Five

CHAPTER FIVE: THE FIRST MONSTER

The north research facility was already under lockdown when we arrived. Kael had brought a small tactical team, while I carried the access records my father had recovered. The front doors were sealed, and alarms flashed red across the glass.

A scientist stumbled out of a side entrance, blood running down his face.

“Don’t let them open the containment wing!” he shouted. “The subject is changing!”

A crash shook the building. Something slammed against the inside of the laboratory door.

Kael raised his weapon. “Everyone behind me.”

I moved beside him instead. “The emergency controls are on the second floor. If the power fails, the containment doors will unlock.”

“You know that how?”

“I read the facility plans.”

He looked as if he wanted to argue, but another crash silenced him. We entered through the side door and ran up the stairwell. A technician lay unconscious on the landing. I checked his pulse, then kept moving. There was no time to waste.

At the control room, I found the emergency switch and pulled it. The containment doors locked with a heavy metallic bang. The banging from below stopped.

For one second, I thought we had succeeded.

Then the lights died.

The system flashed a warning across my vision.

[CONTAINMENT FAILURE IMMINENT.]

A scream echoed through the corridor. The laboratory door buckled, and a creature forced its way through the gap. Its skin had turned grey, its eyes clouded, and black veins spread across its neck. It moved too quickly for something that should barely have been standing.

One of the soldiers fired. The creature kept coming.

“Head!” I shouted. “Aim for the head!”

Kael fired twice. The creature dropped, twitching against the floor. A second infected burst from the laboratory behind it, and the corridor erupted into chaos.

I grabbed a fire extinguisher and swung it into the creature’s face, buying a soldier enough time to escape its grasp. Kael pulled me back just as the infected lunged again. His arm locked around my waist, and for one startling second I was pressed against his chest.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he snapped.

“I’m trying to keep your men alive!”

“Try doing it from behind cover!”

“Try giving me cover worth using!”

He stared at me as if no one had ever spoken to him like that. Then he shoved a spare magazine into my hand and turned to cover the corridor.

We fought our way toward the service lift. Rowan had secured the lower floor, but the exit route was blocked by overturned equipment. I remembered a maintenance passage behind the storage cabinets. I pulled the nearest cabinet aside, revealing a narrow door.

“This way!”

We squeezed through as the corridor filled with infected. The passage ended at a loading bay where an ambulance waited with its engine running. The driver was missing.

A groan came from beneath the vehicle.

I backed away. The driver crawled out, his uniform soaked with blood. His mouth opened, and a wet growl escaped him.

Kael raised his pistol, but the driver lunged at him before he could fire. They crashed against the ambulance. The infected man bit into Kael’s forearm.

Everything slowed.

Kael struck the creature’s head with the butt of his weapon and threw it aside. Rowan shot it before it could rise. Kael staggered, staring at the blood on his sleeve.

I knew what happened next. The infection would spread through his bloodstream. In the first timeline, he had survived the initial outbreak but died weeks later after a hidden bite became infected.

Not this time.

“Get him into the vehicle!” I shouted.

Kael tried to push me away. “Stay back.”

“Shut up and move!”

Rowan helped him into the ambulance while I searched the facility inventory on my phone. The stabilising compound was stored at Facility B, but the system’s timer had already started.

[PRIMARY TARGET INFECTED.]

[STABILISER REQUIRED WITHIN 90 MINUTES.]

[FAILURE: PRIMARY TARGET DEATH.]

I felt a flash of anger so fierce it steadied me. The system could threaten me all it wanted, but it would not decide who lived without a fight.

I turned to Rowan. “Drive to Facility B. Avoid the underpass and take the industrial service road.”

“That route adds ten minutes.”

“The underpass is already contaminated.”

Kael’s face had gone pale. “How do you know?”

“Because I’m right about the things that matter.”

He looked at me through the pain. “If I turn, don’t let me hurt anyone.”

“You’re not turning.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“I can promise I’ll do everything possible to stop it.”

His fingers caught my wrist. His grip was weaker than before. “Why are you doing this for me?”

Because I had watched him die and hated how much the city had needed him. Because my father deserved a chance to live, and Kael was tied to the truth. Because I refused to let the same tragedy happen twice.

“Because I decide who gets a second chance,” I said.

The ambulance sped into the ruined streets. Behind us, the research facility burned, and the first real monster of the apocalypse had escaped into the city.

Before we left the burning facility, I took photographs of the sample labels and sent them to my father. His reply came back in seconds: the samples had been marked for disposal weeks earlier. Someone had deliberately kept them alive. That was the proof we needed, but it also meant Mara had planned for the outbreak long before anyone admitted it was possible. I copied the evidence twice and hid one copy in my system storage. Whatever happened next, she would not be able to erase everything again.

I also took the facility’s emergency radio. It crackled with a warning from a nearby district: two patients had attacked hospital staff. The first outbreak had started earlier than my memories predicted. I tightened my grip on the radio and understood that every hour I spent doubting myself gave the disaster more room to grow.