The air in the maintenance tunnel was a thick, stagnant soup of mildew and old iron. Our boots swallowed the silence, splashing rhythmically through an inch of oily water. The sound echoed off the curved walls like a ticking clock — a countdown to a deadline we couldn't see. "This is it," Katseye whispered. Her voice cracked, a jagged sound in the dark. She pointed a trembling finger toward a rusted iron ladder bolted into the weeping concrete. "The last stop. This leads to the service alley behind the main sector. From there... it’s a straight shot to the gate." "Straight shots usually have a catch," I muttered, wiping grease from my forehead. One of Yuyan’s men, a grizzled soldier named Kaelen with a deep, puckered gash across his cheek, squinted up the dark shaft. "And if we’re followed? How do we alert the gate guards without bringing the whole hive down on us? We're a parade of targets down here." Yuyan checked the magazine of her rifle. The metallic click was final, punctua

The sterile, white light of the Military Medical Wing felt heavy after the grey gloom of the dead zone. We moved with a frantic energy, wheeling Casimir through the corridors. The doctors fell upon him immediately, their faces tight with a confusion they couldn't quite mask. He was stable, his vitals were a steady hum on the monitors, yet he remained locked in a deep, impenetrable slumber. "Do you know what happened to him?" asked one of the doctors. What are we going to say? He was used as an experiment? His entire body shutting down yet we have no clue of what they did to him. "We met him unconscious on a bed." Katseye quivered, the reality that she might lose her father again clawed her stomach. "Please, doctor. Save my father. He is all I got left." Since I got here, Katseye had been losing everyone and everything she holds dear. She lost Riko, lost her home, almost lost Jace and now, Casimir is on the line too. The confident girl I knew before slowly becomes the opposi

The tip of the wall looked like black ink that was spreading faster as it flowed down towards us. The first mutant crash landed, hitting the pavement five feet from me with the force of a falling star. The concrete spiderwebbing under its pale, elongated limbs with Its unhinged jaw that looked like a mixture of a prey mantis with a swell underneath it's mandibles that are rough and long like a lizard. Honestly, it shouldn't have been able to open that wide and let out a roar that vibrated in my marrow. It took me a few seconds to regain myself and I didn't give in to another thought as I lunged straight at it. My blade finding the soft seal of its throat, twisting until the shriek died into a gurgle, but as I kicked the carcass away, my stomach dropped. This doesn't look like a scout. It was the vanguard, which means this horde had only fully grown mutants in its midst. "They're coming!" a voice wailed. Panic erupted like a burst dam. The organized evacuation turned into a fra

The command was a whip-crack across the chaos. "All vanguard! Release at the countdown!" "Five!" We went straight into formation. "Four!" We set up our weapons. "Three!" We positioned ourselves. "Two!" Some whispered silent prayers while we watched the black flood flowing straight towards us. "Attack!" and we charged forward. On either side of us, the soldiers in the first tier yanked the release valves on their back-mounted canisters in a swift motion and immediately released the gas without missing a beat. A pressurized hiss as it slowly filled the air that was a thick, yellowish plumes of flammable gas erupted into the air. It didn't only look like a clump a cloud; it was a sensory wall. The effect was instantaneous as the incoming horde, which had been a synchronized wave of terror, suddenly dissipated right before us like flood water crashing into hard surfaces like rocks, trees and buildings. It looked satisfying. All of them that came in contact with the gas

The loop was a conveyor belt of tragedy. First, the cold shadow of the warehouse and the sneers of Sera’s bookies. Then, the frantic run through the ash. Finally, the sight of Tobi’s eyes going dull as the life left them, a sight that killed me as surely as the steam did. Over and over, I watched him die. I felt my own throat crushed as the toxins burned. Why only this? I thought, huddled in a memory of a dark alleyway while the bookies’ footsteps echoed. Why I'm I going through all these? These are memories I simply want to bury and forget that it ever existed. I then realized that this wasn't usual. My memories skipping each time made me understand that I was being trapped in my own memories. The fact that I am only shown the terrible painful memories had made me have enough. "I'm not running anymore," I whispered. I decided that I am going to break this script. In the next loop, before Tobi could even speak, I did something that felt like tearing my own soul out. I struck h