Killa stepped out of the training room, her breathing steady, her fingers faintly twitching from the sword repetitions she had drilled into herself all morning. The scent of synthetic leather, old steel, and faintly oiled walls clung to her skin like a second uniform.
Void High. A place that shouldn't exist, and yet here she was.
Two weeks ago, the world had crumbled.
She had seen it coming—barely. Not because she was a soldier or a seer, but because she was a writer. She watched the subtle shifts in the news cycles, tracked the strange absences in supply chains, the scattered whispers of disappearances and riots. While others laughed off conspiracy theories, she packed, hoarded, observed. But even she hadn't predicted death by choking.
Still, she supposed dying wasn't the end.
Void High had welcomed her after death—not with warmth or kindness, but with something more dangerous: opportunity.
The academy stood like a fortress in the wastelands of the system's space. Three main floors housed various training rooms, classrooms, and a central hall. Behind the school, additional buildings rose: hostels for males and females, a building for teachers, and a duplex on the far side—her current residence.
For five days, she had trained in silence, sharpening her reflexes and adjusting to the unnatural efficiency of Void High. But the real challenge wasn't physical.
It was managerial.
A soft chime echoed above her as she exited the training room, followed by a translucent blue panel.
[New Quest Unlocked
Objective: Employ 3 Teachers
Reward: Classrooms Unlocked. Student Dormitories Unlocked. Teacher Dormitories Unlocked. Cafeteria Restored.
Requirement: 3,000 Points]
Killa's eyes narrowed. Points.
Of course. Nothing came for free.
"How do I earn points?" she asked aloud, not bothering to raise her voice.
The small girl walking beside her, dressed in a short cloak stitched with threads of light, smiled without turning. Her hair shimmered unnaturally, eyes bright with that inhuman glint. Vee.
"The usual," Vee said lightly. "Kill zombies. Secure areas. Survive."
Killa exhaled slowly.
To gain points meant returning to the ruins of the world she left behind. Lucky enough, she gets to chose her drop off location.
"Open a portal," she said at last. "My apartment."
Vee raised a hand. In the space before them, the air shimmered, parting like water as a small violet-tinted portal bloomed into place.
"All set," Vee said, stepping aside. "Just remember—outside this territory, the system won't assist unless you call it. You'll be on your own."
"I always was," Killa muttered.
And with that, she stepped through.
***
The portal closed behind her with a soft ripple of air.
Killa stood in the middle of her small one-bedroom apartment, the silence deafening compared to the humming void she'd just left. Nothing had changed—at least not here. Her coat still hung by the door. The blankets on the couch remained unruffled. The fridge, though humming faintly, stood untouched since the day she disappeared.
She flipped the light switch. The bulbs flickered once, then bathed the room in soft yellow light.
Electricity was still on,thank God.
She went straight to the tap, twisted the handle—water gushed out cold and clean. Her shoulders relaxed. At least the basics hadn't failed. Yet.
After a quick shower, she reheated some stale bread and made tea. Breakfast, or more accurately, lunch. Her phone lit up the moment she plugged it in. The time read 11:00 a.m., and the lock screen was cluttered with missed calls—all from one person.
Lucian.
She stared at the name for a second, then slid open the messages. A long scroll of texts greeted her.
"Hey. I don't know if you're still in LA. Just…be careful."
"Things are going to shit. Emergency lockdown protocols might hit soon."
"If anything happens, stay put. Do not wander. I'll try to get back."
"Killa. Please. Just wait."
Lucian. The guy from across the hall. They weren't close, but he'd always made the effort—offered to help with groceries once, fixed her Wi-Fi when it crashed, asked about her writing. She thought he was just bored. Turns out, he was a soldier.
She tried replying, but the phone flickered: No Signal.
Typical.
Still, she left the message unsent, hoping the network would return at some point. For now, she had more pressing things to do.
She pulled out a sturdy backpack and started packing. When mapping out this novel she didn't add a storage space as she wanted things to be a little different but now she wished she had.
Bandages. Compressed biscuits. Knives. Water. Lighter. A torchlight. All packed.
