One week later, a lone white van rolled up a fog-drenched mountain path, tires crunching gravel beneath it.
The sky above was heavy and quiet, as if holding its breath.
Inside sat a telecom technician, tired-eyed and sipping cold tea.
His name wasn't important, only his mission: replace the dead signal tower near the abandoned sector. Simple job. No questions asked. He stepped out, toolbox in hand, the thick silence wrapping around him like a shroud.
After hours of climbing and wiring, he rebooted the last circuit panel. "Tower online. Connection stable," he muttered.
Deep underground, below the mountain, a long-forgotten lab blinked back to life. Red emergency lights flashed, corrupted servers buzzed, and the last unreleased transmission from Dr. Elan Kor—the final man left alive in David's lab—began auto-uploading into the dark web's shadows.
[Uploading…] [Transmission active.] But no one saw it. Not yet.
As the technician packed his tools, he heard something. A scream. But it wasn't human or animal. It was layered, wet, broken. "What the hell was that?" he whispered.
He followed the sound toward the edge of the woods, where the side of a collapsed facility lay half-buried, broken, and covered in rust. Curiosity pulled him closer. He pushed through hanging wires and debris, his flashlight flickering. The deeper he went, the colder it got.
Down a stairwell, he found a steel door cracked open, blood smeared on the handle. He hesitated, then pushed it wider.
Inside, six figures stood in the shadows—not dead, not alive. Their eyes glowed red, veins bulged, their skin peeled and bled, mouths half-open in silence. They didn't move until he stepped inside.
Then—they lunged. Screaming. Teeth. Blood. Flesh torn. But they didn't kill him. They bit, they ate, then stopped. The man writhed on the floor, spasming, bleeding. His veins darkened, his eyes burned red, his breath stopped, then restarted. He stood, silently, and joined them.
Together now, seven of them turned. No words. No plan. Only instinct. One step forward, then another, toward the exit, toward the surface. Blood trailed behind them, their bodies swaying like puppets with broken strings.
The world didn't know yet.
But the plague had taken its first breath.