UNKNOWN LOCATION, VALE – 29 JULY 2021, MORNING

“What’s wrong with you?” Marc exclaimed as he and Zaur walked into Sandra’s ward and saw her shaking beneath the covers.

Since Jens had left her side, sleep had been impossible. Nausea rolled through her in relentless waves, and each time she opened her eyes she was gripped by the terror that she had already missed her chance to escape. Yet the silence told her something worse: Martin was still alive. She gave the two men a brief, halting account of her worsening condition — fever, weakness, the sickness that refused to relent — but she said nothing of Jens’s revelations or the memories that had flooded back. She kept those truths locked inside.

Naively, she had hoped Martin, as a healthcare specialist, might offer relief or at least practical advice to make the suffering bearable. Instead, his professionalism revealed itself as little more than a tool for moral superiority. He dismissed her symptoms with contempt, labelling them typical post-vaccination reactions that afflicted the undisciplined and the anxious. He showed no concern for her well-being; her pain was merely evidence of her own failings.

Zaur, by contrast, appeared genuinely concerned — though not in any recognisably human way. He placed his hand over hers where it lay on the sheet. Both palms burned with unnatural heat, far beyond what a healthy body could sustain, yet entirely normal for those already claimed by the infection. They were incubators of something previously unknown: Zaur the robust specimen, Sandra the fragile one. Her survival hung in the balance; if she died now, the pathogen’s further development — and perhaps its very persistence — would be jeopardised. Both of them felt the stakes on a visceral, almost telepathic level. The connection between them pulsed like a shared current, invisible to everyone else.

Sandra recognised him, too. He was the same irritating Persian who had tried to flirt with her in the vaccination centre that day. Yet the man now sitting at her bedside was no longer that Zaur. Something essential had changed.

“We need to get her out of here,” Zaur said after she had finished speaking.

“Are you insane?!” Martin exploded. “We cannot release her under any circumstances! She must be isolated. We wait until they return. Haven’t you heard her? She’s infected!”

“Didn’t you just insist those were ordinary vaccine side effects?” Zaur countered calmly, though Sandra caught the faint grind of his teeth. “And if she’s infected, then so are we all. You’ve been breathing the same air. You’re almost certainly sick, too.”

“That’s precisely why we must stay put! It is our civic duty to protect the outside world from this disease. We remain here and await further instructions…”

“I wonder who these they are that you keep mentioning,” Zaur remarked, fixing Martin with a sharp, unblinking stare.

“The people who brought us here, obviously!” the professor snapped.

“Where’s Jens?” Zaur asked suddenly.

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen him,” Sandra answered too quickly. Zaur knew she was lying.

At that moment footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. Someone was approaching. Zaur bolted from the room, Martin close behind. The first thing they saw in the hallway was the dull gleam of an automatic rifle barrel pointed directly at them.

Jens advanced with slow, deliberate steps and halted midway down the passage.

“I found what I was looking for,” he said, sliding the black bag from his shoulder and setting it on the floor. “And I remember why I needed it. How about you, Martin? Do you remember how we got here?”

The professor’s face drained of colour. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged.

“I can see that you do,” Jens continued. “In case you were wondering, it was me who sent those death threats. I warned you — repeatedly — to stop. You didn’t listen. You thought relocation would protect you. You believed you could simply walk away. This was never supposed to happen, but you left me no choice. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

The question was rhetorical; he knew no answer would come.

“I’ve watched so many people die these past months,” Jens went on. “Not from the virus. From the vaccine you forced on them.”

“You are mistaken, young man!” Martin protested, though his voice cracked and wavered. “I don’t know who fed you these lies, but the vaccine is the only cure. Those who died must have had an aggressive pulmonary condition. Nothing could have saved them.”

“How dare you call that a cure!” Jens roared, his voice raw. “It was never meant to save anyone! I was ordered to abduct people from vaccination centres — people you claimed were infected — and transfer them to isolation units. But it wasn’t the virus making them sick. It was your experimental vaccine dissolving their lungs!”

