I bought the glove the following morning.
Thick black leather. Heavy stitching. Reinforced at the knuckles. Long enough to cover my wrist and tuck into my coat sleeve, creating a seamless barrier between my skin and the world. I bought a left one too, though my right hand had been most affected. I wore them both. I didn't trust either hand anymore.
When the shopkeeper asked why I needed such heavy gloves in the middle of summer, I simply said:
"Work."
He looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe I was.
I never took them off.
Not while eating. Not while sleeping. Not while fighting. Especially not around people. I learned to do everything through leather—button shirts, wash my face, handle money, eat with utensils. It made me clumsy. It made me strange. It made people look at me and wonder what I was hiding.
Good. Let them wonder.
I had learned one thing from the rat. Touch could be dangerous. The black substance wanted to spread.
It wanted to integrate . It was a virus with ambition, a colonizer looking for new territory. Until I knew exactly what was inside me, until I understood the rules of contamination, I wasn't taking chances. Not with strangers. Not with anyone.
I returned to the arena that night.
My opponent was a large man carrying a metal hammer the size of a traffic sign, his arms corded with muscle, his face a mask of scar tissue and bad decisions. The bell rang. He charged. I stepped aside, ducked his swing, struck twice. Once to the ribs. Once to the temple. He staggered, fell, didn't get up. The fight lasted twelve seconds.
I stood over him. The black substance crawled beneath the glove, pressing against the leather, seeking an exit, seeking skin, seeking a new host. I could feel it probing the seams, testing the material, frustrated by the barrier.
I immediately stepped back. Clenched my fist. No.
The crowd screamed for more. For blood. For a kill.
For the spectacle they'd paid to see.
I didn't care.
I had discovered something more important than victory, more important than money, more important than the fleeting satisfaction of the crowd's approval.
The glove helped. Whenever the black substance began moving toward my hand, the thick material seemed to slow it, confuse it, like a blind snake testing a wall. It couldn't penetrate. It couldn't spread. It was trapped with me.
It wasn't a cure. But it was control. And control was the only currency I had left.
Mara started experiencing strange symptoms.
I didn't know it at first. I was avoiding her, keeping my distance, telling myself it was for her safety while the guilt ate at my stomach like acid. I told myself I was being noble. I was being careful. I wasn't being a coward.
Then I saw her in the market, three days later.
She was standing at a vegetable stall, staring at a sign across the square. Not just looking. Staring .
Her eyes narrowed, focused on something impossibly far away, her head tilted at an angle that suggested she was reading something written in a language only she could see.
"You're blocking the tomatoes," the vendor said.
Mara didn't hear him. She was still staring, her lips moving silently.
I walked over. "What are you looking at?"
She pointed. "The sign above the mechanic's shop. It says 'Open for repairs. Specializing in hydraulics and engine rebuilds.'"
I squinted. The mechanic's shop was at least two hundred meters away, through a crowd, past a row of shipping containers, around a corner. I couldn't make out the letters. I could barely make out the building.
"You can see that?" I asked.
She blinked. Then frowned. "I... guess I can. Is that wrong?"
Then came the headaches. She mentioned them casually the next day, pressing her fingers to her temples, wincing at sounds that didn't bother anyone else. Deep pressure behind the eyes, she said. Like something was pushing against them from the inside. And the hearing—she would stop mid-conversation, head tilted, listening to birds or machines or heartbeats that no one else could detect. She'd hear a truck approaching ten minutes before it arrived. She'd flinch at sounds I couldn't hear.
She thought she was getting sick. She thought it was stress, or a fever, or some wasting disease that had slipped past Graveyard's quarantine.
She didn't know she was changing.
And I knew, with a certainty that made me want to vomit, that it was my fault.