The days at the hideout began to blend into a gentle, if fragile, rhythm. The frantic energy of survival was slowly being replaced by the quieter, more deliberate work of healing. Ayham’s body was mending, the vivid bruises fading to a sickly yellow, the sharp pain in his ribs subsiding into a persistent ache. But the deeper wounds, the ones carved by fear and helplessness, were slower to close.He had become the center of a small, quiet universe inhabited by Riham and Omar. They were his shadows, their small hands perpetually finding his, their eyes following him wherever he moved. If he shifted in his sleep, one of them would stir. If he stood to get water, two small figures would silently appear at his side.One afternoon, he was sitting on a threadbare rug in a patch of sunlight, slowly trying to restore mobility to his stiff fingers. Riham and Omar watched him with solemn intensity."Does it hurt?" Riham asked, her voice barely a whisper."Not so much anymore," Ayham said, offeri

The first light of dawn was just beginning to paint the hideout’s walls in shades of grey and gold when Shihab’s phone chimed with a soft, distinct tone he had been waiting weeks to hear.It wasn't the crackle of the radio, but the sound of a social media notification. His heart leaped into his throat. Weeks ago, in a moment of desperate hope, he had sent a message into the digital void to his mother’s account: Mom. We are alive. We are in the city. Are you and the others safe?He had checked every single day. Every day, the message remained unread. Until now.With trembling fingers, he unlocked the screen. There it was. A single line from his mother, Umm Shihab.'My son. My brave boys. We are safe. On Al Noor Island. Your father is with me. The internet is finally stable. Please, answer me.'Tears instantly blurred his vision. He didn’t type a response. His thumb, shaking uncontrollably, hovered over the voice call button. He pressed it, his breath held tight in his chest.The line r

The silence was the first thing Shihab noticed. It wasn't the peaceful quiet of a resting hideout; it was an oppressive, hollow silence that seemed to echo from the spaces his brother used to occupy. For three days, the hideout felt cavernous. Shihab would turn a corner, expecting to see Ayham tinkering with a radio or hear his voice teasing Karam. Instead, he found only stillness. The laughter of Riham and Omar, a sound he had grown so accustomed to, was now a phantom echo that made the ensuing quiet even more profound.He tried to fill the void with work, immersing himself in the one thing that represented a future rather than the ghosts of the past: Fadil's field.The sun was high and hot on the third day. Shihab’s hands, more accustomed to the cool metal of a weapon, were caked in dark, rich soil. He worked alongside Mr. Fadil, the two men moving in a wordless rhythm as they carefully transplanted tomato seedlings into neat, irrigated rows. The physical labor was a welcome agony,

The sun was a bloody thumbprint smeared across the hazy sky as Shihab’s rugged off-road vehicle bounced along the cracked, weed-choked asphalt. The silence was the first warning. It wasn't peaceful; it was a vacuum, a dead zone where even the insects seemed to have fled. He was getting close to the coordinates Hadi had given him for the missing children, but the air itself felt wrong. He brought the vehicle to a silent halt on a small, overlooking ridge and killed the engine. Pulling out his high-powered binoculars, he scanned the suburban neighborhood below. It was a ghost town, but not an empty one. His blood ran cold. There were no signs of normal human life—no laundry on lines, no children playing, no smoke from chimneys. Instead, the streets writhed with movement. Dozens, then hundreds of figures shambled, lurched, and staggered with the tell-tale, jerky gait of the infected. Zombies. The entire area was a sealed kettle, swarming from every direction. "This is a disaster," Shiha

The new route was a ghost’s path, a winding trail through the city’s broken veins. Shihab guided the rugged vehicle through a narrow alley that smelled of stale water and rot, then down a concrete ramp into a storm drain. The headlights cut through the absolute darkness, illuminating a tunnel just wide enough for the car. The air was cold and heavy, the only sound the growl of the engine and the splash of tires through shallow, stagnant water. He emerged, as the System’s map had promised, onto a quiet service road directly behind the apartment block where Zayn and Layan were trapped.He killed the engine and slipped out, moving to the building’s rear fire escape. The metal stairs groaned under his weight, but they held. He reached the fifth floor and found the window to apartment 5B. The glass was grimy, but through a crack in the boards, he could see two small shapes huddled together inside. He tapped on the glass, the sound soft but sharp in the tense silence.Inside, Zayn flinched,