The cafeteria doors didn't just close; they buckled under the weight of the first wave.
"Run," the girl said. It wasn't a suggestion.
Kaelen didn't need to be told twice. The heavy, metallic scent of the "harvest" behind them had turned the South Building into a literal hornets' nest. The clicking sounds—the telltale sign of the Frenzy stage—were no longer coming from just the shadows. They were coming from the vents, the floorboards, and the darkness of the ceiling above.
They scrambled out of the dining hall and into the Main Arterial Passage. Kaelen's breath hitched in his throat, each gasp feeling like he was swallowing shards of glass. His head wound was still seeping, a warm, rhythmic trickle that felt like a ticking clock. To the creatures behind them, he wasn't a man; he was a walking beacon of fresh, oxygenated cells.
"Left!" the girl commanded, her hand finding the small of his back and shoving him with enough force to nearly launch him off his feet.
They skidded around a corner, Kaelen's boots losing traction on a patch of spilled hydraulic fluid. He slammed into a wall, his shoulder barking in protest, but the girl caught him before he could stall. Behind them, the first of the pursuers rounded the corner. It was a former security guard, his tactical vest shredded, his jaw hanging at an impossible angle. It moved with a twitchy, unnatural speed, its limbs jerking as the virus over-clocked its nervous system.
"The stairs!" Kaelen wheezed, pointing to a heavy fire door.
They burst through the door and began to climb. Kaelen's vision was narrowing, a dark vignette creeping in from the edges. One flight. Two flights. His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. On the third landing, the girl stopped.
"Not this way," she hissed, her void-black eyes scanning the shadows above. "The hum... it's too loud up there. They've blocked the upper egress."
"We can't go back down!" Kaelen shouted over the sound of the door below being ripped from its hinges.
"The passage. Right side."
They bolted through a set of double-glass doors into a long, aesthetic corridor. It was a skybridge of sorts, designed to look impressive for the facility's former investors. Both sides were made of thick, reinforced industrial glass, looking out over the dark, smog-choked ruins of the lower sectors. At the far end was an elevator bank.
Kaelen lunged for the call button, hitting it with his palm. Nothing. He hit it again. The display was dead. He looked through the small gap in the elevator doors—the cables were snapped, the car sitting in a mangled heap at the bottom of the shaft.
"It's dead," Kaelen whispered, the horror finally setting in. "We're trapped."
The sound of the clicking was getting louder. The first of the Frenzied emerged from the stairwell, their pale, translucent skin shimmering under the emergency lights. There were dozens of them now, a tide of grey flesh and weeping eyes.
The girl stepped in front of Kaelen. She looked at the reinforced glass of the skybridge, then back at the approaching horde.
"We jump," she said.
"What? No! We're five stories up! I'll die, I'm not like you!"
The girl didn't argue. She pulled back her right fist. Her small frame seemed to expand, her muscles coiling like high-tension wires. She punched.
CRACK.
The glass spiderwebbed, but held. The girl didn't flinch. She punched again, the sound like a gunshot echoing in the narrow passage. The cracks widened, a low groan coming from the frame.
"They're almost here!" Kaelen yelled, his wrench held out in a shaking hand as the first Cannibal reached the halfway point of the bridge.
The girl let out a low, guttural snarl and threw a third punch—not just with her arm, but with her entire weight, her "Uncapped Strength" shattering the structural integrity of the pane. The glass didn't just break; it exploded outward into the night air.
"Jump," she said, grabbing his hand.
"I can't—!"
She didn't wait for his consent. She leaped into the void, her iron grip yanking Kaelen off the ledge.
As they fell, Kaelen's world turned into a chaotic blur of wind and terror. His leg caught on a jagged shard of glass remaining in the frame. He felt the fabric of his heavy work pants tear, followed by the searing, hot bite of the glass slicing into his calf.
"AAAGH!"
