Morning sunlight poured through the blinds of Reyan's apartment, painting stripes of gold and shadow across the hardwood floor. Beyond the window, Niraya hummed with its usual morning chaos—the distant blare of auto-rickshaw horns, the metallic screech of the metro pulling into the elevated station three blocks away, the rhythmic chanting from the temple that echoed across the Vaishali district every sunrise. Ordinary sounds. Almost comforting.
But something felt wrong today, like a held breath before a scream. The air itself seemed thinner, colder, despite the warmth bleeding through the glass.
Reyan stood in the kitchen, hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee, inhaling the bitter comfort. His eyes drifted to the refrigerator door, covered in a gallery of crayon drawings held up by alphabet magnets. Stick figures holding hands under a triangular sun. A purple dog that might have been a horse. Each scribbled smile was a promise he'd made without words—a silent contract written in marker and hope.
"Papa…"
The small voice came from the bedroom doorway. His daughter stood there in her pyjamas, one hand clutching her stuffed rabbit by the ear, the other rubbing sleep from her eyes.
Reyan set down his mug and crouched to her level, opening his arms. She shuffled forward and buried her face in his shoulder. "Don't be late today," she whispered against his shirt. "You promised."
"I won't," he said, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. Her hair smelled like the strawberry shampoo his wife bought in bulk from the market near the old clock tower. "But you have to promise me something too."
She pulled back, looking up at him with wide, trusting eyes. "What?"
"Eat your breakfast. Every bite of that toast. Deal?"
She wrinkled her nose. "Even the crusts?"
"Especially the crusts. That's where all the superpowers are."
She giggled, and the sound loosened something in his chest. For a moment, the strange unease faded.
His wife emerged from the kitchen, drying her hands on a dish towel. Priya. Her name meant "beloved" in Sanskrit, and every time he looked at her, he understood why his parents had chosen it for her at the wedding. But now her eyes searched his face with the kind of worry that came from seven years of marriage—the kind that knew when something was off, even when he tried to hide it.
"Reyan," she said quietly, moving closer. "Please don't overdo it today. And if anything feels wrong—anything at all—you call me immediately."
He nodded, feeling the knot in his stomach tighten. "I'll be careful."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
She didn't look convinced, but she let it go, turning to guide their daughter toward the kitchen table. Reyan lingered in the doorway, committing the moment to memory: Priya pouring orange juice, their daughter swinging her legs from the chair, morning light turning everything soft and golden. The fragile warmth of his life, concentrated in one small room.
He grabbed the bag of pastries from the counter—cinnamon rolls and croissants from the bakery three blocks over—and headed for the door.
"Papa!" his daughter called. "Will you come back soon? Really, really soon?"
Reyan turned, one hand on the doorknob. "Before you even miss me," he said, forcing a smile that felt more like armor than reassurance. "I promise."
The streets of Niraya carried their usual morning perfume: exhaust fumes mixed with freshly baked bread from corner bakeries, the metallic tang of construction dust from the new metro line extension, and the faint sweetness of jasmine from the flower vendor's cart stationed beneath the bronze statue of some forgotten independence hero. Reyan walked with his hands in his pockets, the bag of pastries swinging from his wrist, passing the familiar landmarks—the paan shop with its red-stained sidewalk, the electronics store with its wall of flickering televisions, the chai stall where old men argued about cricket scores.
The bakery was a hole-in-the-wall operation run by a man named Arjun, who'd been making the best cinnamon rolls in Niraya's Vaishali district for thirty years. When Reyan pushed through the door, a bell chimed overhead, and the warm scent of yeast and sugar enveloped him like a hug.
"Morning, Reyan!" Arjun called from behind the counter, wiping flour from his hands onto his apron. "The usual?"
"Yes, and a few extras today," Reyan said, approaching the glass display case. "Taking them to the office. Figured I'd brighten everyone's morning."
Arjun grinned as he began boxing up the order. "Lucky them. You've got good taste, my friend." He leaned in conspiratorially, lowering his voice. "Between you and me, I always steal one of those cinnamon rolls when you're not looking."
Reyan laughed—a real laugh this time, not the forced ones he'd been producing all morning. "I won't tell. But save one for me next time, yeah?"
