The lab smelled like copper and bleach and hot metal.
Ellis couldn't remember when antiseptic stopped meaning clean and started meaning cover it up. The scent crept in quietly, sliding beneath everything else until it settled in the back of the throat and refused to leave. Death had a way of ignoring protocol.
It didn't matter how many times they wiped the counters, how many times they swapped gloves, how many times they flooded a surface with chemical burn and called it sterile—there was always something underneath. Blood in seams. Skin under nails. That faint, sweet-rot note that meant tissue was changing while you watched it.
The officer's body lay open beneath the lights—contained, silent, horrifying in its stillness. Not peaceful. Never peaceful. Just stopped.
The cavity where his ribs had been parted looked too clean for what it was, slick edges reflecting light like wet stone. The brain pan had been opened earlier, the shattered bone fragments set aside in a tray like broken dinnerware. There were still flecks of hair stuck to dried clots along the scalp line. His uniform shirt had been cut away and hung in a corner in a biohazard bag, the sleeves still stiff with blood that had dried black at the cuffs.
Ellis stood over the table, shoulders locked tight, eyes burning from too many hours without rest.
His mouth tasted like pennies. His hands felt like they belonged to someone else—steady only because panic had long since run out of fuel. The world had narrowed to instruments and tissue and the thin line between understanding and being eaten alive while trying.
Across from him, Dr. Michael Wallace adjusted the overhead light and sighed with exaggerated drama.
"Well," Mike said, peering down with professional focus and very unprofessional commentary, "I officially hate my job today."
Ellis didn't look up. "Only today?"
Mike snorted. "Fair. But this is a new low. When I signed up for advanced neural pathology, I assumed the patients would remain mostly… non-murderous."
Ellis glanced at him. "You're coping."
Mike flashed a thin grin. "Correct. Poorly. Loudly. With jokes. Like a normal person."
Outside the reinforced glass wall, something slammed hard enough to rattle the fixtures. A shadow slid past, followed by another. Hands slapped glass. Fingernails screeched.
The sound wasn't just impact—it was insistence. A steady battering that had rhythm now, like the dead were learning where the weak points were. The glass flexed imperceptibly, and the metal frame gave a small, protesting groan.
Mike winced. "Ah. Ambient doom. Love that for us."
Ellis turned back to the monitors. "Status on the quarantined scratches?"
"Still human," Mike said. "Which feels like a weird thing to celebrate, but here we are."
They worked in silence for a few minutes—the kind that only existed between people who'd been doing this together for years. Their movements were synchronized, efficient, born of trust forged in places where mistakes got people killed.
A tech in the corner murmured timestamps into a recorder with a voice so flat it sounded sedated. Another tech kept wiping her goggles as if clearer plastic would change what she was seeing. Somewhere behind the sealed door, boots thudded past in a hurry—running, not walking—and then the sound snapped off like the runner had either turned a corner… or stopped moving.
Mike broke the quiet.
"You remember Boston?" he asked.
Ellis didn't look up. "Which time?"
"The first time," Mike said. "When you punched a general."
Ellis huffed. "He deserved it."
Mike grinned. "Absolutely. I've never seen someone with that many medals look so shocked."
They'd met long before Hunter Army Airfield. Before sealed labs and redacted briefings. Back when Ellis was splitting time between active duty and research, and Mike was the civilian consultant brought in to make sense of neural damage from unconventional warfare.
Mike had been brilliant.Annoying.Completely unimpressed by rank.
Ellis had trusted him immediately.
Ellis studied the latest scans. The pathogen wasn't just present.
It was thriving.
It lit up on the imaging like a map of occupation—clusters where clusters shouldn't be, filament-like structures threading along pathways that looked too purposeful to be random inflammation. The data didn't read like infection.
It read like construction.
"It's not decaying tissue," Ellis said quietly. "It's reorganizing."
Mike leaned closer, humor draining from his voice. "Like it's learning the layout."
"Yes."
Mike swallowed. "That's new."
Ellis nodded. "That's terrifying."
A tech approached with a tablet. "Dr. Leesburg—saliva samples confirmed. Same toxicity as blood. Hair follicles too. Nail beds."
She looked like she might vomit, but she forced the words out anyway, eyes fixed on the screen like it was safer than making eye contact with the dead man on the table.
Mike let out a low whistle. "So basically… don't exist near them."
"Sound draws them. Blood feeds them. Touch spreads it," Ellis said. "Efficient."
Mike grimaced. "Nature's worst group project."
Ellis almost smiled.
Almost.
The slam against the glass came again—harder this time. A wet handprint dragged downward, leaving streaks that looked dark even through the barrier. Another body pressed its face to the glass long enough for them to see teeth and gums and the torn edges of lips that had been chewed through like the person had tried to bite their own mouth off.
Mike peeled off his gloves and leaned back against the counter. Blood smeared his wrist where the cuff had slipped.
"You know," Mike said quieter now, "I keep thinking about how fast this all went wrong."
Ellis didn't answer.
"Penn sent that first alert," Mike continued. "Then silence. And now we've got outbreaks popping up everywhere. Same timeline. Same symptoms."
Ellis's jaw tightened.
"That's not an accident," Mike said. "That's coordination."
Ellis finally looked at him.
"They were warning us," Mike finished. "And we didn't listen."
The words settled heavy.
Not guilt exactly—Ellis had lived too long in systems built on delayed response and denied accountability. But it was something adjacent: the sick recognition of pattern, the cold understanding that a door had been cracked open on purpose and now the whole building was flooding.
Before Ellis could respond, the radio crackled sharply.
"Leesburg, this is Command."
Ellis straightened. "Go."
"We're initiating Tier-One extraction," the voice said. "Your building is classified as a hard-point. You're holding. Good work."
Ellis didn't speak.
He could hear something else behind the transmission—shouting, maybe. A thud. Someone screaming a name. The radio cut those pieces out and left only the polished voice pretending the base was still a base and not a slaughterhouse with power.
"A Black Hawk is inbound in seventy-two hours," Command continued. "Primary evac target is you, Dr. Leesburg. Secondary is your immediate research team."
Mike turned slowly. "Well. That's comforting."
Ellis's expression didn't change. "Negative."
A pause. "Clarify."
"I'm not leaving," Ellis said. "Not without my family."
Silence stretched long enough to be deliberate.
"Doctor," Command said carefully, "this project does not exist without you."
Ellis's voice hardened. "Then it waits."
"You should've been evacuated first," the voice snapped. "You know that."
Ellis did.
And that was the problem.
Because being chosen first meant everyone else was expendable. It meant Sharon in a hospital full of screaming mothers and newborns and barricaded doors didn't rate. It meant Justin out there somewhere in the city didn't rate. It meant the world outside these reinforced walls was just noise.
Ellis heard that truth in the shape of every pause.
"You have seventy-two hours," Command said. "Locate your family. Get them to a secure extraction point. Then you get on that chopper."
"And if I don't?" Ellis asked.
Another pause.
"Then we lose the best chance we have at understanding this," Command replied. "And we don't plan for that outcome."
The radio clicked off.
The lab felt smaller.
The air felt thicker.
Like the building had inhaled and decided not to exhale again.
Mike exhaled slowly. "So. Three days to find your family in the middle of the apocalypse."
Ellis nodded once.
Mike tilted his head. "You're not going."
"No," Ellis said. "I'm staying."
Mike studied him, then sighed. "I figured."
Outside, the dead slammed against reinforced glass.
Inside, the truth settled in.
This wasn't just about survival anymore.
It was about what—and who—was worth leaving behind.
And Ellis Leesburg had already made his choice.