POV: Chloe and Jake
Safety was a lie. It was a thin blanket thrown over a cage.
Their "rescue" had been a transaction. They had traded the known horrors of the infected for the sterile terror of the Forward Operating Base. The FOB was a hastily fortified section of the town square—chain-link fence topped with razor wire, sandbagged positions, and Humvees parked at angles. It smelled of diesel fuel, sweat, and a faint, clinging odour of antiseptic that couldn't mask the deeper stench of fear.
Their cell was a converted storage room in the town hall, stripped bare except for two cots and a bucket. The door was steel, with a reinforced window slit at eye level. They were not guests; they were assets.
The interrogations began within hours.
Sergeant Eva Reyes was their primary inquisitor. The woman who had saved them from the mist looked different under the humming fluorescent lights of the interrogation room. The resolve in her eyes had hardened into an obsession. The blood spatter on her armor was dried to a dull brown.
"Let's go over it again," she said, her voice flat, devoid of the urgency she'd had in the field. She placed a digital recorder on the steel table between them. "From the beginning. The tree."
"It was just a tree," Chloe said, her voice raspy. She'd said it a dozen times. "A weird tree in a clearing. Leo carved the bat from it. Then the tree... turned to dust."
Reyes's jaw tightened. "A tree that turns to dust does not create a weapon that can do that." She slid a tablet across the table. On the screen was a high-resolution, silent video from a drone. It showed a bird's-eye view of a street. A figure—Leo—confronted a shambling infected. The bat swung. The body didn't just fall; it seemed to deflate, a shimmer of light vanishing into the wood. "Ballistics can't explain it. Biology can't explain it. It operates on a principle we don't understand. I need to understand it."
"We don't know anything!" Jake burst out, slamming his hand on the table. "We were just camping! Our friend is dead, another one is a... a monster out there, and you're treating us like criminals!"
Reyes's eyes locked onto him. They were the colour of flint. "Your friend, the 'monster,' is the only reason this town isn't a graveyard already. He is the single most important piece of this puzzle. And you two are the only link I have to him." She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Now, what is the bat made of?"
The sessions blurred together. Sometimes it was Reyes. Sometimes it was a stone-faced specialist who asked the same questions in different orders, looking for inconsistencies. They were given meager rations of food and water, their sleep interrupted for more questioning. The illusion of salvation had curdled into the reality of captivity.
The breaking point came on the third day.
Reyes was particularly intense. She had new drone footage. This one was of the Fall Creek Courthouse, a grand, columned building that now looked like a fortress. The windows were barricaded with planks and furniture. Shadows moved in the alleys around it—shambling, mindless infected, acting as a perimeter guard.
Then, the camera zoomed in on the main steps.
Troy emerged.
He moved with a predator's grace, no trace of the injury Leo had given him. His skin was pale, almost gray, but his eyes burned with that sickly yellow light even through the digital feed. He was dragging something. A man, uninfected, his clothes torn, screaming soundlessly into the drone's microphone. Troy hauled him up the steps as if he weighed nothing, kicked the doors open, and disappeared inside with his prize.
"What is he doing in there?" Chloe whispered, horrified.
"That's what I need to find out," Reyes said, her voice cold. "Is he converting them? Is he... storing them? Your friend with the bat seems to be the only one who can permanently stop him. I need to know how the bat works. I need to know its limitations. Is it only him? Could anyone use it?"
Jake had reached his limit. The constant fear, the helplessness, the image of Troy dragging that man to God-knows-what fate—it snapped something inside him.
"I have to take a piss," he muttered, standing up abruptly.
"The guard outside will escort you," Reyes said, not looking away from the tablet.
Jake walked to the door. The soldier outside, a hulking man named Private Dalton, nodded and fell in step behind him. The bathroom was down the hall.
This was his chance. A foolish, desperate chance. As Dalton stood outside the bathroom door, Jake looked down the hallway. A fire exit. Just twenty feet away. An alarm would sound, but he could be out, into the streets, into the chaos. Anything was better than this slow death in a cage.
He took a deep breath and ran.
He didn't get five steps. Dalton was on him in an instant, tackling him to the linoleum floor with a grunt. The air rushed out of Jake's lungs.
"Trying to be a hero, kid?" Dalton growled, flipping Jake onto his back and pinning him with a knee to his chest.
"Get off me!" Jake gasped, struggling weakly.
The door to the interrogation room flew open. Reyes and Chloe stood there.
"Stand down, Private!" Reyes barked.
But Dalton wasn't listening. His face was a mask of raw, unfiltered grief. "My brother was in your squad, Sarge," he said, his voice trembling with rage. "Kyle. They tore him apart. And these two... they know the guy who could have stopped it. They're protecting him."
"Dalton, that's an order!" Reyes took a step forward.
It was too late. Dalton's grief needed a target. Jake's face was right there.
The first punch was a short, brutal jab to the jaw. Jake's head snapped back, a spray of blood and saliva misting the air. Chloe screamed.
"Tell us what you know!" Dalton roared, hitting him again. A sickening crunch. Nose breaking.
"STOP IT!" Chloe screamed, rushing forward. Reyes grabbed her, holding her back with a firm, unyielding grip. Chloe watched, helpless, as the soldier methodically beat her friend.
It wasn't an interrogation. It was an exorcism. Each punch, each grunt of effort from Dalton, was a vent for the terror and loss that had been festering inside the FOB. Jake stopped trying to fight back. He curled into a ball, his whimpers growing fainter with each impact.
Reyes finally pulled Dalton off, shoving him against the wall. "Get a hold of yourself, soldier! Now!"
Dalton slumped, his rage spent, replaced by a hollow shame. He looked at Jake's broken form on the floor, then turned and walked away without a word.
The silence that followed was broken only by Jake's wet, ragged breathing. His face was a swollen, bloody mess. One eye was already sealed shut.
Chloe pulled away from Reyes and dropped to her knees beside Jake, her hands fluttering over him, unsure where to touch. She looked up at Reyes, tears of fury and despair streaming down her face.
The last vestige of hope died in that moment. The soldiers weren't saviours. They were just men, broken and dangerous. Troy was a monster in a courthouse. Leo was a ghost with a bat. And she and Jake were utterly, completely alone. There was no safe place left in the world.
Reyes looked down at them, her expression unreadable. There was no apology in her eyes. Only a cold, calculating resolve.
"Get him cleaned up," she said to a soldier who had appeared at the end of the hall. Then she turned and walked away, the echo of her boots on the linoleum the only sound in the crushing silence. The cage door had just been shown to be made of the same bars as the world outside.