

He smoothened out a crease on his most recently finished origami bird, all the while holding the thing above his nose, and listlessly read the words printed on the thing. They overlapped, forming nonsense prose and bullshit phrases.

Much like Kyle's thoughts, really. They, too, were all chopped off at the proverbial knees and tossed like a shitty salad afterwards.

He huffed at the bird.

The bird kept dangling from between his fingers, perfectly paper-bird shaped and perfectly quiet. Kyle, still staring, suddenly found himself craving to pop the damn thing into his mouth and swallow it.

Why?

Fucked if he knew.

He'd been bumping into all sorts of freaky intrusive thoughts lately; from wanting to crawl into the bathroom and pull the curtains over him, to wanting to knock himself senseless against a wall, and, of course to eating about every goddamn thing that'd fit into his mouth.

Plus, bite people, ya know?

Have a bit of a nibble?

Especially those assholes that kept fucking knocking on his glass box. Like whatever piece of shit did right now.

Rap. Fucking. Rap.

Kyle decided he'd be stoic today. Ignore it.

He flicked the origami bird between his fingers, dancing it from knuckle to knuckle, and pretended himself elsewhere.

The knocking resumed.

"Mister Crane," a voice eventually said. And, like it or not, Kyle's curiosity stuck its nose out from under layers upon layers of self-loathing, hatred, hunger, anger (which was different from hatred, really, it was), fury (another, entirely, different flavor), boredom— and so on and so forth.

Anyway, the voice. He'd not heard it before.

Female.

Heavily accented.

New.

He rolled his head sideways, quickly followed by putting on his most dire scowl.

The woman wore a lab coat. Not a GRE-flavored one, he noted, though she clutched one of their computer tablets to her chest as she fidgeted on the spot.

They did that a lot, those lab coat types. They put their clipboard and their tablets between him and them and, as of late, Kyle had begun to feel an almost overwhelming urge to put their little shields to the test. Right now was no different and he wondered just how long the tablet would keep him from her before he shoved it down her throat. Sideways, of course.

. . .

Dude.

"What?" he croaked.

"We've made progress with your latest lab tests." She lifted a hand to nudge a thin set of glasses higher onto the bridge of her nose. "Dr. Fraser insisted I introduce them to you. I mean, he insisted I introduce myself. And the results."

Kyle considered turning around again, to give her a good long look at his back while he stared at the wall. But boredom, origami birds, and thoughts of eating said birds made for terrible company. Might as well then. He heaved himself up and stalked over to the glass.

The woman leaned back on her heels the moment he thumped his arm against it and fixed her in a steady stare.

Flighty blue eyes met his. They came framed by a sharp bowl cut of dark brown hair. A Uma Thurman in Pulp fiction kinda cut. He glanced at her name tag. genify laboratories stood printed in small letters above her name, with the y at the end pretending to be a sliced-off, oversimplified DNA helix.

"Carina," he said. "How are you enjoying the torture box? Getting lots of peaceful sleep after a long day of work abusing your lab rats?"

Carina opted to ignore the question, though he did catch a flash of something on her face; a subtle crease in her brow, a twitch of her nostrils, and a brief cut of her eyes down before they hopped back up.

It was considerably more than he'd been getting out of anyone else.

"Dr. Carina Faymann," she corrected him, her accent coming on strong. German, maybe. Or Dutch. Or Swiss. "As I was saying—" Her eyes turned to her tablet and she did a little forward bow. "—we've concluded our last set of tests and—"

"Please," Kyle cut in and turned to indicate his box with a sweep of an arm. "Look around. Look, and behold the fields on which I grow my fucks." When he regarded her again, she'd apparently started holding her breath. "Notice anything?"

Carina's mouth briefly tightened into a thin line. Eventually, she released the air she'd been holding in and asked, quietly: "That it's barren?"

"Mhm."

Did that change anything about his current situation? Hell, no. But he'd been wanting to pop that line off for a while now, so… Yay? One more item to cross off your bucket list, buddy.

"I'll make it quick then." She finally separated herself from her tablet so she could go about all her swiping and tapping. "How are your lacerations?"

Kyle scoffed and stuck out his left arm, showing her the step ladder of lacerations Fraser's goon squad had left on his arm. They started below his shoulder and made it all the way down to his elbow. The ones at the top had been the deepest. Real deep.

