Day 7.
The Factory Floor.
Sauget, Illinois.
09:00 Hours.
The fire was out, but the smell stuck to the back of my throat like warm grease.
It didn't smell like victory. It smelled like a barbecue in a dumpster. Forty human beings—infected, mutated, and napalmed—had been reduced to a fused, blackened mound of slag in the center of the factory floor.
We weren't celebrating. We were scavenging the fucking leftovers.
"The concrete mix is shit," Boyd spat, kicking the industrial mixer we'd dragged in from the yard. He looked grey, his Technomancer eyes twitching as he avoided looking at the corpse pile. "We used all the aggregate on the perimeter wall. The skylight reinforcements won't hold with just sand and cement. One Runner lands on that glass, and it shatters."
"We have aggregate," I said.
I pointed to the pile of charcoal bodies.
"Jack," Paige choked out. She was leaning on a shovel, her face streaked with soot and dried tear tracks. "You can't be serious. That's... those were people."
"They were people yesterday," I said, my voice flat. "Today, they're calcium and carbon. Carbon binds with the cement. Makes it harder than limestone."
I walked over to the pile. The heat was still radiating off it, singing the hair on my arms. I reached out and grabbed a femur sticking out of a fused torso. The meat was cooked black, clinging to the bone like jerky.
I swung it against the steel support pillar.
CRACK.
It shattered into jagged, sharp shards. Inside, the marrow was boiled dry.
"Bone meal," I said. "The Great Wall of China is packed with dead laborers. The Catacombs in Paris hold up the city. We don't waste resources. Not here."
`[ADMINISTRATOR: RESOURCE IDENTIFIED. CALCIUM AGGREGATE. STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY +15%.]`
`[ROOT: YES. GRIND THEM. TASTE THE DUST. BUILD YOUR CASTLE ON THEIR BONES.]`
"We need a crusher," Boyd whispered, looking like he was about to vomit. "The mixer can't handle whole skeletons."
"We have a crusher," I said.
I looked toward the infirmary door.
Travis stood there.
He had walked out of the Lung under his own power, but he wasn't the gym-bro who drove the truck on Day 1. He was a monster. His skin was pulled tight over muscles that seemed carved from granite, veins pulsing with a dull, steady orange light. He wasn't shivering anymore. He was vibrating with potential violence.
He walked over to the pile. He didn't say a word. He didn't look at Paige.
He reached into the pile and ripped a charred torso free. The sound of the cooked flesh tearing was wet and sticky.
He held the ribcage between his massive hands.
CRUNCH.
It wasn't a clean snap. It was a wet, grinding implosion. Ribs shattered. The spine disintegrated. Travis ground the remains between his palms until it was nothing but coarse, black powder and bone chips raining onto the floor.
"Bucket," Travis grunted. His voice sounded like rocks tumbling in a dryer.
Boyd scrambled to get a five-gallon plastic bucket.
Travis filled it. Skull by skull. Rib by rib. He moved with the repetitive, tireless rhythm of a hydraulic press.
A fine grey dust began to fill the air. I tasted it. It coated my tongue.
Burnt pork.
Paige turned away, dropped to her knees, and heaved. Bile splattered the concrete.
"Pour it," I ordered Boyd, ignoring her retching. "Mix it. We seal the skylights by noon."
11:45 Hours.
The work was a nightmare. The air was thick with human dust. We mixed the bone meal into the slurry, pouring the thick, black-grey concrete into the forms Boyd had welded over the shattered skylights.
The factory was becoming a tomb. A secure tomb.
Then, the world split open.
It wasn't a sound. It was a drill bit boring directly into my brain stem.
It started low, vibrating the fillings in my teeth, then spiked into a high-pitched keen that felt like a hot needle piercing my eardrum.
"FUCK!" Ronnie screamed. He dropped his welding torch and fell to the floor, clawing at his ears. "MY HEAD! GET IT OUT!"
I dropped my shovel. The floor tilted. My vision blurred, the Decay Sight glitching violently into static. I felt a warm wetness on my upper lip. Blood.
`[MENTAL ASSAULT DETECTED.]`
`[SOURCE: SONIC VARIANT.]`
`[SANITY DRAIN: 5% PER SECOND.]`
"Cover your ears!" I roared, but I couldn't hear my own voice. The pressure inside my skull was building. Pop. Pop. Capillaries in my nose burst.
"It's inside!" Yana shrieked. She was on her knees, blood streaming from her ears, her eyes rolled back. "Jack, it's eating my thoughts!"
I forced my eyes open. I scanned the factory floor through the red haze of pain.
The North Gate. The small personnel door we had left cracked for ventilation.
A figure was standing there.
It was a woman. Or it had been. She was wearing a dirty white dress that looked like a hospital gown, stained with symbols painted in black bile. An eye weeping tears.
