Toronto, Ontario – August 20, 2025. 2:14 a.m. EST.
Rain fell in sheets of black water.
It wasn't ordinary rain. The droplets carried a faint metallic sheen, left faint violet streaks on skin and concrete, and smelled faintly of burnt wiring and copper pennies. When it touched open wounds it stung like antiseptic gone wrong. When it pooled in low places it reflected the bruised sky twice as vividly, as though the world above had decided to mirror itself below in mockery.
Inside the community center the group had claimed three nights ago, the roof leaked in a dozen places. Plastic tarps scavenged from a nearby hardware store caught most of it, but the steady plink-plink-plink created a metronome of dread. No one spoke above a whisper after midnight. The silence between raindrops felt heavier than the water itself.
Elias sat alone on the second-floor balcony that overlooked the empty basketball court below. One leg dangled over the edge. The chemical light stick beside him had dimmed to a sickly emerald ghost-glow. His journal lay open but untouched. For the first time since the storm he hadn't written a single line.
Instead he stared at his left forearm.
A new mark had appeared during the night—not a rune, not exactly. A thin, branching vein of deeper black beneath the skin, like roots spreading from the original fractal tattoo on his pectoral. It didn't glow. It simply… existed. When he flexed, the vein pulsed once, slow and deliberate, then stilled.
Melanin Taker, he thought again. It's not just taking traits. It's rewriting the blueprint.
He remembered the moose-thing from yesterday. The moment he crushed its windpipe and felt the transfer—not just strength, not just denser muscle fiber, but something deeper. A flicker of primal territorial instinct. A sudden, alien urge to mark territory with scent and violence. He had pushed it down immediately, but the memory lingered like bad aftertaste.
Below, soft footsteps.
Aisha appeared at the balcony doorway. Hood up against the rain that blew in sideways. She carried two plastic bottles of water—filtered through a scavenged Brita they'd found in the staff room.
She didn't speak at first. Just handed him one bottle and sat a careful two meters away. Legs crossed. Back against the railing.
"You haven't slept," she said. Not accusation. Observation.
"Sleep is overrated when the world's rewriting its rules every six hours."
She took a slow sip. "You're changing faster than the rest of us."
He looked at her sideways. Purple eyes catching the faint light. "Jealous?"
"Curious." She paused. "Scared, maybe."
"Of me?"
"Of what happens when you stop being curious and start being… hungry."
The word hung between them.
Elias didn't deny it. "I felt something when I took from that thing yesterday. Not just power. Need. Like the serum woke up an appetite that was always there, just dormant."
Aisha stared at the rain. "And if that appetite turns on us?"
"It won't."
"How do you know?"
"Because I decide what it turns on."
She laughed once—soft, bitter. "That's the scariest part, Elias. You actually believe that."
He didn't answer.
They sat in silence for several minutes, rain drumming plastic, wind moaning through broken windows.
Then Aisha spoke again, quieter.
"I have a younger brother. Malik. Seventeen. Last I heard he was holed up near Jane and Finch with some friends from his basketball team. Before the storm he was… normal. Angry at the world, but normal."
Elias turned his head slightly.
"I'm going to find him," she continued. "Tomorrow. Alone if I have to."
"No."
She stiffened.
"You're not going alone," he said. "But you're also not going without telling the others. We move as a unit or we fall apart."
Aisha studied him. "Since when do you care about family?"
"Since I realized the only thing worth keeping in this new world is what you choose to protect."
She looked away. Voice barely above the rain.
"He's the only blood I have left."
Elias stood. Offered her a hand up.
"Then we get him. But we do it smart. Not reckless."
She took his hand. Her fingers were cold. His were warm—too warm, like fever that never breaks.
When she stood they were close. Closer than necessary.
Her breath caught.
His thumb brushed the inside of her wrist—unintentional, but he didn't pull away.
For a heartbeat the rain seemed to slow.
Then she stepped back. "Tomorrow," she whispered.
"Tomorrow," he agreed.
4:37 a.m.
The scream came from downstairs.
High. Female. Cut off abruptly.
