Chapter 3

I swallowed the red-and-white capsule Rehn handed me. My throat filled with the scratching dryness of powdered wall plaster.

I forced down the urge to retch, chased it with a gulp of dirty water, and even gave him a weak, grateful look.

Rehn pretended to feel my burning forehead and let out a heavy sigh. “Fever medicine doesn’t work that fast. But brother—our compressed rations are completely gone. That high-risk ruin up ahead used to be a big shopping district. I’ll help you in and we’ll try our luck. Otherwise we won’t make it to the survival zone.”

I knew his pack still held plenty of food. I knew the real reason he was taking me into a high-risk area.

But I didn’t resist. I only obediently draped my wrecked right arm over his shoulder.

The ruins were so quiet it made the scalp crawl. Shattered glass and stained concrete blocks layered the dim light with thick shadows. I could feel Rehn’s muscles pulled tight; his palm was slick with cold sweat as he supported me.

As we rounded a thick load-bearing column, a sound of body-on-body friction came from the darkness to our side—something that made skin crawl.

“Right!” Mom’s voice cleaved into my mind, taut as wire. “Three high-tier!”

Three warped shadows surged out with a wave of stench, lunging from an abandoned storefront!

My reflex was to draw my gun—but Rehn moved faster.

He didn’t raise his rifle to cover me.

Instead, he slipped behind me in a flash. His left arm locked around my throat like an iron shackle.

Before I could react, an ice-cold spike of pain drove into my side.

Thuck.

A tactical dagger slid in without resistance. Rehn wasn’t satisfied—he twisted the blade half a turn along the edge of my organs.

Pain like high-voltage current punched straight through my nervous system. Even my scream was strangled off in my throat by his chokehold.

“Sorry, brother,” Rehn breathed into my ear, warm air on my neck. “I need a lot of fresh blood scent to hold them.”

Before the words even finished, he yanked the dagger out. Blood gushed like a broken dam. Then Rehn lifted his boot and kicked hard into my already injured lower back.

I lost balance.

Like a rag, I was launched straight into the raging pack.

In this dead end with nowhere to run, the killing intent that had slept inside me for three days finally detonated.

In midair, I forced my body to twist. Blood sprayed in a brutal arc. Adrenaline spiked so hard it turned the world razor sharp. I barely dodged the deadliest pounce.

The instant I hit the ground, the dagger hidden in my sleeve slid into my palm.

I didn’t run outward.

My legs drove hard. Like a wolf cornered to the edge, I lunged back.

Rehn was turning to flee. He hadn’t expected a dying man to bite back.

The blade cut with absolute precision into the back of his right leg, where he was about to push off—ripping open a deep groove.

A faint wet snap sounded.

His hamstring severed.

Rehn let out a shriek. His body lost balance instantly. I followed with a heavy sweep kick and took his other leg out.

He tumbled, crashing into the mutant pack behind him. Drawn by the fresh blood spraying from his wound, the monsters switched targets and swallowed him alive.

I clamped my hand over the gaping hole in my side—organs nearly torn—dragging a long smear of blood as I slammed into a mall’s emergency exit door to the side.

Blood poured through my fingers. The stairs in front of me split into double images.

“Oh God… son, don’t scare Mom—press the wound!” Mom’s voice rang urgently, real sobs and panic in it. Then her tone turned into pure shock. “Wait… Rehn isn’t dead!”

I staggered and fell hard in front of the freezer door on basement level two.

“That top-tier monster didn’t eat him!” Mom’s voice shook as if she were seeing something that broke all rules. “Those black fleshy tendrils are drilling into his wound like parasites… he’s absorbing it! He’s mutating!”

I bit down on my tongue to stay awake, shoved the freezer’s thick insulated security door open, and slammed it shut behind me—locking it.

The through-and-through wound in my side had wrecked my body functions. I slumped against a frost-covered shelf. Every breath brought up thick blood foam, and the edges of my vision bloomed with death-black spots.

Cold seeped in through the wound and into my organs. I knew my insides were failing fast.

“My heart rate is dropping too fast…” Mom’s voice thickened with nasal sobbing—helpless and desperate, the way she’d sounded when I was a kid with a fever that wouldn’t break. “Normal medicine won’t work here. You’re hurt too badly… Mom can’t save you, son… Mom’s useless…”

Death pressed down layer by layer. My body grew colder and colder.

But in my mind, the image Mom had just described looped like a nightmare—Rehn swallowed by a monster, not dying, but fusing and mutating.

Why?

Why did a traitorous bastard like him get to fuse with monsters under a cruel law—gain their strength while keeping human sanity?

If mutants could be used as fuel to strengthen the human body…

Why couldn’t I?

In the most desperate place, a crazed idea broke through the soil of my mind.

“Mom… I don’t want to die.” My voice was so weak it was barely there.

My good left hand shook as I groped for a cold iron bar beside me. With my last breath of strength, I smashed it into the vent glass on the freezer door.

Crash!

The thick glass shattered. The heavy blood stench trapped in the sealed room poured out through the vent like a flood.

“You’re insane! That will draw them!” Mom screamed in panic.

“That’s what I want.” I leaned against the door and pulled the corner of my mouth upward—weak, cold.

Within minutes, the wet, crawling sound of something sickening came from outside the vent.

A high-tier mutant that had been lurking in the dark shoved itself through the broken opening, drawn by the irresistible blood scent.

It had no eyes. Its split, gaping mouthpiece dripped slime as it locked onto me.

It shrieked and lunged.

I didn’t dodge.

I even tossed away the dagger meant for self-defense. I opened my arms and hugged that twisted mass of horror tight against my chest.

“Son! Move—!” Mom’s scream was sharp enough to tear nerves.

Countless black tendrils exploded outward, stabbing into my wounds and driving straight for my heart. Pain beyond language tore through every nerve in my skull, like a thousand steel saws cutting bone marrow.

Black unknown matter—like molten lava, surged violently into my veins.

“Heart-rate warning! Vital signs collapsing, son! Can you hear me?!”

Mom’s frantic cries and a piercing alarm drifted farther and farther away.

At the final second, when my life line hit absolute zero, the pain stopped abruptly.

And I fell into dead, endless darkness.