Prologue: Awakening
The Bell Doesn’t Always Signal Dismissal.
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SCIENCE WING - DOMUS ACADEMY
Time: 1100
“NOW, off-topic, you know zombie-inspired films are the trend nowadays. Let’s say, our city’s under attack by flesh-eating monsterswe’re included, of course. Your friends and teachers turned to one. Do you think you could hurt them in order to survive?”
Professor Lee’s voice echoed through the lecture hall, calm and collected, yet tinged with something the students couldn’t quite place.
Almost everyone groaned or chuckled.
“Of course, Prof!” Felix, the class clown, grinned from his seat at the front row. “If that happens, it’d be a matter of life and death. I’m not about to volunteer myself as lunch. Duh.”
The class laughed. Some students mimed zombie walks, others joked about who they’d feed to the undead first.
“Watch out, Bianca,” one boy teased. “Your perfume’s too strong—you’ll attract them before anyone else.”
Bianca rolled her eyes. “If they’re already dead, they’ve got no taste. I’ll be fine.”
At the back, quiet and observant, Arcadia stared down at her tablet screen, where a breaking news alert blinked red.
Mass Hysteria in Eastpoint District. Residents report violent attacks. Unconfirmed.
She frowned. Eastpoint is probably their city.
“Hypothetically speaking, what if it’s your best friend?” Professor Lee continued, pacing slowly across the front of the class. “The person you sit next to every day. The one who helped you study. What if they turned?”
The class fell a little quieter, the energy shifting.
“I’d run,” muttered Nico, the ace runner, stretching his arms behind his head. “I mean, I’m fast. I could outrun them all.”
“I’d hide,” said Amber, the debate captain. “Barricade myself somewhere safe, wait it out. There’s always a cure in the movies.”
“You’d die waiting,” said Jian, the robotics prodigy, not looking up from his mechanical prototype. “Best to fight. Think tactically. Kill a friend if necessary.”
“You guys are overthinking it,” Felix said again, still laughing. “It’s not like zombies are real.”
BZZZZT.
The lights flickered.
Then died.
Whispers spread like wildfire. Everyone looked around.
“It’s not even raining...the heck?” Bianca rolled her eyes.
Professor Lee moved to the window, pushing the blinds aside. His shoulders stiffened.
From the fifth floor of the Science Wing, they had a clear view of the parking lot. Students were running, but not likely, more of fleeing.
Something tackled a man in a faculty uniform from behind. Blood spattered the pavement. Screams followed.
“Holy shi—”
“Is this a prank?”
“Guys... check the emergency alerts,” Amber whispered, eyes wide. She stood slowly, holding up her tablet. “The news said there were attacks in Eastpoint, but...this is here. Now.”
Ridge, the class mayor, sighed.
“Guess, Felix does have an evil tongue.”
Before anyone could respond, a loud BANG! erupted from the hallway. Then another. A gurgling groan.
Footsteps.
No. Not footsteps. Something dragging. Something wet.
Felix crept toward the door, his joking smile gone. “Maybe someone’s hurt—”
SMASH!
The glass panel in the door shattered, and a pale, bloodied arm shot through, grabbing his collar. He screamed. The class erupted into chaos.
Bianca shrieked. Nico jumped from his seat. Amber ducked behind a row of chairs.
Professor Lee ran forward, yanking Felix back just in time and slamming the door shut. “EVERYONE! GET BACK. AWAY FROM THE DOOR.”
Through the broken glass, a face appeared. Ms. Trinidad—the campus librarian. Her jaw hung wrong, skin grey, one eye gone. She snarled, smashing her head against the frame, trying to get in.
“She was just fine this morning,” Jian whispered. “She said hi to me. She—”
Lee grabbed the emergency keycard from his desk drawer. “We’re going to the lab. It’s reinforced. We can hold out there.”
“What about the other rooms?” Bianca asked, frozen in place.
“They’ll think the same thing we are,” Ridge answered grimly. “Right now, we move or we die.”
The students began to scramble. Some crying, some completely frozen, others running purely on instinct.
But Arcadia remained still, watching Ms. Trinidad with curious eyes.
Not afraid.
Not surprised.
Instead, she smiled. A slow, dangerous grin.
They really messed up this time.
As the others rushed past her, she followed but not before stepping forward, letting one of the infected tackle one of them.
Her hand moved fast. Too fast. She twisted the librarian’s arm, flipped it over, and slammed her heel into its skull with inhuman strength.
Its head cracked. It fell limp.
The others gawked, but she brushed it off like it was nothing. Her eyes shimmered, not with fear, but red pupils.
Prof. Lee saw it. So did Ridge. But neither of them looked surprised.
“What the hell, Arcadia?” Felix exclaimed, terrified.
She looked at Ridge, “make way, I’ll cover the back.”
Ridge sighed, rolling his shoulders as the infected pounded on the nearby doors and walls, drawing closer.
“I was hoping we’d finish the semester before this,” he muttered.
