Library
Search
GRENUN: When The Air Killed Us

Not enough ratings

GRENUN: When The Air Killed Us

Apocalypselast updateLast Updated : 2026-11-12

By:  Bakari Updated just now

Language: English
16

Chapters: 25 views: 21

Read
Add to library
Report
MysteryMedical GeniusApocalypse

When a catastrophic 9.9 magnitude earthquake strikes Greifswald, Germany, it triggers an 80-meter tsunami, causes a nuclear grid failure that blocks out the sun, and ruptures the sub-level tanks of Project Regen—a secret bio-chemical compound designed to clean polluted water. Silas Brandt, a young lab technician tormented by his own role in creating Regen, survives the initial disaster only to discover a terrifying truth: when the chemical mixed with nuclear fallout and floodwaters, it transformed human biology. Those who breathe the contaminated air turn into **Grenuns**—creatures that don't bite or hunt, but stand in the fog and exhale poison, luring survivors by humming their deepest personal memories. Sixty seconds of exposure to their breath turns anyone into one of them. Armed with only three bottles of clean water, a gas mask, and a locked yellow emergency box he was ordered never to open, Silas escapes the drowning facility into a sunless, flooded wasteland. He seeks refuge at a local pharmacy turned safehouse, run by the strict and unforgiving Mara Jensen, while facing off against Jonas, a ruthless survivor who steals life-saving masks rather than food. As resources dwindle and the floodwaters rise, Silas must navigate deadly double-mask rules, toxic rain, and deep personal betrayals. He discovers that the yellow box holds both the key to purifying the water and a terrifying secret about Project Regen. To save what remains of humanity, Silas has to face not only the evolving Grenuns and rival survivor factions, but also the guilt of his past—fighting to survive in a world where every single breath could be his last.

Show more
Overview
Catalog
Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Holding My Breath

Forty-seven.

Forty-eight.

My lungs are on fire. A hot, tearing agony builds behind my sternum, spreading outward toward my ribs like liquid lead. My throat twitches involuntarily, trying to force my mouth open, trying to suck in whatever is left inside this room.

I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek until I taste copper. Pain buys seconds. Pain keeps the diaphragm still.

Forty-nine.

The floor beneath my knees won't stop vibrating. It isn't a sharp shock anymore; it’s a deep, nauseating thrum that rattles straight through my shins, up into my pelvis, and into my jaw. The reinforced concrete walls of Sub-Level 3 are weeping. Fine, grey masonry dust pours down from the hairline cracks in the ceiling like hourglass sand, settling into my hair, my eyelashes, and the back of my mouth.

It tastes like crushed chalk and hot iron.

Fifty.

Don't breathe. Whatever you do, Silas, do not open your mouth.

Three feet in front of me, the main containment door lies half-sheared off its heavy steel hinges. Beyond it, the central atrium of the Greifswald Bio-Chemical Research Facility is gone. It didn't just collapse; the four-minute 9.9 earthquake chewed it up and spat it into the rising, black floodwaters below.

Through the jagged hole in the wall, I can see the stairwell. The air out there isn't grey anymore. It’s tinged with a faint, sickly yellow mist that clings to the emergency lights like grease.

Regen.

My stomach turns over. My hand, buried inside the pocket of my torn lab coat, tightens around the handle of the small yellow emergency box. The plastic is warm. Too warm. It feels like holding a feverish wrist.

Fifty-one.

My vision narrows. Black pinpricks dance across the edges of my sight, swallowing the ruined doorway, swallowing the dust, swallowing the light. My heart is a frantic hammer knocking against my ribs—thump-thump-thump-thump—demanding oxygen that I refuse to give it.

I helped write the chemical structure for Regen-4. I sat in the glass-walled office on Floor 2 with Elena, drinking lukewarm filter coffee, running computer simulations on cellular regeneration in polluted groundwater. We were going to save the Baltic estuaries. We were going to win the regional innovation grant.

I signed the safety clearance papers. My signature is right there on the bottom of page forty-two in crisp blue ink: Silas Brandt, Junior Systems Tech.

