Angela's heels clicked softly across the unfinished floor, the concrete dust dulling their rhythm. She stood near the edge of the high-rise shell, a blueprint cylinder under one arm, hair pinned back like a woman trying to hold herself together in more ways than one.
Below, New York pulsed like it didn't know it was dying.
The skyline remained, jagged and bold, but to her it looked wrong now. Not because of the steel beams around her, or the red digital clock on the neighboring tower that had frozen at 9:26 AM two days ago. But because Ethan was in a hospital bed three miles away, and the only thing keeping him breathing was a miracle drug the world barely understood.
She brushed a thumb over her temple, where stress left a dull throb like a ticking clock behind the eyes.
Genesis. The word made her stomach knot.
They said it was hope bottled in serum. But she saw it for what it was-a gamble. A molecular Hail Mary. And Ethan's body was the roulette table.
As she took another glance at the streets down below, a man stood in the intersection, not moving, despite the horns, despite the lights. Just... still. Watching. Angela thought it's strange but brushed it off as a behaviour of what probably was a deranged man, or drugs. But somehow her gaze remained fixed on that man like something was quite not right.
"Angela?" Mr. Stein, the German investor, was still talking about support beams. "If we shift the elevator shaft four feet north, we save..."
"Four million in steel, I know," she replied softly, folding her arms. "But we lose sunlight in the atrium. And that was the point. Light, space, breath."
He frowned, but before he could protest, Angela's phone buzzed against her clipboard.
Rebecca: Can we do spaghetti tonight? River wants meatballs.
Normalcy. Her daughter still thought there was a tonight.
Angela smiled, thumb hovered, typed:
Sure. I'll grab the good parmesan.
Angela locked the screen with a sigh, the soft click of her phone sounding far too final. Rebecca had texted about forgotten gym shoes also. Third time this month. Typical. She typed back a hasty "We'll talk at home. Love you," and slipped the phone into the inner pocket of her tailored blazer.
Unprofessional. She knew that. Mid-meeting, high-profile investors from Germany, and there she was, texting her teenage daughter like a distracted intern. But what was she supposed to do? Pretend her husband wasn't dying two floors below St. Mary's? Pretend the cure they gave him wasn't experimental, unstable, and already starting to bleed uncertainty into his bloodwork?
A gentle touch on her shoulder broke the spiral.
"Angela, you seem distracted," Herr Stein said in that velvet German baritone of his.
He was older, tall and thin, always impeccably dressed, a gentleman carved from some forgotten age of courtesy.
"Has something happened? Do you need a moment?"
She turned to face him, quickly straightening the edge of her lapel.
"No, Herr Stein. Apologies. Kids... you know how it is."
He gave a soft, understanding nod. "Yes. I've heard about your husband. I imagine things must be... challenging."
That word. Challenging. As if grief had a PR team.
"I want to assure you," he continued, "if there is anything I can do, anything at all, you need only ask. We accepted this project largely because you were heading it. Your designs, especially the Jakarta complex... they moved us. Vision and structure, married in balance."
Angela offered a tired smile. "That means more than you know. Thank you."
"I understand peculiar situations," he added with a faint smile, then gestured toward the blueprints on the portable display board. "Shall we continue?"
"I think we should," Angela replied, nodding. "Time is scaffolding. Best not let it rust."
Angela's blazer still fit well, even if the lines beneath her eyes said she hadn't slept in a week.
She had to get a hold of herself. Bills still had to be paid, mortgage, children college fund and hospital bills...
She had no choice but to continue her work, to endure, to juggle between caring mother, loving wife and professional architect with a reputation to uphold.
Stein's tie never moved, not even in the wind, like it knew better than to disobey him. The man was the epitome of German elegance, precision and that almost noble image that came with years of experience and obsession for perfection.
* * *
And then the world cracked.
Somewhere below, maybe street level, maybe one of the unfinished service elevators, came a noise that didn't belong on a job site. Not metal. Not glass.
A scream.
Angela and Herr Stein locked eyes. Klara, the intern, froze with a pen still hovering above her notepad.
Then another scream. Closer. Raw. Human. And followed by crashing, shouting, the unmistakable sound of people running away from something.
Herr Stein stepped to the edge of the open scaffolding view, looking down toward the base of the construction site.
"What in God's name...?"
Angela joined him and saw it too.
Chaos.
Cars slamming into each other at the corner. A billboard reading Genesis - Because We Care flickered in and out of life, half-melted from the growing fires below. People ran in every direction. Some fell. Some were dragged. And some... didn't look right. Their movements were wrong. Twisted. Broken.
