"Even ruins deserve color."
The sky above Oxford bled into the horizon — a bruised gray swallowing every sound.
Leina Moon crouched on the roof of the Fine Arts building, clutching her paint-smeared backpack tight against her chest. Below, the campus didn't look like home anymore. The quad — once a mess of laughter, music, and glittering confetti — had turned into a graveyard of reflections. Rain pooled in cracked tiles, catching light like broken mirrors. Torn banners drifted across the courtyard, their colors faded but stubborn.
Her hands shook — not from fear. From stillness. She was never built for stillness.
When the outbreak started, she'd been at cheer practice. Sneakers squeaked on the gym floor, music pulsed for half a second before the alarms swallowed everything. She could still see the coach waving them out, shouting, Move! Some people ran toward the noise. Some away.
Now, there was no noise left to run toward.
She'd spent two nights hiding in the art studio upstairs. Her paintings still covered the walls — slices of sunlight trapped in oil. She stared at them until her throat ached. Each brushstroke looked like a message from another world, one that still believed in warmth.
So she made one last mark.
With a wide stroke of red, she dragged paint across the studio door. Uneven. Bold. A promise.If she survived, she'd keep painting. Even if the world forgot color, she wouldn't.
The old wall radio coughed to life sometime before dawn. Static at first, then a break — a voice:"—anyone still alive… this is Mike Warren… Chemistry labs, east wing… survivors welcome—"
Leina froze. A voice. A real one.
She pressed her ear to the radio, heart climbing her throat. Nothing else — just that soft static whispering like rain against tin.
She tore a page from her sketchbook and scrawled three messy words in blue paint:I am coming.
Then she packed — quick, mechanical. Water bottle. Paint tubes. Two granola bars. A small knife scavenged from the cheer gear cabinet. Her hands knew what to do even if her brain lagged behind.
Through the window, the courtyard glistened, all wet stone and ghosted light. Three stories down. No stairs left. But rooftops — rooftops she understood.
"Okay, Leina," she muttered. "You've jumped from higher."
Wind needled her face as she vaulted from the Fine Arts balcony to the Music Department roof. She landed light, rolling to bleed off impact. Everything was slick, but motion was her language.
She wasn't strong like Mike.Wasn't calculating like Kazuma.Didn't know either of them — only a voice through static.
But she knew rhythm.And survival, she realized, had the same rule as cheer routines: keep the rhythm or you fall.
She moved across rooftops, fluid, quiet, every breath syncing with the rain. Between leaps, she left traces — small acts of defiance. A red smear on a ledge. A yellow swipe along a doorframe. A line of blue dripping down a pipe.
A heartbeat in color.
At the cafeteria courtyard, she paused. Below, three infected staggered through puddles. One still clutched a pom-pom. The sight hit hard. She could almost hear echoes — music, laughter, her own voice counting out time.
"Five, six, seven, eight…"
Her breath wavered. She whispered, "You'll dance for me one last time."
She found a metal tray wedged in a gutter, hurled it across the yard. The clang ripped through the air; the creatures turned toward it. Leina slid down a drainpipe, gone before their hunger caught up.
By dusk, she reached the Science Quadrant. The air smelled of rain mixed with something acrid — smoke and acid and metal. Across the courtyard, a flicker of orange light glowed behind the Chemistry lab windows. Movement. Shadows.
Her pulse steadied. She took it as a sign.
Below, the infected swarmed the courtyard, drawn by the hum of the generator. Eyes catching light, blank as marbles. No safe ground. Only air.
She backed up to the edge of the Biology roof. Five meters. Maybe six. One chance.
"For color," she whispered.
She ran. Jumped.
For an instant she was flying — a streak of motion across the drowned campus. Then she hit hard, rolled, and laughed — sharp and breathless.
Rain plastered her hair to her face. She crawled to the skylight, peering through the rippling glass. Two figures below — one pacing, one measured. Voices rising and falling around the hum of machines.
Alive. Real.
Leina pressed her palm to the glass, smiling. "Found you."
She tapped twice. Pause. Once more. A rhythm, not a knock.
Below, someone looked up. Mike Warren's voice — muffled but unmistakably warm — cut through the storm."Well, look what the cat dragged in."
Leina grinned. "More like what the wind blew over."
A click. Locks shifted. The hatch opened. Warm light spilled into the rain.
As she climbed inside, something caught at the edge of her vision — a shadow, distant, near the rear entrance. Still, deliberate. Watching.
Dan Fort.
She didn't see him exactly — more like she felt him. A shape. A pause in the air. When their eyes almost met, the world seemed to blink. Then he was gone.
Inside, the door sealed. Four heartbeats now, beating together for the first time since everything had fallen apart.
And above them, through the broken skylight, the storm cracked open just enough for dawn to find her red-stained hands —a little streak of color against the gray.