"Everyone stop."
My voice cut through the afternoon air, and three hundred and thirty-four zombies froze as one. Behind me, Min-Tong, Mrs. Chen, and Lily Wong stumbled to a halt.
"Wei?" Min-Tong's hand found my arm. "What's wrong?"
I didn't answer immediately. I was too focused on the presence ahead—that cold pulse of power, so similar to mine and yet fundamentally different.
In my original timeline, I'd been unique. Ten thousand years of searching, of experimenting, of pushing the boundaries of my abilities, and I'd never encountered another being who could control the dead.
Until now.
"There's something ahead," I said quietly. "Another controller."
"Another...?" Min-Tong's grip tightened. "You mean someone else who can do what you do?"
"Not someone. Something."
I closed my eyes and reached out with my Death Aura, extending my senses as far as they would go.
There. Two blocks north, moving slowly west. A core of concentrated power—cold, hungry, alien—surrounded by a cluster of lesser presences. Zombies, definitely. But they didn't feel like mine. They felt... bound. Chained to that central power by something that wasn't will.
Something that was instinct.
"The Tier 2," I realized. "From the parking garage. It's not just evolved. It's commanding."
------------------------------
The evolved zombie came into view as we rounded the corner.
I'd expected something monstrous. Tier 2s in my original timeline had been larger, stronger, faster—apex predators in a world of shambling corpses.
This one was different.
It looked almost human. A man, maybe forty years old, wearing the tattered remains of a business suit. But his eyes... his eyes burned with a cold blue light, and the air around him seemed to shimmer with suppressed power.
Behind him walked a retinue of fifteen zombies. They moved in formation—not the mindless shambling of normal dead, but the coordinated steps of soldiers following their commander.
The Tier 2 stopped when it saw us.
Its head tilted. That same curious gesture from the parking garage.
And then it spoke.
"Another one."
The words came out wrong—gargled, distorted, like sound pushing through vocal cords that had forgotten how to work. But they were words. Coherent. Meaningful.
My blood went cold.
"You can talk."
"Learning." The Tier 2's lips twisted into something that might have been a smile. "Watching. Growing."
Behind me, Min-Tong made a sound of pure horror.
"Wei," she whispered. "That thing is talking."
"I noticed."
"How is it talking?"
"I don't know." But I had a terrible suspicion. In my original timeline, the truly powerful zombies—the Tier 5s, the Tier 6s—had been intelligent. Capable of strategy, of planning, of speech. But those hadn't appeared until years after the outbreak.
This was Day 2.
Something was very, very wrong.
------------------------------
The Tier 2 took a step forward.
Immediately, I raised my hand, and my entire horde surged into defensive formation. Three hundred and thirty-four zombies forming a wall of dead flesh between the evolved threat and the living survivors behind me.
The Tier 2 stopped.
"Strong," it said. "Many. But weak. Each one... weak."
"They serve their purpose."
"Purpose." The word came out like a question. "What purpose? What are you?"
I met those burning blue eyes.
"I'm the man who's going to kill you."
The Tier 2 laughed.
It was the worst sound I'd ever heard—a wet, gurgling noise that had nothing to do with humor and everything to do with madness. Its fifteen zombie minions shifted restlessly, responding to their master's mood.
"Kill me," it repeated. "You? With these?"
It gestured at my horde—three hundred and thirty-four Tier 1 zombies, common dead, slow and weak by any measure.
"Meat," the Tier 2 continued. "Fuel. You bring me... gifts."
And then it charged.
------------------------------
The Tier 2 moved faster than anything dead had a right to move.
It crossed the distance between us in a blur, its body a projectile of cold fury. My front line of zombies didn't even have time to react—three of them went down in an instant, torn apart by claws that had hardened into something like steel.
But I'd been expecting this.
"Flank," I commanded, and my horde responded.
Zombies poured in from all sides, a tide of grasping hands and gnashing teeth. They couldn't hurt the Tier 2—not individually—but they could slow it, distract it, bury it under sheer weight of numbers.
The evolved zombie roared in frustration as a dozen bodies piled onto it. It threw them off with terrifying strength, but more kept coming. And more. And more.
"Min-Tong," I called without turning. "Take the others and run. Head south. My zombies will guide you."
"Wei, I'm not leaving you—"
"Go. Now."
I heard footsteps—Mrs. Chen and Lily Wong fleeing. But Min-Tong's presence lingered at my back.
I didn't have time to argue. The Tier 2 was tearing through my zombies like paper, and its minions were joining the fight—fifteen controlled dead attacking my flanks, trying to break through to the survivors.
