Everything was dark.
The only light source was the moon trying to shine behind the cloudy sky, casting weak silver through the smoke that had become Linkon's permanent atmosphere. Somewhere in the distance, a building groaned before collapsing—the sound of steel bending, concrete shattering, lives ending.
Nana was crying.
She sat in the narrow alley between two apartment buildings, knees pulled to her chest, biting down hard on her own hand to muffle the sobs. Her teeth broke skin. She tasted blood. She didn't care.
So tired.
She'd been fighting for over a week since the scientific facility broke down. Creature after creature, hunting everything in sight. The electricity was gone. Some buildings had collapsed when giants crushed them like cardboard boxes. Bodies covered the streets—real bodies that didn't dissolve into white mist, that just stayed there, rotting in the humid summer air.
And Nana was starting to think it would be better if she just stopped fighting.
"Nana."
Zayne's voice cut through the haze. His hand closed around hers—the one she'd been biting—and gently pulled it away from her mouth. His other hand cupped her face, tilting it up so she had to look at him.
His hazel eyes were exhausted. Dark circles underneath. Blood on his white coat that used to mean something when hospitals still existed. But his gaze was steady, anchoring her to reality when everything else felt like it was dissolving.
"We need to move," he said quietly. "It's not safe here."
She wanted to laugh. Nowhere was safe. But she let him pull her to her feet anyway because her body still obeyed commands even when her mind wanted to shut down.
Zayne guided her toward his apartment building three blocks north. The journey was borderline suicide—exposed streets, no cover, creatures prowling in packs now that humans were scarce. But he moved with surgical precision, ice forming at his fingertips whenever something got too close, and somehow he brought her inside.
The lobby was dark. Bodies in the corner—neighbors she'd probably met at some point when the world was normal. Zayne steered her past them, up the emergency stairs because the elevators were dead, to the seventh floor where his apartment still stood intact.
He locked three deadbolts behind them.
Nana stood in the middle of his living room, still crying silently. Her whole body shook—exhaustion beyond repair, trauma beyond words. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept. Couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten something that wasn't a protein bar stolen from a ransacked convenience store.
Zayne's heart shattered at the sight of her.
He knelt in front of her, taking her smaller hands in his. They were covered in cuts, calluses, gun oil, dried blood. The hands of someone who'd been reloading weapons for days straight.
"Tell me where it hurts," he said softly.
Nana slowly raised her face. Her dark eyes were dull, red-rimmed, empty in a way that terrified him more than any creature ever could.
She showed him her knee first—a deep gash from sliding across broken glass. Then her elbow, scraped raw. Her chin, bruised purple from something's clawed hand. Her fingers had small cuts from her knife, from reloading her dual guns over and over while fighting to guard Akso Hospital before it collapsed three days ago.
Before everyone inside died.
Zayne treated each wound with careful precision. He pressed a kiss to her knee before cleaning it with antiseptic wipes from his medical bag. Wrapped her elbow with clean gauze. Dabbed ointment on her chin. Bandaged each finger individually, murmuring apologies whenever she flinched.
He found a small bandage with a smiley face printed on it—something from the pediatric supply kit—and placed it carefully on her nose where a tiny cut had split the bridge.
"There," he said, trying to smile. "Good as new."
Nana didn't respond. Just stared at him with those empty eyes.
Zayne's throat tightened. "Where else are you hurt?"
For a long moment, she didn't move. Then slowly, she raised one hand and pressed it to her chest. Right over her heart. Right where her aether core hummed beneath engineered bone and modified tissue.
Where it hurts most.
Zayne understood. The physical wounds were nothing compared to the rest of it. Seeing how her parents had used her as Specimen 21 in their program. Watching every friend she knew die—in Avalon, in the facility, in the hospital. Discovering she'd never been human, not really, just a weapon someone built from birth.
He didn't have medicine for that. Didn't have treatment for a broken heart, for shattered trust, for the kind of grief that came from losing everything twice.
But he smiled anyway—soft and sad and determined—and pulled her closer until her forehead pressed against his chest. Until she could hear his heartbeat, steady and real and *alive*.
"We're going to make it," he promised quietly. "No matter how long it takes to kill every creature in here. No matter what we have to do. We're going to survive this."
Nana wanted to believe him. She just... didn't have the energy to feel hope anymore.
But she nodded slowly anyway because Zayne needed her to. Because he'd been fighting just as long, saving people who were too tired to want to live, and he was still trying.
He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Let me help you clean up."
The water wasn't running—pipes burst somewhere in the city's infrastructure collapse—but he had wet towels prepared, a basin of collected rainwater, soap that still smelled like lavender from when the world made sense.
He cleaned the dirt and blood and smoke from her skin with gentle hands. Changed her torn, filthy clothes into one of his oversized shirts and clean sweatpants. Braided her hair so it wouldn't tangle while she slept. Did all the small, careful things that doctors did when medicine failed and all they had left was comfort.
When he finally guided her to his bed, Nana curled into a ball immediately, clutching his pillow. She was asleep within seconds—the kind of deep, dreamless unconsciousness that came from complete physical and mental shutdown.
Zayne tucked the blanket around her. Checked her pulse out of habit. Watched her chest rise and fall for a full minute just to make sure she was really breathing.
Then he moved to the window.
Linkon City spread out below him in ruins. Fires burned in three different districts, painting the sky orange-red. Shadows moved between buildings—creatures fighting, hunting, claiming territory. Screams echoed from somewhere east. Gunshots from the west, then silence.
Another creature roared. Another building groaned.
Zayne pressed his forehead against the glass and closed his eyes.
Please, he prayed to a God that had stopped listening weeks ago. Please let Linkon be okay.
Even though he knew it wasn't.
Even though the city was dead and Avalon had been reborn and the government had fled and left them all to die.
Even though he'd spent three days operating on people who died anyway, fighting creatures in hospital hallways, watching colleagues get torn apart while he tried to save patients who couldn't be moved.
Even though Nana—fierce, stubborn, unbreakable Nana—had finally shattered in an alley because there was only so much a person could take before their mind gave up.
Zayne opened his eyes and looked at the chaos below.
His ice evol hummed beneath his skin, cold and ready and wrong in a way that reminded him he wasn't fully human anymore either. That the facility had transformed him into something else, something *more*, whether he wanted it or not.
"We'll make it," he whispered to the ruined city. To the creatures hunting in the streets. To whatever higher power might still be watching. "We have to."
Because if they didn't, if they gave up, then his patients had died for nothing. The hospital had fallen for nothing. Nana's parents' betrayal, the specimen program, Avalon itself—all of it would have been for nothing.
And Zayne refused to accept that.
So he stood at the window and kept watch while Nana slept. Kept his ice evol ready. Kept his medical bag packed. Kept his resolve intact even as the world fell apart outside.
When dawn finally came—grey and smoke-stained and wrong—he would wake her. They would eat something. They would check their weapons. They would go back out into the hell that Linkon had become.
They would survive another day.
And another.
And another.
Until either the creatures were dead or they were.
No matter how long it takes.
.
.
.
.
.
To be continued.