We were finally relaxing. Or, well I was finally relaxing.
Which meant I was face-down on the floor, arms sprawled out, trying to breathe normally while my nervous system recovered from slowing time like some kind of twitchy anime protagonist.
I'd earned this rest. I survived a pharmacy run. I dodged zombies. I discovered I had powers. I did not pee myself. That's a win in my book.
But then the door buzzer went off.
Which is basically the apocalypse version of hearing your phone ring during a nap.
Everyone froze.
Chai slowly slid her headphones off. The Boy Scout reached for his walkie-talkie. Sir Quackers honked like he knew someone outside *definitely* didn't have snacks.
Tito Edgar raised one eyebrow. "No one alive knocks anymore."
He wasn't wrong. The last person who knocked was a zombie that still had enough muscle memory to remember door etiquette.
---
Edgar peeked through the periscope (because of course this man installed a periscope in a post-apocalyptic bunker), and frowned.
"There's a girl outside."
We waited.
"She has a backpack, a machete, and..."
He paused.
"And?"
"She's holding a zombie. On a leash."
I sat up. "She's what now?"
"She's got a zombie. Like a dog. But, you know, undead."
Chai blinked. "That's either an emotional support zombie or a massive red flag."
Sir Quackers let out a long, flat *quack* of disapproval.
---
We opened the hatch cautiously.
Standing there was a girl in torn jeans, a flannel shirt, and a ponytail that screamed *I have seen things*. In one hand, she held a thick chain.
On the other end of the chain?
A zombie.
Eyes dull, face half-baked, hoodie shredded, feet dragging.
But tied up like a poorly trained pit bull.
The girl raised her free hand and smiled casually. "Hey. I'm not infected. He might be. But he's cool."
I stared.
Chai stared.
The zombie groaned like it was low on battery.
"What is this?" I said. "Some kind of twisted Girl Scout demo?"
She nodded at the zombie. "His name's Bruno. He's my ex."
---
So now we had a **girl with a machete**, a **zombie on a leash**, and **Edgar whispering behind me that this is how cults start**.
But she looked sane. Like, bunker-level sane.
She sat at the table, hands open, unarmed, while Bruno stood tied to a support beam in the corner of the room, swaying gently like he was waiting in line at the LTO.
"My name's Aira," she said, sipping from a bottle of water like this wasn't the weirdest day ever. "And I didn't bring him for company. I brought him because he talks."
Chai paused mid-spoon of canned spaghetti. "Excuse me?"
"In his sleep," Aira clarified. "Mumbles, mostly. Repeats words. Names. Places. I think whatever's left in his brain remembers something from before he turned."
She looked right at me.
"Especially you."
---
I froze.
"Me?"
She pulled out a beat-up notebook from her pack and flipped it open. Inside were pages of scrawled notes. All of it transcribed from what her zombie ex had mumbled while tied up.
Dates. Weird science terms. Place names. Repeated phrases.
And one name, circled in red.
**Darren.**
I immediately broke into a nervous sweat.
"Okay, that could be a different Darren," I said, raising my hands. "It's a very common name. Darren Espanto exists. Darren from Accounting. Darren the YouTuber who reviews mango float recipes. Maybe he meant one of them."
"Did any of them cause a pizza-related apocalypse?" Edgar asked flatly.
"I mean—technically—we don't know that."
---
Aira continued flipping through her notes. "He says other things, too. Stuff like 'Project Eden,' 'Sequence Failure,' and…" She squinted. "'Unlock the loop.'"
Chai's eyes narrowed. "That's some villain monologue energy right there."
I pointed at Bruno. "You're telling me that zombie—your ex—has been whispering *mysterious evil science phrases* and my name like he's building lore in his sleep?"
"Yes."
"And you brought him here?"
Aira nodded. "Because he reacts to your name. Last time I said 'Darren' near him, he tried to bite my boot off."
I turned slowly toward Bruno.
He was still standing in the corner, staring at the floor. Breathing. Silent.
Then he twitched.
Just once.
---
The bracelet on my wrist pulsed.
I looked down. It was glowing again. Not a flicker—**a steady, warm light**.
"Um," I said. "It's doing the thing again."
Chai leaned forward. "Bracelet or your anxiety?"
"Both."
Suddenly, the temperature dropped. The lights flickered.
Time didn't slow.
It **hiccupped**.
One second everything was normal. The next—
Everyone froze.
Colors bled out of the room.
My breath caught in my throat.
Then Bruno stood up straighter.
Eyes clear.
Voice… eerily normal.
And he said:
> "You weren't supposed to be awake yet, Darren."
---
I almost peed.
Like, full bladder betrayal.
Even Edgar took a step back.
Bruno stared directly at me. Not mindlessly. Not zombie-style. Like he *knew* who I was.
> "They looped it wrong. You weren't meant to remember."
The lights flickered again.
Then—
He collapsed.
The room snapped back to normal.
Everyone just… stared.
Even Sir Quackers tucked his head under his wing like *nope, not today*.
---
"Okay," I said, voice cracking, "I feel like we skipped about ten plot points."
Edgar moved cautiously toward Bruno and checked his pulse—not that it mattered. "That wasn't instinct. That was intelligence. Whatever's inside him... it remembers."
Chai pulled out her phone. "Can I record this?"
"Please don't," I said.
"I'm going to anyway," she whispered.
Aira closed her notebook. "He's never done that before. He usually just mumbles. But this? This was a message."
I sank into the beanbag, brain spinning.
Bruno knew me.
The virus *knew* me.
And apparently, I wasn't supposed to be "awake."
"Does anyone else feel like we're all inside a badly-coded simulation run by interns?" I muttered.
Edgar didn't answer. He just walked back to his desk, pulled up a dusty file folder labeled **Project Eden**, and laid it flat.
"We need to talk," he said. "About what you really are."