The room tilted around me. My reflection, those burning crimson eyes, the fangs, seared itself into my mind. I wasn't just different. I was something that shouldn't exist.
Lira's fingers brushed my arm. "Ethel… what are you?"
"I—" The word caught in my throat. I didn't know. All I knew was the thrum of impossible strength in my veins, the sharp clarity of every sound outside; the grind of boots on pavement, the clatter of rifles.
Then the noise swelled. Heavy footfalls pounded up the steps. Wood splintered.
The front door exploded inward.
"Hands up! Now!"
Three soldiers in black hazard suits flooded the room, rifles leveled, visors reflecting the candle's dying light. Their voices were metallic behind the masks, but the authority in them cut through the air like a blade.
I raised my hands, palms slick with sweat. Lira did the same, her eyes wide but clear—clearer than they had been moments ago.
One of the soldiers advanced, a square device in his gloved hand humming with a low, mechanical buzz. A scanner. I'd seen one earlier that day, when they'd dragged coughing men and women into the streets. If it glowed red, infection. And that meant elimination.
The soldier held it toward Lira first.
The device stayed silent. No red flare. Only a calm green light pulsing in the center.
"That's… impossible," he muttered, voice muffled by the mask.
He swung it toward me. I felt the vibration in the air as it scanned, a cold sweep across my skin.
Green.
No alarm. No red.
The soldier stepped back a fraction, confusion leaking into the mechanical precision of his movements. "Both clear," he said finally, glancing to his partners.
"But we tracked an infected signature into this sector," another answered. "Two signatures."
I said nothing. My heart—if it was still human—beat steadily, strong enough to drown out the echo of their words. The fever that had consumed me hours ago was gone. In its place thrummed something ancient, stranger.
The first soldier lowered his rifle slightly, though his eyes behind the visor stayed sharp. "You're not on the registry. Names."
"Ethel," I managed, my voice rough but steady.
"Lira," she said, her hand trembling only once before she let it fall to her side.
The soldier studied the scanner again, as if willing it to contradict itself. The green light glowed on, unyielding.
"Fine," he said at last, though I could hear the uncertainty beneath his command. "Sector sweep is complete. You'll be escorted to the checkpoint for processing. Don't try anything."
Processing. Quarantine. Words that once might have meant safety now sounded like the edge of a blade.
I lowered my hands slowly, every sense sharpened to an impossible degree. Their heartbeats thudded in my ears like drums. I could smell the faint iron tang of blood behind their suits, could count the seconds between each breath they took.
And beneath it all pulsed the new truth inside me.
I wasn't infected.
I wasn't cured.
I was changed.
What I was, I still couldn't understand. But the soldiers' scanner had shown the world's first proof: whatever I had become, the plague could not touch me.
And Lira… she was alive because of it.
The soldiers conferred in clipped, metallic voices, their visors reflecting the flicker of the dying candle. One of them finally lowered his rifle and turned to me.
"You two stay inside. Doors locked. Windows sealed, we'll come pick you up tomorrow," he said. "Do you understand?"
"Yes," I answered, the word almost catching on my tongue. Lira nodded beside me, her fingers curling into the fabric of her sleeve.
A second soldier stepped forward and set a small bundle on the cracked table—heavy, rust-colored coats that smelled faintly of antiseptic. "Protective gear," he explained. "If you have to step out for supplies, wear these. They'll keep the virus off your body. But you're safer inside."
His visor tilted toward us, as if he was still trying to solve a puzzle he couldn't name. "You're lucky," he added. "Most unprotected don't last the night."
With that, they filed out, boots echoing down the stairwell. The door closed with a hollow thud, and the muffled clang of their steps faded into the distance until only silence remained.
I stood frozen, listening. My new senses stretched outward: the groan of warped floorboards, the faint hiss of the candle, the wind carrying the stench of smoke and rot. No soldiers. No pursuit.
Lira exhaled, a thin ribbon of breath. "They… they believe we're clean."
I touched the coarse fabric of the coat they'd left. Protective gear—meant for those still human. I almost laughed.
"They think we're like the few who never caught it," I said. "Untouched."
Her eyes flicked to mine. "But we were infected."
I nodded slowly. "We were."
The memory of the fever shivered through me—how it had gnawed at my bones, how certain I'd been that death was already taking me. Yet here I stood, stronger than I had ever been, while the scanner's green light declared me healthy.
Outside, a distant siren wailed and faded. I imagined the soldiers moving from house to house, their own bodies sealed inside layers of filtered fabric. They were not infected, not yet, but even they needed those suits to survive.
Whatever had happened in those frantic moments between Lira and I had driven the virus out—burned it away as though it had never been. They would never believe it. Perhaps I barely believed it myself.
I let the heavy coat fall back onto the table and met Lira's eyes. The candlelight caught the faint color returning to her cheeks, the steady rise and fall of her breathing.
"They don't know what I am," I said quietly.
Lira's voice was a whisper. "Do you know?"
I thought of the red glow in my reflection, the sharpness of my new senses, the hunger stirring somewhere deep and strange. It matches the description of a creature from novels and movies, but I can't be so sure yet.
"I don't know yet," I answered.
I noticed that Lira doesn't have the red eyes and fangs that I have, whatever it is that happened to me, it didn't happen to her. I could perceive it, she smell different from me.
The silence that followed felt like a tide drawing out before a storm. But the silence didn't last.
A sudden crack of gunfire split the night, sharp enough to rattle the glass in the crooked window. Shouts followed—harsh, urgent commands distorted by respirator masks. Boots pounded against pavement like frantic drumbeats.
Lira flinched. "What's happening?"
I moved to the window, careful not to touch the curtain's fraying edge. The street below was a blur of motion. Soldiers darted across the broken asphalt, rifles raised, their shouts cutting through the cold air. Between them, people—thin, stumbling figures—ran for their lives. Their clothes hung loose over skeletal frames, their movements unsteady and wild. The infected.
More gunfire erupted, a staccato rhythm that echoed off the ruined buildings.
My breath caught. The soldiers weren't just herding now—they were hunting.
And then—
A flicker.
It wasn't the candlelight. Something bright and impossible shimmered in the air before my eyes, as if the world itself had torn open a seam.
Words. Floating, glowing, translucent.
[Save as many infected as possible]
[Turn them into uninfected by being intimate with them]
I stumbled back, heart hammering. The text hung there, perfectly clear, glowing a pale silver that pulsed with a rhythm almost like a heartbeat. No screen, no projector—just there, a transculent text in the air.
Lira's voice broke through the shock. "Ethel? What is it? What do you see?"
I blinked hard. The words didn't vanish. They waited, patient and unnervingly alive, as though the air itself demanded obedience.
A quest? The word felt wrong on my tongue, yet my mind understood it instantly, as if it had always been there, waiting to be remembered.
[Save as many infected as possible]
My pulse quickened. The memory of Lira on the verge of death, transitioning to the way she had gotten healed, appeared in my mind.
[Turn them into uninfected by being intimate with them]
The meaning struck with the weight of a hammer. What had happened between us wasn't an accident. It had been the cure.
I heard another burst of gunfire outside, the sharp cry of someone falling.
Lira stepped close, her eyes wide. "Ethel?"
I turned to her, words sticking in my throat. How could I explain the impossible? How could I tell her that some unseen force had just given me a mission to heal the infected people?
The glowing text pulsed once more, brighter in fact, as though waiting for an answer.
"Okay."
And then, deep within my chest, I could feel a new resolve awakening in me. It stirred—warm, potent, and was terrifyingly alive.