But it was her throat that stopped my heart.
Her neck was swollen, distended to the width of her shoulders like a bullfrog. The skin was translucent, stretched so thin I could see the fluid pumping inside, pulsing with a bioluminescent violet light.
She opened her mouth.
SNAP.
Her jaw unhinged completely, the ligaments tearing, the mandible hanging loose against her chest like a broken hinge.
The sound wasn't coming from her mouth. It was coming from the sacks on her neck, vibrating like the wings of a giant insect.
The Howler.
A Tier 3 precursor. This shouldn't exist yet. Not on Day 7.
`[THREAT: HOWLER (ARTIFICIALLY INDUCED).]`
`[FACTION SIGNATURE DETECTED: THE REBORN.]`
She wasn't a random spawn. The symbols on her gown... Zealots. They had done this to her. They had cut her open, implanted the mutation, and sent her in as a probe.
The scream intensified.
Glass in the overhead office shattered, raining down on us. Boyd collapsed, seizing, pink foam bubbling at his lips.
I tried to raise the Fang, but my hands were useless spasms. My equilibrium was gone. The maggots in my vision multiplied, swarming over my eyes, eating the world. I fell to one knee, vomiting breakfast.
"Travis!" I screamed, but it came out as a wet gargle.
The big man was the only one standing.
He was stumbling, shaking his head like a bear stung by a thousand bees. The orange glow in his veins flared blindingly bright, fighting the violet sonic waves.
`[TANK CLASS PASSIVE: PAIN DAMPENING.]`
`[RESISTANCE: 60%.]`
He looked at the woman. He didn't cover his ears. He roared—a guttural, physical sound that cut through the sonic lance.
He charged.
The Howler saw him. She shifted the pitch. The violet light in her throat flared white-hot. She directed the scream straight at him.
The concrete floor beneath Travis cracked from the sonic pressure. His nose burst, spraying blood down his chest. His eyes rolled back in his head.
But he didn't stop.
He was a train with the brakes cut. He plowed through the sound wave, his skin rippling from the force.
Five meters. Two meters.
He reached her.
He didn't punch. He grabbed her throat—both massive hands wrapping around the glowing, pulsing sacks.
The sound cut out instantly, replaced by a wet, gurgling choke.
Travis lifted her off the ground. She thrashed, clawing at his arms, her legs kicking air.
"Shut. Up," Travis grunted.
He squeezed.
POP.
It wasn't a bone snap. It was the sound of a pressurized balloon exploding. The sacks burst. Violet fluid sprayed across Travis's face and chest, sizzling where it touched his skin like acid. Her neck collapsed inward, pulp and cartilage grinding together.
The woman went limp.
Travis dropped her. He stood there, swaying, blood pouring from his ears and nose, mixing with the glowing violet ichor on his chest.
The silence that followed was deafening.
I scrambled up, wiping the vomit from my chin. My balance returned slowly. I walked over to the corpse.
The symbols on her gown were clear now. The Reborn.
"Zealots," I spat, wiping blood from my eye. "They're weaponizing the infected. Stitching them together."
I kicked the body over. The mutation was crude. Surgical staples ran down the side of her neck. They had forced the evolution before the virus was ready.
"Burn it," Helen rasped, stumbling over. She looked terrified, clutching her bleeding ears. "Jack, that... that sound. It made me want to tear my own eyes out."
"It's a frequency," I said. "Induces psychosis. If she'd held it for another minute, we'd be killing each other."
I looked at Travis. He was wiping the violet slime from his face, looking at the dead woman with zero emotion.
"You okay, big man?"
"Loud," Travis said. He kicked the corpse. "Weak bones."
I looked at the pile of bone meal concrete we had just mixed. Then at the Howler corpse.
"Throw her in the crusher," I said.
"Jack..." Paige started, her voice thin and trembling.
"She's a message," I said. "And we're going to send one back. We're going to build our walls out of their monsters."
Travis grabbed the corpse by the leg. He dragged her toward the mixer. Her head bounced on the concrete, leaving a smear of violet slime and black bile.
I looked at the map on my HUD. The Red Faction was gone, burned on the highway. But now, a new ping had appeared to the South. A faint, violet pulse.
The Reborn.
"Day 7," I whispered. "And the crazy people just showed up."
`[THREAT NEUTRALIZED: HOWLER PRECURSOR.]`
`[NEW BLUEPRINT: SONIC DAMPENING EARPLUGS.]`
`[BIOMASS HARVESTED: 60KG.]`
"Back to work," I yelled, my voice cracking. "We have a skylight to seal."
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 7
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) ████░░░░░░ 4/10 Nodes
DEFENSE: SKYLIGHTS SEALED (BONE CONCRETE)
New Threat: The Reborn (Cultists)
Asset: Tank Class (Combat Tested)
Morale: CRITICAL (Psychological Trauma)