Chapter2

As the high walls of the Coastal Safe Zone loomed over the horizon, I counted the patched bullet craters on its surface. Thirty-two. The smallest, barely half a meter across, was likely left by a handgun. The largest sat directly above the main gate—its edges charred and brittle, hastily leveled with fresh concrete. The cement hadn't fully cured yet, leaving uneven patches of dark and light gray.

A searchlight swept across Slade’s face and mine. The beam moved past us for three seconds before snapping back, pinning me in its glare.

"New?" The guard on the wall had his rifle raised. The muzzle pointed down, but his index finger rested lightly just outside the trigger guard. I took note of his posture—a seasoned veteran who had seen too much go wrong, maintaining a perfect balance that allowed him to snap the rifle up and fire in a split second.

"Found 'em. Picked 'em up on the road." Slade gave the rope in his hand a yank. "A mute. Doesn't bite."

The guard’s gaze raked over me. I stood there, knees trembling. The wound on my chest was bound with filthy rags torn from god-knows-where, the blood seeping through the edges already blackened and crusted over. He asked, "Name?"

Slade opened his mouth to answer, but I beat him to it. My vocal cords were still trembling. The syllables grated out like a slowly turning, rusted hinge, but I enunciated every single word: "Please... save... me..."

The guard faltered, his eyes shifting from Slade to me. I lowered my eyes and hunched my shoulders, making myself look like a pathetic, rain-battered sparrow.

Slade’s expression froze for a few seconds before he let out a dry laugh. "Mute? The fuck it is."

I didn't respond. The guard’s finger moved entirely away from the trigger guard. He waved us down. "Take 'em inside. East Sector, C7. Find Jack to register."

Slade yanked the rope and walked forward, kicking his heel back against my calf—not too hard, but just enough to make me stumble. Playing along, I pitched forward a couple of steps to catch my balance. Out of the corner of my eye, I scanned the stacked sandbags and barbed wire lining the base of the wall. Strips of dark brown cloth fluttered against the wire in the wind, revealing jagged, torn bone fragments snagged underneath.

The camp was more crowded than I had imagined. Shacks jury-rigged from corrugated iron and tarpaulins stood crammed together, leaving only a narrow alley wide enough for two people to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. Empty tin cans and discarded oil drums piled up along the sides. The air was thick with the mingled stench of disinfectant, stale sweat, and boiling beans. A few bare-bottomed kids squatted in a doorway, dividing up a piece of rock-hard bread. Seeing the iron collar and rope around my neck, they fell dead silent in unison, their eyes tracking me all the way down the alley.

An old man in a flat cap received us. His wobbly-legged desk was piled high with yellowing logbooks. He chewed on the cap of a fountain pen, the nicotine stains on his teeth even yellower than his hair.

"Name?" Jack pulled the pen from between his teeth.

Slade said, "Just put down whatever."

"Where are they staying?"

"Squeezing in with us. It's just bait, anyway."

Jack’s pen paused. He looked up and glanced at me, his eyes sliding from the iron collar around my neck to the red rope burns on my wrists. He didn’t say anything, just looked back down and scribbled on the paper. "Shack Number Seven. Your team's responsibility."

Slade collected half a bag of hardtack and a jug of water, then dragged me deep into Sector C, ducking into a low-slung tin shack. The tarp on the roof was missing a corner, revealing a patch of dismal gray sky through the hole. The floor was layered with corrugated cardboard, topped with a piece of linoleum bearing some incomprehensible foreign advertisement. Slade tossed the biscuits and water into a corner, then used the hemp rope to tie me to a heavily rusted iron pipe in the middle of the shack. The iron collar struck the pipe with a sharp clank.

"Stay put," he dropped the command, turning and ducking into the adjacent shack.

I leaned against the wall and sat down, my fingers brushing against the iron collar. Its jagged edges had already bitten into my flesh, throbbing in time with my pulse. I traced my fingertips around the inside of the ring until I found the clasp—a standard spring latch. A quick pry with any blunt object would pop it open. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was making them believe this thing could hold me.

Once the night fully set in, the camp's clamor gradually died down, leaving only the footsteps of guards changing shifts and the occasional low growl from far beyond the walls. I closed my eyes, letting my consciousness extend underground, riding the vibrations of high-frequency sound waves.

Deep within the soil, a faint rhythm pulsed. It was my kin.

They were hiding in the drainage pipes, in the crevices of foundations, beneath the excavated pits of buried waste. They tapped against the dark rock walls with their antennae and walking legs, like some forgotten frequency waiting for a response.

I didn't answer them yet. It was too early.

Three days. I needed three days for my vocal cords to fully heal, to make this shell look more like a terrified, ordinary human. More importantly, I needed to listen, to watch. I needed to trace out the camp's rules, its conflicts, and its web of relationships, blueprint by blueprint, folding them all into the rapidly expanding neural palace deep inside my skull.

On the third night, I lay flat on the corrugated cardboard. I listened to the wind slapping against the tin roof, accompanied by the alternating, high-and-low snores of Slade and Toby from next door. I counted the frequency of the infected's footsteps outside the wall. Last night, it was one wave every forty-seven seconds. Tonight, it had shortened to thirty-nine.

They were getting closer, drawn together by some invisible thread pulling them toward this place. And the other end of that thread was tied directly to the signal radiating from the crystal core in my veins.

I rolled over, burying my face in the damp cardboard, and stretched my lips into a silent smile.

Soon.