By now, they'd all healed.

Only two of the deepest cuts were still easily visible, the rest hadn't even scarred.

"As you've noticed, you've shown near full cellular regeneration within six days while under minimal UV light exposure," Carina said. "That's a miracle. We both know that. And while you don't heal as fast as—" She looked over her shoulder. Right over to the glass box on the other side of the lab.

"Theo," Kyle offered. "His name is Theo. Did you know Fraser volunteered him when he was fifteen? I mean, being fifteen is punishment enough, now imagine being turned into a man-eating monster on top of that. Bummer, right?"

Carina's mouth did that thing again where it pulled together tight. When she looked back to Kyle, he figured she had begun pondering if maybe she should be calling over Dennis or Jakob with their stupid shock batons.

"—Theo," she echoed, "heals quicker than you, but unlike yours, his cells react to trauma by means of mutation. His damaged tissue develops alterations that could be considered defensive in nature, such as hardened skin or even… I… I suppose we could call them sharpened protrusions."

"Spikes," Kyle said. Spikes which Kyle (momentarily) wished he'd grow too so he could put them through her eyes. (No, seriously, he did not want to grow spikes. Or spines. Or sharpened protrusions of any kind. Jesus fucking Christ on a rickety crutch, no thanks.)

"Lady." Kyle glowered at her as she merrily tapped away at her tablet. "You are messed up."

Carina turned the tablet around and pressed it to the glass wall, the screen facing him. It was full of numbers. And graphs. Full of shit he didn't want to see.

"Maybe," she said. "But I am— I mean, we are also very close to cracking how this THV variant has affected you. And by you, I mean all three of you. Miss Sirota." Her head leaned left, indicating Fi's glass box. "Theo. Yourself. I dare say that if all goes well and if you cooperate, then we may be seeing this through in only a few more days."

Kyle's hands tightened into fists. He slammed one against the glass, right next to the tablet—

—and re-read the message that'd popped up in the middle of the screen. His heart hammered in his chest.

Trust her, the message said.

We're coming for you.

Viking


2036


Night pulled itself down from the mountains, hopped the wall, and drenched Villedor in shadows that ran through its streets like ink.

Kyle had watched the light die from the relative safety of Hakon's "porch", with his good arm propped up on the railing and a light breeze flirting with his neck. It'd been a long wait between now and the moment he'd watched Fi leave, most of which he'd spent sorting diligently through all the intel he'd gotten out of Hakon — and being really. fucking. worried.

Especially now. With the sun having a snooze.

Out there, approximately too far away, Fi was doing his job; the one listing Be willing to do stupid shit, as its sole hiring requirement. And you know what that was? Wrong. Very. Very. Wrong. Fi was meant to tell him unhinged his ideas were, to inform him about every single thing that could go wrong in the most colourful of details possible.

This was backwards.

Kyle scowled at the night. The night kinda scowled back. Not with a squint, of course, that'd have been ridiculous, but with the tell-tale moan of a city releasing its nightmares out into the fresh air.

. . .

Fresh-ish air. Villedor had an odor.

And its own nightly percussion jam session, apparently. A while ago, when the gloom hadn't fully settled yet, the rooftops had come alive with bells. He'd heard the steady, strong tone of a single church bell, accompanied by uncountable pots and pans, and, yeah, cowbells, probably; all calling out and repeating the same message.

Go home.

Remembering Harran's evening symphony, Kyle had almost gotten his ass kicked into an anxiety episode born from nostalgia.

Almost. He'd breathed through it and worried about Fi instead.

In the bell's wake came the stuttering yowls of all those things that liked going bump in the night. Or, rather, in answer to them. Kyle was convinced that there was a certain territorial flair to the yowls and the howls and the warning calls.

We're awake, they said. Our turn.

And once the lot had yowled itself out came the silence.

"Drink?"

Kyle stopped staring into the murky dark and threw Hakon a look. They stood near the shack's door, where a UV light fixture lit them up in its buzzing, blue light. Kyle admitted he wanted to slide out from under it. To park his ass somewhere else. But then Hakon held up two bottles pinched between his fingers by the necks and that warranted reconsideration.

The caps were already missing. He could smell beer.

