Hearing strange noises behind the door, Adam held his breath. He rose unsteadily, gripping his improvised weapon. For a long moment, he stood motionless, eyes fixed on the door.
It creaked.
Something was slowly pushing it open from the inside. A thin gap, then wider. Darkness spilled from the back room into the main area, like a shadow bleeding across the floor.
A figure emerged into the light.
A man staggered out of the back room, his silhouette wavering with each step. His emaciated body was tinged with a bluish hue, as if his circulation had failed long ago. Sweat streamed down his forehead and cheeks. His arms trembled uncontrollably, and his bloodshot eyes darted frantically around the room. Each movement tore at his stretched clothing, exposing patches of torn skin hanging in ragged strips.
"Help me..." he rasped. "I don't... want to die..."
Adam didn't answer. He stood stiffly, weapon in hand, as though his body were suspended between movement and paralysis.
"M-my... wife... daughter..." he whispered hoarsely, each word sounding like it scraped through a throat filled with broken glass. "Th-they're waiting for me... I have to... go back to them... I can't stay here... I can't..."
The man stepped forward, his knees quivering as if they might buckle beneath him. He shuffled his feet, uncertainly, as if he had forgotten how to walk. His fingers twitched erratically, clenching into fists only to go limp again, as though the nerves inside him were waging a war independent of his will.
He looked Adam straight in the eyes. His lips trembled, as if they might crumble to ash. "I don't... want to die," he croaked. "Please... I'm begging you..."
He took another step, unsteady, as if fighting against his own body. "They... my family..." he rasped, but he was no longer looking at Adam. His gaze was fixed somewhere else, as if speaking to someone only he could see. "I left the pot on the stove... Anna told me not to forget... I always forget... she'll scold me again..."
Adam took a hesitant step to the side. "Hey... easy. What's your name?" he asked quietly, but the man didn't react. "You have a family? Kids?" he offered gently, trying to make any kind of connection, but his voice only echoed off the walls.
"I have to fix the balcony door... Suzy scared someone will break in again... I just went out for medicine... just for a moment..."
A tightness gripped Adam's throat. The man wasn't talking to him. He was speaking to a memory.
For a moment, he looked as if he might cry. Adam stepped toward him, carefully, like approaching a wounded animal. He took a slow breath and raised a hand as if to calm him, to touch his shoulder, to offer some sign of human contact.
"It's okay... you're here, you're still yourself... I'll help you, if I can..."
But before he could get closer, the man's body convulsed.
His eyes widened unnaturally. A brownish foam spilled from his mouth.
A choking howl tore from his throat, shifting into a sudden, guttural scream. It sounded like meat being ripped apart, laced with pain and madness—somewhere between agony and hatred. The echo of that sound ricocheted through the pharmacy, filling it with raw, primal terror.
The man lunged at Adam.
Adam jumped to the side, nearly tripping over his own feet. The man thrashed forward, hurling himself like a predator driven by instinct, not consciousness.
"Stop! We don't have to—!" Adam shouted, backing toward the wall, desperately searching for something to defend himself.
"Please...!" His voice broke, but despite his fear, Adam kept talking.
"Do you hear me? You're still in there, right? You're not one of them... We don't have to fight!"
The man lunged again, but Adam dodged at the last second, crashing into a shelf of medicine.
"Stop! You have a family, remember? Zuzka, Ania... you talked about them!"
The man hesitated for a fraction of a second, but his body kept moving forward. There was no awareness left in his eyes.
Adam continued to back away, each step unsteady and off-balance. Suddenly, his back struck the cold wall.
"Please don't make me do this..." he whispered, raising his improvised weapon. For a brief moment, he hesitated, staring into the man's face. He pulled back to swing, but then—unexpectedly—the man grabbed the pole with surprising force.
Adam felt the weapon torn from his hands and hurled aside. He stood frozen for a split second, eyes wide and mouth agape, as if trying to understand what had just happened. His heart skipped a beat, and the skin on his neck tightened like a drawn string. He stepped back, then again, until he felt the icy touch of the wall behind him.
The man advanced without hesitation. His feet scraped the floor, but his body moved with a strange, unsettling certainty. Head tilted slightly, arms limp, mouth open as if to whisper something he would never say. There was no life in his eyes—only a glassy reflection of light, registering nothing. It was as if the person had vanished, leaving behind an empty shell—soulless, purposeless, driven by something inhuman.
