Day 9.
I didn't wait for morning.
At midnight, I slipped out of the compound with Vanguard at my side and three hundred zombies trailing behind us. Ghost padded along the rooftops above, her presence a warm thread in the back of my mind.
The rest of my army I left spread across Seattle—a network of eyes and ears, watching every street, every building, every shadow.
"Vanguard senses... wrongness," my Elite said. His voice was still rough, still learning to form human words. "Different dead. Stronger."
"That's why we're going to meet them."
The mutations I'd sensed were three miles northeast, clustered near an old industrial park. According to my network vision, they numbered around forty—a small group, probably wanderers that had drifted together by instinct rather than purpose.
Easy prey.
If I was still the same person I'd been before the Hive King battle.
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The industrial park had been a logistics hub before the apocalypse. Warehouses. Loading docks. Shipping containers stacked like children's blocks.
Now it was a graveyard.
Bodies littered the ground—dozens of them, torn apart with savage efficiency. These weren't my kills. These weren't even zombie kills.
These were something worse.
"What did this?" I murmured.
Vanguard's nostrils flared.
"They did. The wrong ones. They... hunted."
I knelt beside a corpse. The wounds were ragged but precise—not the mindless tearing of regular zombies. These had been made with intent. Purpose.
They're learning, I realized. Evolving past pure instinct.
That was very, very bad.
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I found the first mutant behind a rusted shipping container.
It had once been a woman. Now—
Now it was something else.
Her skin had darkened to an unhealthy purple-gray, stretched tight over muscles that bulged in wrong places. Her arms were longer than they should be, ending in fingers that had fused into three-pronged claws. And her face...
Her jaw had unhinged, widening to reveal rows of teeth that no human skull could support.
She saw me.
And she charged.
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A normal zombie would have stumbled. Shambled. Given me seconds to react.
This one covered twenty feet in a single leap.
I didn't have time to dodge. I barely had time to raise my hand and reach for her soul—
CLAIM.
The command hit her mid-flight.
In my original timeline, this would have been a battle of wills. A struggle. A test of my mental fortitude against her undead instincts.
Here?
She dropped to her knees like a puppet with cut strings.
Mine.
Just like that.
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The power that flooded into me was... different.
Regular zombies were like candles—small, flickering, easily absorbed. The mutant was a bonfire. Heat and light and power surging through our connection, filling cracks in my soul I hadn't known existed.
"Vanguard claims reward?" My Elite was looking at me with something like hunger.
"No. I need her. I need to understand what she is."
I reached deeper into the connection. Saw through her eyes. Felt her enhanced muscles. Sensed her improved reflexes.
She was Tier 1. Still Tier 1. But her base was higher. Faster. Stronger. More dangerous.
If regular zombies were soldiers, mutants were elite shock troops.
And I had just claimed my first.
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Finding the rest was easy.
With one mutant under my control, I could sense the others. They were connected somehow—not a hive mind like the Hive King's army, but a... resonance. A frequency only they could hear.
I followed it.
Twenty minutes later, I stood in the center of the industrial park, surrounded by forty mutated corpses.
They were varied in their mutations. Some had elongated limbs. Others had bony plates across their torsos. Two had what looked like vestigial wings—useless for flight but wickedly sharp for slashing.
All of them were looking at me with those too-bright eyes.
Not with hunger, I realized. With assessment.
They were evaluating me. Deciding if I was prey or predator.
I showed them.
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CLAIM.
The command wasn't words. It was will. Pure, overwhelming, absolute.
It crashed into forty minds at once.
In my old timeline, this would have strained me to my limits. I would have felt the headaches, the nosebleeds, the sensation of my brain being squeezed by invisible hands.
Now?
I felt nothing.
No strain. No resistance. No limit.
Just forty new threads connecting to my consciousness. Forty new bodies joining my army. Forty new sources of power feeding into my soul.
The mutants dropped to their knees.
"Master," one of them rasped—the first word any of them had spoken. Its voice was garbled, twisted by its malformed jaw.
But it spoke.
They're all going to speak, I realized. They're all going to think.
These weren't mindless zombies anymore.
They were soldiers.
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"Wei."
Ghost's voice touched my mind, carried through our bond.
"Something approaches. From the east. Many. Many."
I extended my senses—through Ghost's eyes, through Vanguard's, through the forty mutants I'd just claimed.
And I saw them.
Hundreds. Maybe thousands.
A wave of zombies, pouring through the streets toward the industrial park. Some were regular corpses—shambling, mindless, easy. But mixed among them were more mutants. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
And at their head...
Something big.
Not Hive King big. Not that ancient, that powerful. But something that had started to evolve. A Tier 2. Maybe Tier 3. A creature that had consumed enough flesh to grow beyond its original limits.
It looked like a bear. Or what a bear might become if it had been dead for a week and then stuffed with extra bones and muscle.
Its eyes fixed on me across the distance.
Its rotting lips peeled back from teeth the size of kitchen knives—not in a snarl, but in something far worse.
Recognition.
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"Vanguard," I said quietly.
"Master."
"Take our forces and fall back toward the compound. Warn Rachel. Get everyone ready."
"You... stay?"
"Someone has to slow them down." I cracked my neck. "Besides, I want to see what that thing is."
Vanguard hesitated—the first time I'd ever seen him question an order.
Then he bowed his head.
"Vanguard obeys. Vanguard trusts."
He vanished into the darkness, my original three hundred zombies following. The forty mutants I'd just claimed stayed, forming a loose circle around me.
I faced the approaching horde.
Thousands of zombies. Dozens of mutants. One evolved leader.
Day 10 wasn't supposed to be this bad, I thought. In my timeline, the mutations were scattered. Disorganized. It took weeks for them to start grouping.
But here?
Here they were already moving as a pack.
Already hunting as a unit.
And they were heading straight for my compound.
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The bear-thing stopped a hundred feet away.
Its pack—if that's what they were—spread out behind it. A wall of dead flesh and hungry eyes.
I waited.
"You... control... the dead."
The voice was a rumble. Deep. Wrong. Like stones grinding together in a throat that was never meant for speech.
"Yes."
"We... felt you... claim. Felt... the weak... become yours."
"They're not weak anymore."
The bear-thing's lips peeled back from teeth the size of kitchen knives.
"We... are... not weak... either."
It raised one massive paw—and pointed at me.
"You... become... ours."
The horde charged.