"Deal." Arjun handed over the bag, heavier now with the weight of fresh pastries. "Stay safe out there, Reyan. You never know what the day might bring."
The words hung in the air longer than they should have. Reyan nodded, paid, and stepped back into the street; the bag balanced in one hand. Every person he passed, every sound of the city—car engines, phone conversations, a distant siren wailing from the direction of the eastern industrial district—seemed sharper today, more immediate, though he couldn't explain why.
By the time he reached the office building in the business district near the river, the unease had settled back into his bones like an old injury before rain.
The office smelled like stale coffee, instant noodles, and the lingering ghost of someone's microwaved lunch from yesterday. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in a sterile white glow. Reyan pushed through the door to find Samir and Taj already at their desks, surrounded by empty noodle cups and crumpled energy drink cans.
"Man, I swear these noodles are my only friends," Samir groaned, stabbing at the remnants of his breakfast with a plastic fork. He was the stockier of the two, with a perpetual five o'clock shadow and a habit of making terrible jokes at the worst possible times.
Taj snorted, not looking up from his phone. Tall, lanky, with glasses that were always slightly crooked, he had the kind of sarcastic delivery that made everything sound like a setup for a punchline. "Your friends taste like cardboard and regret."
"Better than your personality."
"At least I have one."
"Says the guy who cried during that car commercial last week."
"It was emotional! The dad bought his son the toy car he always wanted!"
"It was a Hyundai ad, Taj. You cried during a Hyundai ad."
Reyan set the bag of pastries on the break room counter and cleared his throat. Both men looked up.
"Morning, boss," Taj said, raising an energy drink in mock salute. "You look like hell. Did you sleep in your clothes or is that just your face?"
"Thanks," Reyan muttered. "Real morale booster."
Samir pushed away from his desk, rolling his chair closer. "Seriously though, you good? You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The 'I'm about to climb the walls' look. The 'I haven't slept in three days and I'm seeing sounds' look. Take your pick."
"I can see sounds," Taj said thoughtfully. "They're purple."
"You need help."
"I need coffee. And therapy. But mostly coffee."
Reyan ran a hand over the back of his neck. "I'm fine. Just… going to work in my cabin for a bit. Need some quiet."
Taj raised an eyebrow. "Quiet? In this office? Good luck. Samir snores when he's awake."
"I do not—"
"You literally just made a sound like a dying walrus while eating those noodles."
Samir stood, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair with exaggerated dignity. "You know what? I don't need this abuse. I'm going to the supply store. We're out of toner. Again. Because someone—" he pointed at Taj, "—keeps printing memes."
"They're not memes, they're important cultural documents."
"It was a picture of a cat saying 'I can have cheeseburger.'"
"Art is timeless, Samir."
"I'm leaving before I commit a felony." Samir headed for the door, then paused. "Actually, I'm starving. That client meeting ran through breakfast. You coming, Taj?"
Taj stood, stretching dramatically. "Yeah, might as well. If I stay here, I'll just argue with the printer again. Last time it won, and I'm not ready for a rematch."
"How does a printer win an argument?"
"It printed 'ERROR' seventeen times. It knew what it was doing."
Reyan waved them off absently, fighting a small smile despite everything. "Take your time. I'll hold down the fort."
"Don't work too hard, boss," Samir called over his shoulder. "And try those cinnamon rolls. They're the only reason I haven't quit yet."
"That and the fact that no one else would hire you," Taj added.
"I hate you."
"Love you too, buddy."
The office door swung shut behind them, their bickering fading down the hallway. Suddenly the space felt too large, too quiet. Reyan stood alone among the empty desks, the hum of fluorescent lights the only sound. He grabbed a pastry from the bag—might as well, since he'd bought them—and headed down the hall to his small office.
It wasn't much—a desk, a filing cabinet, a window that overlooked the alley behind the building where stray cats fought over restaurant scraps—but it was his. The room smelled faintly of pine air freshener and old paper. He sank into his chair and pulled out his laptop, trying to lose himself in spreadsheets and emails.
On the corner of his desk sat a small framed photo: Priya and their daughter at Niraya Beach last summer, both grinning at the camera with ice cream smeared on their faces. The old lighthouse visible in the background, the one that hadn't worked in twenty years but the city kept anyway because tourists liked it.
He stared at it for a long moment, then forced himself to look away.