Yeah. He'd stay put. For now.

"You're a real sharing type," Kyle said as he accepted one of the bottles. "Thanks."

"I'm clever, Mister Crane. In my experience, it pays to be good to a man with a gun."

Kyle allowed his good shoulder a small shrug, lifted his bottle, and said, with a smile, "Santé."

"À la bonne votre," Hakon returned, grinning from ear to ear, and clicked his bottle against Kyle's.

Then they drank. And drank a little more.

"Not your type of brew?" Hakon asked after about sip number three. Probably because Kyle'd made a face.

He'd not wanted to make a face, but he was agitated, okay? Thinking about Fi. About how she hadn't called yet. About everything, really.

"It's alright," Kyle said. "I'm spoiled though, got a buddy back home who makes this amazing cannabis beer. I swear, that kid woulda made a fortune before the Fall with that shit."

"Home," Hakon parrotted back at him. "I'd thought Pilgrims don't have homes? You have, what, roosts? Nests?"

"Oh, we've got homes." Kyle lifted his bottle, eyeballing how much he had left. "Some of us, anyway. Fi and I got a place we go to during winter. That's home. What about you? How long has Villedor been home?"

"Long enough to divorce three beautiful wives."

"Oh yeah?" Kyle's eyebrows made an effort to pop off his forehead. "Damn. Well. Okay, you're definitely staying away from Fi."

Hakon's laugh was both genuine and quiet, tempered by how neither of them wanted to tell the nighttime prowlers they were up here. "Tell me, Mr. Crane. You're American, no? Were you in Europe with your Military or did you get an unexpected extension to a holiday when they grounded the flights?"

"Bit of both."

Hakon's head bobbed up and down. "I bought tickets to Biarritz weeks before the outbreak, before anyone knew what'd happen. They have beautiful beaches there, in Biarritz and great for ocean fishing. And surfing. I'd wanted to surf since I was a child but never got the time or the cash for it. So when I finally get to go, they start recommending quarantines and I think, hey, what the hell, I'll go anyway, right? Couldn't think of a better place to sit this shit out than at a white beach." Hakon took a long swig of beer. "Then the airports went. Then the trains. The roads. Then, boom, we have a wall around the entire city like what they did to Harran in 2014."

Kyle eyed Hakon over the dirty glass of his bottle. He clicked his tongue. "Let me guess… you want to pick up where you left off? Head to the ocean?"

"Can't say it hasn't crossed my mind. It's easier there, no? Has to be."

"Nowhere is easier. Every corner you pick has its pros and cons, whether that's access to drinking water, food, or, you know. Electricity. Plus, the coast is a long-ass hike from here, doesn't matter what direction you pick. Especially for someone who needs—" He lifted the bottle to point at the UV lights buzzing at them, leaving the rest unsaid.

In response, Hakon's lips twitched into the sort of smile you put on when you knew there was little else you could do; when grin and bear it was all you had left.

"You're probably right," Hakon said. "A pond, then. I'll start with a pond. Or a lake, if I'm lucky. Either way, I'm leaving."

Kyle nearly raised a finger to tell him he knew just the lake for him, when his radio gave a quiet pop of static. His heart rate picked up.

Drastically.

He shoved the beer bottle at Hakon, snatched up his radio, and turned to face the night.

"We're headed in," Fi said, her tone steady. As if she'd told him she'd pop down to 7-11 for a cinnamon roll, rather than into a GRE lab in the dead of night.

Kyle inhaled slowly. "Good luck," he said.

On the other end of the waveband, Fi huffed. "Good night, Crane," she answered. "Don't wait up."


Aiden's arm hurt. The wound on his shoulder throbbed. And his ego? That'd been bruised, too. He'd spent way too long trying to hit that damn sapling. Pebble after pebble (which he'd had to collect himself since Zofia wouldn't let him have any of her coins) he'd shot at the crooked little tree, and pebble after pebble had hit thin air.

He dug his fingers into the sore muscle below his shoulder and wondered what else he could fall short on in only a single day.

A which had come to its end and made room for the dark; and the darker it'd gotten, the tighter Aiden's throat had become.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," he mumbled after swallowing a pesky lump.

