Meanwhile – Top Floor.
Henry had once been a lonely, bitter man.
A fifty-something maintenance worker with a pronounced limp from an old injury and a face only a mother could love—and even that was questionable. Heavy jowls, thin hair, small eyes too close together, a nose that had been broken and never set properly.
He'd spent his entire adult life unclogging drains and fixing heaters for professors who never learned his name, who called him "maintenance guy" or just "hey you" when they needed something.
Students walked past him like he was furniture, invisible except when something broke.
He never married. Never even held a woman's hand romantically. Never had anyone look at him with desire or genuine affection.
He lived quietly, resentfully, surrounded by people who ignored him—until the mist came and changed everything.
The Transformation
The day it rolled through the city like a living thing, Henry found two strange fruits among the wreckage of the campus greenhouse while checking for survivors.
They were pale-white, almost glowing faintly with internal light, pulsing with warmth that seemed to call to him. They didn't look like anything that should exist naturally.
He ate them both without hesitation, driven by hunger and curiosity and the desperate hope that maybe, finally, something good would happen to him.
At first, nothing. Just the awful taste—bitter, metallic, wrong.
Then came the pain—excruciating pain that made him collapse and convulse on the greenhouse floor. His muscles tore and reformed, fibers multiplying and densifying. His bones realigned with audible cracks, straightening, thickening. His skin hardened until knives could no longer cut him, becoming tough as leather.
When he looked in a cracked mirror hours later, barely able to stand, the limp was gone. Completely. The injury that had plagued him for twenty years had simply ceased to exist.
His back was straight for the first time since his teens. His arms bulged with power, muscles defined in ways that made him look decades younger.
For the first time in his miserable life, he felt strong. Powerful. Worthy.
The Descent
At first, in those early days, he used that newfound strength to help people.
He broke open locked doors, rescued trapped students from collapsed buildings. Shared the food he found with others, organized rescue efforts.
But when no rescue came—no army, no police, no government relief, no help at all—when he realized that civilization had truly collapsed and no one was coming to restore order, something inside him snapped like a rotten branch.
On the fourth day after the apocalypse began, he kicked down the door of another dorm room and took their food by force, ignoring their pleas.
By the fifth day, he'd taken over the entire top floor of Building C, establishing himself as the undisputed ruler of this small territory.
Now, a week into the new world, every surviving teacher and student on that floor lived under his absolute control.
Those who failed to bring back adequate supplies were punished severely.
The men were beaten with iron rods he'd scavenged from construction sites, sometimes crippled permanently as examples.
The women… he found other uses for them. Uses he'd fantasized about for decades but never had the power to enact.
The Justification
He told himself it was justice—after all, hadn't the world ignored him his whole life? Hadn't these same people walked past him without acknowledgment? Hadn't the pretty professors and students treated him like trash?
Now, it was his turn to be in charge. His turn to take what he wanted.
And deep down, in a place he didn't examine too closely, Henry prayed that the fog—and the apocalypse—would never end.
That this new world, where strength was the only law and he was finally strong, would last forever.
The Current Scene
In what used to be the faculty recreation room—a space that had once hosted birthday parties and retirement celebrations—now converted into his personal lair, Henry sat sprawled in a plastic chair.
The furniture around him was expensive, scavenged from faculty offices. Leather couches, a good desk, even a small refrigerator that still worked off a generator.
He was surrounded by crates of food and water bottles, his personal hoard that no one else was permitted to touch without permission.
Before him, standing frozen in terror, was a trembling woman—Professor Grace Chen, one of the surviving faculty members who'd been trapped in the building when the apocalypse began.
She'd once taught literature, had published papers on classical poetry. Now she stood before a tyrant, reduced to a supplicant begging for mercy.
"You didn't find anything again, huh?" Henry said, his tone dripping with mock disappointment.
He rose slowly from his chair, deliberately taking his time, savoring her fear. His new body towered over her—he'd gained at least four inches in height along with the muscle.
"Well, rules are rules, Grace. No food, no mercy."
The Abuse of Power
The woman's hands shook visibly, her whole body trembling. "Please, Mr. Henrry, I tried— I really did—"
She had tried. The stores were picked clean, the nearby buildings too dangerous. But excuses meant nothing to him.
"Save it."
He smiled, cruel and wide, showing teeth that had somehow straightened and whitened during his transformation.
"Now… you know the rules. Take off your coat."
Her breath hitched audibly, terror flooding her face. "Please don't—"
"Don't make me use force," he said, his voice dropping to something low and hungry, almost a growl.
He'd learned that women complied more readily when they thought resistance would mean violence. The psychological dominance was almost as satisfying as the physical power.
He reached out with one massive hand, fingers extended—
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