Work. Focus on work.
But the unease wouldn't let go.
The office was too quiet. Too empty. And that feeling in his gut—the one that had been there since morning—was getting worse.
FAR ACROSS TOWN: THE TURN
The Nexus Research Facility occupied six basement levels beneath what appeared to be an unremarkable pharmaceutical office building in Niraya's eastern industrial district, not far from the old shipyard that had been abandoned since the '90s. To anyone passing by, it looked like any other corporate structure—glass and steel, sanitized logos, security guards nodding off in the lobby. But six floors underground, scientists were playing with fire.
The project had a name: Neural Regeneration Initiative. The goal was simple, at least on paper: stimulate the regrowth of damaged neural tissue using a modified viral vector. Spinal injuries, brain trauma, degenerative diseases—all could theoretically be reversed. The funding was generous, routed through shell corporations and government contracts that didn't ask too many questions. The oversight was minimal. And the lead researcher, Dr. Kapoor, had assured everyone that the trials were progressing beautifully.
Until today.
The volunteer—Subject 17, though his name was Ravi—lay strapped to an observation table in the centre of the lab. Monitors beeped softly, tracking his vitals. IV lines snaked from his arms. He'd signed the waiver three weeks ago, desperate for the money. Fifty thousand rupees to lie on a table for a few hours while they injected experimental medicine. Easy money. The injection site on his forearm still bores a faint bruise.
At first, everything seemed normal. Heart rate steady. Blood pressure within acceptable ranges. Dr. Kapoor made notes on her tablet, nodding with satisfaction.
Then Ravi's eyes snapped open.
His body convulsed, back arching violently against the restraints. The leather straps creaked. Alarms shrieked. Monitors flatlined, then spiked into frantic zigzags. The medical team rushed forward, shouting instructions over the chaos.
"Hold him down!"
"Get the sedative!"
"His temperature's spiking—forty-one degrees—forty-two—Christ, forty-four—"
Ravi's eyes rolled back, showing only whites. His mouth opened, jaw unhinging wider than seemed possible, tendons standing out like cables in his neck. A sound came out—low, guttural, wrong. Not a scream. Not human. Something that vibrated in the chest and made teeth ache.
The restraints snapped.
He moved faster than anyone expected, launching himself off the table and onto the nearest technician—a young woman named Shreya. His teeth found her arm before she could even process what was happening. Blood sprayed across the white tile floor, bright and arterial, and the smell hit immediately—copper and salt and something else, something chemical that shouldn't be there.
Shreya's shriek cut through the alarms, high and desperate and cut short.
Her body convulsed once, twice. Her eyes clouded over, the pupils swallowed by a milky white film that spread like oil on water. Black veins began to spiderweb from the bite wound, racing up her arm, across her shoulder, disappearing beneath her collar.
When she stood, she moved like Ravi—jerky, predatory, wrong.
The lab erupted into chaos.
Scientists scrambled for the exits, but the infection spread faster than panic. A security guard pulled his baton and swung at Ravi, connecting with a sickening crunch that echoed off the concrete walls—but Ravi didn't fall. Didn't even flinch. He grabbed the guard by the throat and bit down, tearing through flesh and cartilage. The sound was wet, like biting into an overripe fruit. Another victim. Another set of clouded eyes. Another pattern of black veins spreading like cracks in porcelain.
Ahmed had been standing near the storage room when it started. While everyone else stampeded toward the main doors—a fatal mistake—he moved in the opposite direction. Years of laboratory training had taught him to think in emergencies, not just react. As a junior researcher on the viral containment team, he understood what was happening even before Dr. Kapoor did.
This wasn't a medical emergency. This was an outbreak.
He slammed the reinforced steel door of the storage room behind him and threw the deadbolt—a door designed to contain chemical spills and biohazards. His hands shook as he dragged a heavy metal shelf across the entrance, then another, building a barricade. The storage room had been his domain for two years. He knew every inch of it, every supply, every possible advantage.
Outside, he could hear them. The groans—deep and resonant, almost like speech but not quite. The wet, tearing sounds. The screams that cut off too quickly, followed by more groans joining the chorus.
Ahmed pressed his back against the wall and forced himself to breathe slowly, quietly. Through a crack in the door, he watched the infected stagger through the lab. He noted everything with the detached precision of a scientist observing an experiment:
The speed of transmission—under thirty seconds from bite to turn.