Elias was moving before conscious thought. Bare feet silent on cold tile. Down the stairs. Through the dark gym. Past the barricade.
Jamal was already there—pipe in hand, breathing hard.
Talia crouched over a body.
Not one of theirs.
A girl—maybe nineteen—curled on the floor near the side entrance. Clothes torn. Blood on her thigh. Eyes wide, unseeing.
Alive. Barely.
Kwame stood a few steps back, vines retracting from the doorway like retreating snakes. One tendril still dripped red.
"She tripped the outer barrier," Kwame said flatly. "Thought she was a crawler. Vines reacted before I could stop them."
Elias knelt beside her.
Pulse weak. Breathing shallow. Femoral artery nicked—not severed, but close.
He placed his hand over the wound.
The black vein on his forearm pulsed.
Melanin surged. Not just healing—something more invasive. He felt her blood, her cells, the faint mutation already stirring in her marrow from two days of exposure.
He could take it. All of it. Leave her empty. Or—
He pushed.
Energy flowed the other way.
Her eyes snapped open. Gasped. Back arched.
The wound closed. Skin sealed without scar.
She stared up at him—pupils blown wide.
"Who…?"
"Stay still," he said.
Talia's voice cut through. "She's not one of us."
"She is now," Elias answered.
The girl—her name, they would learn later, was Zara—reached up. Fingers brushed his jaw.
"Thank you," she breathed.
Her touch lingered.
Aisha appeared at the doorway. Saw the scene. Expression unreadable.
Jamal muttered, "Great. Another mouth to feed."
Elias ignored him.
He helped Zara sit up.
She was shaking. But her gaze never left his face.
7:19 a.m.
They gathered in the old staff kitchen. Canned peaches passed around. No one ate much.
Zara sat wrapped in a scavenged blanket. Color returning slowly.
She spoke in fragments.
Was a Ryerson student. Art major. Was with her older sister Leyla when the first wave hit. Leyla got taken by something with too many legs in an alley near Dundas Square. Zara ran. Hid. Survived on rooftops until hunger forced her down.
She looked at Elias the entire time she spoke.
"I saw you," she said suddenly. "Two nights ago. Near the pharmacy. You killed that… thing. The one with the antlers. You didn't run. You just… ended it."
Jamal snorted. "Hero worship already?"
Zara ignored him. Kept looking at Elias.
"I want to stay," she said. "I want to learn how to… do what you do."
Talia laughed coldly. "You want power. Or you want him."
Zara flushed but didn't deny it.
Elias spoke before the tension could boil over.
"You stay if you pull your weight. You leave if you don't. No favorites. No charity."
Zara nodded quickly.
Aisha watched the exchange. Jaw tight.
Kwame broke the silence. "We're moving north tomorrow. Toward Jane and Finch. Aisha's brother."
Jamal looked up sharply. "Since when?"
"Since now," Elias said. "We voted?"
"No vote," Aisha said quietly. "But I'm going. With or without you."
Jamal sighed. "Fuck. Fine."
Talia shrugged. "I'm bored anyway."
Kwame simply nodded.
Zara looked hopeful.
Elias stood.
"Then we prepare. Weapons. Food. Water. We leave at first light tomorrow."
He walked away before anyone could argue.
Behind him, Zara whispered to Aisha.
"He's different, isn't he?"
Aisha didn't answer.
But her fingers curled into fists.
9:43 p.m.
Rain had stopped.
The city was quiet in the way only apocalypse can be—silent but never empty.
Elias stood on the roof alone.
The black vein on his arm had lengthened again. Now it reached his wrist. When he concentrated, he could feel it mapping new pathways—muscle, nerve, even bone density.
He closed his eyes.
Felt the city breathe around him.
Mutated things moved in the dark. Larger. Hungrier. Smarter.
Somewhere north, Aisha's brother waited—or didn't.
Somewhere closer, Zara watched him from the stairwell door. Eyes bright with something more than gratitude.
And somewhere inside himself, the hunger stirred again.
Not for food.
For more.
Always more.
He smiled into the darkness.
Small. Private.
Dangerous.
The crownless paragon was waking up.
And the night was long.
(End of Chapter 5)