We didn't account for the tectonic fault slipping. We didn't account for the backup containment seals shearing off under forty thousand tons of shifting granite.

Fifty-two.

I caused this. The thought repeats in my head, rhythmically, sickeningly, matching the throb behind my eyes. This is my fault. This is my fault.

Fifty-three.

I can’t hold it. My diaphragm spasms violently. A hoarse, strangled sound escapes my throat.

Panicking, my left hand fumbles wildly at my belt, grabbing the hard rubber edge of my Dräger dual-filter gas mask. My fingers are wet with sweat and engine oil, slipping off the strap twice before I manage to drag the heavy rubber seal over my chin, nose, and eyes. I yank the double straps back over my head, digging the edges of the silicon skirt into my skin until it hurts.

Exhale first. Clear the dead space.

I blow out hard. The rubber check-valve near my chin flutters with a wet phut-phut, pushing out the trapped air.

Then I drag in my first breath.

The sound inside the mask is deafening. A hollow, harsh SKRRR-HHHH as air is forced through the charcoal canisters on either side of my jaw. It smells like synthetic rubber, stale sweat, and the sharp, metallic tang of compressed activated carbon. It’s dry and tasteless, but it’s clean.

My lungs expand, taking in the filtered air, and for three seconds, I slump forward onto all fours, resting my forehead against the wet concrete floor, weeping with pure, pathetic relief.

I'm alive. I can breathe.

Fifty-six.

I pull myself up onto my knees, wiping the condensation off the inner lens of my visor with the sleeve of my coat. I check my pockets with frantic, trembling hands.

Left pocket: one half-liter plastic bottle of mineral water, unsealed but still full. Right pocket: two sealed half-liter bottles of mineral water. Belt loop: one spare charcoal filter cartridge, slightly dented. Right hand: the yellow box.

Three bottles of water. One mask. One box I was explicitly ordered to burn if the containment alarms ever went off.

Suddenly, a sound cuts through the steady hum of the crumbling building.

It isn't the grinding of shifting concrete. It isn't the distant, low roar of the sea breaking over the outer seawalls of Greifswald.

It’s a voice.

"Silas..."

I freeze. The air inside my mask stops dead.

The voice didn't come from the radio on my shoulder. It didn't come from the intercom system—the power grid died three minutes into the shaking. It came from right outside the shattered door.

It’s low, soft, and wet, like someone trying to speak with a mouthful of heavy syrup.

"Silas... please..."

My blood turns to liquid ice. I slide backward across the wet floor, my boots scraping against loose gravel, my back slamming hard against the overturned filing cabinet behind me.

There shouldn't be anyone alive on Sub-Level 3. The entire administrative wing collapsed into the lower sump ten minutes ago. Everyone who didn't make the elevator shaft was drowned in the first wave of chemical overflow.

"Who's there?" I whisper into my mask. The rubber cup muffles my voice, turning it into a wet, terrified rascal. "Stay back! I'm... I'm wearing a level-three respirator! Stay back!"

A pale, grey hand reaches around the jagged edge of the doorframe.

The fingers are long, thin, and slick with green-tinged fluid. The nails aren't broken; they are stained a deep, bruised black near the cuticles. Black veins, thick as thick twine, bulge against the grey skin of the forearm, pulsing rhythmically in time with the flickering yellow light.

Then, the face moves into view.

It's Frau Weber. The fifty-two-year-old night custodian who used to leave small wrapped peppermint candies on my desk every Tuesday morning.

Her hair is wet, plastered across her forehead in dark, clumped strands. But her skin... her skin isn't human anymore. It has turned the dull, waxy shade of ash. Her eyes are completely milky white, the pupils dissolved into cloudiness, yet they are turned directly toward me.

She isn't bleeding. She isn't biting her lips. She isn't snarling like a rabid animal.

She just stands there in the doorway, framed by the yellow mist, holding her hands loosely at her sides.

And then, she takes a breath.

