The mory of a dimly lit camp ca to like it was etched into my mind. Shadows leaned against the walls, pressing in, but Lila didn’t care. She grabbed by the shoulder, dragging until my back hit cold concrete.
"Adrian, you can’t be serious... are you? I said they were dead—! It’s no use!!" Her voice was high with panic.
I didn’t respond.
"There’s still ti to leave. We can... we can find a safe haven. N—New Jersey!!! I haven’t forgot about that! We can finally—"
"I don’t want to go anywhere with you." The words left before I could think. Maybe too harsh.
Her breath hitched. The air slled of sweat and burnt coffee, tangling with the tallic sting of fear. I could see her chest rising and falling, her fists twitching.
I wanted to tell her— no, to scream at her—that we couldn’t run anymore. People were counting on us. They were still out there, sowhere, waiting for soone to make the right move. I needed to face this, not hide behind any more plans or empty promises of survival.
"You’re... you’re so selfish and stubborn. You never consider ...what I want!" she whispered, voice low now, almost dangerous.
"And you do?" I retorted. She went silent.
"It’s about ti you understand, Lila."
I stepped back before walking away, letting the tension release from like steam. Her knuckles beca white, nails digging into her palms, jaw clenched. Shadows flickered across her face. I wasn’t gonna argue with her.
Resolve shaped my every step as shadows painted my face.
I had a plan. Not foolproof— but to it was the only path forward. And sohow by grace, it had to work.
Looks like this was gonna be easier than I thought.
The warehouse was a storm of noise and shapes, everything falling in and out of focus as the blinding white slowly thinned into figures that were hard to make out. My pulse hamred in my temples, each beat piercing through the leftover ringing.
But we finally had them,— Aubrey, Terri, the others— dazed, stumbling, but alive.
Their ropes fell in clumps. Hands grabbed shoulders. Clothes. Arms. Anything.
Terri’s fingers found my arm in the ss, clinging with a desperation that didn’t match her unsteady breath.
"Thank you— thank you, thank you so m—"
"We need to move."
My voice cut through, laced with resolve. I didn’t slow down. I hooked my arm under hers and pulled her along, weaving through the groaning bodies writhing on the floor.
tal clanged. Soone scread. My ears fought to translate sound from static.
Shapes twitched in the fog. The mbers of the crucible blinked hard, trying to force vision back into their ruined eyes.
Then— a shadow lunged.
I only saw the blur a heartbeat before it connected.
Instinct took over.
I ducked, feeling the wind of the bat grazing over my skull and smash into a crate behind . Splinters burst across the air.
"DON’T LET THEM FUCKING LEAVE!!!"
Her voice cut through the chaos— the piercings woman. She seed half-blind, half-feral, but very much alive.
Unfortunately.
Around , the others stumbled into motion. Carl dragged Aubrey upright. Lila fired blindly into the haze, each muzzle flash painting her face in stuttering fras of cold, brutal calculations.
The Crucible gunn shook off the flashbang faster than expected. So were still crawling. Others were already pushing to their feet, weapons jerking wildly as they regained balance.
One of them bolted forward— fast.
His arm hooked around a camp mber’s throat. The knife flashed once, sharp and final.
A choking wet sound followed, before they collapsed together.
I froze for half a second, sothing warm stinging my eyes— before forcing myself forward, dragging Terri back into motion even as my stomach twisted seeing the body hit the ground.
"Go! Keep going!"
Gunshots rang out behind us. Another scream. The whole warehouse was tilting around , like reality was monts from collapsing.
But by so miracle—
we made it.
The cold night air enveloped my face as I stumbled outside. It cleared the ringing just enough to breathe again. Relief washed over so hard it almost knocked down.
The others burst out behind . I slowed, turning to look.
Aubrey’s arm was slung over Carl’s shoulder.
Two n carried a limping survivor.
Terri held onto like I was the only solid thing in the world.
Barely any casualties.
That was a win in my book.
A smile tugged at my face, despite the blood drying on my hands. I didn’t want to think about that right now.