Zofia looked at him. She'd just put away her radio and abandoned her scouting perch from which she'd kept an eye on the medical center for the better part of his target practice.

"It's alright if you've changed your mind," she said.

"No. I haven't." He joined her by the edge of the roof, crouching near enough to bump her knee with his leg. "And bailing now would be a dick move."

"Mh." Zofia shuffled an inch sideways. Away from him. Then she pointed down, at street level. "There, left of the entrance. See how there's fewer Biters near it? And how there's a bus lodged in sideways? That's where the Volatiles crawled out. The riff-raff learned to stay clear with them coming and going like that and that gives us space. Now, we'll go down there—"

"—where the Volatile's crawled out?"

"Where the Volatile's crawled out, yes. There won't be any more coming, since whatever is still in the building will stay there for the rest of the night. They tend to leave a runt or two behind to guard their nests."

"Runts," he echoed.

She nodded. "Like the ones in the tunnel earlier today."

"Those were… runts?"

"Comparatively."

"How were they runts?"

She paused at the exhale, giving Aiden the impression she'd snap at him, but then she indicated the one Volatile that loitered near the bus.

"Tell me what you see," she asked.

Aiden's brow knitted. "Uh. An ugly MF?" The Volatile's posture was hunched as it stood in a spot of ghastly moonlight, its bald head turned towards the bus and its long, clawed fingers scraping over the ground as if to entertain itself with a constant scrt scrt over the cracked asphalt.

"Look at the head. See that darker skin, that knotted patch? And how it goes down his neck, then the shoulders, and all the way down his spine where the skin gets all glowy? What's that remind you of? The shoulder bits, they look a bit like pauldrons, no?"

"Guess so."

"That means he got injured. Maybe someone tried to kill him, knocked him in the head hard enough to split skin or cut his shoulders up. Or maybe he got clumsy and fell off a roof." At that, she regarded him with a look from under judgemental eye-lashes.

Aiden pursed his lips.

"Regardless of how he got hurt, if a Volatile's wound is bad enough, that wound starts to heal all wonky-like. Some grow scales so thick you can't hack through them, and others sprout spikes so sharp and hard, they pierce doors. But the process takes time. So if you bump into one that's your size, naked, and with a raisin for a head, that means it's a runt. If it's about Crane's height and if it put on armour, that means it's trouble."

"So what you're saying is— that guy down there is trouble?"

Zofia scoffed. "Don't worry about him. He won't see us, not if you stick close. Now. Listen." She nodded towards the bus. "We'll circle over to that ambulance. From there, we'll head to the bus and climb. See that ledge over there?" Her arm came up. "The one on the left, where the seal ends? We'll be able to reach it from the entrance hall roof."

He did, indeed, see it. He also saw the damn Volatile still though.

"Yeah."

"Great. We get up there and then we find a window."

"Understood."


While Aiden's aim had continuously failed him, Zofia had stashed her bow in the garden shed, hiding it (along with its arrows and sling) behind a fold of tarp. "You're not bringing it?" he'd had asked and she'd informed him, with her voice flat, that it wouldn't do them any good inside.

Now, down on the street, with the moon's weak glow their only light, he realised why she'd carried the heavy slingshot in her pack. And it hadn't been in anticipation of having to throw him a toy to play with.

She'd timed their drop in a way that had the loitering Volatile look the other way and then rushed them behind the cover of the ambulance parked near the entrance. Its tires had long gone flatter than a board and it missed its entire driver's side door. The back stood wide open. Zofia gestured for him to stay put, then leaned around the front bumper to send one of her coins shooting off into the night.

Glass shattered.

One beat. Two beats.

"Quick," she hissed — and then she was gone, her footsteps still so damn light Aiden barely heard the dirty street crunch under her shoes.

They reached the bus. She scampered up its side, near-silent. Then came Aiden's turn, which ended with metal groaning under him and came with a shock of icy sweat pooling in his nape. They made it though. The Volatile, drawn by the sound of glass shattering, was too far away to notice, giving them all the time they needed to clear the bus and get up onto the center's entrance hall. The N that'd fallen off greeted them by lying motionless under the moonlight.

After that came more climbing, which left Aiden wondering how on Earth he managed to have less reach than a woman who stood about half a head shorter than him. A detail he still pondered— quietly, in the privacy of a mind that wanted to reel faced with so much night —when Zofia found them a suitable window.

