The Fracture's violet light faded, leaving the survivors knee-deep in snow. The air bit through Kael's jacket, sharp as a blade. Rook cursed, kicking at the ice-crusted ground. "We're dead here. We turn back—now ."
"We can't," Elias said, pointing to the sky. The vortex that had pulled them here had vanished. "No way out but forward."
Kael's skull throbbed where the drone's voice had echoed. Subject Zero. The phrase clung to him like a curse. He clutched his journal, flipping to the map of the university tower. The symbols the Visitors had etched were identical to those scrawled in his own handwriting—drawn from dreams he couldn't explain.
"We need shelter," Mara said, her voice trembling. She held her arm where the infected child had clawed her. The wound glowed faintly, the skin around it blackening.
"She's already changing," the voices whispered.
Kael shoved the thought away. Not yet.
The tower loomed ahead, its frozen facade glittering under a blood-red moon. The group trudged toward it, weapons raised. Snow crunched underfoot, but beneath the silence was a sound Kael couldn't place—humming .
"Listen," he hissed.
The others froze. From the shadows of a collapsed lecture hall, the noise grew louder: a rhythmic, wet squelch, like roots burrowing through soil.
Then they saw them.
The Rot had adapted.
Here, they were encased in ice, their fungal growths crystalline and jagged. Their eyes glowed blue, and when they moved, their limbs snapped like brittle branches before knitting themselves back together. A pack of them circled a frozen vehicle, peeling it apart like a carcass.
"They're… farming," Elias muttered.
"They're building ," Rook corrected. "A hive."
One of the creatures turned. Its head twisted 180 degrees, locking onto the group. With a shriek, it lunged.
Chaos erupted.
Kael fired his rifle, shattering the creature's skull into shards of ice and spores. The spores hung in the air, glittering like diamonds, until Mara yanked him down. "They're alive !" she shouted. "They'll infect us!"
The survivors scattered. Elias took a hit to the leg, his prosthetic sparking as he fell. A Rot child pounced, but Rook drove her bayonet through its chest, the blade steaming in the cold.
"Move! " she barked.
They sprinted toward the tower, the Rot swarm closing in. Kael glanced back—Mara was lagging, her steps uneven.
"Keep going!" she gasped.
"She's slowing you down," the voices snarled. "Abandon her."
"No," he growled, grabbing her arm. "I'm not losing you."
The tower's entrance was a shattered archway, its doors frozen shut. Rook blasted them open with a grenade. One by one, the survivors dove inside, slamming the doors shut behind them.
Inside, the cold was less biting. The walls pulsed with faint bioluminescence, the same toxic green as the Rot's spores.
"It's infected the building," Elias said, breathless. "This place is alive."
Kael pressed his ear to the door. The Rot outside had stopped. Not attacking. Just… waiting.
"They're not following us," he said. "Why?"
"They're guarding something," Rook muttered.
Mara collapsed against a wall, clutching her arm. The black veins had spread to her elbow.
"Kael," she whispered. "It's too fast."
He dropped to his knees beside her, fumbling for the syringes in his pack—the ones Elias had given him for his schizophrenia. But they were gone, stolen by the Fracture's chaos.
"You know what you have to do," the voices hissed.
"No," he said aloud.
"What?" Mara asked.
"Nothing. Just… stay awake."
"I don't think I can."
Her eyes fluttered. Kael gripped her shoulders. "Look at me. Look at me. You're not dying here. Not today."
But the truth clawed at him. The Rot wasn't just a disease—it was a hive mind. And Mara was already part of it.
Flashback:
A woman in a lab coat—Lira—standing over a console. "The AI will merge with you, Kael. It'll rewrite your mind. But you'll be whole."
"What if I lose myself?"
"You'll gain everything."
Kael staggered back. Lira. His sister. The scientist who'd started it all.
"You're lying," he whispered to the voices.
"Who?" Mara mumbled.
"No one. Just… hold on."
Rook appeared beside him, her pistol drawn. "We've got two choices. Kill her now, or wait until she kills us."
"Don't," Kael snapped.
"She's one of them already. You know it."
He did. The black veins, the speed of infection—it wasn't natural. The hive was accelerating her transformation.
"She's a bridge," the voices said. "A link to the AI. Use her."
"What?" Kael asked aloud.
Rook narrowed her eyes. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "But maybe… maybe she's not just a victim."
Mara's eyes snapped open. Her pupils were glowing faintly, the same eerie blue as the hive.
"They're in my head," she whispered. "They're singing ."
Then she screamed—a sound that wasn't human. The walls trembled.
Outside, the Rot began to pound on the doors.