Day 8.
Sarah Kim had been invisible for six hours straight.
Her power wasn't like the movies—no shimmer, no distortion, no telltale signs. When she activated it, light simply bent around her, treating her body as if it didn't exist. Even her footprints in the snow vanished the moment she lifted her foot.
Complete and perfect invisibility.
The mountain path had been brutal. Forty miles of ruined highway, collapsed bridges, and abandoned vehicles. She'd passed zombies by the hundreds—mindless wanderers that had drifted east from Seattle, drawn by some instinct she didn't understand.
They couldn't see her. Couldn't smell her. Couldn't sense her at all.
But she could see them, and what she saw made her stomach turn.
These zombies were different. Their skin was darker, almost purple in places. Some had bony protrusions growing from their shoulders and elbows. One had an extra arm—stunted and malformed, but definitely growing.
Mutations, she thought. Wei warned us about Day 10. But this is Day 8.
The timeline was accelerating again.
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She reached the coordinates at noon.
Facility Seven-Alpha wasn't hidden. It didn't need to be.
The complex sprawled across a mountain plateau—a collection of concrete bunkers, antenna arrays, and helipads connected by cleared roads. Chain-link fences topped with razor wire surrounded the perimeter. Guard towers rose at regular intervals, each manned by soldiers in winter gear, rifles ready.
Military, Sarah realized. Actual military. Not survivors playing soldier.
She counted at least fifty personnel visible from her position. Humvees patrolled the access roads. A helicopter sat on the nearest pad, rotors still.
But it was what lay behind the surface structures that caught her attention.
A massive door—easily a hundred feet wide—was built into the mountainside itself. Blast doors, the kind designed to survive nuclear strikes. They were open, just a crack, and she could see movement inside.
Trucks moving in and out. Forklifts carrying crates. People in white coats hurrying between vehicles.
They've been here for years, she thought. This isn't a temporary refuge. This is a base.
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Sarah circled the perimeter, staying a hundred meters from the fence.
Her power had limits. She could maintain invisibility indefinitely, but any physical interaction—touching someone, knocking something over—would break it momentarily. And sound still traveled. If she stepped on a branch, they would hear it.
So she moved slowly. Carefully. Mapping every guard rotation, every camera angle, every patrol route.
What she found didn't make sense.
The guards weren't watching the perimeter for zombies. Their rifles pointed outward, yes, but their attention was focused on something else. Something inside.
She followed their gazes toward the mountain door.
And then she saw them.
Figures in containment suits, escorting something from the mountain's interior. Something big. A cage on wheels, covered in thick black cloth, pulled by a small tractor.
The guards raised their weapons, tracking the cage as it moved.
Whatever was inside, they were afraid of it.
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Sarah found a gap in the fence—a drainage culvert that ran beneath the perimeter. The grate had been removed, probably for maintenance, and never replaced.
Sloppy, she thought. Or deliberate.
She squeezed through, emerging inside the compound.
The bunkers were newer than she'd expected. Some had satellite dishes on their roofs—commercial grade, the kind used for data transmission. Others had generators running, humming with power.
She passed close to a group of scientists.
"—readings are off the charts again. Ever since Day 5—"
"I know. Seattle. The Hive King's death."
"Not just death. Absorption. The necromancer didn't just kill it. He took something from it."
"Director Chen wants samples by end of week. If we can replicate—"
Their voices faded as she moved past.
Director Chen. That name rang a bell. Wasn't that the name Wei mentioned? His old boss?
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She followed the covered cage toward the mountain door.
The entrance was even more impressive up close. The blast doors were three feet thick, layered steel and concrete. They could probably survive a direct hit from anything short of a bunker-buster.
Beyond them, the mountain had been hollowed out.
Sarah stepped inside and stopped.
The cavern was massive. A hundred feet high, at least, carved from raw stone and reinforced with steel beams. Banks of computers lined the walls. Medical stations dotted the floor. And in the center...
In the center was a pit.
Circular, fifty feet across, ringed with observation platforms and restraining equipment.
And in the pit was something that shouldn't exist.
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It was a body. Or what had once been a body.
The creature was at least twenty feet tall, even in its compressed, curled position at the pit's bottom. Its skin was translucent, like wax over candle flame, and beneath that skin she could see something moving. Organs that pulsed with their own light. Bones that shifted and reformed.
Tubes ran from its flesh into the walls—dozens of them, pumping fluids in and out. Machines beeped and hummed, monitoring vital signs that shouldn't be possible.
It was alive.
Or maybe alive was the wrong word. It was functioning. Existing. Waiting.
And as Sarah watched—frozen, every muscle locked despite her invisibility—its eyes opened.
Not human eyes. Not zombie eyes. Something older. Deeper. Eyes that held the weight of millennia.
They looked directly at her.
I see you, a voice whispered in her mind. Not sound—thought. Pure, invasive, ancient thought. Did he send you? The one who carries my gift?
Sarah's invisibility shattered.
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Alarms blared.
Guards shouted. Boots thundered across concrete. Flashlight beams swept the cavern.
Sarah ran.
She didn't think—couldn't think. The voice in her head was still there, still speaking, still touching parts of her mind that should have been private.
You cannot hide from me, child. I gave him his power. I gave him his second chance. And soon, I will collect what is owed.
She hit a side corridor, forcing her power back. Invisibility flickered, stabilized, held.
The guards charged past her, weapons raised, looking for an intruder who wasn't there anymore.
Tell him, the voice continued, somehow louder even as she fled. Tell the Zombie King that I am patient. I have waited ten thousand years. I can wait a few weeks more.
But when I wake fully... when this body is complete...
He will return what is mine.
Or I will take it from his corpse.
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Sarah didn't stop running until she was three miles from the facility.
Her lungs burned. Her legs screamed. She'd been invisible for so long that her power felt drained, a hollow ache behind her eyes.
But she was alive. She'd made it out.
And she knew what she had to tell Wei.
The voice. The creature. The thing in the pit.
It wasn't a zombie. Wasn't a Tier 5. Wasn't anything the apocalypse had created.
It was something that had caused the apocalypse.
Something that had given Wei his powers.
Something that expected to collect on a debt he didn't know he owed.
Sarah pulled out the radio Wei had given her.
"This is Sarah," she gasped. "I'm clear. Heading back."
Static. Then Rachel's voice: "Copy. Any injuries?"
"No. But I found something." She looked back toward the mountains, toward the facility that housed an ancient god. "I found something bad. Really, really bad."
"How bad?"
Sarah thought about the thing in the pit. The voice in her head. The weight of ten thousand years in those inhuman eyes.
"Tell Wei to prepare," she said. "Tell him whatever sent him back... it's waiting for him. And it's not going to wait much longer."