His stance shifted. No longer that of a calm, composed class mayor, but something trained, something dangerous.
“Everyone,” he called, voice even but firm, “Stay close. No one breaks formation. Don’t look back.”
Bianca opened her mouth to speak, but the look in his eyes silenced her. Those same eyes but now glowing a sharp, ocean blue.
Behind the group, Arcadia exhaled softly and turned, facing the hallway they’d just come from. The moaning was louder now. Shadows staggered in the dim flicker of emergency lights.
She gave Professor Lee a sideways glance. “You’ve got a funny way of preparing kids for midterms.”
Lee almost smiled. “Now’s your time to shine, G51.”
She nodded, and her eyes lit red darker than Ridge’s, burning instead of sparking. Her muscles tensed, and when an infected leapt toward the group from the rear, Arcadia moved.
Fast.
Her boot slammed into its chest, sending it flying into the lockers. Another creature came crawling from the ceiling tiles. She caught it midair, twisting its neck with a sickening crack before tossing the corpse aside like paper.
Ridge moved simultaneously at the front. With each step forward, he cleared the path. Grabbing a broken pipe from the ground and using it with deadly efficiency. He ducked, dodged, and struck, glowing veins pulsing with each movement. His strength wasn’t brute, it was precise.
Behind him, his classmates ran as ordered, surrounded on both ends by beings they suddenly realized they never knew.
Amber clutched Jian’s arm. “Who—what—are they?”
Professor Lee, walking in the center of the group, finally answered, “They’re not monsters. They’re also humans like us, just a little more special. Engineered, Augmented.”
Another roar from the back. Arcadia snarled and launched a fire extinguisher down the hallway, hitting an infected square in the face, giving her just enough time to sweep two others with a locker door she ripped off the hinges.
“Don’t stop moving!” Ridge yelled from the front. “We’re almost at the lab. Arcadia, status?”
“Three down. One runner incoming.” She ducked, grabbed the runner’s leg, spun him midair, and drove his body straight through a classroom door.
The nightmare had just begun.
-----
Quarantine Zone Echo-9, Eastpoint District
Time: 1050
The Eastpoint Checkpoint Camp had been erected overnight.
What was once a community sports complex was now a full-blown military quarantine zone, bristling with concrete barricades, guard towers, and barbed wire fencing. Spotlights swept the perimeter. Drones circled overhead.
Beyond the fences, a panicked crowd pushed and screamed—parents, siblings, and strangers trying to get information, shelter, or even a glimpse of someone trapped behind the chaos.
Inside the command tent, the air was heavy with tension.
Major Reyes stood near the main monitor, arms crossed, sweat rolling down her temple. She stared at the real-time satellite feed of the city, specifically over Domus Academy, where red warning markers pulsed steadily.
Beside her stood Lieutenant Marco Suarez, head of the perimeter ground operations, in full combat uniform. Across from them, calm and cold in all black tactical gear, was Agent Dominguez of an unnamed intelligence division. No insignia. No rank. Only authority.
“Containment’s failed in Sectors 3 and 4,”Reyes reported, jaw clenched. “They’re not stumbling like infected. They’re running. Climbing. Evolving.”
“We’re seeing neural rage acceleration,” Dominguez responded flatly. “Faster than expected. Urban population density worsens the spread.”
Suarez’s eyes narrowed. “How the hell did it get into Domus Academy?”
“There are many theories. Possibly a contaminated delivery route. Possibly internal exposure. Nothing is confirmed.”
Reyes stepped closer. “But you’re not surprised.”
“I’m informed,” Dominguez shrugged. “Domus Academy was flagged last month for anomalous biometric activity. It was under quiet observation.”
Suarez crossed his arms. “Observation by who exactly?”
“Classified.”
There was a pause. Reyes looked between them, tension thickening.
Suarez’s eyes narrowed further. “You’re hiding something.”
“I’m doing my job, Lieutenant.”
“Which is what exactly?”
Dominguez didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to the monitors, where scrambled surveillance feeds from the academy is shown—students running, classrooms barricaded, and for a moment, two strange images:
A girl slamming an infected into a wall with superhuman strength. A boy at the front of a group, clearing a path through the infected like a trained soldier.
The feed distorted.
“Who are they?” Suarez asked, pointing at the screen.
Dominguez tapped a button on his comm. “Irrelevant to your task. Focus on perimeter lockdown and maintaining evac corridors.”
Suarez didn’t buy it. Not even close. But he nodded stiffly and stepped out of the command tent. The intelligence agent still has more authority than him by hierarchical order. Damn intelligence. Outside, the noise of helicopters, commands, and radio chatter swirled around him.
He immediately turned to his aide. “Get me the full list of student names from Domus Academy. Cross-check with the Division’s redacted archives. Any entry marked ‘RESTRICTED’, I want to know about it. Quietly.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the soldier jogged off, Suarez looked back at the tent.
Something was very wrong.
And he intended to find out what.
----
