FAR ACROSS TOWN : THE TURN (4:37 P.M.)
Under a fake pharmaceutical office, six floors below ground, a handful of people thought they were changing the world. They called it The Neural Regeneration Initiative. Big words for desperate hope.
Ravi was just another man who signed up for ₹50,000 and a chance to walk again. Three years in a wheelchair does that to you — makes you believe in miracles wrapped in medical jargon.
"You sure about this?" Ahmed had asked him earlier that morning, clipboard in hand.
Ravi smiled. Tired but hopeful. "My daughter's getting married next year. I want to walk her down the aisle."
Ahmed nodded and checked a box. "Any allergies? Previous reactions to medication?"
"Nothing. I'm healthy. Well—" Ravi glanced at his legs. "You know what I mean."
"Yeah. I know." Ahmed tried to smile back. "You'll be fine. We've done this forty-three times. Standard procedure."
That was two hours ago.
Now Ravi was strapped to a medical bed, IV in his arm, electrodes taped to his temples. Dr. Kapoor stood beside him with the syringe — clear liquid, faintly blue under the fluorescent lights.
"Ready?" Kapoor asked.
"As I'll ever be."
"Good. You'll feel a slight pinch, then warmth spreading through your body. Perfectly normal. We'll monitor you for six hours, run some tests, and if everything looks good, you go home tomorrow."
"And then I walk?"
Kapoor hesitated. Just a second. "The regeneration takes time. A few weeks, maybe a month. But yes. Then you walk."
He injected the compound.
Ravi winced. "That's… warm. You weren't kidding."
"It'll pass," Shreya said from the monitors. She was new, barely three months in. Still believed in the work. "Heart rate's steady. BP normal. Neural activity—"
She stopped.
"What?" Kapoor leaned over.
"Spike. Big one. Frontal lobe."
"How big?"
"I don't… I've never seen readings like this."
Ravi blinked. "Is that bad?"
"No, no. Just… unexpected." Kapoor checked the screen. "Ravi, how do you feel?"
"Hot. Really hot. And my head—"
His eyes rolled back.
"Ravi?"
His body went rigid. Every muscle locked at once. The restraints groaned.
"He's seizing!" Shreya lunged for the emergency kit.
"No, wait—" Kapoor grabbed her arm. "That's not a seizure. Look at the monitors."
The brainwave patterns weren't erratic. They were synchronized. Pulsing. Like something was rewriting itself in real time.
Then his eyes opened.
They weren't his eyes anymore.
He screamed — raw, guttural, wrong — and thrashed so hard the bed scraped across the floor. His wrists bled against the restraints. His back arched until vertebrae cracked.
"Sedate him!" Kapoor yelled.
Ahmed ran for the cabinet. His hands shook as he filled the syringe. "How much?"
"All of it!"
He jabbed the needle into Ravi's arm and pushed the plunger.
Nothing.
Ravi kept screaming. Then he stopped. Just… stopped. His head tilted. Slow. Deliberate. And he looked at Shreya.
She froze.
"Ravi?" she whispered. "Can you hear me?"
He smiled. Not a human smile. Something that learned how to smile by watching.
Then he bit her.
No lunge. No warning. Just teeth sinking into her wrist.
Shreya shrieked and jerked back, but he held on. Blood sprayed across the floor. Ahmed grabbed her and pulled, and when she finally tore free, her veins were already darkening — black lines crawling up her arm like cracks in porcelain.
"Oh god. Oh god, what's happening—" She stumbled backward, clutching her wrist.
"Get her to isolation!" Kapoor barked.
But there was no time.
Shreya's eyes rolled. Her body convulsed once, twice, then went still. When she lifted her head, her pupils were blown wide, veins stark against pale skin.
She lunged at the nearest person — Prakash, the senior researcher.
Prakash stumbled backward, clutching his neck. Blood seeped between his fingers. "No, no, no—"
His legs gave out. He hit the floor hard.
