The Olympic Sculpture Park stretched along Seattle's waterfront like a graveyard of giants.
Massive steel sculptures cast long shadows across overgrown lawns. The Space Needle loomed in the distance, its observation deck dark and silent. And scattered among the art installations, my zombies waited in perfect stillness—one hundred and fifty of them, forming a perimeter that nothing dead could breach.
I'd left the other two hundred at the compound with Vanguard. No point bringing my entire force when I didn't know what I was walking into.
"You're sure about this?" Min-Tong walked beside me, her eyes scanning the empty paths. "It could be a trap."
"It probably is."
"Then why are we here?"
"Because whoever these people are, they have information I need." I gestured at Ghost, who was padding ahead of us, her ears swiveling constantly. "And because traps work both ways."
Ghost's thought brushed against mine: Humans ahead. Five heartbeats. One smells... strange.
"They're here," I said. "Five of them. One awakened, maybe more."
Min-Tong's hand found the knife at her belt—a ten-inch blade I'd given her that morning. She wasn't trained, not yet, but she held it like she meant to use it.
That was good. In this world, intent mattered more than skill.
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They emerged from behind the Eagle sculpture—a massive steel bird frozen mid-flight, its wings spanning thirty feet.
Five survivors.
The leader was a woman in her fifties, silver hair cut short, wearing what looked like military fatigues with the insignia removed. She moved with the economy of someone who'd spent decades learning to fight.
Behind her: a heavyset man with a shotgun slung across his back, a young woman clutching a tablet computer, a teenage boy with haunted eyes, and—
I stopped.
The fifth figure was a girl. Maybe twelve years old. Small, delicate, with hair so pale it was almost white.
But her eyes were wrong.
They glowed.
Not the cold blue of a Tier 2 zombie, but something warmer—silver, luminescent, like moonlight trapped in glass.
"You're the precog," I said.
The girl smiled. It was a strange expression—too old for her face, too knowing.
"And you're the one who came back," she replied. Her voice was soft, melodic, utterly out of place in the ruined world around us. "Ten thousand years. That's a long time to remember someone."
My blood went cold.
"How do you know that?"
"I see things. Past. Future. Sometimes present." She tilted her head, and for a moment, those silver eyes seemed to look through me rather than at me. "You died, didn't you? Really died. And something sent you back."
"Maya." The silver-haired woman's voice was sharp. "We talked about this."
"He needs to know what I know, Commander. Otherwise we're all going to die."
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The silver-haired woman stepped forward.
"I'm Rachel Chen. Former Army, 75th Ranger Regiment. This is my team." She gestured at the others without introducing them individually. "We've been tracking you since Day 1. That first night, when you walked out of your compound with a zombie following you like a pet—we saw it from a building six blocks away."
"Why didn't you make contact earlier?"
"Because we weren't sure what you were." Her eyes flicked to the zombies standing at attention behind me. "Now we know. You're a necromancer. You control the dead."
"Among other things."
"Other things." Rachel's expression didn't change. "The precog—Maya—she says you're from the future. That you've lived through all of this before. Thousands of years of apocalypse."
"That's right."
"Then you know what's coming."
"Some of it. The timeline's already changed. Things are happening faster than they should—the Tier 2s, the evolution rate, the awakened." I looked at Maya. "And apparently, precognitives."
Maya's smile widened.
"I'm not the only one," she said. "There are others waking up. All over the city. All over the world. Fire. Lightning. Strength. Speed. Healing." Her silver eyes found Min-Tong, and something flickered in their depths. "Some of them will save lives. Some of them will end them."
"Maya." Rachel's voice carried a warning.
"It's fine. She needs to know too." Maya walked toward Min-Tong, her movements eerily graceful. "You're going to be important. Almost as important as him. But only if you survive what's coming."
Min-Tong's face had gone pale.
"What do you mean? What's coming?"
"Day 5," Maya said simply. "The Awakening."
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We gathered in the shadow of the Eagle sculpture—six living humans, one psychic child, and a hundred and fifty dead sentinels standing silent guard.
Maya sat cross-legged on the grass, her silver eyes distant, unfocused.
"Tell me about Day 5," I said.
"It's not a what," Maya replied. "It's a who."
The heavyset man with the shotgun shifted uncomfortably. The teenage boy looked like he wanted to run.
"In Seattle," Maya continued, "there's something sleeping. It's been sleeping since the virus first spread. Growing. Feeding on the death around it. When it wakes up..."
"What is it?"
"You called them Tier 2s. The evolved zombies. Smarter, faster, stronger." Maya's voice dropped to a whisper. "This one is Tier 4. Maybe Tier 5. It's hard to see—the future gets fuzzy around things that powerful."
I felt my heart rate spike.
In my original timeline, Tier 4s hadn't appeared until months after the outbreak. Tier 5s took years. The idea of a Tier 5 on Day 5 was—
"That's impossible," I said flatly.
"The timeline changed." Maya's silver eyes focused on me with uncomfortable intensity. "Because of you. Your presence created ripples. The virus is evolving faster. The zombies are growing stronger. And something ancient woke up that wasn't supposed to wake for a very long time."
"Something ancient?"
"The virus didn't come from nowhere." Maya's voice was distant again, her eyes losing focus. "It was created. Engineered. And the things it was designed to create... they were always meant to wake eventually. You just accelerated the schedule."