The scent hit the air instantly. Above them, the Frenzied creatures at the edge of the broken window went absolutely ballistic. The smell of fresh, leg-vein blood was the final trigger. They didn't even hesitate. Driven by a hunger that overrode the survival instinct, the creatures began to hurl themselves out of the window after them, a rain of grey bodies falling through the dark.
The girl hit the ground first. She landed with a sickening thud—her left ankle twisting at an angle that made Kaelen's stomach turn. She rolled, absorbing the impact, and caught Kaelen mid-air before he could smash into the concrete.
She dropped him unceremoniously, her face contorted in a brief grimace. She looked down at her foot. With a cold, mechanical detachment, she grabbed her own ankle and twisted it back into place. CLICK.
She stood up as if nothing had happened.
Kaelen lay on his back, clutching his bleeding leg. "They're... they're still coming," he gasped, looking up.
Above, the falling Cannibals were hitting the ground. Because they weren't getting fresh blood to sustain their regeneration, their bodies were brittle. Many hit the pavement face-first, their spines snapping like dry twigs, their skulls fracturing upon impact. They lay in broken heaps, limbs twitching uselessly.
"They aren't regenerating," Kaelen muttered, a delirious laugh bubbling in his throat. "They're too hungry. They've used up their reserves... they're just falling to their deaths."
But not all of them were dead.
Four of them had landed on the softer debris of a trash heap or had fallen onto the bodies of their comrades. They were battered, but they were upright. And they were staring at Kaelen's leg.
The girl stepped forward, her breath coming in ragged hitches. The run and the jump had taken a toll. Her "Debt" was high, her energy levels flickering.
The first creature lunged. The girl caught it, but her movements were slower, heavier. She grabbed its head and slammed it into the concrete, but she stumbled as she rose. The second and third closed in.
She snarled, diving low. She grabbed the second one by the waist and swung it like a club into the third, but the impact sent her reeling back. She was fatigued—her movements losing that terrifying, fluid grace.
The third one tried to rise. The girl didn't give it the chance. She lunged forward, thrusting both hands into its open, screaming maw. With a sickening, wet sound of tearing muscle, she split the creature's head apart, the two halves of its jaw hanging by threads of skin. She tore the remains free and hurled the severed head-matter at the fourth creature, striking it square in the face.
As the fourth one recoiled, she slid across the pavement, grabbing its leg. She hauled it down, her boot coming down on its other thigh with a bone-shattering crunch. She began to pull, her eyes fixed on the creature's torso, intending to rend it in two.
But she was too tired.
The first one she had slammed down wasn't dead. It had crawled behind her while she was focused on the kill. It lunged, its teeth inches from the back of her neck.
"Watch out!" Kaelen screamed, trying to crawl toward her, but his injured leg gave out.
The girl turned, but she was too slow. She was caught off guard, her arms tied up with the creature beneath her.
The shadow that fell over them wasn't from the building.
A hand—huge, calloused, and corded with muscle—reached out of the darkness. It gripped the attacking Cannibal by the shoulder.
The new figure was a woman, but "woman" felt like an understatement. She looked to be in her early twenties, but her physique was monstrous—thick, dense layers of muscle that made her look more like a titan than a human. She was built like a heavy-weight bodybuilder, her skin stretched tight over massive deltoids and biceps that looked like they were carved from stone.
She didn't say a word. Her right hand swept back toward her left ear, coiling like a spring, and then swung forward in a devastating, horizontal arc.
THWACK.
The punch didn't just hit the creature. It decapitated it.
The Cannibal's head was launched into the darkness, spinning like a grisly football. The headless body stood for a fraction of a second, blood spraying in a frantic geyser, before collapsing into a heap.
The tall woman stood over the girl and Kaelen, her shadow swallowing them both. She wiped a smudge of black gore from her knuckles and looked down at them with eyes that held no fear—only a cold, predatory hunger of her own.
"You're making a lot of noise," the newcomer said, her voice like grinding stones. "And in this building, noise is an invitation."