His body shook with rage.

“I watched them suffocate. I watched them cough up blood. I’ll never unsee the bodies I had to bury. Zaur and Sandra are the last two left. I refuse to bury them. Instead, I’ll bury you.” He swung the rifle back toward Martin.

“I alone am not to blame!” Martin shrieked. “Do you think I decide policy? I follow orders! You can’t kill me – they’ll hunt you down and hang you for this!”

“I’ll take my chances,” Jens said coldly. “I was trained to disappear. It’s me against the system – the system that raised me.”

At that moment Sandra emerged from the ward, drawn by the shouting. Martin seized his chance. He grabbed her shoulder and yanked her in front of him as a shield.

“Surely, a soldier wouldn’t shoot at an innocent civilian,” he screamed. “Right, Jens?”

“I might as well shoot her,” Jens replied evenly. “She won’t survive anyway. As long as I get you.”

“I’ll tear you to pieces, Gauls!” Zaur growled. His voice had altered — deeper, vibrating unnaturally at the edges. His pupils swallowed the whites of his eyes, leaving them almost pure black. He advanced on Martin with predatory menace.

“Oh, my God… It worked,” Martin whispered, staring in awe and terror. “You’re the first specimen to survive the pathogen! How long have you been like this? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“So, you admit you experimented on people?” Jens grunted, eyes flicking nervously between the two.

Zaur did not wait for recovery. He lunged, shoving Sandra aside — she fell hard to the floor — and seized Martin’s face, fingers clawing toward his eyes.

“Jens, shoot him!” Martin howled, struggling. “He’s not human any more – we can’t control him!”

“I have enough bullets for all of you,” Jens hissed, swinging the rifle toward Zaur.

Martin, though weaker, fought back desperately. He gripped Zaur’s lapels and used his bulk to throw the younger man off balance. Jens watched the struggle, realised collateral damage no longer mattered. His only priority was Martin. He fired three shots. One struck the professor in the right shoulder. Martin collapsed with a scream, blood blooming across his pyjamas.

Jens lowered the barrel and advanced, eyes burning with quiet hatred.

Zaur had dropped low at the first shot and crawled toward Sandra. She lay motionless on the floor, skin prickling as she registered the frantic rhythm of his heart, the feverish heat rolling off him. She could not open her eyes. Zaur scooped her into his arms and fled down the corridor, away from the wailing virologist and the advancing soldier.

Martin screamed for help as Jens closed in. He rolled onto his stomach and dragged himself along the floor, leaving a smeared red trail. Jens caught up easily, kicked him onto his back, and levelled the rifle at his face.

A deafening siren erupted. All lights extinguished except the pulsing red emergency strips. At the far end of the hallway the double metal doors buckled inward. Three fully equipped special-unit soldiers burst through, rifles raised, beams cutting through the gloom.

“Drop the weapon!” they bellowed.

Martin shrieked that he had been shot. Jens spun, blinded by their torches, and squeezed the trigger blindly. The response was immediate: three precise rounds struck his chest. The blue-eyed soldier dropped to his knees, blood pouring from his mouth, then collapsed forward.

Zaur had already carried Sandra into the cafeteria and hidden her on the lower shelf behind the counter.

“Zaur, get away from here,” she whispered as he crouched beside her on the floor.

“Quiet. You need rest. I promise I’ll get us out.”

“I’m dying, Zaur,” she breathed.

She knew she would not survive. Yet some instinct insisted that Zaur — despite everything — was the priority. He had to escape so the entity inside them could endure.

Zaur understood the same. His desire to remove her was not compassion. Sandra had not died in the first hours after injection; that meant the pathogen could still take root in her. Two hosts were better than one. The impulse felt almost human — the original Zaur’s instinct to protect his own kind — yet the consciousness that drove it remained alien, not yet fully fused.