She donned a thick brown jacket layered over two sweaters, thermal gloves, and a pair of jeans beneath tactical boots. Her helmet and scarf completed the ensemble. The gear limited her flexibility, but she wasn't aiming for stealth. She was aiming for survival.
Standing by the front door, she held her breath.
No sound.
She leaned into the peephole—that tiny, fisheye spyglass that showed her the hallway beyond. Lucian's door sat directly across, sealed shut like always. Nothing moved. Not even a shadow.
Then she remembered.
Lucian had given her a spare key. And another one—smaller, brass, unmarked. Use it when you're in trouble, he'd said. What the hell did that even mean?
She searched the drawers. Nothing. She flipped through a few coats. Still nothing.
Then she remembered dumping laundry the day he left.
She crossed to the laundry basket, shoved aside a pair of jeans, and finally—there it was. Two keys on a red tag. One labeled with Lucian's unit number. The other… blank.
She grabbed both.
In her other hand, she picked up her metal bat—her current favorite weapon. Light, easy to swing, and incredibly satisfying on impact.
With one last deep breath, she cracked open the door and peered out. Still quiet.
She stepped into the hallway, slow and deliberate.
Killa slipped into Lucian's apartment, quietly locking the door behind her.
It smelled faintly of pine air freshener and cologne. The curtains were drawn halfway, letting in slanted beams of daylight that gave the room a dusty warmth. His place was tidy. Too tidy. The kind of neatness that didn't come from comfort but from habit. Military precision.
She made her way to the kitchen first—opening the fridge, cabinets, checking every shelf. He had food, yes. Cans, dried pasta, a bag of rice, even a couple of vacuum-sealed protein bars. But it wasn't much.
Definitely not the stockpile she had back home.
With a sigh, she wandered into the bedroom, clutching the second key. It had to open something. A box? A drawer? A safe?
She started with the obvious. Nightstand. Locked? No. Just socks and a half-read book.
Under the bed? A dusty shoebox filled with old photos and letters. Nothing locked.
The closet? Shirts. Shoes. Nothing.
She sighed, wiping a streak of sweat off her temple as she stepped away from Lucian's closet. The key still dangled from her fingers—annoyingly mysterious and currently useless. She had searched every drawer, shelf, and shadow, and nothing had clicked.
"Forget it",She muttered. She didn't have much time to waste. She opened the door again. The hallway was clear,no blood spills on the walls,no half eaten corpse. Just clean and tidy. She moved towards the stairs,she couldn't risk the elevators.
She lived on the 30th floor of this complex. She moved down towards the 25th where she heard sounds.
The first groan echoed from below — a slow, guttural sound that vibrated through the concrete. Then came the dragging footsteps, the wet slap of something unnatural. Killa crouched slightly, her breath steady, her eyes locked on the shadows shifting down the hall.
They came in twos and threes. Limbs crooked at wrong angles, eyes cloudy and unfocused, but their intent was unmistakable. Hunger radiated off them in waves. She didn't wait for them to come too close. Her legs tensed, and she sprang forward with a sharp, clean swing of the bat. The crunch of bone and flesh was louder than she expected, reverberating through her arms.
The first one went down. One hundred points.
She pivoted quickly, barely dodging the second. The bat cracked across its jaw, sending teeth flying. Another strike to the skull, and it slumped.
Two hundred.
The third lunged toward her faster than the rest. She stumbled back, the weight of her thick coat slowing her, but her reflexes kicked in. She pulled the knife from her side pocket and drove it upward, straight into the creature's chin. It gurgled, twitched, and fell.
Three hundred.
Even if she hadn't trained for long,it still came in handy. The simulation she used was pretty much real,she had gone past the whole disgusting phase but yet looking at the whole thing again gave her the chills.
She had always taken excercise seriously, so she was pretty fit. This was nothing for her,she still had 2700 points to go.
Killa stepped cautiously onto the 25th floor landing, the bat still slick with congealed blood in her grip. Unlike her own floor, which had been strangely quiet and eerily untouched, this one reeked of death.