Ghost yowled and leaped at one of them, claws raking across dead flesh.
Ghost fights for pack!
"Ghost, no—"
But she was already gone, a gray blur of fur and fury, driving back two zombies with sheer ferocity.
I turned my attention back to the Tier 2.
It had fought free of the pile and was coming for me directly. Its blue eyes locked onto mine with terrible focus.
"You," it snarled. "Different. Like me. But weaker."
"I'm not like you."
"Yessss." The word stretched, sibilant. "Both between. Both neither. You feel it. The hunger. The cold."
I did feel it. That yawning emptiness at the core of my power. The void that had to be filled.
But I wasn't controlled by it.
"The difference," I said, "is that I choose what to do with my hunger."
And I reached out with everything I had.
------------------------------
Controlling a Tier 2 wasn't like controlling a Tier 1.
There was no empty void waiting to be filled. There was will—cold, alien, but genuine. A mind that had evolved beyond mere instinct into something approximating thought.
My Death Aura hit it like a wave hitting a cliff.
For a moment, nothing happened.
The Tier 2 laughed again, that terrible gurgling sound.
"Weak," it said. "Told you. Weak—"
And then I stopped trying to fill a void that didn't exist.
Instead, I found the edges of its will. The places where consciousness met power. The seams where identity had been stitched together from death and hunger and something that might have been memory.
And I pushed.
Not to replace. Not to dominate. But to break.
The Tier 2 screamed.
------------------------------
The battle lasted exactly eleven seconds.
I counted every one of them.
In the first three, the Tier 2's will buckled under my assault. Its control over its minions shattered, and fifteen zombies stopped mid-attack, suddenly masterless.
In the next four, I claimed those fifteen—adding them to my network, filling the voids where the Tier 2's power had been.
And in the final four, I broke through.
The Tier 2's consciousness didn't surrender. It collapsed. Folded inward like a dying star. All that alien intelligence, all that cold hunger, all that evolving mind—crumbling under the weight of my will.
What remained was a void.
And I filled it.
------------------------------
The Tier 2 went still.
It stood in the middle of the street, surrounded by the torn remnants of my zombies, its blue eyes dimming from cold fire to clouded gray.
And then it dropped to one knee.
"Master," it said.
Its voice was different now—flat, obedient, empty of everything that had made it a threat. The mind that had spoken to me, that had laughed at me, was gone.
In its place was nothing but loyalty.
I stared at my newest acquisition.
Three hundred and forty-nine zombies now. But this one... this one was different. Stronger. Faster. Smarter, even in its dominated state.
My first Elite.
"Rise," I commanded.
It rose.
"What is your name?"
Silence. Of course it didn't have a name. It had been a man once, but that man was gone.
I studied its face. Its posture. The way it stood at attention, awaiting orders.
In my original timeline, my first Elite had been called Iron Fang. A name given by the survivors who'd watched it tear through a Tier 3 in defense of our camp.
This one would need a different name. A name for a new timeline.
"Vanguard," I said finally. "That's what I'll call you. You're my vanguard now."
The Tier 2—Vanguard—inclined its head.
"Vanguard obeys."
------------------------------
"Wei."
Min-Tong's voice came from behind me. I turned.
She was standing at the edge of the street, Ghost pressed against her leg. Mrs. Chen and Lily Wong were nowhere to be seen—they must have kept running.
But Min-Tong had stayed.
Her face was pale. Her hands were shaking. But her eyes...
Her eyes were fixed on me with an intensity that made my skin prickle.
"What are you?" she whispered.
It was the same question the Tier 2 had asked. But coming from her, it meant something different.
"I told you," I said. "I'm a time traveler. A necromancer. Someone who came back to save you."
"No." She shook her head slowly. "That's what you can do. I'm asking what you are. Because what I just saw..."
She gestured at the street. At the torn zombie corpses. At Vanguard, still kneeling beside me.
"What I just saw wasn't human," she finished.
I didn't have an answer for her.
"Maybe not," I admitted. "Maybe I stopped being human a long time ago."
"Then what are you now?"
I looked at my hands. At the army waiting behind me. At the dead thing that had been an enemy and was now a servant.
"I don't know," I said honestly. "But whatever I am... I'm yours. If you'll have me."
Min-Tong was quiet for a long moment.
Then she walked across the street, stepping over zombie corpses, until she was standing right in front of me.
"I'll have you," she said quietly. "Whatever you are. Whatever you've become. I'll have you."
And she took my hand.