Her chest expands, pulling the thick, poisonous air of the hallway deep into her lungs. She holds it for two seconds, her grey throat swelling, and then exhales a long, visible plume of pale green vapor straight toward the threshold of my room.

She doesn't move toward me. She doesn't take a single step.

She just stands in the doorway, breathing.

Sixty seconds, my mind screams, the safety manual text flashing behind my eyes in bright red letters. Inhalation of unrefined airborne Regen-4 induces systemic cellular necrosis and neural hijacking within 60 seconds of exposure.

Frau Weber parts her pale, grey lips. A soft, horrible sound vibrates out of her chest—a sound I used to hear coming from her small radio when she cleaned the hallways at night.

She begins to hum.

It’s a slow, gentle melody. A quiet German lullaby. The exact one my mother used to sing to me when the winter thunder rolled in over the Baltic coast.

Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf...

My hands shake so violently that I almost drop the yellow box. Cold sweat pours down my neck, soaking into the collar of my lab coat.

She shouldn't know that song. Frau Weber was a stranger. We spoke five sentences to each other in two years.

"Stop," I choke out through my mask, pressing myself as hard as I can against the filing cabinet. "Stop it. Please."

She doesn't stop. She stands in the doorway, her milky, dead eyes staring right through my glass visor, her chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm, filling the small room with her poisoned breath.

Waiting for me to take off my mask. Waiting for me to come out and join her.

Outside, far in the distance, the high-pitched, wailing scream of the city's tsunami siren finally begins to blow.

 

 

