FAZER LOGINInside the apartment, Carter strained his eyes through the peephole, his face ashen from pure horror. He saw the damp mask, the violent shivers, and the wild, frantic panic in her eyes. Convinced she had been exposed to the lethal spores out in the red fog, he shook his head vigorously and shouted through the barrier. "I’m not opening it, Ann! You went out there! If you’ve got the Rot, you’re bringing spores inside with you!""Open the goddamn door, Carter!" Ann shouted, her voice breaking as she coughed into her elbow, her fists hammering against the reinforced wood until her knuckles went numb. "This is my home! I haven’t contracted the disease; I was wearing a mask. Let me into my house!""The mask is useless, Ann! I’m not dying because of your careless actions!" Carter cried, from the safety of the hallway.A wave of panic shot through her body, stopping her heart even faster than the cold of the winter air. But through the haze of her desperation, memories flickered to life. Dr
Outside, Ann gasped, reaching up to adjust her mask in shock as Madison's voice began speaking again in her deadly cold cadence. Ice ran down her spine in terror as she gazed up at the reinforced observation turret and saw the owner. "M-Madison?" Ann stuttered, her voice quavering in terror as she retreated into the slush. "Please… Madison, open the gates! I can be a nurse; I can help.""Help?" Madison's laughter cut over the connection with venomous cruelty. "You were always so adept at stealing, Ann. Stealing things that weren't yours… but out here? In the real world? You don't have your stolen home to hide in. You have nothing." "Madison, please!" Ann cried, her breaths coming out in ragged sobs that filled the fabric of her mask as she clutched at her chest, the bitter wind biting through her coat. "I'm freezing! I need some air to breathe! Please just let me in!""Let you in?" Madison laughed coldly. "And squander my precious filtered air on a thief who would steal things withi
Her eyes widened.Sprawled across the blood-spattered snow right outside the heavily guarded decontamination airlock were the twitching, convulsing bodies of some people. Unknown to her, they are the scavengers who had come to steal and kill.One of them was violently thrashing in the mud, doubling over in a gut-wrenching spasm before coughing up a thick, unmistakable spray of black-tinged blood onto the pristine white frost, the terrifying, instantaneous calling card of the Ash Rot consuming his unprotected lungs. Ann clamped a gloved hand over her masked mouth, her eyes widening in absolute, paralyzing terror as she realized just how close death was to the sanctuary's walls.She had seen deaths many times; after all, she is a nurse, but this was different.The high-altitude ridge seemed to be a territory where the air turned into an aggressive predator. The bitter, minus-temperature gale blew the crimson fog into violent vortexes battering the reinforced titanium gates of Madison’
The frost on the inside of the living room window pane had turned into a thick, opaque, fern-like pattern, locking in the pale, diseased light of the dead winter day in the tight, frigid home. With each breath, billowing clouds of steam appeared in the air.Ann slammed the pantry door shut with an echo of a dull, hollow bang, which made a few empty ceramic mugs that hung on the kitchen counter rattle. She spun around quickly and faced Carter, who was sitting casually on the dilapidated, springs-ragged sofa, tossing a small metal bolt between his hands along with faint crackling sounds of a battery-operated radio whose time had long run out."Are you even listening to me, Carter?" Ann snapped, her voice cutting through glass sharpness, full of the frustration of weeks-long effort to hold on to her crumbling life. "We have absolutely nothing in this house now. We are out of any food supplies, Carter…” she glared at him as she continued to speak, "...out of everything. There is no can of
They didn't have to wait long to find out.Moving side by side through the reinforced corridors of the lower transition levels, Madison and Spencer stepped out of the central lift just as the shrill screams of diamond-grit teeth ripping through three-inch titanium-enforced alloy filled the maintenance shafts, echoing around them like the death throes of a wounded giant entombed beneath the ice. A violent shower of blinding, white-hot sparks flared across the external sensor feeds visible on the corridor monitors, hissing against the frozen frost of the high-altitude ridge. Up inside the reinforced command center, Madison did not even flinch. She leaned back against the master console slowly, her body unyielding, staring calmly at the thermal imaging screen with the steely determination of someone who was certain of her own strength. This place had not been thrown together from scraps and tins when the Ash Rot started descending upon the lowlands; this was an advanced quarantine fac
The red emergency strobes blinked in sync with the steel bulkheads of the command center, turning the entire room into a blur of rhythmic crimson sweeps. The air grew instantly heavy with the acrid, biting scent of overloaded electrical circuits, scorched plastic housing, and burning copper insulation."Seventy-four percent system integrity," Clara’s voice pounded through the comms network from the administrative hub as she frantically worked to track down the source of the mysterious drainage. "Main grid logic gates are locking themselves out. Someone has managed to tunnel right through to our intranet from an external terminal or bypassed the physical connections on Sub-Level Three."Madison wasted no time. Any memory of the intimate warmth of the previous minute disappeared without a trace, leaving only the merciless, tactical mind of a professional soldier whose stronghold was under attack."Isolate Sub-Level Three immediately," Madison commanded, her voice cutting through the scr







