Speed’s fingers brushed the decaying flesh of her chest. A slow testing touch, the specific stupidity of someone who had grown up behind walls and had never learned what touching things on the plain actually meant.

A touch wakes it up. My mother’s voice, arriving from somewhere I hadn’t accessed in years. A touch always wakes it up.

"That thing is going to kill—"

The zombie’s hand shot up and grabbed his wrist before I finished the sentence. Speed reacted fast, I’ll give him that. He lifted it and drove it hard into the ground.

"Wow," Mercury said, watching through the windshield.

For a moment Speed stood over it like he had handled the situation. Like that was the end of it. Then I watched the zombie’s chest rise from the ground. Its mouth opened.

Even through the thick armored glass, my body heard the sound. That wet, rattling shriek that had been burned into my nervous system for twenty years. The sound that meant the plain had stopped pretending to be quiet.

Shit.

They came from everywhere.

Every frozen figure on the plain gained life simultaneously, the specific horrible moment when the plain stops being a landscape and becomes something that is moving toward you from every direction.

They staggered toward whatever living body they could smell, and there were a lot of living bodies standing outside their cars in the dark.

The post-trauma hit me before I could stop it. I felt teeth in my neck that weren’t there. My muscles locked. I sat in the back seat of the car and watched through the glass and couldn’t move, which had never happened to me before. Not once in twenty years.

"All personnel outside. Now." Sinn’s voice through the speakers.

I heard it. I couldn’t react.

Sherry woke up. I felt the moment her body registered what was outside the window. She looked at me.

"Bram."

She was the only active person in the car. Mercury had frozen somewhere too, hands still on the wheel, eyes somewhere that wasn’t the windshield. Sherry moved between the front seats and locked May’s door before any of it could get through. Then she turned back to me.

"Bram. Bram. Braaaam."

The shout broke through whatever had locked me. I came back. Mercury came back at the same moment, some shared frequency in Sherry’s voice reaching both of us.

Outside, it had already become something else entirely.

Students were fighting. Code was moving through the infected like he had been waiting for exactly this, blades extending from his hands, each one he passed going down. He was singing. I couldn’t hear the words but I could see his mouth moving and his expression was not the expression of someone in danger. It was the expression of someone who had found their environment.

Oddo was tearing them apart with his hands. Close combat, close range, completely in his element.

Harmione was burning anything in front of her, fire at level six making space around her, but they kept coming. The more the Guardians fired the more arrived from directions nobody had anticipated.

"Don’t fire," I shouted at Sinn as I got out, Sherry behind me. We locked Mercury inside.

Sinn heard me. Looked at me. Made a decision.

"Hold fire," he called to the Guardians.

Gunshots brought more. Gunshots brought everything within earshot from every direction you couldn’t predict. The plain had taught me that before I could read.

[Charge: 1900]

Every infected that touched me dried and dropped. The electrical body doing its work automatically. But each contact cost one charge and the infected were everywhere and 1900 was a number that could run out.

This is why the system told me to stock up, I thought, watching the number tick down with each contact.

General Sinn appeared at my side, breathing hard, his scarred face now carrying the look of a man whose entire understanding of the mission had just been shredded in ninety brutal seconds.

"Kid," he said. He hadn’t learned my name yet. "What do we do?"

"Retreat into the cars," I said. "Now."

Sinn didn’t hesitate. "All units back to vehicles! Formation!"

The cars opened one side of their doors, soldiers holding the perimeter on the other sides, keeping the line while people moved toward safety. I stood with Sherry at our door.

May appeared first out of the chaos, moving with the uncanny efficiency of someone who had known exactly where to be. She got in.

Code carved through a cluster of infected like a dancer, blades singing from his hands, mouth still moving in some private, joyful song. His face wasn’t afraid. It was ecstatic.

Oddo smashed his way forward like a human wrecking ball, infected flying in broken heaps. Harmione burned her way to safety and got in.

We got in and locked the doors. Through the glass I could see two students still outside. Owen and Speed.

Speed was running, his super speed buying him distance, pink hair flashing under headlights as he sprinted toward the vehicles. Owen was tracking him. I watched Owen’s glowing red eyes follow Speed’s movement and I felt something wrong about it before I could name it.

Owen’s eyes narrowed. He discharged. A bright crimson arc of electricity slammed into Speed mid-stride. Speed convulsed, went down hard.

The infected swarmed him instantly. A writhing pile of teeth and claws swallowed him whole.

Owen turned and walked calmly back to his vehicle without a backward glance.

General Sinn stood outside for one frozen second, watching the boy die. Then he pulled back into his own car and the last doors slammed shut.

Inside our vehicle, the air was thick with heavy breathing. May’s usual chaos had gone quiet. Sherry’s face was pale but steady. Mercury stared straight ahead, hands still shaking slightly on the wheel. A ten minute break on the way to the actual mission.

One student gone. At least ten Guardians already turning. The cars were completely surrounded, hundreds of infected clawing at the armor, rocking the heavy vehicles.

Sinn’s voice came through the speakers. Slightly different from before. The specific quality of a man whose confidence has been accurately updated.

"Outside kid," he said.

Me. He still didn’t know my name.

"What do we do now?"