THE LAST 100 DAYS

Removal Notice

Chapter 10: Removal Notice

"Mine's gone! Marcus, my numbers are gone!"

Dana's scream cracked across the pharmacy. Sixty heads snapped toward her.

Ethan checked the corner of his vision. Empty. No clock, no class, nothing. For eight days that glow had counted against him like a second pulse, and without it he felt like he was falling.

"Nobody run," Marcus said. "Stay where you are."

"It's over!" Garrett shoved off the wall. "They shut it off because we're finished!"

"Or because something's about to change," Ethan said.

"You don't know that."

"No." His voice shook. "I don't."

Four seconds. Five. Pete was praying under his breath. Cole sat in the corner inside a ring of scorched tile, arms locked around his knees. Marcus had made him sleep there since the shelf burned.

Seven. Eight.

Every window came back at once.

A gasp swept the room. Ethan's clock returned, **[92 DAYS, 9 HOURS]**, and above it was blue text he had never seen.

**[ATTENTION, SURVIVORS.]**

**[STAGE ONE: SURVIVAL IS IN PROGRESS.]**

**[CURRENT HUMAN SURVIVAL RATE: 71%.]**

Nobody spoke.

"Seventy-one percent of what?" Dana whispered.

"Of everyone," Eli said from his cot, gray and shivering. "Everyone who was alive eight days ago."

Garrett did the math aloud, because someone had to. "Twenty-nine percent. Gone."

"In eight days," Ethan said. The words tasted like metal. The father in the street. The guard with the steaming mug. Millions of people, erased before he'd learned to sleep through a night.

Dana sat down hard on the floor. "Eleventh floor," she said, to nobody. "He said twenty minutes."

Ethan crouched beside her. He had nothing to give her but his presence. She gripped his sleeve and didn't let go.

Another line burned in.

**[NEXT ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE: 72 HOURS.]**

**[SURVIVORS WHO FAIL TO ADAPT WILL BE REMOVED.]**

"Removed," Pete said hoarsely. "Like the ones at midnight."

The word hit Ethan like cold water. The security footage. A man, then an empty chair. No claws, no blood. A deletion.

*It's not random. It's a score.*

And scores had readers.

He pried Dana's fingers loose, gently, and stood. "Marcus. Every door doubled. Windows boarded, roof access blocked, a watch on every side."

Marcus's eyebrows rose. "Since when do you give orders?"

"Since we have seventy-two hours."

For a second Ethan thought Marcus would push back. Instead he gave one short nod. "You heard him! Move!"

The room broke into motion. Shelves tipped, hammers came out. Garrett grumbled and lifted a board anyway.

"I can help."

A thin man in a courier jacket stood at Ethan's elbow. Noah had shown up two nights ago with a bag of canned food and no explanation for how he'd crossed three blocks of monsters alive.

"Let me scout the buildings around us. Exits, rooftops, what's living in them." He shifted his weight. "I'm not strong. I know that. But nobody here knows this district like I do."

"Why should we trust you?" Pete said.

"You shouldn't. Just eat what I bring back."

Ethan almost smiled. "Forty minutes. If you're late, I send nobody after you."

Noah's jaw tightened. "Good. Don't."

He slipped out the side door.

Ethan dragged the map into his lap and wrote in a column, fast. *Midnight vanishings. Monsters learning. Clocks for everyone. Survival rate. Removal. Adapt.*

They all fit together. That was the horror. None of it read like a disaster. It read like a procedure.

*Nobody gives a whole city a deadline unless someone is grading.*

Noah was back in twenty-five minutes, breathless, his jacket torn. "Tenth Street's empty. Every alley, every rooftop. They're not hiding anymore, they're leaving." He swallowed. "Toward us."

Marcus was already at the front window. Ethan reached it a second later.

Forty yards away, one creature stood under a dead streetlight. It wasn't crawling or clicking. It stood perfectly upright, head turned, staring at the pharmacy as if it knew exactly who was inside.

"That's the third one tonight," Noah whispered. "Each one stopped under a lamp. Every lamp is on the road to this building."

"The power's been dead for eight days," Marcus said.

"I know."

Down the avenue, the first streetlight flickered on.

Then the next. Then the next. A line of white light unrolled block by block, straight to the pharmacy door, and at the end of it the creature lowered itself onto all fours and began to walk. It didn't hide or click or hesitate.

The seventy-two hours hadn't even started.