The retention of basic motor functions despite apparent brain death.
The way they responded to sound and movement but ignored stationary objects.
The black veins that pulsed beneath their skin like living things.
And something else. Something that made his blood run cold.
They were learning.
Not much. Not yet. But he watched one of them—a former colleague named Prakash—try three times to open a door before finally figuring out the handle. The first two attempts were mindless pushing. The third was deliberate, purposeful.
This wasn't random. This was the virus working exactly as designed, just with catastrophic unintended consequences. And if they were learning now, what would they be capable of tomorrow? Next week?
He pulled out his phone—no signal this deep underground—and opened his voice memo app. If he died here, someone needed to know what happened.
"Day one, hour zero," he whispered into the phone. "Subject Seventeen exhibited full necrosis of higher brain functions while maintaining aggressive predatory behaviour. Transmission is fluid-borne, instantaneous conversion averaging twenty-eight seconds from exposure to turn. The virus isn't killing them—it's rewriting them. Neural regeneration protocol appears to have succeeded in rebuilding neural pathways, but without higher cognitive function intact. They're operating on base drives: hunger, aggression, survival. Black veining suggests the virus is still active in their system, potentially mutating. Most concerning: observed problem-solving behaviour in Subject... in Prakash. They're adapting. Repeat: they're adapting."
Through the crack, he watched Dr. Kapoor stumble past, her white coat soaked in blood that wasn't hers. She was infected now, her eyes milky white, her jaw working soundlessly, black veins crawling across her face like lightning scars.
Then Ahmed saw it: the loading dock doors at the far end of the lab, left open by a delivery driver who'd fled at the first sign of trouble. The infected were moving toward it, drawn by sounds from the surface—traffic, voices, life. They poured through like water finding a crack, spilling out into the service tunnels that connected to the metro system, the storm drains, the parking garages beneath the business district.
The virus was loose. And Ahmed was the only person alive who understood what it was.
And what it might become.
He stayed in that storage room for six hours, documenting everything he could see, every pattern, every weakness. He recorded the way they moved—shambling now, but getting steadier with each passing hour. The way they responded to stimuli. The way some of them stood perfectly still for minutes at a time, as if... thinking.
When the sounds outside finally faded to sporadic groans, he made his decision. He couldn't stay here. The city needed to know what this was—and more importantly, how to stop it before it evolved into something unstoppable.
Ahmed gathered supplies methodically: a fire axe from the emergency kit, bottled water, a first aid kit, and most critically, a sealed sample of the original virus from the refrigerated storage unit. Evidence. Proof. And maybe, just maybe, the key to a cure.
He picked his way through the carnage, stepping over bodies of colleagues whose names he'd never forget. The emergency exit led to a maintenance tunnel, then to a ladder that climbed six stories to street level.
When he emerged into an alley behind the shipyard, the city above was already burning. Sirens wailed from every direction. Smoke rose from the business district. And in the distance, he could hear screams.
But Ahmed was a survivor. And he had work to do.
THE COLLAPSE
Reyan was two hours into his spreadsheet when something felt wrong. Not a sound exactly—more like the absence of sound. The usual hum of Niraya outside had changed pitch, gone discordant. The metro schedule that ran like clockwork was silent. No temple chanting. No car horns. Just... nothing.
He saved his work and stood, stretching his back. Maybe he should check on things, grab some water. He pulled open his desk drawer and pocketed his small folding knife—a habit from his father, who'd always said, "Better to have it and not need it."
The main office was still empty when he stepped out. Samir and Taj hadn't returned yet. Their desks sat abandoned, coffee cups still steaming faintly. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, too loud in the silence.
Reyan's phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out. A text from Priya: Are you okay? News says there's some kind of attack downtown. Please call me.
His thumb hovered over the reply button. Attack? What kind of—
Through the office windows, movement caught his eye.
On the street below, two people were struggling. No—not struggling. One was on top of the other, and the way they moved was wrong, violent, animal. The person on the ground was thrashing, screaming, a sound that carried even through the glass. Reyan could see the splash of red on the pavement, spreading like spilled paint.
Then the screaming stopped abruptly.
