In the humid, heavy air of Miami, Florida, the world outside Ryan's window felt deceptively normal. The palm trees swayed in the late afternoon breeze, and the distant hum of traffic suggested a city still pulsing with life.
Inside the house, however, the atmosphere was stifling.
After a silent, rushed dinner, Ryan and Daymon retreated upstairs. Usually, Daymon would disappear into his own room to game, but tonight, he followed Ryan.
He paced the floor before sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes fixed on the glow of Ryan's monitor. They were caught in a loop of digital paranoia, their fingers hovering over the refresh key, haunting underground forums and obscure video-hosting sites.
They were looking for the truth—the kind the evening news was clearly scrubbing from the airwaves.
An hour bled away in the blue light. Every site they visited felt like a ghost town of deleted threads and "404 Not Found" errors.
"We missed it," Daymon muttered, rubbing his eyes. "If we'd stayed up last night, we might have seen the raw uploads before the censors got to them. Now, it's all gone."
Ryan didn't answer. He was scrolling through a list of clickbait on a third-tier video site. His mouse hovered over a thumbnail titled G.T.A 6 Gameplay Leaked.
He scoffed. From the blurry image, he could tell it was just recycled footage of Grand Theft Auto 5, likely a scam for views. But for some reason, his gut told him to click.
The video started exactly as he expected: a low-quality recording of a digital car speeding through a fictional city. Ryan prepared to close the tab, but as he skimmed the progress bar, the footage flickered six minutes in.
The game vanished, replaced by a shaky, vertical cell phone recording.
Ryan's breath hitched. "Daymon. Come look. Now."
"Kansas City Footage."
The video showed a view from a high-rise window in Kansas City, Missouri. The person recording was whispering frantically in the background, though the audio was muffled and distorted. The camera focused on a nearby rooftop where two figures appeared to be locked in a desperate embrace.
At first glance, it looked like they were hugging—a moment of grief or comfort amidst chaos.
Then, the text overlay on the screen caught Ryan's eye: [People in Kansas City Missouri are going crazy.]
On the screen, the "hug" turned violent.
One of the figures broke free, but instead of fighting back, they turned and sprinted toward the edge of the roof. There was no hesitation, no look back. The person leaped.
The most bizarre, haunting detail was that their legs kept moving in a running motion even after they hit the air. It was as if their brain hadn't registered the lack of solid ground; they were running into the abyss.
The brothers flinched as the figure hit the pavement several stories below. The camera operator gasped, the sound of their ragged breathing filling the room.
The clip jumped. The person had clearly opened the window to remove the glare of the glass. Now, the street below was a hive of activity. Police cruisers with flashing lights surrounded the fallen body, which was being covered by a yellow tarp.
The cameraman tried to zoom in, his hands shaking so violently that the frame blurred.
Suddenly, the camera whipped back toward the roof. The operator miscalculated the zoom, panning across a brick wall in a frantic search for the source of what he saw off camera.
When he finally found the target and zoomed out, another body was already mid-fall. It struck the concrete only yards away from the first.
"What is wrong with them?" Daymon whispered, his face pale.
The horror intensified. Below, in the crowd of onlookers and officers, a man suddenly began to convulse.
He started swinging his arms in wide, whipping arcs, lashing out at anyone within reach. It wasn't a fight—it was a frantic, mindless thrashing.
People scrambled away, creating a circle of empty space around him, but then another person in the crowd began to mirror the behavior, snapping their head back and chasing a fleeing woman.
Just as the brothers leaned in, the screen went black.
A loading circle spun for three seconds before a red banner appeared: Post deleted for violation of terms and service.
"What the hell is happening over there?" Daymon's voice was thick with shock. He stared at the black monitor as if he could force the images to return.
Ryan sat back, his mind racing through the logic of every horror movie he'd ever seen.
"Did you notice... no one got bitten? In the crowd, they weren't biting each other."
Daymon nodded slowly, processing.
"You're right. If this is some kind of virus, it doesn't spread like the movies. Not like a zombie bite."
"It's faster," Ryan mentioned, his voice trembling. "It's either spread by touch or just by breathing the same air. Either way, it's invisible. You wouldn't even know you're catching it until you're running off a building."
The weight of the situation hit them simultaneously. Their father was out there. He was currently driving toward that very region to pick up their Aunt Zahra.
Ryan snatched his phone and hit speed dial. It went straight to a generic voicemail. His heart sank into his stomach. "He's not picking up."
"We have to tell Mom," Daymon said, standing up.
"Why?" Ryan shot back, his voice rising in panic. "She's sick, Daymon. She can't do anything about it. Telling her will just make her worry herself into a hospital bed."
"Think about it, Ryan!" Daymon gestured wildly. "No matter how you look at it, this is ending badly. Even if Dad somehow reaches Zahra and saves her, then what? You think the government is just going to let him drive back to Florida? He's in a city full of... whatever that is. They'll probably quarantine the whole state. They won't let him leave and risk bringing that 'running' sickness back here."
Ryan's posture slumped. The "main character" fantasy he'd briefly entertained earlier at school—the idea that they would get powers and save the day—was gone.
This was cold, hard reality. "You're right. But we're thinking too far ahead. Would they even let him into the city limits? My guess is he'll get there and get picked up by the military before he even sees her. If they want to keep this under wraps, they won't let anyone who saw it go home."
Daymon went silent. The room felt smaller than it had ten minutes ago. Downstairs, they could hear the faint sound of their mother coughing—a reminder of the fragile peace they were trying to protect.
"We wait until the morning," Daymon finally said, his voice hollow. "If Dad doesn't call back, we tell her. We have to."
Ryan looked back at the screen, at the "Post Deleted" message. The silence of the internet was the loudest warning they had ever received. The world was changing, and it was moving toward them faster than they could run.