They carefully avoided what little glass remained rising from the frame in jagged peaks, dropped into the hallway, and promptly saw nothing. Absolutely nothing. The moonlight had little reach in here, which turned everything into blocky shapes bleeding together in the dark and had him worry he'd bump into something if he kept blindly stumbling forward.

Incidentally, that was also when he remembered that he'd dropped his flashlight in the tunnel.

"Zofia?" Aiden whispered.

Something crunched. Behind him? He turned. No. In front of him? No? Shit. Where'd she go? Had he lost her? Already? Aiden squinted into the dark and groped out with one hand, when, suddenly, click a light came on, splashing its beam up against ruined walls.

It also came from all the way down a hallway he hadn't even known had been there, falling off right next to him and leading deeper into the building. At the end of it stood an elevator. And from there, the light waved at him. Or, well, Zofia did, carrying it, and so Aiden hurried to catch up.

On his way there, he passed one sealed door after the other, each one shunted closed with yellow metal bars. Signs were bolted across them, reading INFECTED, DO NOT OPEN, and by the time Aiden reached the last one, he'd slowed from a careful jog to a disturbed crawl.

"Yeah. They locked them in," Zofia said, like she'd read his mind (or how his jaw worked quietly). Her flashlight's beam cut up to land on a row of plaques on the wall.

"We're in the infected ward." The beam wobbled over a plaque which someone had covered up with a white sticker and written INFECTED on. "You know, from back when they thought that's all they'd need. That means we got two floors to go."

The beam cut up. GRE BIOMARKER DISTRIBUTION it read, quickly running out of space and needing to have the INHIBITOR INJECTIONS bit added in smaller letters at the end.

"So, what? We find some stairs?"

Zofia traded him a flat look — and flipped the flashlight around, offering it to him, grip first. It was one of those L-shaped ones with the bulb on the shorter end and it even came with a clip attached to it.

"You can keep that," she said. "Long as you turn it off when I tell you to."

The don't you need it? died on his tongue when she positioned herself on one side of the elevator's doors, slipped her fingers into the gap and gave him a nod that told him he ought to stop standing around like an idiot. And that they didn't need stairs, apparently.

His bite didn't agree much with all the effort that went into getting the doors open without power. Neither did the night at large. Every inch they got out of the doors came with a loud, grating noise, which echoed over their shoulders and down into the corridor with its shunted doors and flaking walls.

"Okay, pull harder," Zofia said. "We've got company coming."

"What?"

"Pull. Harder."

"Yeah— sure— okay—" Aiden heaved with all he got, feeling a bit like he was a tube of twenty-year-old ketchup getting squeezed for that last drop — and then he heard it: the thumping of feet.

Heavy feet.

The Volatile rounded the corner on the far end of the hall long before they'd gotten the door open. Not that that stopped Zofia; she slid right on through.

Leaving Aiden on this side.

Here.

With the Volatile.

Really?!

Aiden chanced a look over his shoulder, just as the thing turned to look down the way-too-short-hallway, its yellowed eyes catching the light from his flashlight. Aiden, frantic, faced the door and tried to shove both wings open himself.

"You'll fit," Zofia hissed on the other side. "Squeeze through."

"What?! No, no I—"

The Volatile stuttered up a delighted yowl.

"Yes. Yes, you will. Squeeze."

"Oh, for—" Aiden abandoned his useless rattling on the door and— head and wounded shoulder first —crammed himself through the gap. Behind him, the Volatile charged. Halfway through and Aiden thought he'd gotten stuck. Any second now and—

—he popped free, his back in renewed agony as it scraped along the hard metal edge. Oh. And he almost fell down a fucking hole. Almost, because Zofia pushed him, which gave him the second he needed to grab on to the nearest ledge.

"Ladder," she said, not wasting a breath. "Climb."

Aiden wheezed and fumbled for said ladder, which stood only a grab away. Then, WHAM, the whole elevator door shook as the Volatile threw itself against it. But even if the doors held, the gap remained, and Aiden had made it two rungs up before the thing stuck its head through the middle and began to wiggle through just like Aiden had before.