He considered smashing a window but dismissed it; the noise would draw the soldiers immediately. He needed a weapon. Jens’s bag lay in the hallway, stocked with ammunition. The cafeteria had only one entrance; he could not retrieve it unseen.

Then inspiration struck — an impossibility for a human body, but trivial for one that had transcended such limits.

Defying gravity, Zaur scaled the metal shelving and crawled onto the ceiling. He moved head-down, limbs adhering effortlessly. Spatial inversion felt natural; gravity simply realigned to the surface beneath him.

He crept along the corridor ceiling like a lizard. Outside light spilled through the open doors at the far end. Two soldiers were loading the wounded Martin onto a stretcher bound for a waiting helicopter. One remained behind, checking Jens’s body before moving deeper into the clinic.

As the soldier turned a corner, Zaur dropped silently beside the bag. He unzipped it with care. Inside lay heavy ordnance: a machine gun, three automatics, a scoped rifle, combat knives, five hand grenades. He selected a knife and a single grenade — the lightest combination for the return journey across the ceiling.

The pulsing red emergency light and incessant siren grated on him, yet prolonged exposure dulled the irritation. His senses adapted: vision sharpened in the strobe; sound receded to background.

He slithered after the remaining soldier, calculating the moment to strike.

The man entered the cafeteria, sweeping corners, peering under tables. As he approached the counter, Zaur prepared to drop. At that instant, the knife slipped from his pocket and clattered to the floor.

The soldier spun, firing into the darkness where the sound had come from. The bullet vanished harmlessly into shadow.

Zaur remained motionless on the ceiling. The soldier scanned left and right, then — instinctively — tilted his head upward. Even through the mask and the erratic red flashes, Zaur saw the raw horror bloom in the man’s eyes.

He could not wait for reinforcements. Using the soldier’s paralysis, Zaur dropped. He rolled beneath a table as the red light extinguished. The soldier fired again — missed. In the next black interval Zaur closed the distance from behind, tackled the man to the ground, and knocked the rifle away.

Straddling the soldier, Zaur clamped both hands around his throat. A sadistic pleasure surged through him as unnatural strength flooded his limbs, burning like an inner furnace. The soldier’s blows landed without effect; Zaur felt nothing. When the struggle grew tiresome, he twisted sharply. The neck snapped with a wet crack that cut through the siren.

Zaur rose and turned toward Sandra’s hiding place. He felt no pulse, no breath, no echo of their earlier connection. Alarm spiked. He rushed to the shelves.

The red beam flared. Sandra lay motionless.

He reached for her — no respiration, no heartbeat vibrating in the air. The link had severed.

Without a word he turned and walked out.

Red. Black

He slipped the grenade from his pocket.

Red. Black.

He pulled the pin.

Red. Black.

He listened to distant sounds beyond the building.

Red. Black.

He lobbed the grenade into the cafeteria.

Black.

The explosion roared. Before the blast wave could reach him, Zaur had already returned to the ceiling and scuttled clear.

Outside, the helicopter crew heard the detonation. They tried to raise their comrade on the radio — silence. One soldier remained with Martin on the stretcher while the other sprinted back toward the clinic.

The cafeteria lay at the opposite end of the building, buying Zaur time. He returned to find the explosion had torn a jagged hole through the fibreglass ceiling. The soldier’s body was unrecognisable, shredded amid twisted metal, splintered wood, and pulverised debris. Sandra lay buried somewhere beneath the wreckage.

Cold morning air poured through the breach. Zaur squeezed onto the roof, crawled to the edge on hands and knees, and peered down. The helicopter idled below, rotors turning. They would soon realise one body was unaccounted for. Search teams would follow; his family and contacts would be harassed. Yet no panic stirred in him.

For now, he waited beneath the ventilation pipes, concealed, until the helicopter lifted off with Martin aboard. Only then would he leave — across the endless open field that surrounded the isolator in every direction.