Chapter 7:
Whisper Net
The scratching at the walls didn't stop until dawn.
It wasn't the kind of sound you could ignore. Not the rhythmic scrape of tree branches or the skittering of rats. No, this was something worse. Something deliberate. Like fingernails dragging across concrete, slow and searching, pausing just long enough to make me think it had stopped before starting again, closer this time.
By then, my nerves were frayed to breaking, every muscle in my body coiled tight enough to snap. My breath came in short, controlled bursts, my fingers digging into the fabric of my jacket as if I could physically hold myself together. The air tasted like rust and damp concrete, thick with the sour tang of fear.
Nia hadn't slept either. I could tell by the way her fingers kept twitching toward the knife strapped to her thigh, her pupils dilated so wide they swallowed the warm brown of her irises. She sat with her back against the wall, her knees drawn up, every line of her body taut as a tripwire. The lantern between us guttered, its flame reduced to a feeble blue ember, casting jagged, flickering shadows across the concrete floor. The light made her face look hollow, her cheekbones sharp enough to cut.
Neither of us had spoken in hours. There was nothing left to say.
Sarin appeared just as the first gray light seeped through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. He moved silently, like smoke given form, his boots making no sound against the cold floor. The lines around his eyes were deeper than they'd been last night, the scars around his barcode standing out in stark relief against his ashen skin. He looked like a man who had spent the last few hours staring into something dark and unnameable.
"Up," he said, nudging my boot with the toe of his. His voice was rough, stripped raw. "We've got work to do."
Nia was on her feet before I could blink, her body thrumming with restless energy. She rolled her shoulders, the motion sharp, like she was shaking off something clinging to her skin. "Whisper Net?"
Sarin's mouth twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile. "If we can find a signal strong enough to pierce the interference."
I rubbed my eyes, the grit of sleeplessness grinding against my lids. My head throbbed, a dull, insistent ache that pulsed behind my temples. "What the hell is Whisper Net?"
Nia shot me a look that was equal parts pity and impatience.
"Only thing keeping the truth alive in this city."
The back room of the safe house was colder than the rest, the air thick with the scent of ozone and burnt plastic. It smelled like desperation, like the last-ditch efforts of people who knew they were running out of time. A makeshift workstation had been cobbled together from scavenged parts—a gutted radio transmitter, a dozen car batteries wired in series, and a single, battered laptop that looked like it had survived a war. The keyboard was missing three keys, and the screen bore a spiderweb of cracks, but it hummed to life under Nia's touch like a loyal dog recognizing its master.
She dropped into the chair in front of it, her fingers flying across the keyboard with a familiarity that bordered on intimacy. The screen flickered to life, lines of code scrolling too fast for me to follow. Watching her work was like watching a surgeon perform an emergency operation. Every movement precise and every decision made with lethal certainty.
"ZERA's got the city locked down," she muttered, more to herself than to us. Her voice was low, tight with frustration. "Standard frequencies are monitored, encrypted channels get scrambled within minutes. But the Whisper Net... it's different."
Sarin leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. The dim light carved deep shadows under his cheekbones, making him look more like a specter than a man. "It's not centralized. Not something they can just shut off with a switch."
"Then how does it work?" I asked, stepping closer. My breath fogged in the cold air, and I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly aware of how exposed I felt.
Nia didn't look up. "Mesh network. Every device still powered on in this city. Phones, routers, even fucking smart fridges, they're all nodes. Signals bounce between them, too scattered for the Antlers to track. Fragments of truth, hidden in the noise."
The screen resolved into a chaotic mosaic of video feeds, text logs, and garbled audio files. Most were corrupted, their visuals glitching in and out of existence like ghosts fighting to stay tangible. But a few were clear enough to make my stomach turn.
One showed a security feed from what looked like a hospital corridor. The fluorescent lights flickered erratically, casting stuttering illumination over the scene. Bodies strapped to gurneys, their limbs thrashing against restraints. Their skin was gray, stretched too tight over bones that seemed to shift beneath the surface. One of them turned its head toward the camera, and for a second, I thought its jaw unhinged, splitting open too wide, and too wrong.
Then the feed cut to static.