Expand
Next Chapter
Download
Continue Reading on MegaNovel
Scan the code to download the app
TABLE OF CONTENTS
    Comments
    No Comments
    Latest Chapter
    More Chapters
    You may also like
    new release novels
    25 chapters
    Chapter 1: Holding My Breath
    Forty-seven.Forty-eight.My lungs are on fire. A hot, tearing agony builds behind my sternum, spreading outward toward my ribs like liquid lead. My throat twitches involuntarily, trying to force my mouth open, trying to suck in whatever is left inside this room.I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek until I taste copper. Pain buys seconds. Pain keeps the diaphragm still.Forty-nine.The floor beneath my knees won't stop vibrating. It isn't a sharp shock anymore; it’s a deep, nauseating thrum that rattles straight through my shins, up into my pelvis, and into my jaw. The reinforced concrete walls of Sub-Level 3 are weeping. Fine, grey masonry dust pours down from the hairline cracks in the ceiling like hourglass sand, settling into my hair, my eyelashes, and the back of my mouth.It tastes like crushed chalk and hot iron.Fifty.Don't breathe. Whatever you do, Silas, do not open your mouth.Three feet in front of me, the main containment door lies half-sheared off its heavy steel
    last updateLast Updated : 2026-11-05
    Read more
    Chapter 2: 4 Minutes
    Four minutes.That is how long a 9.9 earthquake lasts when the earth decides to rip itself apart beneath your boots. Two hundred and forty seconds. I know the exact length because the digital clock on the lab wall froze at 04:01:12 when the power grid ruptured, its cracked red LEDs still faintly glowing in the dark.The floor beneath my knees won't stop rolling. It isn't just shaking; it feels like the concrete is turning to liquid, buckling upward in sudden, violent thrusts that throw me sideways into the sharp corner of a steel workbench.Pain shoots through my hip, hot and blinding. I collapse onto my hands and knees, my forehead slamming hard against the floor."Get up, Silas," I cough into the rubber cup of my mask. My voice sounds tiny inside my own head, muffled by the charcoal filters. "Get up."My hands are slick with sweat and green grease. When I try to push myself up, my right palm slips on the floor, and I go down again, scraping my cheek against the rough cement. The wat
    last updateLast Updated : 2026-11-05
    Read more
    Chapter 3: The Wave
    The emergency stairwell is a vertical chimney of panic.My lungs tear with every breath as I take the concrete steps three at a time. SKRRR-HHHH. SKRRR-HHHH. The charcoal filters on my face click and rattle with every desperate gasp. The rubber seal bites so hard into the bridge of my nose that I can feel raw skin chafing under the pressure, but I don't touch it. I don't dare.I hit the heavy steel access door on the roof level with my shoulder, bursting out into the freezing open air.Rain hits my mask immediately—fat, heavy droplets that streak across my clear visor, blurring the world into liquid gray. The wind off the Greifswald coast screams like a dying animal, tearing at the lapels of my wet lab coat.I run to the eastern ledge, my boots skidding on the slick gravel roof, and my chest locks up so tight I forget to breathe.I see the wave.It isn't water. Water is blue; water reflects the sky. This is a mountain of black, churning sewage, mud, and crushed harbor infrastructure m
    last updateLast Updated : 2026-11-05
    Read more
    Chapter 4: Underwater
    I am underwater, and my mask is leaking.The cold hits my face like a slap of broken glass. Cold black Baltic water, heavy with mud, diesel, and pulverized concrete, forces its way under the lower rubber skirt near my jaw. The sharp, bitter burn of contaminated salt water surges straight up my left nostril.My diaphragm violently spasms. Don't inhale! Silas, don't you dare inhale!I fight the terrifying urge to gasp, clamping my teeth together so hard my jaw muscles ache. The taste of the water is vile—like licking the lead terminal of a rusted car battery. It scorches my tongue, leaving a dry, metallic film that makes my throat swallow on pure instinct.Everything is dark. Down here, thirty feet under the surface of the flood, there is no sun, no emergency lighting, no direction. I kick my feet wildly, my heavy leather boots dragging like iron weights, but I can't tell up from down. The pressure in my ears builds to a dull, throbbing scream as the churning current tumbles me over and
    last updateLast Updated : 2026-11-05
    Read more
    Chapter 5: Dark Sun
    I look up, and the sky isn't a sky anymore.It looks like someone took a massive, rusted iron lid and slammed it down over the whole damn world. There are no clouds, no blue patches, no soft morning light filtering through the storm. Just a flat, suffocating ceiling of dull, bruised ash suspended three hundred feet above the flooded rooftops of Greifswald. The sun is gone—replaced by a faint, sickly white disc that bleeds no warmth, casting zero shadows across the churning, oil-slick water below.The air hitting the clear visor of my Dräger respirator doesn't move like wind. It feels heavy, stagnant, carrying a damp, sulfurous heat that makes the rubber skirt bite into the raw skin of my jaw.SKRRR-HHHH. SKRRR-HHHH.The sound of my own lungs echoing inside the plastic facepiece is the only proof I’m still breathing clean air. Every drag through the dual charcoal canisters tastes like powdered chalk and old copper. It’s dry, tearing at the back of my throat, but outside the mask, the w
    last updateLast Updated : 2026-11-05