One of the construction workers sprinted up the stairs toward them, face covered in blood, not his own.
"They're killing people!" he shouted. "They're eating them!"
Klara let out a strangled sob. Angela's mind went white.
No plan. No escape route.
Just steel, concrete, and the sound of death rising floor by floor.
Herr Stein looked at Klara, the chaos below flickering in his glasses like distant lightning.
"Go. Tell the pilot we're leaving. Now!"
He turned to Angela, eyes fierce but still calm. "Angela, come. Our helicopter is on the roof. It's the only way."
Klara didn't hesitate. She kicked off her heels and bolted, her long strides echoing up the steel service stairs, leaving behind her leather folio, a pen, and her dignity. The pages fluttered like wounded birds.
Stein gripped Angela's hand with surprising strength. "This way, dear!"
She didn't argue. There wasn't time.
They sprinted through the half-built floor, rebar, broken tiles, unfinished concrete. Angela's mind raced faster than her feet: the kids, the hospital, Ethan, but instinct shoved reason aside.
Behind them, screams grew louder. Something, someone, slammed against a metal beam with enough force to make it ring like a bell of doom. Klara's footsteps disappeared above. Silence. Then a high-pitched shriek.
"Klara?" Stein called, but the answer came in thumps.
Something was crawling down the stairs now. Or falling.
Angela's lungs burned. Every hallway looked the same, half-walls, broken windows, wires snaking like vines. They reached the scaffolding door. Angela flung it open...and nearly slipped.
The wind howled around them. No guardrails. Just sky and a wooden plank walkway that clung to the side of the tower like a death wish.
Below, the city burned.
"There!" Stein pointed to a crane arm bridging the gap between the scaffold and the rooftop access. The helicopter was there, spinning its blades like an anxious wasp.
Angela's mouth went dry. "You've got to be kidding me."
"No time!"
Behind them, pounding steps. Fast. Sloppy. Inhuman.
"Oh God..."
"They're coming..." Stein whispered. And then, louder: "GO!"
Angela stepped onto the plank, heart in her throat, arms out for balance, wind tearing at her blazer. She didn't look down. Didn't breathe. She reached the crane. Climbed. Hands bleeding from rusted metal. Pulled herself onto the roof.
The pilot was already powering up.
The rooftop was a mirage of safety-clear sky, wind slicing across the concrete, and at the far edge, the whirring promise of escape: the helicopter. Its blades had just begun to spin.
Klara rushed forward, hair whipped sideways by the wind. She made it to the cabin, flung the door open, and scrambled inside.
Angela was just a few steps behind, her lungs burning, Stein at her side, when the rooftop access door exploded off its hinges behind them.
They turned.
A wave of bodies poured through.
Dozens. No, hundreds. Remnants, blood-slick and howling, a tide of human ruin crashing toward them.
Angela froze.
Stein didn't.
"Run, Angela!"
He shoved her with both hands, hard. She stumbled sideways, fell, rolled across the rooftop toward a collapsed scaffolding beam.
Stein turned and charged, a lone man against the tide.
The horde met him like a wall. His last sound was not a scream, but a roar.
Angela looked up, just in time to see the mob slam into the helicopter, metal twisted, blades cracked, the entire machine tipped, and then fell.
Over the edge.
Gone.
The noise it made was apocalyptic.
Angela scrambled to her feet, but the Remnants weren't done. They spilled toward her, faster now.
She backed away until her heel struck empty space.
The edge.
Then nothing beneath her.
She slipped.
Her hands caught a rusted beam, fingers screaming in pain as her body swung into the void.
Below her: fire. Screams. A nightmare city.
She dangled there, panting, tears blinding her, unable to pull herself up.
Then...a ledge.
Four feet below. Barely a platform. But it was something.
She didn't think.
She dropped.
The metal thudded beneath her like a drum of war.
Angela lay there, gasping, bruised, alive. Her face turned toward the sky, where Stein's voice still echoed in her mind.
"Run, Angela.", words still etched in her brain.
She would.
But first, she had to find her children.
The city howled below. The building shuddered. Angela looked down just in time to see the city turn into a living hell.
* * *
A few miles away...
St. Michael's School for Excellence had once been a church.
The bones were still there-the arched hallways like hollow ribs, stained glass windows repurposed into classroom dividers, and an old bronze bell mounted above the main entrance, tarnished and silenced, its final ring long since replaced by electric buzzers and fire drills no one took seriously.
