Day 11. Dawn.
The inner circle didn't take my decision well.
"You want to walk into a government black site that's been monitoring us since Day 1?" Drake's fire flickered around his fists—a nervous tell he hadn't learned to control. "The same facility that's keeping an ancient monster in their basement?"
"Yes."
"With how many zombies?"
"A thousand. Maybe two."
"That's insane."
"Probably."
Drake stared at me. Then he laughed—a harsh, disbelieving sound that echoed through the War Room.
"Fine. I'm coming with you."
------------------------------
The argument lasted two hours.
In the end, the expedition team was small. Me. Drake. Sarah. Vanguard.
Min-Tong wanted to come. I said no.
"If something happens to me," I told her quietly, pulling her aside while the others prepared, "you're the only one who can stop what I might become. You need to stay here. Stay safe."
"And if something happens to you there?"
"Then you'll know I'm beyond saving anyway."
She gripped my hand so hard it hurt. Even her healing glow couldn't mask the fear in her eyes.
"Come back to me."
"I will."
I wasn't sure if it was a promise or a lie.
------------------------------
Max would hold the compound. Rachel would command the defenses. Harold would keep the infrastructure running. Dr. Vasquez would treat any wounded.
Maya would watch the futures.
"I can't see past the facility," she admitted before we left. Her silver eyes were troubled—more troubled than I'd ever seen them. "The entity's presence creates... static. Interference. I can see you entering. I can't see you leaving."
"Is that because I don't leave?"
"I don't know." Her small hand found mine. "Be careful, Wei. Whatever's in that mountain... it's older than anything I've ever sensed. Older than the Hive King. Older than the virus itself."
"I know."
"Do you?" She looked up at me with those impossible eyes. "Do you really understand what you're walking toward?"
I thought about my ten thousand years. The endless loops of apocalypse and death. The moment when something had reached across the void and pulled me back to the beginning.
"Better than anyone."
------------------------------
We left at noon.
A thousand zombies formed our escort—not the full army, but enough to handle anything we might encounter. Ursa led the vanguard, his massive form clearing a path through the abandoned streets. Vanguard walked at my side, silent and watchful.
Ghost rode on my shoulder, her consciousness brushing against mine with each step.
Something wrong, she sent. Air tastes different. Smells like... endings.
"I know."
The further east we traveled, the worse it got.
------------------------------
The Olympic Mountains rose ahead of us like broken teeth against the sky.
In my previous timeline, these mountains had been beautiful—snow-capped peaks and evergreen forests, hiking trails and scenic overlooks. Tourists came from around the world to see them.
Now they were wrong.
The trees closest to the peaks had turned black. Not dead—changed. Their bark glistened like oil and moved like flesh. Their branches reached toward the sky in shapes that no natural growth could produce, twisted geometries that hurt to look at directly.
"What the hell is that?" Drake muttered.
"The entity's influence." I kept my voice steady, but my heart was hammering. "It's been here for thousands of years. Maybe tens of thousands. The land remembers."
"The land remembers?"
"Look at the ground."
He did.
The soil beneath our feet was darker than it should be. Not from ash or rot—from something deeper. Something that had seeped into the earth itself, changing it on a fundamental level.
"This is its territory," I said. "We're walking into something older than human civilization."
Drake's fire flared brighter.
"Great. That's just great."
------------------------------
We made camp at the base of the mountains as the sun began to set.
Sarah had been scouting ahead, her invisibility letting her move undetected through the twisted landscape. She reappeared beside me as the others set up a perimeter.
"There's a road," she said quietly. "Old. Military grade. Leads up the mountain toward a concrete structure about three miles in. I think that's the facility."
"Guards?"
"Couldn't tell. The closer I got, the more my power flickered. Something up there interferes with abilities." She hesitated. "I saw shapes in the trees. Watching. Not moving. Just... watching."
"Zombies?"
"I don't think so. They didn't feel dead. They didn't feel alive either."
I looked up at the darkening peaks.
"What did they feel like?"
Sarah was quiet for a long moment.
"Waiting."
------------------------------
The night was cold.
Not natural cold—something deeper. A chill that seeped through clothes and skin and muscle, settling into bones. My zombies didn't feel it, but I saw Drake's fire burning higher, fighting against the impossible temperature.
