GRENUN: When The Air Killed Us

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 moving across the bay. It stands taller than the church steeples in the center of town—a towering eighty-meter wall of liquid destruction swallowing ships, docks, and coastal houses in silent, terrifying speed.

"God," I choke out through the rubber cup of my respirator. "Oh God..."

The roof around me is chaos. Twelve or fifteen lab workers who managed to reach the top level are screaming, running back and forth like trapped ants, clawing at the locked maintenance hut, trying to find somewhere—anywhere—higher to climb.

A young man in a torn blue maintenance jacket trips near the ledge, his hands slipping on the wet gravel. He falls back against my legs, his eyes wide and bloodshot, fixed on the approaching wall of black water.

Before I can think, I drop to one knee, keeping my left arm clamped like an iron vise around the yellow emergency box. I reach out with my right hand and grab his wrist.

His fingers lock onto mine instantly—a crushing, desperate grip of pure survival. His knuckles are scraped raw, bleeding onto the sleeve of my coat. He isn't wearing a mask. His mouth is wide open, gasping, crying out words that get swallowed instantly by the roaring gale. I don't even know his name. I've worked in the same facility for two years, and I don't know his name.

"Hold on!" I shout into my mask, dragging him up onto the raised concrete lip of the elevator housing. "Hold onto the beam!"

He doesn't answer. He just stares past my shoulder, his face turning paper-white.

I turn my head to look toward the southern corner of the roof.

Standing alone near the drainage spout, completely unbothered by the screaming wind or the freezing rain, is a man in a long black wool coat. He isn't running. He isn't reaching for a handrail. He isn't even wearing a respirator.

He just stands there on the edge, looking out at the monster wave with his hands resting calmly in his pockets.

As if sensing my gaze, he slowly turns his head.

Through the sheet of pouring rain, I catch a clear glimpse of his face. His skin is a dull, ash-gray, cut through by thick black veins that pulse along his jawline. But unlike Frau Weber, his eyes aren't cloudy milky white—they are sharp, dark, and terrifyingly clear.

He looks straight at me. He looks at the yellow box clutched beneath my left arm.

And then he smiles. A slow, thin, calm smile that pulls the tight gray skin across his cheekbones.

Before my brain can process who he is or how he can breathe the open air, the sky turns pitch black.

The sound hits us first—not a splash, but a roar so deep it shatters the glass panels of the skylights behind us, sending a million shards of sharp crystal raining into the darkness.

The wall of water slams into the face of the building.

The concrete structure beneath my boots shudders, cracks, and yields. A violent, icy shockwave throws me off my feet into the air. The grip on my wrist snaps instantly, the maintenance worker swept away into the roaring dark before he can even scream.

Cold, heavy water hits me like a freight train of solid iron.

My vision explodes into white noise, then total, absolute blackness.