Elias remembered how this part went.
Images that were not his flickered through his skull, barging in sharp and sudden, like an uninvited guest. It showed him a skyline buckled beneath the orange sky. He heard the scream of a bridge as if some giant hand had plucked it apart.
Faces followed… ones he could not name.
He watched patterns of defeat unfold before him, dozens of failures that became a single catastrophic whole.
Elias tasted ash in his throat, smelled dust that had no source in the plaza. He sagged against the railing, fingers whitening as they clung to the metal.
People were screaming below. The sound was enough to snap him back into himself.
A hysterical cry rose above the rest as a woman staggered away from the subway steps, one hand pressed uselessly to her cheek where a man's teeth had torn flesh away. Blood streamed between her fingers.
"My face! I can't--- I can't feel my face!"
Another shout followed, louder. A man had dropped to his knees, staring in horror as flames poured uncontrollably from his palms, igniting the sleeves of his jacket. Smoke curled upward, thick and acrid, and he wailed as if the sound alone might extinguish the fire.
Nearby, a translucent shield shimmered into existence, then collapsed a second later under the weight of a panicked crowd pressing against it. People fell. Someone screamed as their leg bent the wrong way beneath the crush.
"What is happening!"
"Get off me!"
"Help me--- Please!"
Every sound from the plaza felt warped, as if Elias were hearing everything through a long and empty tunnel. He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes and tried to breathe through the memory.
The mnemonic echo did not come as an explanation.
It came as an insistence, firmly commanding him to remember.
'This is where it goes wrong.'
The thought hit him like a blunt object.
[Ability registered.]
[Mnemonic Echo - Passive.]
The private text still hovered at the corner of his vision. It felt less like a label and more like a verdict.
Elias tore his gaze away and forced himself down the stairs two at a time.
Bodies tumbled past him, people running blind, their bags slung wildly against their shoulders and backs. Shoes skidded through spilled morning coffee, faces flushed with adrenaline.
A security officer waved a pistol overhead, shouting for order as the crowd surged past him. No one listened. Another officer was already down, two of the bitten clambering over his body.
"In your front!"
Elias barely registered the warning before the stink of blood hit him. He ducked as a man with a fractured jaw lunged for his shoulder, teeth snapping inches from skin… but he was not quick enough. Fingers raked across his white sleeves, nails tearing fabric as they clawed for purchase.
"Help!" someone screamed. A person slammed into Elias from behind, shoving him forward and knocking the breath from his lungs. He stumbled, barely catching himself as his foot almost slipped.
A low growl came from his left. The attacker lurched after him again, movements jerky, delayed, as though his body were receiving instructions a fraction of a second late.
This time, Elias reacted swiftly. He spun---
And a third person crashed into the attacker blindly, tumbling out of the crowd and sending him sprawling down the stairs.
"Ha… ha," Elias breathed through his mouth, chest heaving.
"Move!" another voice barked, sharp in his ear. Elias pushed on, heart hammering.
Behind him, the sounds blurred into a mess of shouting, sobbing. Something heavy struck the stairwell, hard enough to rattle the railing, and Elias felt warm spray spatter the back of his neck. He flinched but kept moving.
An old man tripped from the landing to the plaza below. Elias heard the impact, the bones that snapped like branches underfoot. Before the old man could even cry out, hands seized him, wrenching him upright with their fingers digging into his shirt and skin.
Flesh tore. Blood poured out in a heavy, dark red pool, and someone slipped in it, fell hard and did not get back up.
Elias did not turn around. He knew what he would see if he did: mouths chewing and eyes glazing over as a man became nothing more than meat.
Turning back was not curiosity--- it was surrender. You hesitated. You stopped. Then you were next.
He took the last steps two at a time and did not stop running. He pushed through the crowd toward the east exit, toward a cluster of shops and an alley that sloped up away from the plaza.
Somewhere a car alarm keened on and on. Somewhere else a child cried as his parents were being torn apart before his eyes.
Elias kept moving because that was what felt easier. He veered into the cluttered trash bags, not slowing down. All the while his passive skill hammered at him without mercy.
Mnemonic Echo beat against his awareness, dragging the future up into the present, flooding him with what was about to go wrong.
He saw it immediately, the difference his borrowed memories picked out, carving him a highlight across the scene.
'I can't go right here, I may trip!'
He followed the instinct without questioning it, sliding around a pile of bins. The sounds of the plaza dulled from his ears, replaced by his ragged breathing and the slap of his shoes on concrete. His lungs burned. His heart was raging to come out of his chest.
At the top of the slope, the alley opened into a side street.
For half a second, Elias slowed.
Cars sat frozen at crooked angles, doors flung open and engines dead. A delivery van blocked the intersection, its driver gone.
People fled in all directions. Some were running, others staggering, already breaking apart.
Growls cut through the noise. They came from bodies sprinting on all fours, snapping upright in the middle of their run. Blood frothed at their mouths, strings of red swinging.
Elias darted left as one of them leapt between two cars and slammed a man to the pavement. Ahead, a storefront detonated outward in a roar of glass. He raised his arm just in time, shards slicing the air where his face had been.
A man stumbled through the shattered window, screaming his lungs out. His clothes were on fire, flames crawling hungrily up his back. He flailed blindly, knocking into a traffic light post hard enough to bend it.
Someone shouted for water. Someone else ran the other way.
Elias froze as his vision swam, overlapping images bleeding into one another. Elias smelled ash before there was smoke. He forced himself to focus on what was real.
The same street. The same spot. A doubled image of the burning man outlined too clearly. The picture came in a heartbeat. This man would detonate any second now.
"Shit---"
"I'm on fire! Help me---" The man's scream cut off as the fire on his back burst outward.
The shockwave slammed Elias off his feet, throwing him backward into a parked car with a crunch of metal and bone. He slid down the door, ears ringing, stars bursting across his vision.
Elias gasped and dragged himself sideways. The car's windows blew out, glass spraying across the street.