The air always smelled faintly of dust, bleach, and old chalk. Not the scented markers and plastic polish of modern academies, St. Michael's clung to tradition like a stubborn ghost. Wooden desks etched with generations of boredom. Posters about volcanoes and mitochondria, curled at the corners. Teachers whose souls had retired years before their pensions kicked in.
In Room 3B, Rebecca Rost sat with one sneaker tapping against the linoleum, one fist holding up her cheek, and every ounce of her willpower focused on not glaring at Trevor McAllister.
God, he had good hair. Like shampoo commercial good. Even now, while Mr. DeWitt droned on about tectonic plates in that voice that could put espresso to sleep, Trevor's floppy surfer-boy mop just... glowed. Not fair. Even less fair that he was laughing at something Danielle said. Danielle. Who wore pink everything, including mascara. Who giggled like an anime side character and always smelled like peach shampoo and girl hierarchy.
Rebecca chewed her pencil like it owed her money.
Trevor was supposed to like smart girls. Girls who got B-pluses even when they didn't try. Girls who actually had thoughts beyond lip gloss and TikTok dances.
"...and when the Eurasian Plate collided with the Indian Plate..." came Mr. DeWitt, still bravely teaching to the void.
Rebecca sighed.
This wasn't hell. This was purgatory.
She glanced sideways.
Her little brother, River, sat across the aisle, slouched low in his chair like a cat in a sunbeam. Not asleep. Not doodling. Writing.
Always writing.
She'd peeked once when he wasn't looking. Something about "the world beneath the world, where silence is currency and memory is a burden." He was twelve.
Creepy little genius.
Most of the kids in Room 3B were fourteen, bored, hormonal, and halfway through a math unit that none of them would remember. But River wasn't like the others. Not just younger, but sharper. Moved up two grades after blitzing through a home-schooling streak during what his mother referred to as "that lonely, slightly culty phase."
He didn't talk much. Sat near the window. Wrote constantly. Journals, short stories, ideas for what he called "the final blueprint of human dignity." His handwriting was too neat for his age, too precise. When a teacher asked him a question, usually just to catch him not paying attention, he'd answer it perfectly. Then casually point out the mistake in their phrasing.
Teachers hated that. Not openly, of course. But in the subtle sighs, the sudden pop quizzes, the reluctance to call on him unless absolutely necessary. River didn't care. He wasn't there to impress. He was there to observe.
Ethan, their dad, used to say River was going to be the next Stephen King or the next cult leader. Depending on how puberty went.
Rebecca gave him a look. He didn't notice. Just kept scribbling, his pen carving out thoughts like scalpel blades. There was something eerie about how calm he looked. Like he knew.
Like he was waiting.
A bell rang somewhere, not the final bell, just the between-class bell. Like a throat-clearing before the real performance.
But something was...off.
It didn't sound right.
A delay. A stutter.
Rebecca sat up straight.
And then the fire alarm screamed to life.
Only, it wasn't the usual beep-beep-beep.
It was one long, unbroken wail. The kind that goes through your skin, past your bones, and drills into your soul like something ancient waking up.
Kids started murmuring, eyes darting, uncertain. Teachers poked their heads into hallways, brows furrowed. No one moved at first. Then someone screamed.
Not the alarm. A real scream.
From the west wing.
Then another.
River calmly capped his pen, stood up, and slipped his notebook into his bag.
Rebecca stared at him. "What the hell are you doing?"
He looked at her like she was the odd one. "Getting ready."
"For what?"
He blinked. "The end. Duh."
And then came the sound of glass breaking. Not a window, but a wall of them. Something smashed straight through the western corridor. Heavy footsteps. Shouts turned to shrieks. A girl burst into the room next door, covered in blood. Not hers.
Mr. DeWitt dropped his clipboard.
Outside the window, across the courtyard, the school nurse sprinted past, with someone attached to her arm. Biting.
Someone else ran face-first into a classroom window, cracking it like an egg.
Pandemonium cracked open.
Rebecca stood, grabbed River. "We're leaving. Now."
He didn't resist. Just followed, eerily calm.
"What about Trevor?" he asked as they ducked out into the hallway.
"Trevor can kiss Danielle goodbye."
"I thought you liked him."
"Shut up, River."
Down the hall, kids screamed. A teacher threw a chair. Someone pulled the fire extinguisher and used it as a weapon.
Rebecca's sneakers skidded on tile as she dragged her brother toward the exit, her breath catching when she realized...
...the front doors were already locked.