"You did it..." Carl rasped, breath fogging.
"We saved our people because of your plan. Thank you, Adrian."
A blush crept up my face before I could stop it.
The first ti anyone had ever thanked like that.
I opened my mouth to say sothing—
but just then, then their eyes widened— faces draining to white.
I was confused for a second. Did they not just—
"LOOK—!"
There was sothing behind .
Lila lunged without thinking, driving her knife into the stomach of the infected woman who had crept up behind . The woman’s eyes were spiderwebbed crimson, just like Mary-Ann’s that night— red, ruptured, hungry.
"Please..." she croaked, breath rattling.
"Just let kill one person before I die... one—"
The knife twisted. She was dead. What kind of monster even begs for sothing like that in their last monts?
I stumbled back, trying to catch my breath, before I saw what everyone else was staring at.
Not one infected.
Not a handful.
A mass.
A heaving, staggering horde filling the entire lot, red-eyed bodies piled over one another, pressing through fences, dragging themselves through the fog like a tidal wave of dying humanity.
Give a fucking break.
"What the fuck..." I whispered under my breath.
And with that, despair washed over the whole entire group once again.
I don’t get it. There wasn’t as much infected when we first arrived here.
...was it the flashbang?
"What do we do now?"
A voice cut through my panicked thoughts. Carl’s. When I turned, his eyes were wide, glistening— desperate in a way that twisted sothing sharp inside my chest.
"What..?"
I could barely respond, barely look at him. No, he couldn’t possibly expect to...
But as i looked around at the rescued survivors— Terri clutching her ribs, Aubrey leaning heavily on Carl, even Lila, who was wiping blood off her blade with steady fingers. Every single one of them stared at with that sa unspoken plea.
They all expected to bring them though this as well. Even this.
I found myself completely overwheld within seconds. My knees gave out, hitting the gravel hard enough to sting. I dragged both hands through my hair, gripping it as if I could force my brain to work faster.
Carl frowned, stepping closer. His shadow lood over .
Even he could’ve seen that this was a lost cause— couldn’t he?
Completely sandwiched between two pressures.
The surging infected.
The psychos that were still in the warehouse.
There was nowhere to run.
"Take all the ti you need to think, Adrian."
His voice was raw but steady. I barely looked up at him.
"I have faith in you. We all do."
I lifted my head fully at that.
The world was a chaos— screams in the distance, the rattling groans of the infected, the muffled shouts of Crucible mbers inside the warehouse—
But Carl’s expression...
that quiet, absolute certainty in his eyes...
It cut through the noise.
Even though I knew deep down there wasnt much ti to truly think, he really did believe in , didn’t he?
I sighed.
A new sense of resolve and purpose began to surge through , Carl’s words acting as my new backbone as I slowly got up.
My eyes flickered passed the survivors, to my surroundings...
There had to be sothing we could utilize.
"The infected, though sowhat sentient, are attracted to noise and light."
Terri’s voice cut through the chaos in my mind, sharp despite her trembling. I barely had ti to blink before every pair of eyes in the lot shifted to her. Aubrey’s bruised face was pale beneath the gri, yet her eyes focused.
"It’s just a theory, but I think that’s a side effect of what the disease does to your mind."
I glanced at Lila for just a brief mont. A thousand questions hit . Wasn’t she...—?
They flickered back to Terri.
"The first ti I was at this warehouse, the first ti Aubrey had let off shots at Sheldon’s crew, I noticed a change in the infected’s density in Hyde park afterwards."
A mont of silence.
"Specifically...around this area."
My gaze darted to the shadows where the horde surged, a living wave of red-eyed chaos, and for a fraction of a second, it almost felt like they were staring back.
"With the Crucible having created havoc in the air recently," Terri pressed on despite the hoarseness in her throat,
"the infected seed to pile... a lot. Now it looked like the flashbang tipped everything off."
A cold revelation hit my face, eyes widening as if ice water had just jolted awake.
My own idea...that flashbang wasn’t a mistake.
It was a trigger.
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