The military truck that had picked them up at Rouxi’s house rolled through the outer gates of their base just before the sun had started to set.

None of his team wanted to be here, they kept looking over their shoulders, trying to see if Rouxi maybe had followed them.

It wasn’t like they hadn’t tried to convince her to come to base. But she just shook her head and told them that that would never happen. She was just as cruel and direct as she always had been with them...

But when everyone else was waiting for him in the military truck, Rouxi went to the door and whispered low to him. "It’s not like I’m going anywhere."

Right. She wasn’t going anywhere. If they needed her, they knew where to find her.

And that eased something in Commander Li’s chest that he wasn’t going to look too closely at.

A deep pothole knocked him out of his thoughts as the trucks headlights cut across the concrete barriers and half-finished defenses. The entire place looked a lot worse than they had when he left the base less than a week ago.

At some point during his absence, things had started slipping.

Not collapsing completely. Not yet. But the cracks were there now, obvious in ways they hadn’t been before.

Or maybe he had gotten so used to Rouxi’s house that now, no place could compare.

Letting out a long sigh, he focused on what he could see. Floodlights illuminated the main yard in uneven patches, several of them flickering hard enough to be distracting.

Soldiers moved through the compound carrying crates, weapons, medical supplies, anything they could get their hands on, but there was no rhythm to it anymore. People were shouting over each other and trucks were parked at awkward angles like no one had bothered organizing anything after unloading them.

And everywhere Li looked, he saw exhausted faces.

The truck stopped near the medical wing and Li stepped down first, his boots hitting wet pavement hard enough to splash muddy water up the legs of his pants. The rain had stopped almost a full day ago, but the base still looked soaked through.

Then the smell hit.

Blood.

Antiseptic.

Rot.

Death.

Luo Xin climbed down beside him, his medical kit slung over one shoulder as his eyes swept across the compound. The medic’s expression tightened almost immediately.

"Something’s wrong," he muttered.

Li could hear Rouxi’s voice in his head saying ’no shit’, but he didn’t open his mouth. No one could look at this and think that everything was right.

The medical building was overflowing.

Soldiers sat shoulder to shoulder along the walls and floor, some wrapped in blankets despite the humid heat inside the building. Others shook violently where they sat, sweat soaking through their uniforms while medics rushed between them carrying trays of supplies that looked dangerously low.

One man screamed somewhere deeper inside the building.

Another voice shouted for restraints.

Li’s jaw tightened slightly as he walked further in.

Bodies were lined along one wall under military tarps. He cocked his head to the side as he registered the dead.

How could this happen? Was there an attack?

A young medic rushed past carrying bloodied gauze in both hands, his face pale enough to look sick himself. Another soldier stumbled into the hallway and immediately doubled over, vomiting onto the floor hard enough that blood splattered with it.

No one even looked surprised anymore.

Luo Xin stopped beside one of the cots and frowned.

The man lying there couldn’t have been older than twenty. His skin was burning red with fever, sweat pouring down his face while his body shook hard enough to rattle the metal frame beneath him.

"Symptoms started yesterday," another medic said quickly as he approached Luo Xin. "High fever. Muscle spasms. Elevated aggression in some cases. We thought it might be a zombie infection but they don’t have any bites."

Luo Xin’s expression darkened slightly. "They all have the same symptoms?" he asked.

The medic nodded immediately. "Almost all of them."

Li looked over the room again.

Fever. Sweating. Shaking. Confusion. The exact same thing he and his men had experienced after standing in the rain.

Luo Xin clearly reached the same conclusion. "This is the same thing," he said quietly. "The symptoms match up perfectly. But you guys were fine. Why are they dying?"

The younger medic blinked. "Same as what?"

Li answered before Luo Xin could. "My team experienced similar symptoms less than twenty-four hours after we were exposed to the rain two nights ago."

The medic stared at him. "You’re serious?"

"Yes."

"And you recovered?"

Li nodded once. "Within a day."

Luo Xin adjusted the strap on his medical kit before adding calmly, "Rouxi took longer," he pointed out.

That name made Li glance at him briefly. Neither of them explained further.

A crash echoed from deeper in the building, then a high pitch scream of pure pain and terror.

Everyone in the hallway turned at once as two soldiers burst through one of the side doors dragging another man between them. The man convulsed violently, his body jerking hard enough that the soldiers almost lost their grip.

His eyes snapped open and the lights above them exploded. Glass rained down across the hallway and several people shouted at once.

The soldier screamed again, but this time it wasn’t fear. It sounded more like confusion as sparks burst wildly around him, electricity crawling across his arms in uncontrolled waves.

"Get him outside!" someone shouted.

"No, hold him down!"

"He’s burning himself!"

The lights flickered again and one of the nearby monitors exploded with a loud pop, smoke immediately pouring out of the back.

Commander Li stepped aside automatically as the struggling soldier was dragged past him, electricity continuing to snap violently across the floor beneath him. One of the medics caught a burst across his arm and cried out, his muscles locking instantly before he collapsed.

Panic spread through the room almost immediately after that as people started shouting louder.

Some backed away with fear while others rushed forward trying to help.

One woman near the far wall suddenly screamed as the metal tray in her hands bent inward hard enough to crush her fingers.

Across the room, another soldier slammed into the wall when a burst of air exploded outward around him without warning.

The building descended into chaos in seconds.

Li stood in the middle of it and watched.

No one understood what was happening, and that was the problem. Hell, if he and his men hadn’t gone through it themselves, they wouldn’t know what they were looking at.

People’s powers were awakening randomly throughout the base, uncontrolled and unmanaged. Some soldiers survived the fevers and changed. Others died before the symptoms fully developed.

Some simply stopped breathing in the middle of treatment while the medics moved on to the next patient because there weren’t enough hands left to save everyone.

The system was breaking faster than command realized.

Or maybe they already knew.

Maybe that was worse.

Luo Xin moved immediately once the panic started, stepping toward the nearest injured medic without hesitation. His hands glowed faintly for only a second as he pressed them against the man’s burned arm. He healed almost instantly.

Li noticed several nearby soldiers staring at Luo Xin immediately afterward, fear mixing with relief in equal measure.

But that was a problem for another time.

Outside, alarms suddenly started blaring across the compound and Li turned toward the nearest window automatically.

Soldiers were already moving across the yard, rifles raised toward the perimeter fencing.

The outer barricade near the eastern wall had partially collapsed.

And through the gap, something small moved quickly through the darkness.

Li narrowed his eyes slightly.

A rat.

No.

Not just a rat.

The thing’s skin hung in strips from its body, exposing patches of blackened flesh and bright white ribs beneath. One eye was completely gone while the other reflected brightly under the floodlights as it disappeared into the broken foundation of a damaged building.

Li stared at the hole for a long second. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Then another rat followed it inside.