Kapoor knelt beside him. "Prakash, stay with me—"
But Prakash's eyes were already changing. Veins darkening. Pupils dilating.
Then he lunged.
Kapoor screamed and fell back. Others tried to pull Prakash off, but he was too strong. Unnatural. When he bit down on someone's arm, the infection spread again.
He didn't even get a chance to scream.
Chaos erupted.
People ran. The elevator was too slow. The stairs were too far. The guard — a guy named Vikram who always ate lunch alone — swung his baton and cracked Ravi across the jaw. Bone crunched. Ravi's head snapped to the side.
He turned back, jaw hanging at the wrong angle, and grabbed Vikram by the throat.
Dr. Kapoor stood frozen, staring at the monitors like they'd give him an answer.
Within minutes, half the lab was infected.
Someone — Ahmed didn't see who — made it to the elevator. Pressed the button. The doors opened.
An infected researcher stumbled inside with them.
Ahmed watched through the lab's security monitor as the elevator rose. First floor. Second floor. Third.
When the doors opened on the ground level, the infection poured out into the pharmaceutical office above. Receptionists. Delivery workers. A janitor mopping the hallway.
All it took was one bite. One scratch.
Then those people stumbled out onto the street.
And Niraya began to fall.
Ahmed didn't think. He just moved.
He ran down the hall — past the labs, past the conference room where they used to eat birthday cake — and into the storage closet. He slammed the steel door, twisted the lock, shoved a metal shelf against it.
The room was cold. Sterile. Metal shelves lined the walls, packed with vials, samples, documentation — months of research stored in labeled containers. All their work. All their mistakes.
Then he stood there, chest heaving, listening.
Footsteps. Screams. Wet sounds. Breaking glass. Bodies hitting walls.
He pressed his back against the door and slid down until he was sitting, knees pulled to his chest.
Then he saw something worse.
Prakash — one of the senior researchers — shuffled past the window.
He twitched once, twice, like a broken puppet. Then his hand reached the door handle.
Twisted.
Stopped.
Twisted again.
Then, slowly, deliberately, he turned it the right way.
Ahmed's breath hitched.
He wasn't just moving.
He was learning.
His phone was still in his pocket. He pulled it out. His hands wouldn't stop shaking.
He opened the camera. Hit record.
"It's Ahmed Ansari. Junior researcher. Neural Regeneration Initiative." His voice cracked. "It's… I don't know what time it is. Maybe noon. Subject forty-four — Ravi Mehta — rejected the compound. No. Not rejected. It… changed him. Thirty seconds after contact, the infection spreads. They're not dead. They're not… they're still moving. Learning. I saw Prakash open a door. Not randomly. He remembered how."
He stopped. Listened. The screams were fading now. Replaced by something worse — silence. Then shuffling. Dragging.
"God. God, what did we do?"
He sat there for what felt like hours. Maybe it was. Time didn't make sense anymore.
Finally, when the silence became unbearable, he moved.
He packed light — the emergency axe, a water bottle, his ID badge (why, he didn't know), and one sealed vial of the compound. Evidence. Guilt. He wasn't sure which.
The maintenance ladder was old, rusted, but it held. Each rung echoed in the dark shaft. He climbed slowly, trying not to think about what was waiting above.
When he pushed open the hatch, heat slammed into him. Smoke. Ash. The sky was orange.
Niraya was burning.
Cars were abandoned in the streets. Overturned. Some still had their doors open, engines running. Bodies lay on the pavement — some still, some not. Sirens wailed in the distance, then cut off abruptly.
Ahmed stood there, gripping the axe, staring at the city he'd lived in his whole life.
A woman stumbled past him. She was crying, dragging a child by the hand. "Run," she gasped. "Just run."
He wanted to ask where. Wanted to ask what happened. But she was already gone.
Somewhere close, glass shattered. Then screaming. Then nothing.
Ahmed looked back at the hatch. He could go back down. Lock himself in. Wait it out.
But wait for what?
The city swallowed him whole
He tightened his grip on the axe… and stepped into the burning city.