Ray didn't wait for the door to open.He moved to the side of it, flat against the wall, and the moment the first soldier stepped through he drove an elbow into the back of the man's skull before he had taken his second step. The soldier dropped without a sound.The second one through the door had time to raise his weapon before Ray's hand closed around the barrel and pushed it toward the ceiling. One shot fired into concrete above them and a sound like the whole room cracking open, and then Ray twisted the weapon free and put the soldier down with the stock of it across the jaw.Two more in the corridor outside.Ray was already through the door before they had fully analysed what had happened inside the room. The first came at him very fast, a very fast speed closing the gap in less than a second, and Ray let him come, stepping inside the swing and using the soldier's own momentum to drive his face into the concrete wall. The fourth soldier tried to radio something before Ray r

Ray recovered slowly, in bits.It was not at once the way waking from sleep worked, bit In pieces. The sound of machine first and then the hiss and click of the machines, then the low voices of people working.And the specific silence of a room where everyone present had a task and was doing it. Then light, white and surgical and coming from directly above him, too bright for eyes that weren't ready for it.Then the restraints.He felt them before he felt much else. Thick bands ran across his chesta and his wrists, his ankles, the cold of the table beneath him running up through his back and shoulders. He tried to move and the bands held without any give at all, the kind of restraints built for something much stronger than an ordinary man.Built specifically for him.He turned his head to the left and the room came into focus in stages.It was large. Larger than the labs he had seen upstairs, the ceiling higher, the equipment were more extensive.It had the kind of space that ha

Ray's mind kept circling back to the bullet.One second a gun. And the next second nothing. The metal hadn't disappeared. It had gone into him, the same way food became energy, the same way everything his ability had ever produced had come from somewhere inside him that he had never fully understood.He has always been able to pull from himself. Supply from nothing, which had never really been nothing, just something stored in a place the old world had no map for.Now he could pull from outside too.He could now take in and use.Absorb and convert. And he could not just produce but also consume.He thought about it for exactly as long as the firefight allowed him to, which was few seconds, and then he stopped thinking and started moving."Head forward," he told the group at the next junction. "Keep moving. I'll catch up.""Ray…." Zoe screamed."Thirty seconds," he said. "Go."They left, Priya taking point with the pistol, Ken supporting Saul, Charlie helping Dani keep her feet und

The growling didn't stop.Ray stood at the cave entrance and listened to it move. This was not the random, directionless sound of infected wandering through forest. This was circular and deliberate.The zombies outside were holding a perimeter and not attacking, and that single detail was wrong in a way that put stillness in his stomach.Zombies didn't hold perimeters.Zombies didn't do anything that required sustained direction. They moved toward heat and sound and smell and they attacked when they got close enough. They didn't surround a position and wait.Someone was directing them.Ray turned back to the group settled in the main chamber. Everyone was present and accounted for. Ada was still against the wall with Eli beside her, her colour slightly better but her eyes still carrying the deep exhaustion of someone who had emptied themselves completely. Dani sat close to Ray's side, her shoulder against his arm, her breathing steady but her face pale from the wound Bleach's s

Ray went alone at first.He then told the group to stay in the cave, stay quiet, and wait for him to come back. He gave Ken the compass heading in case something went wrong and left before anyone could argue about it.The forest northwest was different from the section they'd been living in. There were older trees.with thicker trunks, the ground beneath them flattered and it was easier to move across. Ray kept his pace steady and his senses open, checking for zombie movement, checking for soldier activity, finding none.Two hours in he perceived smoke.This was not forest fire. It was controlled fire. It came from multiple sources burning at the same time in the organised way of people who had figured out how to manage heat without drawing too much attention.He slowed down.A quarter mile further he heard the voices. Then the walls.He stopped at the treeline and looked.The camp had been built into a wide natural clearing, expanded outward in every direction with salvaged mate