The city wasn't a city anymore. It was a corpse crowned in smoke and echoing with distant screams.
For three days, Rahul had hidden inside the science wing of St. Ravencroft. He crouched in a corner beneath a broken lab table, surrounded by shattered glass, dried blood, and the stench of chemical rot.
He hadn't spoken a word since the outbreak.
No one came back for him.
No one even tried.
He found a half-eaten protein bar in a teacher's drawer. Drank toilet water in the staff washroom. Licked condensation from window panes when thirst gnawed at him.
When he slept, nightmares tore at him: visions of Ayush laughing on the rooftop, the others running past him without a glance.
When he woke, there was only the gnawing emptiness and the crawling hatred blooming under his skin.
The Window
On the third day, Rahul crawled to a shattered third-floor window.
Below, he saw them.
Ayush's group — alive. Moving together across the old sports shed fence, low and careful. Ayush in the front, giving signals. Kartik carrying supplies. Shivam glancing over his shoulder, guarding. Ananya close behind Ayush, too close.
They moved like a real team.
Like a family.
Rahul's fingers dug into the windowsill until the concrete flaked under his nails.
"Why him? Why not me?"
At first, he only watched, too weak to do anything else.
But slowly, curiosity turned to resentment. Resentment turned to venom. And venom turned into something worse.
The Bite
It happened on his second escape attempt.
A girl — her jaw shattered, eyes glazed red — lunged at him from a locker. Her teeth tore into his forearm before he smashed her skull against the wall in blind panic.
He staggered back, panting, staring at the wound.
He waited for the fever. For the madness. For death.
He didn't sleep that night. Instead, he lay on the cold floor, staring at the ceiling, mumbling to himself.
"It's coming. Any second now."
But when morning came, the wound was closed.
Not scarred. Healed.
Smooth skin. As if nothing had happened.
The Corridor Test
Driven by a mix of terror and disbelief, Rahul walked straight into a hallway full of infected the next day.
They turned. Sniffed.
He felt his lungs stop.
But they simply moved past him. A few even brushed against his shoulders.
He didn't move. Didn't breathe.
When they were gone, he almost laughed. Almost cried.
The Discoveries
He tested himself for hours after that.
A deep cut on his hand? Gone in minutes.
A steel locker he once struggled to shift? He bent it like tin.
No hunger. No fatigue.
Stronger. Faster. Regenerating.
"I'm not human anymore. But I'm not one of them either."
Something new.
Something alone.
The Shadow
Rahul followed Ayush's group across crumbling rooftops, through smoke-choked alleys, behind overturned buses. Always watching. Always waiting.
He saw Ayush slit a zombie's throat with cold efficiency. Saw Kartik bandage Shivam's bleeding shoulder. Saw Ananya lean into Ayush during a quiet moment, whispering something Rahul could only imagine.
In those moments, Rahul wasn't a monster.
He was just a boy abandoned on a rooftop, watching someone else live his story.
The Attack
One evening, in an abandoned grocery shop, Rahul ran into a terrified couple scavenging.
The woman screamed. The man threw a metal pipe that cracked against Rahul's skull.
Rahul didn't even flinch.
He stepped forward. Grabbed the man by the neck.
One push — his spine folded against the wall.
The woman dropped her knife and ran.
Rahul looked down at his shaking hands, not from weakness, but from recognition.
"This... this is who I really was before they took it all away."
The Knife
In an alley behind the construction site, Rahul found a kitchen knife.
Drake's blade. Dropped during Ayush's frantic rooftop fight.
Rahul turned it over in his hands, admiring the weight. The balance.
"His weapon. Now mine."
The Stalk
Ayush's group reached a metro station on the edge of the city — exhausted, dirty, barely alive. They moved in tight formation, checking every shadow.
Rahul followed from the rooftops.
He saw them react to distant helicopter lights. He watched them dodge drone sweeps. He admired their desperation.
But under it all, he saw one truth.
"Ayush still believes he's the hero."
"And they still believe in him."
The Encounter
Shivam scouted ahead into an underground parking lot to clear a path. He stepped past a flickering overhead light, his breath quick.
Then he froze.
Rahul stood in the center of the floor, framed by cracked pillars and puddles of rainwater.
Shivam's voice barely escaped his throat.
"...Rahul?"
Rahul tilted his head, eyes studying every twitch in Shivam's face.
A slow, human smile.
But there was no warmth behind it. Only hunger — the kind that no food could ever satisfy.
"Still playing the good guy game, huh?" Rahul whispered, voice soft but echoing.
Shivam backed away. "What… what happened to you?"
Rahul took a step forward, the knife glinting under the broken ceiling light.
"Tell your leader… I'm not hiding anymore."
He moved so fast Shivam stumbled, tripping backward.
But Rahul didn't attack.
He only watched. Turned. And disappeared into the dark like a phantom.
The Final Thought
Rahul climbed a nearby rooftop, crouched low, watching Ayush's group gather below.
His mind roared with conflicting echoes.
The cheers he used to get when he fought in school.
The way Ayush's group looked at him with fear that day on the rooftop.
Their laughter without him.
"I'm not one of them. I'm not one of you. I'm beyond both."
"I am the next chapter."
Rahul was no longer human... and not quite a zombie either. He had become something far worse — a predator with no tribe and nothing left to lose.