Edward sat crumpled on the edge of his bed, hoodie sleeves rolled up in fists. He hadn't glanced at his phone since. He didn't want to. Sam's final text continued to burn his skin with heat.
Ed. Lights. Not right. Hungry.
The silence in the house had changed. It was no longer emptiness—it was tension. Something was uncoiling, pressing in at the periphery of things. The tape across the windows made shadows in the rooms, scattering light into a thin wash. All the sounds—breathing, the gentle hum of the refrigerator, the creak of the baseboard heater—were too loud.
He stood up, driven by impulse. He needed to do something.
The official warning continued to quietly blink on his phone display, amber-glowing in the corner:
Stay at home. Avoid all unnecessary travel.
It didn't have lockdown. Officially. But that's what it was. The words were diplomatically phrased enough not to cause panic. Just vaguely enough to shift the responsibility onto the individual. It was like all that early pandemic terminology again—except nobody was posting about it. No arguments. No debates. Just silence.
And fear.
He headed into the kitchen, opened one cabinet, closed it. Opened another. He wasn't hungry. He just needed to do something. His eyes wandered to the back door.
The blackout curtain had started to droop at the corner. He'd taped it there the night before out of desperation. Now, he'd reinforced it with thumbtacks, driving them through the heavy fabric into the wood. Paranoid? Maybe. But one strip of tape was already coming loose. That was enough.
He peeked through a gap between the glass and the curtain.
The sidewalk was well and truly vacated—but not deserted. A jogger moved along the path, headphones in, head down, oblivious. Further up, someone in a hoodie stood beside a car window, handing something that looked like food. The trash truck hadn't passed through, but some residents had evidently not heard—or did not care about—the call to remain indoors.
It felt wrong. The kind of surreal where the world was about to split in half, but just hadn't yet.
He let the curtain fall back behind the door.
The room felt as though it contained less air. He needed to get out. Or at least prepare himself.
He opened the linen closet in the hall. Pulled out the cloth face mask he'd kept from the pandemic—dusty, but clean. Then the sunglasses. A little scratched, but fine. Sam had mentioned the word light. About it being wrong. She'd said it twice.
From the home tool drawer, he grabbed a pair of heavy gardening gloves. Never used. He slipped them on, curled his fingers. The rubber coating cracked softly.
Finally, the jacket—the old university wax jacket. Thick, water-stained, comforting to put on. Like a shield. Not that it was any kind of real protection, most likely, but it would make him feel less exposed.
He caught a reflection of himself in the hallway mirror. Hoodie, glasses, mask, gloves, jacket. He looked ridiculous.
Like someone making it up as they went along—dressing up for some end-of-the-world roleplay.
But somehow, it worked. That illusion of control.
He dug around in his rucksack—added a flashlight, two water bottles, a packet of paracetamol, a power bar. Duct tape. A scarf. Just in case. Everything now was just in case.
The silence descended again.
He set the bag next to the door and kicked his computer to life. Hours ticked by, and the same warning page repeated—press releases and health bulletins. The news hadn't changed. Still, the government health talking head parroted the same memorized phrases about "a respiratory illness of unknown etiology" and "out of an abundance of caution." Memorized. Insubstantial.
He flipped through channel after channel. No real news. No hospital footage. No maps. Just generalities and warmed-over headlines.
With a snort of contempt, he opened YouTube. "Well," he muttered, "if there's one place to find objective, peer-reviewed epidemiological information, it's in the comments section of a conspiracy video."
He typed: new virus symptoms 2025.
A mess of thumbnails. Some too easy to dismiss—drones filming empty hospitals, indistinguishable figures in doorways. But not this one. No caption. Just a timestamp and a desaturated still of a hooded figure, addressing the camera.
He clicked it.
The figure looked pale. Tired. But calm.
"This isn't airborne the way they're telling you," the man said. "Not exactly. It's photoreactive. That's what people started noticing first. It lives dormant—but the light activates it. UV spectrum."
Edward leaned forward. The video was jumpy, clearly filmed late at night, low-res, and off-grid. The man kept glancing over his shoulder.
"They're saying it's just fatigue and confusion. But what I've seen—what people are doing—"
Before it disappeared, Edward scrolled down to the comments.
bluelight_bite91: "No. The light doesn't cause it. They don't like the light. It burns them or something. My neighbor won't get near a window now."halfburned: "This is totally fabricated. But also, my brother hasn't left his flat for three days. Told me the light 'hummed.' What does that even mean?"SickOfTheSilence: "They took down the last one of his vids too. Check archive links. THEY don't want this out."johnnymidnight44: "UV is the trigger. Just look at who's outside in full sun and not blinking. They're not right."
Then the screen flickered.
This video has been removed for violating YouTube's terms of service.
The comment section blinked out with it. Page gone.
Edward sat frozen.
Some said the light caused it. Others said the ill were afraid of the light. None of it made sense—but all of it was heading in the same direction.
Something wasn't right.
He went back to the kitchen window again, the curtain still low from before. He opened it another inch.
The sun had moved its course—clouded, but present. He stood with his eyes on the pale light, tracing the sharp, slashing lines along the road.
He reached out, touched the glass, felt the cold of it against the glove.
Not yet. Soon.
Tonight.
If the light was dangerous, then he would labor in darkness.