Episode 12 — MICHAEL
Michael could no longer keep helping in the infirmary.
His hands trembled.
Not from physical exhaustion, but from something deeper—
a pressure in his chest that wouldn't leave,
as if his breath belonged to someone else living inside him.
He had done everything he could there.
His fingers were numb.
His eyes burned from smoke, from sleeplessness, from too much blood.
Far off, he could still hear improvised sirens—
cars with broken alarms, horns stuck wide open,
the echo of a civilization pretending to still be alive.
He thought about staying a little longer,
but he knew he'd be lying to himself.
He wasn't saving anyone anymore.
He was just watching people die slower.
Now he needed to know.
He needed to see his people.
His friends.
Her.
He walked out of the makeshift medical building and crossed the campus again.
What had once been an open space full of students, noise, laughter,
was now an evacuation zone after a war that had lasted only minutes
but left centuries of ruin.
The air smelled like metal.
Like ozone mixed with rain and ash.
The clouds were thick and swollen,
and between the trees the melted hail left thin rivers of red water
sneaking toward the drains.
Broken windows.
Trees snapped at the roots.
Glass crunching beneath his shoes.
Scattered backpacks.
Soaked phones.
Notebooks lying open like open wounds.
Some people were still trying to reach the emergency tents,
but they walked in circles now,
because the signs were gone.
Others carried bodies wrapped in sheets.
A few wandered aimlessly,
their eyes lost,
clutching some meaningless object in their hands—
a picture frame, a book, a single shoe.
Michael clenched his fists, took a deep breath, and started to run.
He didn't think.
He just listened to the wet rhythm of his steps on the pavement.
It took him almost fifteen minutes to reach the men's dorms—
fifteen minutes crossing scenes his mind refused to arrange in order.
People begging for help that would never come.
Hands reaching up.
Eyes wide open, staring at nothing.
When he reached the entrance, he stopped.
He recognized a piece of clothing.
A gray hoodie with a blue patch.
He'd seen it hundreds of times.
The body lay twisted on the steps, seated in an impossible position,
arms hanging longer than they should.
There was no head.
The impact had been clean, absolute.
A crater in the ground beside the body still steamed with melted ice.
Michael didn't scream.
Didn't cry.
Something inside his mind shut down,
and for one hollow second,
the world in front of him became unreal—
a corrupted recording that refused to make sense.
His breath slowed.
Very slow.
Then he kept walking.
The building smelled like damp cloth and stagnant air.
Inside, it was chaos.
Blood smeared down the hallways.
Mattresses half blocking the doors.
The electricity flickered like an uneven heartbeat—
orange emergency lights stretching shadows across walls and bodies.
People wounded on the floor.
Some locked in their rooms.
Some crying quietly.
Others shouting names that dissolved into echo.
Water dripped through cracks above,
a constant whisper between explosions of noise.
The dorm supervisor—barely twenty‑two—
was trying to organize something, anything:
a list, a plan, a map.
But his eyes said it all.
He had already seen too much.
He stared with that hollow look people get
when their mind is trying to erase an image it can never forget.
Michael climbed the stairs slowly,
his shoes sliding on melted ice and blood.
Each step echoed like the building itself was floating above the ground.
When he reached his floor,
the door to his room was half open,
swaying gently with the wind that came from inside.
Everything was overturned.
Beds flipped.
Drawers pulled out.
Clothes wet and stained.
A desk lamp blinked on and off,
throwing ghostly frames of light over the walls.
His other roommate wasn't there.
Desk empty.
Phone shattered on the floor.
The charging cable swung slowly from the table.
The window wide open, curtains breathing inward and out.
He didn't know if his friend had escaped,
if he was trapped under rubble,
or if he looked like the one outside.
He didn't stop to think.
Thought was a privilege for people who still had time.
Michael moved with the precision of pure instinct.
He grabbed his closet bag.
A black backpack.
Shoved clothes inside without folding.
Two shirts.
A jacket.
A small first‑aid kit.
From the fridge, he took water bottles,
a few protein bars,
a pack of cookies.
He didn't count.
He didn't weigh.
He just filled the space.
