UNKNOWN LOCATION, VALE – 28 JULY 2021: SUBJECT ZAUR

The passage had haunted Sandra’s mind ever since she translated it.

It came from a short text her new boss had asked her to render from Anglo-Saxon into Pan-Slavic. As a professional translator she was trained to remain detached, to treat every assignment as neutral material — politics, military briefings, technical reports. Indifference was part of the job. Yet this piece refused to fade. She remembered it word for word, as though the sentences had etched themselves into her memory.

Starting from our childhood, we are fed ideas and images of how zombies look like and how they behave. But the truth is, most people wouldn’t recognise one even if it stood right in front of them. Zombie means just as much as slave. And each slave has a master. Those are the same masters that own the banks and the media. Someone who possesses all the money in the world and decides what news is broadcasted to the masses, also controls the minds. And mind-control leads us back to slavery. It’s hard to admit that you were a slave, but once you’re awakened, you won’t let yourself be fooled again. There are two types of zombies: slaves that blindly follow the narrative and slaves that help to spread the narrative. If the former can only be accused of ignorance, the agitators are guilty of treason and bribery. For the latter, it is always about financial gain.

The text was not about pop-culture undead. It was allegory, sharp and accusatory, aimed at something far more insidious. It did not fit the usual run of documents she handled, and that mismatch only deepened the enigma surrounding her employer. She had not worked for him long enough to ask personal questions, but the words lingered, stirring curiosity she could not quite suppress.

Now she understood why the passage had resurfaced.

Zaur reminded her of a zombie.

The longer she observed him, the more convinced she became that his symptoms diverged from hers, even though they had all received the same injection. She sensed it with an intuition she had never possessed before — an almost tactile awareness, as though something alien inside her recognised its counterpart in him.

His interaction with Martin was a masterclass in manipulation. The professor imagined he held the reins, yet Zaur was the one steering the ride. At first glance Zaur appeared cowed, deferential. But the longer they argued, the more fluid and precise his speech became. He agreed, then contradicted; soothed, then provoked; affirmed, then undermined. Not from genuine engagement, but because he relished Martin’s unravelling.

Once again, Sandra seemed the only one to notice. She lacked the strength to intervene, so she stayed seated, knees drawn to her chest behind a cafeteria table, watching events unfold. In stillness like this, details emerged that usually went unseen.

Zaur displayed no agitation, no fear, no concern. He belonged here — exactly here, with exactly these people — as though he followed a private script. He had his own agenda, and he executed it with calm precision.

Still, he could not outmatch Martin or Jens in sheer demagoguery. The professor and the soldier simply ignored him, excluding him from their escalating debate over what to do next. Zaur accepted the dismissal without protest. Instead, he turned his attention to the anomaly in the room: Sandra.

He noticed her watching from her sheltered vantage point — quiet, detached, immune to the hysteria that gripped the others. He recognised that she formed her own judgements. Without a word to the bickering pair, he crossed the room, arms folded across his chest and sat opposite her. A self-satisfied smile curved his lips.

The pose, the smile — they triggered an odd déjà vu. Something familiar, something she had seen before. But Zaur gave her no time to chase the memory.

“Your name’s Sandra, right? I haven’t properly introduced myself. I’m Zaur. I’m a representative.” His gaze locked onto hers, intense and unblinking. She felt an invisible thread tighten between them, a connection that was not entirely welcome.

“We’re fortunate to have professionals like Martin and Jens,” he continued smoothly, “but they tend to become radical — too much background, too much responsibility weighing on them…”

His words flowed with practised ease, yet they rang hollow, the product of professional deformation rather than sincerity.

“Are you sure they’re experts?” Sandra replied. “Are you even sure those are their real names? No one appointed them to take responsibility for us. As far as I’m concerned, it’s every man for himself.”

Zaur leaned across the table, voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “So, you think they’re not who they claim? That they’re hiding something?”

“I don’t know, Zaur. You tell me. I don’t trust them. I don’t trust you either. Who are you? Is Zaur your real name? What exactly do you represent?”

His eyes darkened. Sandra glimpsed a depth there — black, abyssal, hungry. Dangerous. Not Jens’s predictable, human danger, born of fear and fragility. Zaur’s was different. He was no longer entirely human. Something fundamental had changed after the vaccine. She felt it now, that same alien pulse stirring weakly inside her own body in response to his nearness. Zaur had mastered the mimicry, but the mask slipped in a single unguarded instant: silent rage flashed across his features when he realised that she wasn’t buying his performance.

His eyes appeared to redden. Then she saw it — the vessels on the surface of his sclera writhed, dark and worm-like, coiling beneath the tissue.

Primal terror locked her muscles. She could not move, could not breathe. The paralysis probably saved her life; any sudden reaction might have provoked something irreversible. Zaur sensed the shift but did not grasp that she had witnessed the mutation.

“Perhaps I was mistaken,” he said scornfully, leaning back. “Perhaps you’re not as special as I thought. On closer inspection, Sandra, you’re really quite ordinary.”

“Not as ordinary as a Persian immigrant kissing Gaul arses,” she retorted.

Zaur grinned, looked away, rubbed his lower lip as though searching for a cutting reply. Finding none — or choosing not to escalate — he rose abruptly and left the cafeteria without another word.

Sandra wanted nothing more than to crawl back under the sheets, but fear kept her rooted. If Zaur followed her to her ward… She did not want to imagine what might happen once she slept. So, she stayed in the lunchroom, condemned to endure Martin’s foaming monologue on the miraculous virtues of the ByWell vaccine.

It must have been near midnight when the two men finally exhausted their argument and retreated to their room, stomachs rumbling. Sandra had fallen asleep at the table; head pillowed on her folded arms. Jens woke her gently, shaking her shoulder before he left. She trailed after them long enough to confirm Zaur was not in either of their wards. Then she returned to her own room, checked every cupboard and the bathroom, and locked the door behind her.

Even so, safety felt illusory.

That night the nightmare returned, persistent and unchanging. A man stood beyond her window, nothing more than a misty silhouette at first. The longer she stared, the sharper his outline grew against the glass. Eventually he pressed both palms flat to the pane. Each time the contact startled her awake — heart hammering, sheets damp with sweat — only for the cycle to repeat. By dawn exhaustion finally claimed her, and she slipped into deeper, dreamless unconsciousness.