"The Server Room!" Ethan shouted over the screams of the dying office. "It has reinforced doors!"
He turned to run but stopped. Jessica was still on the floor near the reception desk. She was covered in the security guard's black blood, her eyes wide and vacant, staring at the spot where Kevin was tearing strips of meat from Mike's shoulder.
"Jessica!" Ethan roared.
She didn't move. She was in shock.
"We can't leave her," Claire cried out, grabbing Ethan's arm. Her fingernails dug into his skin. "Ethan!"
"Fuck," Ethan cursed.
He lunged back toward the reception desk. He didn't ask. He didn't negotiate. He grabbed Jessica by the back of her blouse and hauled her to her feet with a violence born of necessity.
"Move or die!" Ethan snarled in her face. "Those are your only choices!"
The harshness snapped her back to reality. She blinked, looked at the carnage, and let out a choked sob.
"Run!"
Ethan pushed the two women ahead of him. "Go left! Down the IT corridor!"
They sprinted past the rows of cubicles. The office had become a slaughterhouse. People were running in circles, trapped by their own panic. A sales rep smashed a chair over an infected woman's back, but the woman simply turned and clawed his eyes out.
Ethan kept his eyes moving. He saw the path ahead. The IT corridor was located behind the main bullpen.
As they passed the body of the first guard, the one Ethan had killed, he felt a pull. A tug in his mind. The white light hovering over the corpse pulsed.
He needed that bead. He needed the power.
"Keep going!" Ethan shouted to the women. "I'm right behind you!"
He feinted a stumble, dropping to one knee beside the guard's corpse.
"Checking for keys," he muttered to no one.
His hand swept over the corpse's head. To anyone watching, it looked like he was checking the guard's belt. To Ethan, his hand passed through a sphere of light.
[Item Acquired: Colorless Aether Bead (Common)]
He clenched his fist, shoving the invisible object into his pocket, and scrambled back up. There were no keys, but he had what he needed.
He sprinted after the women.
They reached the end of the hall. The door to the Server Room was a heavy steel slab designed to protect millions of dollars of hardware from fire and theft.
It was closed. A red light blinked on the card reader.
"It's locked!" Claire shouted, rattling the handle. "Ethan, it's locked!"
Ethan skidded to a halt beside them. He looked back.
Three infected were rounding the corner of the cubicles. One of them was Henderson. The manager's shirt was ripped open, and blood was pouring from his cheek. He spotted them.
"Ethan..." Henderson moaned, breaking into a shambling run. "Help..."
"Back away," Ethan ordered.
He looked at the card reader. He didn't have a keycard. He raised the brass letter opener, but he knew it was useless against a mag-lock.
"Ethan!" Jessica screamed. "They're coming!"
Ethan scanned the floor. Think. Look.
There.
Halfway down the hall, protruding from a supply closet, was a leg. It wore the denim jeans and sneakers of the IT support staff.
"Cover me," Ethan said.
"With what?" Claire yelled.
"Just yell! Throw shoes! Distract them!"
Ethan bolted toward the supply closet. He reached the leg and pulled.
The body of Greg, the lead sysadmin, slid out. Greg was dead. His throat was missing. But clipped to his belt was a plastic lanyard.
Ethan ripped the lanyard free.
Henderson was close now. The manager swiped at Ethan as he ran back. Ethan ducked, feeling the wind of the clawed hand pass over his head.
"You're fired, Henderson!" Ethan grunted.
He shoulder-checked the manager, sending the overweight man stumbling into the wall, and dived for the door.
He slammed the keycard against the reader.
Beep. Green light.
Click-thunk.
The magnetic seals disengaged.
"Inside! Now!"
Ethan shoved Jessica and Claire through the opening. He jumped in after them and slammed the heavy steel door shut. The mag-lock engaged instantly with a solid, reassuring thud.
The muffled sounds of scratching and pounding started immediately on the other side, but the door held.
Ethan slid down the door until he hit the floor. He gasped for air, his lungs burning.
The server room was frigid. The air conditioning here was independent of the main building, kept at a constant sixteen degrees Celsius to cool the racks of blinking servers that lined the room like monoliths. The noise was a constant, droning roar of cooling fans.
"Safe," Ethan wheezed. "We're safe."
Jessica scrambled away from the door, crawling into the corner. She pulled her knees to her chest and began to rock back and forth. "They were eating him. They were eating Kevin."
Claire leaned against a server rack, her face pale. She looked at Ethan. Her eyes were full of fear, but also suspicion.
"Ethan," she said, her voice trembling but firm. "You knew."
Ethan looked up. "What?"
"You knew exactly how to kill that guard," Claire said. "You didn't hesitate. You went straight for the eye. And you told me..." She swallowed hard. "You told me they don't feel pain. What are those things? Tell me the truth."
Jessica stopped rocking and looked up, waiting for the answer.
Ethan stood up. He walked deeper into the room, checking the corners to make sure they were truly alone. The room was clear. Just rows of black cabinets and blinking green lights.
He turned back to them. He couldn't tell them about the System. He couldn't tell them he had died and reincarnated. They would think he was insane, and in a survival situation, trust was the only currency that mattered.
"They're dead," Ethan said flatly.
"Dead?" Claire shook her head. " Henderson was running. Kevin was..."
"They are dead bodies driven by a virus or a parasite," Ethan lied, mixing truth with plausible fiction. "Whatever was inside that mist, it rewires them. It shuts down the higher brain functions and leaves only the hunger."
He walked over to a tool cart left by the IT staff and picked up a heavy screwdriver, testing its weight.
"How do I know?" Ethan continued, answering the question before she asked it again. "I watched the guard. When he hit the floor, he cracked his elbow on the desk. I heard the bone snap. A normal human would have screamed or gone into shock. He didn't even flinch. He used the broken arm to push himself up."
He looked Claire in the eye.
"That means the pain receptors are gone. The nerves are dead. Striking the body is useless. You can stab them in the heart, break their legs, or gut them like a fish, and they will keep crawling toward you until they chew your face off."
Jessica let out a whimper.
"The only thing that controls the body is the brain stem," Ethan said, tapping his own temple. "You have to sever the connection. Destroy the brain, and the puppet strings get cut. It's the only way."
Claire stared at him. She processed the information. It was horrific, but it had a logic to it. It explained what they had just seen.
"Headshots," Claire whispered. "Like in... like in a video game."
"Exactly," Ethan said. "Headshots only."
He turned away from them, pretending to inspect a server rack. He slipped his hand into his pocket and touched the Colorless Bead.
Consume.
[Ding!]
[XP Gained: +4]
[Current XP: 7 / 300]
He was slowly creeping up. But Level 1 was dangerous. He needed a weapon better than a letter opener or a screwdriver.
"So what now?" Jessica asked, her voice small. "We just... stay here?"
"We can't stay forever," Ethan said. "This room has no food and no water. But it's secure. We have time to think."
He looked around the room. It was the nerve center of the building.
"This is the main server node," Ethan said. "There might be resources here we can use."
He walked over to the main terminal desk. The monitors were still active, displaying network traffic graphs that were flatlining as connections across the city died.
But one screen showed a grid of camera feeds.
"Security," Ethan muttered.
He tapped the keyboard. Most of the cameras were static, likely destroyed or obscured by the mist. But the internal cameras were working.
He saw the 27th floor lobby. It was empty of the living. Bodies lay everywhere. The infected were wandering aimlessly, twitching.
He saw the stairwell. It was jammed with bodies. A pile-up.
He clicked to the parking garage. It was chaos. Cars on fire.
"We need a plan," Ethan said.
[Mission Update: Endure the Day (0/1)]