Oh god. There was nowhere to go in here except up and Volatiles didn't need ladders to climb. Once it'd made it through—

Except it didn't. While the Volatile turned its glowing eyes up at him and let its maw fall open to bare horrible teeth, Zofia grabbed a hold of a ledge near the door, pulled herself up — and kicked the thing in the side of its bald, shrivelled head.

Its neck snapped sideways.

It yowled (enraged, Aiden figured).

"I said climb," she snapped at him, right as she'd repositioned herself to grab the gap in the door at the top. Above the Volatile. At this rate, all it'd have to do was reach up with one of its long arms and grab her. Then she'd get torn out into the hallway and Aiden would get his spine folded for not doing whatever it was he was supposed to be doing in a situation like this.

Certainly not climb and leave her.

Right?

While he couldn't make up his mind if he should do as told (and climb) or ignore her (and help), Zofia kicked down, cracking her foot into the back of the Volatile's head; and kept kicking until the thing's yowls turned into drawn-out, pained screeches. At kick number three it hit the floor. At kick number four it slid back and out of her reach.

The screeches turned to distorted yowls, followed by two hard, rattling thumps against the elevator doors. Like the thing had thrown itself at them in frustration.

But it didn't stick its head through again.

Huffing, Zofia leapt the distance from the door to the ladder, grabbed onto the rungs right below Aiden, and glared up at him. Aiden, still hanging dumbly from the rungs, could have sworn he caught a faint gleam in her eyes; or that they'd changed colour from their dull grey to a bright amber.

Which was ridiculous, of course.

"Climb," she repeated.

Aiden swallowed and hauled himself up.


He smelled it long before they reached their floor: a sharp and acrid stench that felt like it burnt off every hair in his nose and threatened to cut his lungs to ribbons. But when he hesitated, Zofia told him to keep going and so he did, all the way until he reached a set of already open elevator doors.

Dents and scratches in the metal told Aiden someone had worked it apart with a pry bar. And the half-eaten man they found slumped against the wall off to the right confirmed it. Even in his slack-jawed death, he still clutched the pry bar in one hand.

That smell though. Jesus.

And the light.

A faint, sickly glow choked the hallway, coming off patches of some weird, yellow/green stuff sticking to the walls and forming mounds on the floor. A lot of it had crystallised, forming sharp, jagged edges that protruded from the mounds, but he could see plenty of wet surfaces that held on to a sticky sheen. Aiden shuddered. Whatever it was, it reeked — and judging by how Zofia lifted her shirt to shove her nose into it, he wasn't the only one.

"Bollocks," she said.

"You know what that is?"

"Sort of. We've come across it a few years back, at another one of the walled cities." She looked up at him. Her eyes, Aiden noted, were perfectly normal and perfectly grey; whatever he'd seen back in the elevator shaft must have been a trick of the light. "There were a bunch of cities like this one, cities they tried to isolate. But unlike Villedor, those all went real quick, and whenever they did, some arsehole got to push a big red button and blow them from the map. Though, see, the beasties don't care about fire near as much as people do, especially the ones that go and hide in the sewers all day, so the scientist types cooked up this nasty shit that eats straight through anything that's got THV in it."

"Oh." Aiden glanced from her to the substance and back again. His breathing got a lot shallower.

"Exactly. Try not to lick it."

. . .

"Wha— Why would I—"

She snorted. "Come on. Volatiles hate this stuff, so we should be alright up here."


They were alright, but they weren't alone. While there hadn't been any Biters inside the immediate hallway past the elevator, the adjacent rooms were packed with them. None of them were awake though. They'd folded together on the floors like wilting weeds, with their bony bodies weighed down by year upon year of wasting away. Most wore thick, turquoise GRE lab coats. The rest had been military, judging by their armoured vests and gear.

Aiden wondered if any of them could still get up, or if their legs would snap if they tried. But he wasn't about to put that to the test and, instead, followed Zofia's example: he stayed quiet.

At the end of the hall and the Biter-filled rooms, Zofia stopped. So did he, and for a while, Aiden peered over her shoulder at what he assumed to be trouble. Not the Volatile kind of trouble. But trouble nonetheless.

The corridor broke off on the left and the right. That was normal, he figured. But in front of them, where one would expect either more rooms or whatever it was medical places liked to have in the middle of large spaces, was a fully sealed structure. Floor to ceiling. Left to right. It had all been reinforced with metal and that same tarp he'd seen cling to the center's facade.