Adam drew short, ragged breaths, as though the air had become too thick to swallow. Panic overtook his body: hands trembling uncontrollably, legs weakening, heart racing so fast it blurred into his thoughts. A lump of terror rose in his throat, choking and brutal.
The approaching shadow of the man drowned out everything else. Adam felt like a child trapped in a corner—helpless, crushed into a world where no rescue would come.
"Please..." he whispered, almost begging. "Don't do this..."
As the man lunged at him one final time, Adam screamed—in despair, in terror—as if that one word could push death away.
"Don't come any closer!" Adam shouted, swinging his arm in front of him. His shoulder traced a wide, chaotic arc, as if trying to shatter the air itself or physically push away the inevitable. It was a movement born of panic—not strength, but desperation and sheer fear.
At that moment, the air around him exploded, hurling the man backward as if an invisible force had rejected everything threatening his life.
The man was flung like a rag doll, crashing into a shelf and collapsing to the floor with a heavy thud.
Adam froze. His mind went blank. He didn't understand what had just happened. His arm was still raised, as if it hadn't yet realized what it had done.
But then he heard a soft, wet rustle.
The man... was trying to get up.
Something snapped inside Adam. Instinct took over. He lunged forward, grabbed his weapon from the floor, and surged ahead. His entire body tensed like a drawn bowstring.
He leapt and brought the weapon down with all his strength.
The pole struck the skull with a dull crack, like wet wood splitting.
The man's head slammed against the floor, but Adam didn't stop.
He struck again, his scream blending with the sound of breaking bone. The weapon slipped in his hands, slick with blood and sweat, but he didn't stop. Another blow. And another. Each time he brought the pole down, a wild, terrified roar burst from his throat—incoherent, full of anguish.
Adam's scream was like the howl of a wounded animal—pouring from his chest in uncontrolled waves with every strike. When a system window flashed before his eyes, he didn't even register it. The body before him had stopped moving, but he kept swinging, as if trying to shatter something invisible—his fear, his grief, his thoughts. His hands slipped again and again, but clenched tighter each time.
As if he could kill what had just happened.
After several more desperate blows, his body finally gave out. The weapon slipped from his fingers, and Adam collapsed onto the floor, landing on his back against the cold tiles. He gasped for breath, violently, as if his lungs were battling for each scrap of air.
Tears ran down his cheeks. He didn't know when he started crying, and even less when he started laughing. A soft, hysterical laugh mixed with sobs as his body shook under the weight of overwhelming emotion. He pressed a hand to his mouth, trying to stop it, but he couldn't.
He lay there—broken, torn by inner chaos where fear, relief, guilt, and revulsion bled together, indistinguishable. Only now was he beginning to grasp what had happened.
"I killed him..." he whispered to himself, as if he didn't believe his own words. "He could've... maybe he could've come back... Maybe... there was something I could've done..."
He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, trying to erase the image. "I had no choice... that wasn't him anymore... that wasn't a human."
He tried to steady his breathing, but the voice in his head wouldn't quiet. "But he begged... he talked about his daughter... I..."
His breathing slowed, though his heartbeat still stuttered. He knew that if he hadn't killed, he would already be dead. There was no room for doubt in that.
He struggled to his feet, his legs like jelly. He looked at the body. And then the nausea hit him.
What was left of the man's head resembled a smashed pumpkin. Blood, bone, tissue—all a chaotic mess that had once been a face. Adam turned his gaze and held his breath to keep from vomiting.
Then something caught his eye.
In the clenched fist of the dead man, something glimmered.
Adam crouched carefully and gently pried the fingers open. A small, cold pendant rested in his palm. The metal reflected the dim light, and the thin chain was twisted, as if gripped tightly for a long time. With light pressure, the lid popped open with a faint click, revealing its contents.
Inside was a photo. A smiling man with a woman and a young girl.
Adam inhaled deeply, as if trying to force something heavy back down his chest. He closed his eyes, held his breath for a moment, then exhaled slowly through his nose, trying to regain control.
He looked at the body one last time. He stood still, eyes fixed on the formless mass that had once been a man. He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly, as if to calm the storm raging inside. His hand trembled as he reached into his pocket and slipped the locket inside. He looked one last time—not at the corpse, but at the tragedy he could no longer undo.
He turned and walked toward the exit. Each step was slow, deliberate, as if something inside him had changed. Something irreversible. As though he'd passed a point of no return