The skies over Colombia churned with the weight of an unnatural stillness. The sun, dimmed behind a thick veil of dark clouds, cast a sickly hue across the abandoned border town below. Roads that once buzzed with life now stretched empty, cracked, silent, and overgrown in places with invasive roots. Cars were abandoned mid-escape, doors ajar, belongings scattered like remnants of a forgotten war.
An eerie haze lingered in the air. Faint, almost invisible but poisonous in silence. Like the breath of something ancient and rotting.
The Division-7 hovercraft hissed quietly as it descended near the town's perimeter. It didn't touch ground, protocol forbade it. Instead, a magnetic ramp extended mid-air with a low hum.
Dævd stepped out first, his black tactical mask filtering the air with soft rhythmic pulses. His coat fluttered lightly as he surveyed the empty streets ahead, sword sheathed across his back.
Kade followed next, masked as well, eyes scanning every rooftop and shadow with practiced suspicion. His hand hovered near his gauntlet. The silence didn't sit right with him. It never did.
Jules was last to disembark, his own mask glowing faintly at the seams as he landed with a lighter step. "So this is the 'Black Zone,' huh?" he muttered, adjusting his gear. "Lovely vacation spot. Really gives you that end-of-the-world charm."
Kade grunted. "Focus. We're not here to crack jokes."
"I can do both," Jules said, but his voice was tighter now. The air felt wrong even with filters. Too cold. Too quiet.
Rena's voice buzzed in through their earpieces.
"You're on-site. Bio-signs are faint but fluctuating. Approach with caution. Confirm the contamination source if possible. Retrieval is secondary—survival is primary. Keep comms open."
"Copy," Dævd replied, his voice calm.
They advanced, boots crunching against gravel and debris. With each step deeper into the town, the air thickened. The haze became denser in the distance, like a looming wall of poison. Storefronts were shattered, windows cracked. Corpses were nowhere to be seen, but signs of something unnatural lingered in claw marks, melted concrete, and strange, oily smears leading into alleyways.
Jules slowed as they passed a convenience store. The security camera was still twitching, panning back and forth despite the power being long gone.
"No birds. No animals," he murmured. "Even the rats knew to run."
Then they heard it, distant, distorted… a sound like coughing mixed with dragging feet.
The infected were near.
Dævd raised a hand and the trio halted.
From the edge of a street corner, a hunched figure emerged, skin discolored, eyes glowing faintly with a sickly hue. Its breath came out in visible black wisps. Then another. And another. Shuffling. Moaning. Their bodies sluggish but not lifeless.
"Contaminated civilians," Kade muttered, anger under his breath. "If we breathe that in, we're done."
"No mistakes," Dævd warned. "Keep moving. We find the source, stop the spread. No hero plays."
Jules cracked his knuckles. "Then let's hope whoever's behind this is still around."
The trio moved like ghosts between buildings, keeping low as the infected wandered aimlessly in the distance. Their movements were clumsy, shambling, but there was something unnerving in their stillness, like they were waiting for a signal.
"Eyes up," Kade said quietly, spotting a cluster of them swaying near an overturned police van. "Don't fire unless you have to. Sound draws them."
Jules flicked a small green light from the back of his glove. "What's worse than zombies?" he whispered.
"Zombies with purpose," Dævd replied, narrowing his eyes. "Something's guiding this."
The haze thickened as they neared the central district, turning the once-picturesque town into a toxic ruin. Cracks glowed faintly along the street, like veins pulsing with tainted energy beneath the surface.
And then they saw it.
Half-buried in a collapsed building stood a mangled transmitter tower, blackened and warped its base fused with alien technology. Dark veins ran from its core into the concrete, pulsing slowly. At its heart was a Terrakai shard, faintly glowing, a piece of tech far too dangerous to be left in human hands.
Jules' eyes widened behind his mask. "That's not Earth-made."
"No," Dævd said grimly. "It's not."
A low tremor rippled beneath them. The sound of cracking asphalt echoed.
Then a voice, raspy, distorted, rang out from the shadows.
"You smell like light. I hate it."
From the haze emerged the monstrosity.
Once human, now mutated beyond recognition. It's arms had grown disproportionately large, veins coursing with black energy. It's skin shimmered with patches of metallic corrosion, pulsing and unstable. It's eyes, or what was left of them, burned with a sick green light. Fumes hissed from it's cracked jaw like steam from a pressure valve.
"You… you're them," it growled. "The ones they sent… to kill me."
Dævd stepped forward, firm. "We're here to stop this spread. Whatever happened to you, we can help you."
The monster snarled, unhinging its jaw wider than humanly possible. A low hum built in it's chest, growing louder by the second.
Kade's sensors lit up red. "Incoming energy spike!"
Too late.
It let loose a dark-matter blast from it's mouth, a spiraling beam of nothingness that turned a building to ash in seconds.
Jules tackled Kade aside as Dævd vanished in a blink, reappearing a rooftop.
"Spread out!" Dævd shouted. "It absorbs energy, don't power him up!"
As the monster charged, the ground beneath him cracked. It's body was a reactor of pure instability, limbs spasming between rage and agony. All around it, the infected began to stir more violently, drawn to it's rage like moths to fire.
The dark-matter beam faded into silence, leaving only a burnt trench carved through concrete and steel.
Dævd landed before the hulking figure, Lucent Grave humming quietly at his side, not raised. His eyes scanned the creature, twitching, unstable, half-man, half-monstrosity. A crude respirator mask struggled to contain the smog curling from its body.
It let out a guttural snarl like a chorus of screams in one throat and began to mutate further, ribcage expanding, spine erupting with jagged protrusions that glowed faintly with an eerie, violet hue.
"Whatever this thing is…" Jules muttered, "it's not natural. It's like it's feeding off the environment."
"No…" Dævd said softly. "It's feeding off everything. Light, heat, movement… even pain."
The creature lunged.
The shockwave flattened a nearby structure as Dævd vanished from sight, reappearing behind it in a flash of static lightning. He struck, not with a killing blow, but with the hilt of Lucent Grave. The monster staggered but recovered instantly, jaw unhinging unnaturally.
A pulse of black-matter vomited from its mouth, raw oblivion tearing through the road like paper. Dævd rolled, barely dodging, his mask shield flickering as the corrosive mist grazed him.
From the rooftops, Kade fired a charged plasma shot.
Direct hit.
The creature absorbed it.
Then grew.
"No way," Kade hissed, watching the pulse readings spiral. "He… he consumes energy."