I should have felt it too.
I didn't.
Stronger, Ghost sent, pressing against my neck. But also... colder. Like them.
"Like who?"
The dead things. The ones that serve the old power.
I looked down at my hands. Pale. Bloodless. The wound from Ursa's claws had healed without scarring—healed faster than any human should.
"Am I still human, Ghost?"
She was quiet for a long time.
Don't know. But still Wei. Still Alpha. That matters more.
I hoped she was right.
------------------------------
Vanguard woke me three hours before dawn.
"Master. Something approaches."
I was on my feet instantly, power flooding through my senses. The network of zombie minds lit up around me—a thousand points of awareness, all focused on a single point approaching from the north.
Not zombies. Not mutants.
Something else.
"Hold positions," I commanded. "Don't attack unless I give the order."
The figure emerged from the tree line.
It was human. Or had been, once.
Tall. Gaunt. Dressed in the tattered remains of a military uniform. Its skin had the same oily sheen as the corrupted trees, and its eyes—
Its eyes were holes. Perfect circles of absolute darkness where pupils should have been.
"The Master welcomes you," it said. The voice was wrong—layered, like multiple people speaking in unison. "The Master has waited long for this moment."
"The entity sent you?"
"The Master has many servants. Some dead. Some living. Some... in between." It smiled—a horrible, fractured expression. "Like you, Necromancer. Like what you are becoming."
My hands clenched.
"I'm not becoming anything."
"You are becoming everything." It tilted its head, studying me with those empty eyes. "The Master is pleased. You have grown strong. Claimed many. Fed the pattern as promised."
"I didn't promise anything."
"You don't remember. But you will." It gestured toward the mountain. "Come. The Master waits. The Master will show you what you've forgotten."
Then it turned and walked back into the darkness.
------------------------------
"Did that thing just invite us in?" Drake's voice was tight with barely controlled fury. "Did an empty-eyed monster just invite us in?"
"Yes."
"And we're going?"
I looked at the twisted trees. The oily ground. The mountain that rose like a tumor against the stars.
"Yes."
"Wei." Sarah's hand was on my arm. "This is a trap. It has to be a trap."
"Maybe." I started walking. "But we need answers. And whatever's in that mountain has them."
Behind me, I heard Drake curse.
Then footsteps, following.
------------------------------
The road Sarah had found was concrete—military grade, just as she'd said. It wound up the mountainside in switchbacks, cutting through corrupted forest that seemed to lean away from the path.
Even the entity's influence had boundaries.
Or maybe the road itself was part of the design.
We walked for two hours. The cold got worse. The trees got darker. The shapes Sarah had mentioned appeared in the edges of my vision—figures standing motionless among the black trunks, watching without eyes.
Pack scared, Ghost sent. But loyal. Will fight if needed.
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."
Will come to that eventually. Always does.
She wasn't wrong.
------------------------------
We crested a ridge as the sun began to rise.
And stopped.
The facility spread out below us—a complex of concrete buildings built into the mountainside itself. Military. Brutal. Functional. But that wasn't what made us stop.
The pit made us stop.
It dominated the center of the facility. A perfect circle, hundreds of feet across, descending into absolute darkness. The buildings surrounded it like worshippers around an altar.
And rising from that darkness—
Something moved.
"Oh god," Sarah whispered.
It was massive. Translucent. A body that defied geometry, shifting and folding in ways that hurt to look at. Tentacles or limbs or something else entirely, reaching up from the pit, grasping the edges, pulling—
Waking up, Ghost sent, her mental voice trembling. The old power is waking up.
I couldn't look away.
Because in that moment, I remembered.
Not clearly. Not fully. But fragments—images from ten thousand years of trying to stop this. Of watching this thing rise. Of dying, over and over, as it consumed everything.
And I remembered what it had whispered, at the very end, as it dragged me back through time:
You will build me a body. You will feed me power. And when I wake, you will give me what was promised.
The entity's massive form shifted. Dozens of eyes—each larger than a car—swiveled toward our position.
A voice filled my skull. Ancient. Terrible. Pleased.
WELCOME HOME, MY VESSEL. I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.