I stared at her.
"You're saying the apocalypse was planned."
"I'm saying someone wanted this to happen. And now that it's happening faster, the things they created are waking faster too." She blinked, and for a moment, she looked like what she was—a frightened twelve-year-old girl in a world gone mad. "The one in Seattle. It knows you exist. It felt you claim the Tier 2 yesterday."
"It felt me?"
"You're connected to death. So is it. When you took Vanguard, you announced yourself." Maya's voice trembled. "It's coming for you, Wei. On Day 5. And if you're not ready, it won't just kill you. It'll consume everything you've built."
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"How do you know all this?"
The question came from Min-Tong. She'd been silent since Maya mentioned her importance, but now she stepped forward, her dark eyes fixed on the silver-haired child.
"The visions started three days ago," Maya said. "When the virus spread. Something in my brain... changed. Now I see things. Fragments of time. Possible futures." Her smile was sad. "There are a lot of futures where everyone dies, you know. A lot of futures where you never came back. A lot of futures where the thing sleeping under Seattle wakes up and nothing survives."
"And in the futures where things go differently?"
"You're there." Maya pointed at me. "You and your dead army. You're the difference. But only if you're strong enough."
"How strong?"
"Stronger than you are now." Maya's voice was matter-of-fact. "Your three hundred zombies won't be enough. Your Tier 2—sorry, your Elite—won't be enough. The thing that's waking... it commands thousands. Maybe tens of thousands."
I absorbed that.
"Where is it?"
"Underground. The old drainage system beneath the city. It's been there since Day 0, growing, absorbing every zombie that wandered into its domain." Maya shuddered. "It's so hungry, Wei. I can feel it even now. Hungry for the living. Hungry for power. Hungry for you."
"For me specifically?"
"Your power is the same as its power. Death. Control. Command." Her silver eyes bore into mine. "It sees you as a rival. A threat. Or maybe..." She hesitated. "Maybe a meal."
"Can it take my zombies?" I asked. The question had been gnawing at me since the night of Day 0—that presence I'd felt watching, the three zombies I'd lost at dawn. "Sever my control?"
Maya's face went pale.
"Yes." The word came out barely above a whisper. "In some visions... it reaches into your network and pulls. Your zombies become its zombies. Your army becomes its army. That's why you need more than just numbers. You need strength of will that can't be broken."
I thought of those three lost zombies. The clean severance. The amusement I'd felt from whatever was watching.
It had been testing me. Sampling my power.
Learning how to take it.
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Rachel Chen spoke.
"Here's our proposal. My team has supplies—a week of food, ammunition, medical equipment. We have vehicles—two armored trucks, modified for zombie resistance. And we have Maya."
"What do you want in return?"
"Protection. Alliance. Your zombie army is the strongest force in Seattle right now. If this Tier 5—or whatever it is—really is coming on Day 5, we need to be together when it happens."
I studied her.
"You're military. You have supplies. You have a precog." I tilted my head. "Why do you need me?"
Rachel's jaw tightened.
"Because I've seen what happens to conventional forces against the evolved. Two days ago, I watched a squad of eight soldiers get torn apart by a single Tier 2. Guns, training, tactics—none of it mattered." She looked at my zombie army. "But you... you turned that same Tier 2 into a servant. You control the threat. That's not a weapon. That's a game-changer."
"And if I say no?"
"Then we'll try to survive on our own. But Maya says the odds aren't good."
I looked at Maya.
"What do you see if we work together?"
The girl's silver eyes went distant.
"Fire," she whispered. "War. Pain. A lot of death—but not extinction. A chance." Her focus sharpened. "You live. She lives." Her gaze flicked to Min-Tong. "Most of us live. But there's a cost. There's always a cost."
"What cost?"
Maya was quiet for a long moment.
"You have to become what they're afraid you are," she said finally. "The monster. The Zombie King. You can't keep hiding. You can't keep holding back. When that thing wakes up on Day 5..." She swallowed. "You have to be ready to drown it in corpses."
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The negotiation took an hour.
Rachel's team would move to an area near our compound—not inside, not yet, but close enough to coordinate. They'd share supplies, intelligence, and Maya's visions. In return, my zombies would provide perimeter security and early warning.
It wasn't trust. Not yet. But it was a start.
As we finalized the details, Maya approached me alone.
"There's something else," she said quietly. "Something I didn't want to say in front of the others."
"What?"
Her silver eyes met mine.
"The thing in the tunnels. It has a name. In the visions, I hear other zombies calling to it. Worshipping it." She shivered. "They call it the Hive King."
The Hive King.
I didn't recognize the name from my original timeline. Whatever this creature was, it hadn't existed in the world I'd lived through before.
My presence had created it.
Or woken it.
"There's more," Maya continued. "In some futures—the ones where you lose—it doesn't just kill you. It absorbs you. Your power, your will, your consciousness." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "It becomes you, Wei. The Zombie King that humanity fears. But it's wearing your face."
I stared at her.
"You're telling me this thing wants to steal my identity?"
"I'm telling you that if you die on Day 5, something terrible happens. Not just to Seattle. To the world." She reached out and touched my hand—her fingers ice cold. "You can't die. Whatever happens. Whatever it costs. You have to survive."
"I plan to."
"I know." Her smile was sad, ancient. "But plans don't always survive contact with the enemy. And this enemy... it's been planning for a very long time."