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Spence clutched his bleeding neck as he stumbled into the train station platform, boots echoing in the empty space. The bite throbbed with each heartbeat—hot, angry, infected. He had maybe six hours before the virus turned him into one of those things.
Six hours if he was lucky.
The antidote was close. Had to be. He'd hidden it himself, right here in the train car before everything went to hell.
The platform was empty. No zombies shambling around, no sounds except his ragged breathing and the distant groan of settling metal. Spence climbed aboard the train, his free hand fumbling with the overhead compartment where he'd stashed his bag all those hours ago—back when he'd thought he was about to be rich.
The package was exactly where he'd left it. Inside, the metal case gleamed under the emergency lights.
His hands shook as he entered the combination. The locks clicked open.
Rows of vials—blue and green, virus and antidote, nestled in protective foam. Beautiful. Salvation in a syringe.
Spence grabbed one of the green vials, pulling out the injector mechanism. Just one shot. One shot and he'd be—
Roar.
The sound was low. Deep. Wrong.
Spence froze, eyes darting around the train car. Nothing. Empty seats, emergency lights, shadows. Nothing—
Click. Click. Click.
The sound came from above.
He looked up slowly.
The thing on the ceiling had no face. No eyes. Just exposed brain tissue glistening wet and raw, and a mouth that split too wide, too far back. Its tongue—Jesus Christ, its tongue—extended at least three feet, testing the air like a serpent. Corded muscle rippled under skinless flesh as it crawled across the metal ceiling, claws clicking against the surface.
"Oh my God—"
The Licker dropped.
Spence barely had time to scream before it crashed into him, all muscle and teeth and that horrible tongue. The antidote vial shattered against the floor. His scream cut off wetly as jaws closed around his throat—
In the lab, everyone stared at the monitor in horrified silence.
The security feed showed everything. Spence's final moments played out in grainy black-and-white, the Licker's form a twisted mass of violence as it fed.
"Jesus," Matt breathed.
Marcus leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. "Bastard released the virus that killed five hundred people. Getting eaten by his own creation? That's poetic justice."
The others looked at him, then back at the screen. Matt's expression shifted—from horror to something darker. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. That piece of shit should rot in hell."
"Matt—" Alice started.
"No." Matt's voice was hard. "My sister died because of him. Because he wanted a payday. So excuse me if I'm not crying over his corpse."
Alice closed her mouth. She couldn't argue with that.
On the monitor, something was happening to the Licker. Its body convulsed, muscles expanding, bone structure shifting. The exposed brain tissue darkened, calcified—eye sockets forming where there had been only raw flesh.
"What's it doing?" Ryan asked quietly.
The Red Queen's avatar appeared on the screen, young girl's face impassive. "Evolution. The Licker consumes DNA through feeding. Each kill makes it stronger, faster, more dangerous. That specimen was our earliest prototype—unstable but adaptive. Now that it's fed on human tissue..."
The thing on the screen rose to its full height. Taller. More muscular. Eyes—actual eyes—opened for the first time, glowing faintly in the darkness.
"...it's become a Hunter. Functionally perfect predator. Enhanced olfactory capability, pattern recognition, pack instincts—"
The Hunter's head snapped toward the camera. Its nostrils flared.
Then it started moving. Toward them.
"Shit," Kaplan said. "It knows we're here."
"How do we—" J.D. started.
"Run." Marcus pushed off the wall, already heading for the door. "Now."
"Where?" Alice caught up to him in two strides. "There's no way out, we're trapped—"
"Ryan said the air locks seal on a timer, right?" Marcus didn't slow down. "We use that. Lead it into a section, get ourselves out before the locks engage."
"That's insane," Kaplan said, but he was following anyway. "How are we supposed to lure that thing exactly where we want it?"
"We improvise." Marcus held out his hand. "Give me the remote."
Kaplan blinked. "What?"
"The pulse weapon remote. The one that'll fry the Red Queen's mainboard."
"Why would we—"
Marcus took it from Kaplan's hand before he could finish the sentence. The tech barely seemed to register what happened.
"Because the Red Queen's been helpful," Marcus said, "but I don't trust helpful AIs when I'm running for my life. No offense," he added to the nearest camera.
The Red Queen's face appeared on a wall monitor. "I—"
Marcus pressed the button.
The pulse weapon activated somewhere deep in the facility. Every light in the Hive died at once. Screens went dark. The gentle hum of ventilation and electronics—gone. Only emergency lights remained, battery-powered, casting everything in blood-red shadow.
"Jesus Christ," Matt said into the darkness.
"This way." Marcus's voice came from ahead. "I memorized the layout when we came in. Stay close."
They ran.
Through corridors lit only by failing emergency lights. Past laboratories full of broken glass and worse things. The Hunter's roar echoed somewhere behind them—close, then distant, then close again. Marcus led them deeper into the Hive, taking turns that seemed random but weren't, doubling back through sections they'd already cleared.
"It's not catching up," Alice panted, keeping pace beside him.
"No," Marcus agreed. "It's not."
She glanced at him sideways, but didn't ask.
