Prologue
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“It wasn’t death that frightened us. It was the idea of surviving in a world that no longer remembered how to live.” — Noah Quinn, post-crisis journal
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The last train had come and gone.
Bryce McAllister stood alone on the open-air platform of the Lakeshore transit station, a relic of bleached concrete and flickering halogens. Morning hadn’t fully arrived; it hung in a sickly limbo where shadows stretched too long and the sky blushed yellow for all the wrong reasons.
He checked his phone again. No signal. Not a single bar, just the pixelated mockery of a loading icon trying to summon a world that had quietly stopped responding.
There had been a girl crying behind a trash bin when he first arrived, barely twelve, clutching an empty water bottle like it could keep her safe. Her mother had dragged her off before Bryce could ask if they were okay, eyes wide and glassy with panic. That was over an hour ago. Since then, no trains, no staff, and no news. Just the low, distant thrum of helicopters and the acrid stink of smoke that hadn’t been there the day before.
Bryce squinted into the distance. Something shimmered over the tracks, not heat, but particulate, drifting lazily in the slanted dawn light. Dust, maybe. Or ash.
Or shine.
He’d heard the term just once on a crackling emergency broadcast: “Avoid zones of high atmospheric density... presence of visible yellow haze may indicate an infection cluster... symptoms include high fever, altered cognition, extreme aggression...”
Then static. And nothing.
The sound reached him before the shape did, a rhythmic flapping, wings against wind, fast and erratic. A bat, no bigger than a fist, careened overhead. Another followed, then five more. They dipped low, skimming the platform like pebbles skipping water. Bryce ducked instinctively, but the bats were gone in seconds, vanishing into the mist that curled like smoke over the rails.
He backed toward the wall of the station, heart pounding.
That’s when he saw her.
She moved in jerks, like a marionette with tangled strings. A woman in what had once been a nurse’s scrubs, now sweat-soaked and clinging to her frame. Her skin was flushed red, blistered in places, and her eyes, glassy, sunken, glowed faintly with something feral.
She didn’t speak at first. Just stared.
Bryce opened his mouth, unsure what he meant to say. “Ma’am, are you—?”
“What did you say?” she snapped.
He froze. He hadn’t said anything yet. His mouth had only opened.
The woman stepped forward. Her breath came in gasps, thick with fever, her skin slick with it. Bryce saw the telltale shimmer on her brow, the way her sweat glistened yellow under the failing lights.
His gut clenched.
And from behind the ticket kiosk, a voice rang out, clear, tired, steady.
“Don’t move.”
Bryce turned, startled. A man emerged from the shadows, gaunt and unshaven, a long coat pulled tight across his frame. He moved with hesitation, like someone who hadn’t spoken to another soul in weeks. In one gloved hand, he held a crowbar slick with rust.
The woman hissed and lunged. Bryce stumbled back as the man stepped forward, raising the crowbar.
“I’m sorry,” the stranger murmured, more to himself than anyone else. Steel met bone with a sickening crunch.
The woman collapsed in a heap, twitching once before going still. Her sweat left a smear of yellow on the concrete. Bryce, breathless, just stared. The man wiped the crowbar on his sleeve and looked up. His face was drawn, dark hair falling over sunken eyes.
“Who are you?” Bryce managed.
The man looked past him, at the glimmering particles in the air, at the empty tracks, the sallow sky, the rising mist. Almost whispering, he spoke “Noah…”.
With that he turned and walked up the station stairs and out of sight.
