Ethan Kai swept the corridor's shadows with a quick glance. Grunts and wet whispers drifted from the dark, low and hungry, but nothing yet came toward him or the detective. The door he needed waited at the far end, just where the map had promised.
He flattened against the wall, keeping one wary eye on the cop, and closed his right hand around the knob. It turned without resistance. The hinges screamed when he pushed the door inward. The sound was so loud it felt like a crime. He winced, motioned the other man through, then followed and slammed it shut. The lock slid home with a sharp, final click.
This hallway was narrower. Its walls were concrete with paint peeling in long strips. Doors stood on both sides like blind sentinels. The smell of rot lingered but the place felt less inhabited than the cavernous concourse behind them.
The cop sagged against the far wall, his face the color of paper. His breathing came fast and shallow. "I can't… this isn't… real." His words broke apart in the air, each one weaker than the last.
Ethan knew the look. The mind was giving way, the structure of belief buckling under the weight of what it could not accept. He felt his own strength thinning too, the edges of exhaustion pressing in. He had not eaten since morning. Life had been way not normal since the beggar encounter. And that already felt like a lifetime ago. Adrenaline and habit were all that kept him upright. But the sight of the other man unraveling pulled him back from his own fatigue.
My fault. He's here because of me. The thought was cold and absolute. If I give in now, he dies here. He gets stuck.
A door stood to his right. The label was still clear: BREAKROOM. Its absurd normalcy felt like an trap. Ethan took hold of the cop's shoulder, squeezing hard enough to pull the detective's gaze to him.
"Don't pass out on me, asshole," he said, his voice sharp and without pity. "If I have to carry you, you will not like how you wake up. Now move."
Ethan tightened his grip on the man's shoulder and pulled him toward the breakroom. The door's handle was cold beneath his palm. It turned without resistance.
"Stay with me," he muttered, more to anchor the man's mind than to get a response.
He pushed the door open and stepped into the stale gloom. The overhead lights flickered with erratic pulses, electricity sputtering through the wires fitfully at best. The air smelled of old coffee, mildew, and something meat-sweet that prickled the back of his throat. A battered vending machine leaned against the wall. Tables were scattered across the room, some overturned, their metal legs jutting like broken bones. He did not see the thing in the corner until the cop shuffled fully inside.
It sat slouched against the wall beside the fridge, still as a forgotten coat on a hook. The remnants of a once-red polo clung to its frame, the name tag hanging by a single bent pin. Its neck and parts of its face was gone, peeled away in a ragged arc from temple to jaw. The teeth were exposed in a permanent, wet grin. The skin that remained was mottled gray, stretched too tight over cheekbones. Its left eye was missing. The socket was dark and wet. The smell hit a second later, hot and foul, like raw meat left in the sun.
It moved without warning. A sudden twitch of the neck. Then it exploded off the floor with a guttural snarl, arms clawing for him. Ethan barely had time to shove the cop aside. The thing slammed into him, knocking him back into the edge of a table. His ribs flared with pain. It was on him instantly, the ruined mouth snapping at his face, drool and blood spraying in thin ropes.
If it bit him, he was finished. No antidote. No second chances.
He jammed his forearm up beneath its chin, forcing the teeth away from his throat. The smell of rot was so close it felt like it was sinking into his skin. Its breath was warm and wet. Its nails tore at his shoulder, catching in the fabric of his hoody.
He drove a knee up into its stomach. Nothing. No gasp, no flinch. It clawed harder, mouth working with blind hunger.
The cop was frozen, pressed to the wall.
Ethan twisted his body, forcing the thing sideways, and smashed its head against the corner of the vending machine. Once. Twice. The skull gave on the third impact with a muffled crack, and the weight went slack.
He shoved it off, chest heaving, and stepped back. Blood smeared the vending machine's metal casing, already starting to run in slow rivulets toward the floor. The body twitched once, then lay still.
Ethan wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve and turned to the cop.
"Well, that answers one question."
The man swallowed hard, eyes fixed on the corpse, and stuttered out, "What?"
"They can be killed."
Ethan hooked his hands under the corpse's armpits. The flesh was loose and cold, sliding over the bone as he dragged it toward the door. The body left a wet trail on the tile. The cop stayed out of the way, staring as if trying to memorize every detail in case it came back to life.
The service hallway was empty when Ethan shoved the door open with his foot. He hauled the body out and let it drop with a heavy thump, then pushed the door shut. The lock turned with a solid click.
"Room's ours," he said, more to himself than to the cop.
He crossed to the vending machine. The glass front was smeared with dust and greasy fingerprints. Rows of candy bars and crumpled chip bags sat in neat metal spirals, untouched for who knew how long. He stepped back, planted his heel, and kicked. The glass shuddered but held. Two more kicks and a sharp crack split the air. A spiderweb of fractures spread across the pane. The third blow caved it in. Shards clattered across the floor, some skittering under the tables.