Outside, the city was burning.
* * *
The fire alarms didn't even work anymore.
No pulsing siren, no blinking lights. Just screams-raw, primal, layered with the metal-tang of blood and smoke. Lockers clanged open as kids shoved their things in and ran without them. Phones were clutched like life preservers. Some were filming. Some were praying. Some were trying to call home, but there was no signal anymore.
At St. Michael's School for the Gifted and the Slightly Overachieving, chaos was currently on the syllabus.
Teachers shouted over each other, herding kids like panicked cattle toward the gym, the designated "muster point" printed in bold on every laminated emergency protocol in every dusty binder in every brittle staff office.
River stood still in the middle of the hallway, his notepad in one hand, pencil resting on the spiral binding like it had more sense than everyone screaming around him.
"They're wrong," he muttered, watching the stampede. "That's the first place that falls."
Rebecca spun around. "What did you just say?"
He pointed with his pencil, casually, as if explaining a math problem. "Big room. Too many exits. Too few people watching the doors. It's a feeding trough, not a safe zone."
"Jesus, River."
"Statistically speaking..."
"Shut up with your statistics! We need to go!"
"I am going," he said, flipping the page. "I just haven't decided where yet."
Rebecca groaned, running a hand through her already chaotic hair, now a crown of stress. Her hoodie, half on, half falling off her shoulder, was streaked with dust. She'd elbowed a Remnant in the throat ten minutes ago with a desk chair. She was done. She was pissed. She was ready.
And the worst part?
Trevor had already run off with Danielle Barbie-Bangs clinging to his arm like she was auditioning for Scream 8: Mall Edition.
Rebecca looked back one more time, jaw clenched.
"Fine. We're not going to the gym. But we need a plan. And you're the genius."
River didn't look up. "I'm writing one."
She yanked the notebook from his hands.
He sighed. "Rude."
"I'll be ruder if we die. Come on. Where's the safest place in the school?"
River tilted his head. "Kitchen. Industrial walk-in chiller. One point of entry. Steel-reinforced. And they probably haven't eaten all the pudding cups yet."
Rebecca blinked. "You know what? Not bad."
He finally smiled. "Told you. I'm always thinking."
Behind them, someone screamed. Glass shattered. A door flew open as a body, half-missing, tumbled into the hallway like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The kids near it scattered, some screaming, some frozen.
And the thing that came behind it?
It wasn't a teacher anymore.
Rebecca didn't wait.
"MOVE!"
She grabbed River's arm, and this time, he ran without protest.
The hallway outside the cafeteria was a battlefield: desks overturned, ceiling tiles hanging by a thread, fluorescent lights flickering with an epileptic stutter. Smoke rolled from the stairwell like some lazy beast rising from slumber, and the sound of screaming had become part of the air, like oxygen, like static.
Rebecca pushed the door open slowly. The cafeteria was darker than it should have been, emergency lights bathing everything in dull red. Tables lay scattered like fallen dominoes. Chairs overturned. Trays, juice boxes, a crayon-colored apocalypse.
They stepped inside.
The galley, the industrial kitchen at the far end, was quiet. Too quiet. That was the first warning.
River held up a hand, his face unreadable. Rebecca froze.
There was a sound, soft, barely audible. Shhh-krrrhh. Shhh-krrrhh.
Metal dragging across tile.
River pulled Rebecca behind a prep counter stacked with unopened milk cartons. She crouched beside him, her heart pounding so loudly she was sure it would echo off the stainless steel.
Then she saw him.
Mr. Dobbins , the school's Chief Cook, although the title was not reflecting his cooking skills, or what was left of him.
He moved like a sleepwalker, slow but deliberate. His bulk still carried the shape of the man he had been: a mountain in an apron, bald pate slick with something that wasn't sweat. His right arm swung low, dragging that monstrous ladle, its bowl blackened, dented, glistening. From what, Rebecca didn't want to know.
His face was slack, one cheek half-melted, as if he'd been left too long under the heat lamp. His mouth hung open, jaw clicking now and then like a misfiring gear. And those eyes-glassy, blind, yet scanning as if chasing heat, memory, scent.
River leaned close. Whispered, "He doesn't see us. Yet."
Rebecca nodded, though she wasn't entirely sure she could move if he did.
River peeked over the counter again, eyes tracing the kitchen layout like a general studying a war map.
"There," he murmured, pointing with his chin. "Behind the slicer. Leads to the walk-in chiller. We can go through, loop around. Avoid him."
"You sure?"