For a moment, he faced the mirror in the small bathroom
and didn't recognize the man staring back.
His eyes were distant, alien.
Sweat, or maybe blood, streaked down his face in dark lines.
He put on his thick winter jacket—
heavy enough to feel like armor.
It kept him anchored inside his body,
as though his mind were about to drift out of it any second.
Before leaving, he paused at the door.
The hallway buzzed with low sounds—
crying, footsteps, the static of dead phones.
He took one deep breath,
looked at the empty beds one last time,
and closed the door.
Outside, the snowless sky had changed again.
No one could say if it was dawn or dusk.
Red and gray swirled together above the rooftops,
and the wind tasted like metal and lightning.
Michael gripped his backpack and started moving
toward the far side of campus—
toward the girls' dorms.
Half an hour away, if the paths were clear.
But they weren't.
He tried his phone.
Nothing.
No signal.
No service.
Sometimes the dead screen blinked,
as if reminding him that time still existed.
The campus no longer looked like the place he knew.
Broken trees lay across the walkways.
Benches crushed under ice slabs.
Women calling out names.
Students hauling wreckage away with bare hands.
One boy sat in silence, holding someone under a yellow blanket.
Michael wanted to help him,
but words wouldn't come.
He only placed a hand on the boy's shoulder.
The boy looked up without recognition,
eyes emptied out,
his humanity drowned in what he'd already lost.
Michael kept moving.
His gaze darted side to side, searching faces,
hoping for one he knew.
No one.
Sometimes he saw movement among the trees
and thought it was survivors.
Often it was only the wind shifting a body.
He had to take a detour through the gardens.
The usual roads were blocked by fallen light posts and rubble.
The marble statues were cracked in half—
their faces missing.
Signs of struggle everywhere.
Forced doors.
Shoes scattered.
Backpacks torn open.
The air burned his throat; it smelled of rain and wire.
For a second, he felt something move beside him.
Invisible breath brushing his ear.
He froze.
Listened.
Nothing—only wind squeezing between shattered glass.
He pushed forward.
The closer he came to the girls' dorms,
the louder the noise grew.
People were shouting, pulling debris,
lifting bodies with their hands.
The emergency lights flickered weakly in the haze,
casting red halos over shattered windows.
Each pane bore circular scars—
impacts from hail the size of fists,
edges cracked outward like broken eyes.
Michael forced his way through.
He called her name again and again.
Showed photos on his cracked phone screen.
No one answered.
No one had seen her.
Every step tightened the pain in his chest.
His whole body ached.
But pain was good;
pain meant he still existed.
Pain stopped him from thinking.
He stepped over bodies.
Avoided glass.
Climbed a narrow stairway marked with black soot.
Burn marks ran along the walls—
the smell of electricity and salt,
the residue of a system that had failed catastrophically.
For a brief instant, his mind flashed back to the Twelve.
Their voices.
Their verdict.
Correction, they had said.
Not punishment.
He shivered.
What if the correction had already started with them?
No.
He shook the thought away.
Not yet.
He couldn't believe that yet.
He passed a classroom turned into a refuge.
Twenty people huddled there under blankets,
sharing bottles of water.
Someone called out, told him to rest,
to stay where there was light.
He shook his head and kept going.
Rest was for people with answers.
He had none.
The broken clock tower lay crashed on the grass below,
its hands still fixed at 4:52—
the exact moment the sky had split open.
Far ahead, he saw the dormitory building.
The front door hung wide,
and for the first time since leaving the infirmary,
Michael hesitated.
Fear, real fear, rushed up through his spine.
He was afraid to enter and not find her.
Afraid to find her.
Both were the same terror.
He inhaled slowly.
Tightened the strap of his backpack.
And stepped forward.
The air past the doorway was colder,
as if the building breathed differently from the rest of the campus.
Inside, the dark felt alive;
voices whispered;
breaths and sobs vibrated in the air.
And somewhere,
steady, unavoidable—
the sound of water dripping.
Michael swallowed hard,
and the only thought left in him was singular and absolute:
Find her.
Because standing still now
would mean accepting that the world he knew
was already gone.
And he wasn't ready to do that.