Ethan reached in and grabbed whatever his hands found first. Candy bars. Small bags of chips. A couple of ancient-looking pastries sealed in stiff plastic. He dropped into a chair, the wood creaking under him, and shoved another chair toward the cop with his foot. The service weapon he set on the table next to him. Close enough to remind the cop who was armed and who was not.
The man sat heavily, elbows on his knees. His eyes flickered between the floor and the food in Ethan's hands and the weapon on the table.
Ethan tore open a candy bar, the chocolate dusty and pale with age. It still tasted sweet enough. He ate in short, deliberate bites, washing it down with a fistful of stale chips. His stomach took whatever it was given, the hole in it demanding to be filled.
The cop's breathing was uneven, his body fighting the pull of unconsciousness. He stared at the tabletop, jaw working like he might be chewing invisible words. Finally, he looked up, his eyes sharp in spite of the pallor in his face.
"What the hell is going on?"
Ethan leaned back in the chair, chewing slowly while he considered the question. He could play it safe, offer some half-truth about a chemical leak or a riot. Keep the man functional by keeping him in the dark. But the thought of editing himself felt pointless. If this was all some fevered nightmare, what did it matter? The world outside had already stopped obeying the rules he knew.
He swallowed, set the candy wrapper on the table, and met the man's eyes. "You saw that thing in here. You saw what it did."
The cop shook his head. "That wasn't… it wasn't a thing. That was a man. He was sick, maybe. Starving. On drugs."
Ethan gave a humorless laugh. "If that was a man, then I'm a mall Santa. You saw his face. You think meth does that?"
"There's an explanation." The cop's voice had the edge of someone trying to convince himself more than anyone else. "There's always an explanation."
"Sure," Ethan said. "Here's mine. There's something wrong with people here. We can say it out loud. Zombies. And if one of them bites you, you're done. Like I said earlier the rules change depending on the story you're in."
The cop flinched at the word 'zombies'. "You're talking like we're inside some…some…movie or something."
"I'm talking like I just fought a dead man who wanted to eat my face," Ethan said, leaning forward. "Maybe we are in a movie or a story or something. I just don't know which one."
The cop opened his mouth, then closed it again. His hands rubbed together slowly, restless.
Ethan tore open a bag of chips, the crunch of the bag loud in the room. "What's your name?"
The man hesitated, as if the question itself was a trap. "Carver."
Ethan nodded. "Alright, Carver. Here's how it is. You can keep telling yourself it's all explainable, or you can accept that something's gone very wrong and very crazy and start thinking about how we survive it. I don't care which one you choose, but don't you dare fucking try passing out again."
Carver's jaw tightened, but he did not answer. He stared at the grimy surface of the table, eyes fixed on nothing, as if the right answer might be etched there in the filth if he stared long enough.
"This… this is real, isn't it?" he finally asked, the question less a demand for information and more a confession of his own failing reason. "I'm not dreaming?"
"For all I know, I'm the one dreaming," Ethan said with a shrug that conveyed a great sense of exhaustion. "Let's go with it's happening."
Carver's gaze lifted, raw and pleading. "Then how? How does any of this make sense?"
Ethan thought about telling him it did not. He wanted to say that trying to apply the neat, predictable logic of their world to this one was a fool's errand, a waste of precious energy. But the detective deserved an answer, however profane. He took a slow breath, the air thick with the miasma of decay, and began.
He spoke of an ordinary morning, ordinary until it was not. An old man on the sidewalk, a figure of layered rags and a strange, implacable stillness. He described the smell of the man—ammonia and something ancient—and the voice, not a plea but a command. He recounted the warning that felt like a verdict and the searing, unnatural burn in his palm that followed, leaving a perfect circular mark. He showed the healed brand on his right hand. He told Carver about the surveillance footage, how the camera had seen only an empty sidewalk, recording a lie that his own flesh refuted.
He did not speak of Lews Therin or the Betrayer of Hope. He did not speak of a storybook made real. There was no frame of reference for that level of insanity. He only gave the detective the catalyst, the origin points of the madness that now held them both.
Carver dragged his hands down his face, fingers pressing hard against his cheeks as if he could physically abrade the story from his skin. His eyes, wide and unblinking, were locked on the far wall. The disbelief was still there, a stubborn bulwark against the impossible, but a new foundation was settling beneath it. A foundation of pure, pragmatic terror.
"Then figure out how to get us back," he said, his voice tight with barely controlled panic, the command of a man whose authority had been rendered utterly meaningless. A fish out of water, mouth gaping for the sea.