    Read more
    Chapter 6: First Grenun
    1One. Two. Three.I slam the heavy steel hatch behind me, pulling the rusted iron latch down until the bolt bites into the frame. The sharp CLANG reverberates through the narrow concrete stairwell, echoing down into the dark, flooded stairwell below.I press my back against the wet metal door, my shoulder blades digging into the bolts, heaving heavy, ragged breaths into the rubber cup of my mask.SKRRR-HHHH. SKRRR-HHHH.The charcoal canisters on my jaw buzz with every frantic drag of air. Moisture from my sweat and breath has pooled in the bottom seal, making a wet slosh-slosh against my chin every time my mouth moves. Through the small round glass viewports of my Dräger respirator, I watch the edge of the steel door.There is no violent thudding. No fists pounding on the iron.Instead, after four seconds, I hear the soft, wet scrape of rubber slippers against the gravel on the roof outside.Then comes the sound through the steel plate—a thin, steady whistle of air being drawn throug
    last updateLast Updated : 2026-11-06
    Read more
    Chapter 7: The Apotheke
    1My boots kick against the dark, submerged steps of the second floor, sending ripples of oily green-tinged water washing against the peeling wallpaper.*SKRRR-HHHH. SKRRR-HHHH.*Inside my Dräger respirator, every breath feels like dragging dry sand across raw flesh. Sweat is pooling at the base of my chin inside the rubber skirt, sloshing against my skin with every step. My lower lens is so fogged from my frantic breathing that the world looks like a smear of dark grey shadows and yellow water reflections.Behind me, far up the stairwell, the wet *clack-clack* of Frau Lindemann’s slippers on concrete doesn't stop.She isn't running. She doesn't need to. She is just descending, step by step, letting her deadly breath fill the vertical shaft of the building like silent gas.I burst through the fire door into the alleyway behind Hauptstrasse. The rain has turned into a thick, oily drizzle that smells of burnt plastic and sulfur. The street is a drowned canal—water sloshing waist-deep a
    last updateLast Updated : 2026-11-06
    Read more
    Chapter 8: The Cough
    The silence inside the Apotheke drops like a heavy lead weight.SKRRR-HHHH. SKRRR-HHHH.The sound of my own breathing inside the Dräger respirator feels entirely too loud, too mechanical, cutting through the damp, chemical-smelling gloom of the pharmacy. My fingers remain clamped around the handle of the yellow emergency box, my knuckles aching from the pressure.Jonas doesn't move. He stands two paces away, his massive frame blocking the narrow aisle between the overturned glass display cases, his fingers tightening around the cold iron tire iron until his knuckles turn white. His eyes—bloodshot and rimmed with grey soot—stare past my shoulder, fixed entirely on the closed wooden door at the back of the prescription counter.From behind that door comes a sound that freezes the blood in my veins.COUGH.It isn't a sharp, sudden hack. It’s a wet, rattling heave—the sound of someone trying to force air through lungs half-filled with thick, greasy fluid."Jonas, shut up," Mara says, her
    last updateLast Updated : 2026-11-06
    Read more
    Chapter 9: The Storage Room
    The hinges of the wooden door give off a long, dry screech as it swings outward another two inches into the pharmacy floor.Mara picks up her shotgun in a single smooth motion, bringing the buttstock to her shoulder and aiming straight at the crack in the doorframe. Jonas snaps up off his cot, grabbing his heavy iron tire iron, his face turning paper-white under the dim amber glow of the battery lanterns.I lock both arms around the yellow box, my leather boots slipping slightly against the wet tile floor as I press my spine flat against the back counter.*SKRRR-HHHH. SKRRR-HHHH.*Inside my Dräger respirator, every inhalation cuts into my lungs like broken glass. Moisture runs down the inside of my facepiece, pooling around my chin, but I don't dare move a finger to wipe the lower lens.Through the narrow opening, a figure slowly leans into the light.It isn't a monster. It’s a boy—maybe sixteen years old, wearing an oversized grey hoodie stained with dark grease across the cuffs. His
    last updateLast Updated : 2026-11-06
    Read more
    Chapter 10: The Unlocked Box
    The blue light doesn't just illuminate the room—it cuts through the dark like a blade of ice.It pulses out from the cracked brass latch of the yellow emergency box in a slow, steady rhythm, painting the damp pharmacy walls, the shattered glass display cases, and the pooling floodwater in an electric, fluorescent glow. With every pulse, a low electromagnetic hum vibrates up through the tile floorboards, setting the loose metal shelving buzzing like a hive of hornets.Mara and Jonas stop fighting on the floor.Jonas has his heavy forearm pinned across Mara’s shoulder, his knuckles white, but his eyes are wide, locked entirely on the glowing yellow case sitting three inches from my boots. Mara pushes him off with a harsh, breathless grunt, scrambling backward on her knees, her hand reaching frantically across the wet floor until her fingers wrap around the steel frame of her fallen shotgun.She doesn't point it at Jonas. She points it straight at the yellow box."What the hell is that,
    last updateLast Updated : 2026-11-06
    Read more
    view more
    Explore and read good novels for free
    Free access to a vast number of good novels on MegaNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
    Read books for free on the app
    Scan code to read on App