"I-I'm sorry…" Hana stammered, her voice trembling.
Her eyes darted around the hallway. Shattered glass glittered across the floor like scattered stars. Windows she hadn't touched were cracked open, spider‑webbed with fractures. The metal door behind her was warped, as if something had pressed outward from the inside.
Her radioactivity had burst out again. Wild. Uncontrolled.
She inhaled slowly and looked down at her hands. They were still faintly glowing.
Then she looked back at Haazi.
And froze.
A small gasp escaped her.
He wasn't looking at her the way he usually did, with calm curiosity or quiet concern. His expression was… wrong. Twisted. Empty. Like something had hollowed him out and slipped inside.
"Haazi…?" she whispered.
The lights overhead flickered violently, plunging the hallway into stuttering darkness. Each flash carved his face into a different shape. Shadowed, distorted and unreadable. Then the lights dimmed completely, leaving only the faint glow from Hana's skin.
She could no longer see his expression.
Her heart thudded painfully.
"H-Haazi?" she whispered again, voice cracking.
He moved.
A sudden, sharp turn of his head. It was too fast, too precise. Hana's breath hitched. Her instincts screamed. Something primal inside her flared, warning her that the thing standing in front of her was not the boy she had been speaking to moments ago.
No way… could he be infected? But how?
Her thoughts spiraled, looping in frantic circles. She couldn't think straight. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't decide whether to run or fight.
Her radioactivity pulsed beneath her skin, reacting to her fear.
"That's not Haazi," she whispered to herself.
It is Haazi.
What…?
Her mind contradicted itself, twisting into knots. She blinked hard, trying to clear her vision, but the world felt like it was glitching. It was like reality itself was stuttering around her.
'Haazi' stepped forward.
Slowly. Purposefully.
A faint, menacing aura radiated from him, cold and suffocating. His shadow stretched unnaturally long across the floor.
"You know," he said, voice unmistakably Haazi's but the tone was wrong. Too smooth. Too sharp. Too amused. "They DO say curiosity killed the cat…"
Hana's blood ran cold.
He took another step. "Why don't you wake up now?"
Hana stopped moving.
"…What?"
Before she could finish the word, something ignited inside her chest.
A violent and electric spark flared in her heart.
She gasped, doubling over.
It felt like she had been shot, but there was no wound or any sign of bleeding. Just a searing burst of energy ripping through the centre of her body.
Her vision shattered.
Black and white flickers exploded across her sight, blinding her. The hallway dissolved into static. Haazi's silhouette fractured into jagged shapes. The world twisted, warped, and folded in on itself.
Her life flashed before her eyes.
Her memories, screams, the light and darkness, everything blurred into a chaotic mix of uncertainty and pain.
"What… is happening…?" she choked out.
But the world didn't answer.
It only kept breaking.