The silence that followed the emerald glow of Sarah's healing was even more heavy than the chaos that had preceded it.
Sarah slumped against a toppled shelf of canned soup, her lungs burning and her vision swimming with dark spots. Using "Vibrant Life" had felt like pulling a heavy chain through her own chest. She was drained, her muscles trembling with a fatigue that went deeper than anything she had ever felt during a gym session or a long day at work.
She looked down at Nuhel. He was still pale, and his clothes were a ruin of dark blood and grey dust, but he was breathing. The shallow, ragged gasps had smoothed out into a deep, rhythmic slumber.
"I can't stay here," she whispered to herself, her voice barely a ghost of a sound.
The front of the supermarket was a gaping wound. The fire from the gas tanker was still roaring outside, casting long, dancing shadows across the aisles. The smell of burning rubber and copper was thick enough to taste. Worse than the fire were the sounds coming from the street—the occasional high-pitched screech of a winged creature and the desperate, short-lived screams of people who hadn't found a place to hide.
Sarah knew that the blood of the receptionist and the dead Graveling would eventually draw more of those things. She needed to move Nuhel, but his motorized wheelchair was a blackened skeleton of twisted metal and melted plastic.
Searching the immediate area, she found a flatbed stock trolley near the warehouse doors at the back of the store. It was heavy and awkward, but it was low to the ground. With a strength born of pure desperation, Sarah managed to roll Nuhel's limp body onto the trolley. She winced every time his head lolled, terrified she was undoing the fragile repairs her magic had made, but she had no choice.
She pushed him toward the back of the store, past the deli counter and the walk-in freezers. Behind a heavy steel door labeled "Staff Only," she found a narrow staircase leading downward. A small brass plaque on the wall read: Management – Private.
She left Nuhel at the top of the stairs and descended carefully. At the bottom was a short hallway leading to a reinforced door. It was the manager's office, built like a small bunker to house the store's safe and records. It was perfect. It was underground, the walls were thick concrete, and most importantly, it was silent.
The process of getting Nuhel down those stairs was a nightmare. She had to slide him down step by step on a thick moving blanket she found in the storage room. By the time she rolled him onto the carpeted floor of the office, she was sobbing from the sheer physical strain.
Once he was settled on a small leather sofa in the corner, Sarah felt a frantic, gnawing need to know what was happening above. Nuhel's warning about the sound-sensitive creatures echoed in her mind. He had been so sure, so focused. If he was right—and the dead monster behind the counter proved he was—the world outside was a minefield.
She left the office door cracked and tiptoed back up the stairs. She moved with a grace she didn't know she possessed, placing her weight on the balls of her feet, avoiding every piece of fallen glass and every stray piece of plastic. She reached the main floor and crept toward the jagged hole where the front windows used to be.
She stopped behind a large display of bottled water and peered out.
Montreal was unrecognizable. The street was a graveyard of abandoned cars, some of them still idling, their headlights cutting through the thick, unnatural fog. Corpses lay scattered across the pavement like discarded dolls. She saw a man in a business suit pinned against a brick wall by a creature that looked like a giant, hairless hound. The man wasn't screaming anymore; he was just staring at the sky with empty eyes.
In the distance, she saw three Gravelings huddled together over something she didn't want to identify. They were eerily still, their eyeless heads tilting in unison every time a piece of debris shifted in the wind.
Sarah felt a cold shiver crawl down her spine. If she had made even a single loud sob or tripped over her own feet, she would be out there on the pavement with the others. She realized then that Nuhel hadn't just been brave; he had been incredibly smart. He had figured out the rules of this new horror before the rest of them even realized the game had started.
She retreated as silently as she had come. Once she was back in the underground office, she shut the heavy door and turned the deadbolt. The silence of the room wrapped around her like a blanket.
She spent the next few hours tending to Nuhel as best as she could. She used a first-aid kit from the office to clean the remaining grime from his face and hands. She watched the way the System screens hovered near him, flickering occasionally.
First Global Kill.
The words kept repeating in her head. Thousands of soldiers, hunters, and athletes were out there, yet it was Nuhel—the man the world had discarded because his legs didn't work—who had struck the first blow for humanity. She looked at his peaceful face and felt a surge of genuine admiration. He had faced a nightmare while literally pinned to the floor and had won.
"You really are something, Nuhel," she whispered, a small, tired smile touching her lips. "I don't think even this System has any idea what you're capable of. You're a warrior."
She believed he would wake up. She had to believe it. If a man could survive a spine-crushing accident and then go on to kill a monster from another dimension, a little blood loss wasn't going to stop him.
Sarah sat in the manager's high-backed chair, her eyes fixed on the door. She intended to stay awake, to keep watch, but the silence and the lingering drain of her "Vibrant Life" skill finally took their toll. Her eyelids grew heavy. The last thing she saw was the soft blue glow of the System interface reflecting in the glass of a framed photo on the desk.
She fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When Sarah finally opened her eyes, the office was dim. The only light came from a small emergency lamp on the wall and the soft, ambient glow of the blue translucent screens that seemed to be a permanent part of their reality now.
She blinked, her mind foggy. For a second, she forgot about the apocalypse. She thought she was back in her apartment, and the nightmare was just a result of reading too many of those stories Nuhel liked.
Then, she noticed the sofa was empty.
Her heart skipped a beat. A cold spike of adrenaline shot through her. Had a creature gotten in? Had Nuhel crawled away? She scrambled out of the chair, her mouth opening to call his name, but the words died in her throat.
A man was standing by the desk, his back to her.
He was tall, with broad shoulders that strained against his torn shirt. He was looking at a map of the city that had been pinned to the manager's corkboard. He wasn't crawling. He wasn't leaning on a chair. He was standing firmly on both feet, his weight distributed perfectly.
Sarah rubbed her eyes, sure she was hallucinating. "Nuhel?" she croaked, her voice thick with sleep.
The man turned around. His face was no longer pale; it was full of life, his eyes sharp and alert. A faint, knowing smile played on his lips. He looked at her with an intensity that made her breath catch. He didn't look like a victim anymore. He looked like the protagonist of one of his own novels.
He took a step toward her—a smooth, effortless step—and the sound of his boot hitting the carpet was the most beautiful thing Sarah had ever heard.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," Nuhel said, his voice calm and steady. "How was your sleep?"