A door faced them.

It was made from solid metal and very closed.

And with none of the crystalline stuff nearby, Biters had migrated in front of it, slumped forward and slumbering their days and nights away. Sleeping Beauties, Pilgrims liked to call them. Aiden had absolutely no idea why.

"That's a lot of them," he whispered, but Zofia shrugged.

"Stay here if you like." And then she ghosted past each of them, one light step at a time, rousing not even a single hungry snuff or moan.

. . .

"Stay here my ass," Aiden muttered to himself, pumped his fingers into fists, and followed her, his eyes flicking from the floor (couldn't step on anything that'd crunch) to the Biters and back.

When he reached Zofia by the door (somehow, miraculously, not having woken any up), she had already produced the weird key Crane had given her. The one that looked more like a long, square peg, with a carabiner on one end to clip it to something and a small digital display near the other. Zofia raised it to a panel on the door, slotted the key into a matching square hole — and waited.

"C'mon," she whispered. The display on the key lit up. So did the one on the door right above it, until two faint beeps bounced off each other. One from the key, the other from the door. Soon as they'd passed, Zofia wrenched the key sideways (like one did an actual key) and they were rewarded with a dull THUNK as the locking mechanism released.

Curious moans travelled the rows of Sleeping Beauties behind them, but when Aiden turned to look they hadn't stirred. Even the hiss of air as Zofia pulled the door open didn't rouse them.

"Tada," she said quietly as she slipped on through, leaving him to prop the door open a little more so he'd fit. Then, the moment he'd come through, she plunged him back into darkness by closing up behind them.

Aiden clicked on his light.

Now they were alone.

The stench had faded, too, replaced by a stale afterthought of something that reminded him of antiseptic; and a creepy lack of dust. Or any damage, really. His light slid across the spacious room. It caught cabinets lining the walls, their fronts made of perfectly intact glass clean enough to reflect the light back at him. Stacks of GRE-labelled crates stood between them, none open, toppled, or otherwise damaged. And the tables were practically pristine, their tops respectfully crowded with things Aiden couldn't put names to.

The only thing out of place was a single, toppled stool.

Zofia picked it up as she wandered past and dropped her pack onto it.

"Ever loot a virgin spot before?" she asked.

"No. Can't say I have. Honestly, I can't say I've ever been anywhere this... clean. I feel like I should have washed up before coming in."

"'s cause it's a cleanroom," she said, her voice tilting mid-sentence as if he'd just caught her smiling. But by the time he looked, she'd turned her back to him and was on her knees getting one of the GRE crates open. "Or it used to be, anyway. They had those in all the labs, rooms with filters in the vents meant to keep the virus out back when it was still airborne. And yeah, the power is out and the filters are busted, but no one came and went since to drag in dirt."

"Huh," he commented at length as he wandered to one of the cabinets closest to her. He pried it open. Its shelves were lined with pill bottles. Pain blockers. Antibiotics. All things he'd learned to keep an eye out for; and all worth a fortune.

Aiden's stomach gave an odd squeeze.

"Thanks," he said after a long pause.

"What for?"

"You know, for taking the time to explain this shit to me? The Volatile runts. That chemical shit outside. Cleanrooms. I figure all of that takes a lot out of someone who doesn't like talking." The last bit he added as he'd swiped up one of the bottles, holding it up so he could— coyly —peer down at her from behind it.

Zofia's head turned his way. She'd found another use for the peg-shaped key since: one of the GRE crates. And while she popped the crate open, a chill crept his way, like it'd been filled with ice.

Or like her stare froze him to the spot.

Aiden's stomach gave another one of those odd little squeezes. This time a little tighter.

"Very funny," she said. "Go find a bag before I stuff you in here and tell Crane you got eaten on the way."

Aiden snorted, tapped the pill bottle to his forehead, and got to work.

He'd made it two steps before his stomach squeezed again.

And squeezed.

And squeezed.

A shock of inky blue raced across his eyes. His fingers tightened. Cracked the bottle in his hand; made the flashlight in his other quiver and dance. The seizure that followed a heartbeat later ripped the floor out from under him and Aiden knew only pain.