They burst through a final corridor into the main transit station. The train sat waiting, exactly where they'd left it. Behind them, the Hunter's footsteps—impossibly fast, impossibly heavy—boom-boom-boom against metal floors.
"Go!" Marcus shoved them toward the platform. "Move!"
Ryan practically fell down the stairs. Matt and Kaplan right behind him. Alice hesitated at the threshold, looking back—
The Hunter rounded the corner, all muscle and exposed brain and those new eyes fixed on her with predatory intelligence.
"Alice!"
She ran.
Behind her, the air lock groaned—ancient hydraulics engaging, massive steel doors beginning their slow descent from the ceiling. Three feet. Two feet. The Hunter accelerated, claws sparking against metal, tongue lashing—
The lock sealed with a final, definitive CLANG.
On the other side, the Hunter slammed into the barrier. Metal shrieked. Claws scraped. But the door held.
Everyone stood on the platform, breathing hard, staring at the sealed passage.
"Holy shit," J.D. said. "That actually worked."
Marcus walked past them toward the train, expression neutral. "Told you it would. Come on. We still need that antidote."
Behind the sealed door, the Hunter's roars faded to muffled thuds.
That went smoother than expected, Marcus thought as he descended the platform stairs. The group followed without question—just like they'd been doing since he'd first met them in the Hive's upper levels.
They didn't know he'd been holding the Hunter back the entire chase. Telekinesis was useful that way—invisible, untraceable, easy to disguise as luck or coincidence. Just enough pressure to keep the creature from closing the distance, making it look like their speed and timing had saved them.
But that wasn't all he'd been doing.
The mental influence had started the moment the mercenary team found him in Restaurant Two. Just a whisper of suggestion in their minds, a gentle push toward trust rather than suspicion. Nothing strong enough to override their personalities or steal their free will—he wasn't that kind of monster. Just... smoothing the edges. Making them a little more receptive to his ideas. A little less likely to question.
That's why they'd handcuffed him instead of zip-tying and subduing him properly. Why Alice had listened to his theories without much pushback. Why none of them had seriously questioned how a civilian security analyst seemed so calm and competent in a zombie outbreak. Why they'd followed him into the dark without hesitation when any rational person would have demanded a better plan.
It was practical. Necessary. Their natural caution would have gotten them all killed—would have gotten him killed. A little unconscious cooperation was a small price to pay for survival.
Marcus didn't feel particularly guilty about it.
He felt alive.
They found Spence on the platform below.
Or what was left of him. The Licker had torn him apart, but the virus worked fast. He'd reanimated—a shambling mess of torn flesh and broken bones, barely humanoid, reaching weakly toward the light.
Marcus picked up a section of pipe from the ground, walked over, and brought it down on Spence's skull with a wet crack. The zombie collapsed.
"Sleep tight, asshole," Marcus muttered, shoving the body off the platform onto the tracks below.
No one commented.
The metal case had survived the attack. Marcus retrieved it from the train car, bringing it down to the platform where Ryan, J.D., and Kaplan waited with desperate hope in their eyes.
Green vials. Six of them intact.
"Finally," Ryan breathed. His hands were shaking so badly that J.D. had to help him load the injector. The antidote went in smooth, and he gasped as it hit his bloodstream—cool relief flooding through infection-hot veins.
J.D. went next. Then Kaplan. All three of them slumped against the wall, alive and clean for the first time in hours.
Matt was already in the train cab, figuring out the controls. "Everyone on board! This thing's ready to go!"
Alice stood at the edge of the platform, looking down at Spence's crumpled form on the tracks. Her expression was complicated—grief, anger, regret, all tangled together.
She pulled off her ring. Simple gold band, fake as the marriage it represented. Umbrella had set them up as a married couple for their cover identities. Convenient fiction. She'd worn it so long she'd stopped noticing the weight.
"I don't know who you really were," she said quietly to the corpse. "But whoever he was? He's gone."
The ring glinted as it fell, landing somewhere in the shadows near Spence's body.
"Alice." Marcus stood in the train doorway, watching her. "Time to go."
She turned away from the dead man and climbed aboard.
The train hummed to life, lights flickering on inside the car. Matt got the engine engaged, and with a lurch they started moving. Slowly at first, then faster.
The wheels rolled over Spence's body with a wet crunch. One eyeball—somehow intact—stuck to the undercarriage, carried along for the ride up toward the surface.
Inside the car, Ryan and J.D. sat together, heads leaned against each other, exhausted but alive. Kaplan slumped in his seat, eyes closed, finally allowing himself to relax. Matt kept his hands on the controls, guiding them home.
Alice sat down across from Marcus, arms folded over her chest. She was shivering—shock or cold or both.
Without a word, Marcus shrugged off his jacket and handed it over.
She looked at it for a moment. Then at him. Something unspoken passed between them—acknowledgment of survival, maybe, or shared trauma. Whatever it was, she took the jacket and pulled it on.
The train picked up speed, climbing toward daylight.
Behind them, sealed in the dark, the Hunter threw itself against the air locks over and over. The metal held.
For now.
End of Chapter 48