"Nope," River said calmly, pulling his hoodie tight. "But it's the least suicidal option."
Dobbins moved again, slower now. Growling something low under his breath. Maybe he had sensed something , or maybe it was just hunger.
Shhh-krrrhh.
River took Rebecca's hand. "On three. Stay low."
She tightened her grip. "Ready."
"One... two..."
The ladle stopped.
Dobbins turned.
His head tilted.
Sniffed the air.
River didn't wait for three.
He ran.
Rebecca followed.
Behind them, the ladle dropped
and Mr. Dobbins began to growl.
They ran like hell through the galley, River weaving between the rusted prep tables with the instinct of someone who'd rehearsed escape plans in his head for years. Rebecca barreled after him, heart pounding like a war drum.
Behind them, Mr. Dobbins let out a guttural howl that used to be a smoker's cough, but now sounded more like a chainsaw choking on meat.
Rebecca grabbed whatever she could get her hands on-knives, utensils, even a rack of sad, half-baked pizza trays-and hurled them in his path.
"Eat this, you cholesterol-loaded creep!" she yelled, knocking over a tray stand.
He barely flinched.
The monster cook came barreling after them, his apron stained, one eye milky, and his arms swinging like wrecking balls. For a man with the physique of a walking refrigerator, he was fast. Too fast.
Rebecca panted, tossing another rolling pizza tray rack behind her with all her strength.
"What are you, some kind of hidden athlete underneath all that lard?!" she hissed.
River didn't look back. "Stop taunting the zombie chef and just run!"
They skidded into the chiller room corridor, cold air leaking through the industrial door ahead.
Behind them, Mr. Dobbins roared.
Not screamed. Roared.
His bulk thundered with every step, belly jiggling like a haunted flan, apron soaked in blood.
River darted forward, eyes scanning every surface like a human algorithm.
"There!" he hissed. "Chiller! Go!"
Rebecca lobbed a cutlery rack behind her, wheels squealing as it smashed into Dobbins. It barely slowed him. He shoved it aside like a curtain.
River's foot slipped on something wet, he looked down. Soup? Blood? Both? Hard to tell. But that's not what caught his eye.
Above the prep counter, a long steel pipe snaked across the ceiling. It had split at the joint, probably from the heat, or an earlier impact. Gas hissed out in a thin, invisible stream, already fogging the edges of the room. The air shimmered, heavy with threat.
River's eyes widened.
Then narrowed.
He glanced toward the microwave, hanging crooked on its wall mount, its LED screen blinking patiently: 12:00.
He sprinted toward it.
"Rebecca, stall him. I've got an idea."
River skidded to the industrial microwave and yanked the door open. Inside: a forgotten slice of something vaguely pizza-like. He slammed it shut and punched the keypad like a man defusing a bomb.
"River, now is really not the time for leftovers!"
"Not leftovers," he muttered. "Leverage."
He hit START and turned.
The gas pipe, cracked and leaking above the prep table, hissed with the soft menace of a lit fuse. The air itself felt heavier now. Thicker. Like the room had decided to become a bomb.
Microwave: BEEP. 1:00 minute. BEEP. START.
River grabbed her arm. "Chiller room. Now."
They bolted. Behind them, the microwave hummed cheerfully, like a traitor with good intentions.
They yanked open the chiller door, slipped inside, and slammed it shut.
Three seconds later...
BOOOOOOOM.
The kitchen ceased to exist.
Flames whooshed past the metal door. Pots and trays and knives clanged like the percussion section of the apocalypse. The hinges groaned. Then silence.
Inside, the siblings sat shivering, backs to the shelves stacked with frozen chicken nuggets and emergency meatloaf bricks. River exhaled slowly.
"Well," he said, rubbing frost off his sleeve, "he always did say lunch was... explosive."
Rebecca grinned. "You've officially lost microwave privileges."
They tried to laugh. but the screams outside, drifting in after the fire had settled, robbed them of the luxury.
Rebecca pulled River into her arms, held him close, fiercely, like the world could break around them but not them.
"You think Mom's okay? Dad?" she whispered, voice tight.
River didn't answer right away. He just took her hand.
"I don't know, Becca," he said quietly. "I just hope we see them again."
They sat there, in the cold glow of the chiller, surrounded by shattered trays, spilled mustard, and the broken promises of what was supposed to be a normal lunch.
And they held each other.
Because for now, that was all they had.
And somewhere, not far but far enough, a mother and a father were clinging to life.
By wires. By will.
By the thinnest thread of hope