I am Andy. Your body will be am Andy. Your body will be perfect."
Callum staggered back, drenched in sweat, breath heaving. His pulse slammed against his ribcage like war drums, his skin cold despite the burning heat in the air.
"Wh… what do you mean, perfect?"
he whispered.
Andy didn't move. His form shimmered, humanoid but warped, eyes flickering like static, mouth hanging open as if the words were being broadcast from somewhere else.
"Have you not heard of ghosts?" the voice rasped. "Or the ones who hunt them?"
Callum blinked. "Yes, but… if you're a ghost, how can I see you?"
The voice dropped lower, rougher. "Because you've witnessed my transformation."
Then the world changed.
Sirens screamed from all directions.
A cold, emotionless voice sliced through the tension:
"ATTENTION. IN TEN MINUTES, A NUCLEAR WARHEAD WILL DETONATE. ALL CITIZENS MUST REACH KANYA AIRPORT IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
Far away, on the other side of the city, inside the dim glow of an abandoned public library, two women argued as reality fractured around them.
SAKI stood beside a floating reference desk, waving her arms.
"You're seriously leaving? After everything we've survived? The cursed encyclopedias, the haunted printers, the coffee machine that speaks Latin?!"
MEI strapped on her scavenged pilot goggles.
"I've had enough, Saki! I need to touch the grass. I want to eat food that wasn't downloaded from the Fictional Food Archive!"
"You don't understand," Saki pleaded. "This isn't just a library it's my great-great-grandmother's virtual ancestral realm. Spirits of dead bookworms run this place! Do you know how much work it takes to keep them from spelling 'despair' in the card catalog?"
Mei pointed at a floating bookshelf that rattled ominously overhead.
"That shelf threw a thesaurus at me yesterday for saying 'literally' wrong!"
Saki's eyes flared.
"It was figuratively angry, Mei!"
But Mei was already at the door.
"I'm leaving. If you want to stay, fine. But don't you think you should try stopping me?"
Saki stared at her. "No. Because if you go out there… we both know what's waiting."
The streets outside were a madness of screeching tires and screaming families. Cars slammed into each other as though their drivers were blind or drunk. Blood slicked the sidewalks.
Sirens blended with sobbing. The world was ending in chaos.
And in the middle of it, Callum grinned grimly.
His right hand clenched the knife Uncle Marcus had thrown him moments before. He drew his hand back, aligned his stance like he'd seen in survival training and hurled the blade.
It flew cleanly through the air, fearless, a silver arc in the madness.
But mid-flight something happened.
A pulse. A flicker. Like fire blooming in an unseen dimension.
The knife plummeted and stuck into the pavement just 2.2 centimeters from Callum's foot.
His eyes widened. Above him, Andy's spectral hand hovered in the air.
Five fingers arched like a predator's. Sharp claws, barely 1.2 centimeters from his face, shimmered in and out of reality. The air sizzled.
Andy had intercepted it.
Callum didn't wait to see more. He turned and ran.
His legs blurred beneath him, feet hammering pavement as fear propelled him faster than he'd ever moved in his life. He sprinted through alleys and over cars, dodging shattered glass and mangled bodies.
He was 2.5 kilometers away before he dared glance back.
But Andy was faster.
The creature crouched, shifting his weight. His left leg drew back, his right foot forward. Arms poised, one near his bent face, the other pulled back near his hip. From the holes above his mouth, a ghostly white vapor seeped.
Then he launched forward one hundred and ninety-eight kilometers per hour in a second.
He ran up the side of a skyscraper, leaving fractures in the glass. From the top, he leapt. A dark meteor crashing down.
His fist hit the pavement.
CRACK
A shockwave exploded from the impact, carving a 29-meters -deep crater. Rocks flew upward. People screamed.
Callum froze, staring in disbelief, dust choking his breath.
Out of the haze… a shape emerged. Andy. Half his body visible, half cloaked in rising ash. Monstrous. Inhuman.
Then he charged.
Callum rolled aside just in time. Andy missed but slammed into a nearby woman.
Her body convulsed. Andy entered her.
And she changed.
Nails twisted into black claws. Her pupils bled red. From her back, a tail uncoiled like a serpent, the color of torn flesh.
People screamed. The crowd broke into a frenzy.
Callum, trying to escape, was swept into the chaos.
And then… they fell on him.
Feet. Shoes. Panic.
Someone crushed his hand. Another stomped his face.
A heel smashed into his eye socket. Someone else stomped his ribs.
A man kicked his groin with enough force to slam him into an electric pole.
"JUST DIE ALREADY!" the man screamed. "YOU DON'T DESERVE TO LIVE!"
The world blacked out for a second.
The voice returned.
"SIX MINUTES REMAIN UNTIL DETONATION."
And Callum lay there, broken, crushed under the weight of the panicked world… and the thing inside it.
A young man James Ellery, age 27, U.S. Army deserter with torn sergeant's stripes knelt beside the barely breathing boy on the pavement.
His face was streaked with soot, and his chestnut hair curled damply against his temples. His tan army trousers were shredded at the knees.
He wore a green M41 field jacket over a sweat-soaked white shirt, buttons half-missing. His boots mud-caked, one untied looked as if they'd survived a minefield.
Beside him stood Isabelle Marchand, 24, French refugee, ex-nightclub singer,
survivor of occupied Paris. She wore a dusty crimson swing dress, the kind with wide shoulders and a cinched waist that flared at the hips now torn at the hem,
smeared with ash. Her lips were still painted red, slightly smudged. Her curled brunette hair was pinned in victory rolls, though strands had fallen loose and framed her sharp, expressive face.
Around her neck, a silver locket bounced as she paced. And her heels black satin pumps were cracked, but she refused to remove them.
"We can't leave him, James!" Isabelle snapped, her voice thick with a French accent and raw urgency.
James glanced at her, eyes flicking to the child Callum whose swollen eye leaked blood. "Belle, we don't have time. There's five minutes maybe less. He's not gonna make it."
She stepped closer, her tone dropping, sultry yet sharp as broken glass.
"You said you loved me. You said if we got out, we'd start again. A new life. You want that life without a soul to it?"
She crouched beside the boy and touched his bloodied face. "Look at him. His hands are still soft. He hasn't killed anyone. He hasn't become anything dark yet."
James looked away. "I said we'd marry. I said we'd live quietly. I didn't say we'd raise a child."
Isabelle leaned into him, her voice now soft velvet over fire. "He's not a ghost. Not yet. But if we leave him here, he will be.
And you " she pressed his forehead to his lips grazing his jaw, " you'll see him every time you close your eyes.
Because I will. And I won't let you forget him."
James's throat tightened. His hand twitched toward his pack then back to the boy.
Isabelle cupped James's chin and made him look at her.
"You wanted a future? So did I. But a future without heart is just survival.
This boy is our heart now. We can leave the world with something good still in it."
He stared at her.
And in the middle of falling sirens, collapsing city blocks, and sobbing thousands, he broke.
James bent down, slid one arm under Callum's broken shoulders, another beneath his knees.
The boy moaned faintly.
Isabelle leaned in and kissed the boy's forehead. Her perfume jasmine and old smoke clung to the air like a memory.
"Alright," James muttered, gritting his teeth. "But if we die because of this "
She interrupted, smiling through tears. "Then we die with honor, mon amour."
Together, they ran towards the Kanye airport
On the other side ANDY has taken his old father and mother on his both hands and was running even crossing the speed of train
And successfully dropped them in the airport when they both turned to say good bye he was not there the girl was laying on the ground the soul has been freed