Another file played a child's voice, trembling and small.
"Mommy? Why are your eyes red?"
A pause. Then a wet, choking sound. The audio cut off abruptly.
A third was a scientist's log, timestamped two days before the sky bled.
"Subject 12-L is deteriorating faster than projected. Neural activity suggests the virus isn't just rewriting DNA. It's building something. A network. A hive."
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly too tight. My pulse hammered in my ears, a frantic drumbeat of dread. "These are all from inside HelixMed?"
Nia's jaw clenched. "Some. Others are from people who got out before the walls went up."
She clicked on a file labeled ZERA_ORIGIN.mp4.
The footage was shaky, handheld. A lab I recognized—Sublevel 3, where Rina had worked. The camera panned across rows of containment units, their glass fogged with condensation. Inside, shadows moved. Not human. Not anymore.
A voice off-camera, whispering.
"They knew. They fucking knew."
Then the feed cut to a different scene. A sterile white room. A metal table.
And on it, a child.
No older than eight, her dark hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. Electrodes snaked from her scalp to a machine that hummed ominously in the corner. Her arms were strapped down, the veins standing out black against her feverish skin.
A figure in a white coat stepped into frame, adjusting a syringe filled with liquid so red it seemed to glow.
"Administering ZERA-C9 to Subject 447-D."
The needle plunged into the girl's arm.
For three heartbeats, nothing happened.
Then she screamed.
It wasn't a human sound. It was the shriek of metal under stress, of glass shattering under pressure. Her back arched off the table, her bones cracking audibly as they rearranged themselves. Her pupils swallowed her irises, flooding her eyes with inky blackness.
And then, the feed cut to static.
The room was dead silent. My hands had curled into fists without me realizing, my nails biting into my palms hard enough to draw blood. The metallic scent of it mixed with the stale air, sharp and coppery.
"They tested it on kids?" My voice came out strangled, raw with something too close to grief. Rage burned in my chest, white-hot and consuming.
Sarin's expression was grim. "They needed subjects with adaptable nervous systems. ZERA doesn't just infect the body. It rewires the brain. Turns people into nodes in its network."
Nia's fingers hovered over the keyboard, trembling slightly. "And the Antlers? They're not just enforcers. They're transmitters."
A cold weight settled in my gut.
"That's why they're hunting the immune. We're... what? Interference?"
Sarin pushed off the wall, stepping closer. His presence was like a storm front, heavy and charged. "Worse. You're a counter-signal. Your blood doesn't just resist ZERA. It disrupts the connection. That's why they want you contained. Or dead."
The laptop screen flickered, the image dissolving into pixelated noise. Nia hissed a curse, her fingers flying across the keys.
"We're losing it. They're jamming the frequencies again."
A new window popped up, this one filled with lines of garbled code.
Except, it wasn't code.
It was a message.
:: SHE SEES YOU ::
:: THE HIVE GROWS ::
:: YOU CANNOT HIDE FOREVER ::
Nia recoiled like she'd been burned. "What the fuck—"
The screen went black.
Then the walls screamed.
Not a human sound. Not even an animal one. It was the sound of feedback given voice, of a thousand frequencies colliding at once. The lanterns shattered, glass raining down like shrapnel. Somewhere in the main room, someone shouted, a raw, panicked sound.
Sarin was moving before the last shard hit the ground, yanking a pistol from the small of his back. "They found us."
Nia slammed the laptop shut, shoving it into her bag. "How?"
I didn't need to hear his answer. The barcode on my ribs burned like a brand.
They were always tracking us.
The first explosion rocked the building to its foundations. Dust rained from the ceiling, the concrete groaning under the stress. Screams erupted from the main chamber, followed by the staccato bark of gunfire.
Sarin grabbed my arm, his grip iron-tight.
"Back tunnel. Now."
Nia didn't argue. She was already moving, her knife glinting in the dim light as she led the way through a narrow crevice in the wall, one I hadn't even noticed was there. The passage was barely wide enough to squeeze through, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and rust.
Behind us, the safe house burned.
The last thing I heard before the darkness swallowed us was the sound of horns.
Dozens of them.
Answering each other.
Hunting.