The stench hit her immediately—heavy iron and rotting meat. The floor was a canvas of carnage, streaked with blood that had dried into dark rust-red patterns. Shredded clothing clung to the walls, and bits of flesh were smeared across the tile like careless brushstrokes. A hand—just a hand—lay limp by the elevator doors, fingers curled as if frozen mid-beg for mercy. She paused, pressing a gloved hand to the wall to steady herself.
Her stomach lurched.
She closed her eyes for a moment and swallowed hard, forcing the bile back down. This was no time to be squeamish. She had seen worse. Maybe not with her own eyes, but she'd written worse. Still, fiction hadn't prepared her for the real thing.
She inhaled through her mouth and forced herself to count.
"One… two… three… four," she whispered under her breath.
Two were limping down the hallway near a shattered vending machine, heads twitching at every creak. Another three stood near a busted apartment door, backs to her, feasting on something—or someone—on the floor. Two more loitered near the stairs, rocking slowly on their heels. And the last one… Killa narrowed her eyes. A child-sized figure just outside one of the doors, head tilted to the side, arms hanging limp.
"Eight," she muttered.
"Wonderful."
She adjusted her grip on the bat, then drew a knife into her off hand. She had bo idea how much more were hanging around so she needed to do this as quietly as possible.
Killa tightened her grip on the bat, shifting her weight forward as she took a silent step toward the nearest zombie. It was one of the two closest to the staircase—an older man, or what was left of one. His spine was warped at an angle that made his gait awkward, almost pitiful. The skin on his neck had rotted through in patches, exposing the tendons beneath.
She moved like a shadow, breath shallow, eyes fixed on her target. No sudden movements. No sounds.
One step. Then another.
When she was close enough to smell the rot seeping off him, she struck.
A swift, clean blow to the head. The bat cracked against the skull with a sickening thunk, sending the zombie crumpling like a puppet with its strings cut.
300 points.
Before she could process it, the second one jerked its head toward her. Its milky eyes locked onto her in a flash, and it let out a sharp, guttural hiss.
"Shit," she cursed under her breath, pivoting just in time to block its flailing arms with her forearm.
The impact jarred her bones. This one was faster.
She shoved it off, stumbling back, then drove the bat down onto its skull with all her weight. The hit landed, but not cleanly. Bone cracked, but didn't cave.
The thing reeled—and lunged.
She twisted, dodging just enough for it to miss her throat, and jabbed the knife into its temple with a grunt. It fell instantly, twitching.
Her heart was racing now, breath ragged, and the noise—oh, the noise.
That hiss had been enough.
From down the hall, the others stirred. One of the feeding ones snapped upright, its jaw unhinged and dripping. The child-sized zombie's head twitched unnaturally as it turned in her direction. A screech echoed through the corridor—followed by shuffling feet.
"So much for stealth," she hissed.
Killa backed up toward the wall, lifting her bat again. Her arms were already aching, and she hadn't even hit half her quota. The hallway narrowed near the stairwell—a potential choke point.
That would have to do.
They were coming now, snarling, dragging flesh-matted feet. One of them had no lower jaw, just an open, wet maw of teeth. Another—a woman in a shredded hospital gown—was missing an eye but moved with terrifying speed.
She braced herself, just then she heard the unmistakable sound of a click.
A door. Someone had unlocked a door.
She froze.
Down the hall, one of the apartment doors creaked open an inch. A single eye peered out through the gap—wide, panicked, and definitely human. The person behind the door clearly hadn't thought this through.
The hinge groaned loudly.
Too loudly.
Killa's eyes shot to the far end of the corridor.
Two of the remaining zombies—ones she hadn't seen yet, hidden behind a toppled couch—snapped their heads toward the sound and shrieked. Their bodies jerked into motion, limbs flailing as they charged.
Killa didn't hesitate.
She sprinted down the hall, bat clutched in one hand, knife in the other, just as the idiot behind the door began to close it.
"Don't shut it!" she yelled.
The door paused. The eye widened.
And then—