The person on top stood. Even from this distance, Reyan could see the blood dripping from their mouth, the way they moved—jerky and wrong, like a puppet with tangled strings.
More people appeared. Running. Screaming. And more of those... things. Chasing them. Catching them. Bringing them down with savage efficiency.
"I need to go to my family," Reyan whispered, his voice barely audible over the hammering of his heart. His hands shook as he tried to call Priya, but the line wouldn't connect. Network busy. He tried again. Nothing. Again. Nothing.
Panic clawed up his throat. His daughter. His wife. Alone. He had to get home. Had to—
He turned toward the exit, every instinct screaming at him to run, to get home, to get to them—
Something cold and strong grabbed him from behind.
Fingers dug into his shoulder with inhuman strength, and the smell hit him like a physical blow—rot and copper and something chemical, like ammonia. Hot breath on his neck, wet and rasping. A sound—low, wet, hungry—right behind his ear. That wrong sound, the one that made his teeth ache.
Reyan didn't think. He spun, terror giving him speed, and saw it: milky white eyes, blood-stained mouth, black veins crawling across gray skin like living tattoos. It reached for him with clawed hands; fingers bent at wrong angles.
He tried to scream but nothing came out.
The thing lunged, mouth open wide, and Reyan could see its teeth—too many teeth, or maybe it just seemed that way because they were coming at his face—
Suddenly, a hand—warm, human, alive—grabbed Reyan's arm and yanked him sideways with brutal force. He stumbled, nearly fell, as another figure appeared like a shadow and slammed into the creature with their full body weight. The infected crashed backward into the wall, and the sound of its skull hitting concrete echoed like a gunshot.
"Go, go, GO!" the first man shouted, dragging Reyan down the hallway.
The second man grabbed the nearest door—an unused storage room they'd been meaning to clean out for months—and wrenched it open. "In here!"
They shoved Reyan through the doorway. Behind them, the creature was already getting back up—impossibly, it was already getting back up, with a dent in its skull that should have killed it—joined by more shambling figures emerging from offices and stairwells. The second man threw himself against the door, slamming it shut just as bodies crashed against the other side.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
"The cabinet!" the first man barked. "Help me!"
Reyan's body moved on autopilot, hands gripping the heavy filing cabinet, muscles straining as they dragged it across the floor. Together, the three of them wedged it against the door just as the assault intensified. The wood groaned. The cabinet shuddered. Fingernails scraped against the other side, a sound like chalk on a blackboard magnified a hundred times.
But it held.
For now.
Reyan collapsed against the wall, gasping for air, his hands shaking so badly he could barely hold onto his knife. His rescuers stood by the door, braced against the cabinet. In the dim light filtering through a small window that looked out onto the alley, he could make out only silhouettes—one broader, one leaner. Their faces were turned away, hidden in shadow and the red emergency lighting that had just kicked on.
"Who—" Reyan started, his voice cracking.
"Quiet," one of them hissed, voice low and muffled, maybe by a hand over their mouth. "Sound draws them."
The other one glanced back slightly, and for the briefest moment, something about the way he moved seemed familiar. The tilt of his head. The shape of his shoulders. But Reyan's mind was spinning, drowning in adrenaline and terror and the smell of rot that clung to his clothes. Nothing made sense. The world had ended in the space of five minutes and his brain couldn't catch up.
"You armed?" the broader one asked.
Reyan held up his folding knife, the blade trembling in his grip, feeling absurd. What was a pocket knife going to do against those things?
A pause. Then a bitter, breathless laugh. "A pocket knife. Great. That'll save us."
"Better than nothing," the other muttered, still braced against the cabinet. "At least he had the sense to grab something. Could be worse."
"How? How could it possibly be worse?"
"He could've grabbed a stapler."
"This is not the time—"
"I'm just saying, perspective—"
Outside, the groans grew louder. More bodies joined the assault—THUD-THUD-THUD—the cabinet creaking under the relentless weight. Through the thin walls, Reyan could hear screams from other parts of the building, each one cutting off too abruptly. The wet sounds of feeding. The groans multiplying like a chorus.
The sounds of a world ending.
Reyan pressed his back against the wall and closed his eyes, seeing his daughter's face. Priya's worried expression that morning. The drawings on the fridge.
Before you even miss me, he'd said.
He'd lied.
And now he might never get the chance to make it right.