Ashes drifted across the ruined battlefield like dead snowflakes. The air was thick with smoke, and the ground was soaked in blood, oil, and radiation. Fakhrul Islam stood motionless at the center of it all, his eyes fixed on the broken helmets and torn armor scattered across the earth.
They are gone. Every last one of them.
His team-men and women he had trained with, fought beside, and led through hell and back-had been wiped out in a matter of minutes. They'd faced things no one had seen before. Creatures that ran faster than the eye could track, tore through metal like paper, and attacked with terrifying coordination. These weren't the usual infected. They are something new. Something worse.
And Fakhrul had survived. Alone.
He didn't feel lucky.
He remembered Hamid, dragging a wounded Arif behind cover while Mehedi tried to hold the eastern tunnel. He remembered shouting commands, trying to keep everyone alive, calculating odds that grew worse by the second. He remembered the light in Hamid's eyes fading after he detonated his explosives to stop the swarm. The roar, the fire, the silence that followed.
He hadn't saved them. He'd escaped them.
Days passed.
Fakhrul sat in a sterile white room inside the military's underground complex, staring down at the table. His uniform was clean now, his wounds treated. But nothing could fix what had broken inside him.
"You're sure about this?' General Najmul asked from across the table.
Fakhrul didn't look up. "Yes."
"You're walking away from the military?"
"I'm not walking away from the fight. Just the part where people like you decide how we fight it."
He slid his dog tags across the table. The metal clinked as they stopped beside the General's hand.
"You lost a team, Fakhrul. I know that pain. But this is not a solution. The world needs you. We need to stick together."
"You've seen the casualty lists. I watched them die. Arif died in my hands. They all had a family. What should I tell them? We failed the mission? If you give them the backup army, they could've alive today. You chose your ways. Now I am choosing mine."
The general was silent.
"I'm going to take this fight to the infected," Fakhrul continued. "But I'm going to do it myself. No bureaucracy. No chains of command. Just do me a favor. I want permission to operate off-grid. Access to classified files, blacksite inventories, anything I need."
The general raised an eyebrow, "Aren't you asking a lot?" "I'm offering Something bigger." Fakhrul looked up. His eyes were sharp again, clear. "A real chance to win."
After 4 months...
Fakhrul stood alone in his underground bunker, surrounded by maps, reports, and glowing monitors. Cities are falling. Quarantine zones had turned into slaughterhouses. And the government, for all its power, was still fighting yesterday's war.
He wasn't alone, though.
Across the room, seated at a console, was a young woman-sharp-eyed, quiet, but never uncertain. Her name was Nafisa, daughter of Lieutenant Salam Khan. She was Fakhrul's longtime friend and one of the first to die under his command.
She'd insisted on being part of this. Not out of vengeance, she said-but purpose. Her father died for something bigger. She wanted to finish what he'd started.
"You really think this team will work?" she asked, looking over a file.
"I don't know" Fakhrul replied, "but it's the best shot we've got. And I'm not letting anyone else die blind."
Nafisa nodded once and returned to typing. She didn't talk too much, but when she did, it mattered.
Together, they combed through names, files, records too buried for most eyes. The world needed saving, and Fakhrul needed a team. Nafisa? She just needed to believe that someone still cared enough to fight.
It Started with one name.
Then another.
Then five more.
Each one a piece of the future. A piece of the fight. And this time, they wouldn't fall alone.