Subject Nine Destroys the Apocalypse

Ten years. Thats how long they kept me in that sterile hell, poking and prodding at the architecture of my soul. I didnt just escape; I tore the cage open with a kinetic blast that leveled half the facility. But the freedom waiting for me was a nightmare. The sky was the color of a bruised plum, and the streets were crawling with things that used to be human.

I rounded a corner, my lungs still stinging from the labs recycled air, and stopped dead.

There, pressed against a crumbling brick wall, was my childhood best friend. A man I didn't recognizeher husband, apparentlyhad her pinned. He was snarling, ripping a small fabric bag from her desperate grip.

"The colony has rules, Maddie! Resource management. You think youre special enough to hoard chocolate while the rest of us starve?"

Maddies eyes were rimmed with red, her knuckles white as she clawed at the bag. "Its for Toby... please, hes just a kid..."

Beside them, a girl with perfectly curled hair and a pout that screamed 'protected' let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "Oh, please. Using the kid as an excuse again? Just admit you're a greedy glutton, Maddie."

As the surrounding survivors began to hurl insults like stones, I felt a familiar, cold hum beneath my skin. I stepped forward, tore open a heavy industrial-sized bag of premium chocolate Id scavenged, and slammed it directly into the girls smirking face.

"Is that enough for the group, or do you need a second helping?" I stared them down, the air around my fingertips beginning to distort with a faint, lethal shimmer. "Say one more word, and Ill make sure none of you live long enough to taste it."

The zipper on my backpack was broken.

A waterfall of brightly colored wrappers spilled out, clattering onto the asphalt.

"Ow! Hey! Who do you think you are?!" The girl shrieked, clutching her forehead where the bag had made contact.

Nobody answered her.

Every eye in that alley was glued to the pavement. The sound of dozens of people swallowing hard was the only thing audible in the heavy, post-apocalyptic silence.

"Chocolate... holy shit, its a whole stash..."

"My pulse-scan says its real. Its not an illusion. Its real!"

The crowd broke. They descended like a pack of starving wolves, scrambling, shoving, and clawing for a single bar. The girls screams were drowned out in an instant.

She stomped her foot, grabbing the mans arm and shaking it violently. "Brooks! Do something! Stop them!"

Brooksthe husbanddarkened. His jaw set.

"Enough!" he roared.

The authority in his voice was practiced, sharp. "Have you all forgotten the protocol? Scavenged goods are centralized. Everything goes to Sierra for storage and fair distribution!"

The mention of 'Sierra' seemed to snap them back to reality. The girlSierrasmirked and stepped forward, her palms glowing with a faint, cerulean light.

Spatial Manipulation. The ultimate locker.

But Maddie didn't care about the chocolate. She didn't even look at the frantic crowd. She was staring at me, her face ghostly pale, her breath coming in ragged hitches.

"Wren...?" her voice was a fragile thing, barely a whisper. "Is that really you? Are you actually alive?"

She lunged at me, her arms wrapping around me so tightly it hurt.

My brain felt like it was full of static, slow and unresponsive, but my body remembered her. My hand rose instinctively, patting her back with a clumsy, hesitant rhythm. "Is that... is that my name? Wren?"

"You forgot your own name?"

She pulled back, her hands fluttering over my shoulders and face as if checking for cracks in a porcelain doll. She was laughing and crying at the same time, a beautiful, messy display of humanity I hadn't seen in a decade.

"The director at the group home said some 'benefactor' adopted you. I begged him to tell me who, but he wouldn't budge. I spent years looking for you, Wren. Everywhere."

I stayed silent.

Of course she couldn't find me. For ten years, I wasn't a person. I was Subject 09, living in a sub-basement three hundred feet below the earth. I was a lab rat in a program designed to push human evolution to the breaking point.

My skull had been opened more times than I could count. Chips implanted, serums injected, memories erased and rewritten until my past was nothing but a blurred watercolor.

But through the haze of the drugs and the trauma, one thing had remained. A single, stubborn anchor.

Maddie. The girl who had shared her stale bread with me when we were five. The girl who mattered.

"Who are you? And where did you get high-tier supplies like that?"

Maddie was still checking me for injuries, but Brooks had stepped closer. His eyes moved over me like a radar, cold and calculating.

I thought about it for a second. "Passed a convenience store downtown. Picked them up."

Brooks narrowed his eyes. "Downtown? You expect me to believe you walked through the Red Zone and just 'picked up' a bag of treats?"

Maddie stepped between us before he could finish, her wings spread like a mother hen.

"Brooks, this is her. This is Wren. Ive told you about her a thousand times. Shes my family."

She turned back to me, her expression softening. "Wren, this is my husband, Brooks. We got married five years ago."

She said it with a forced brightness, then looked back at Brooks with a pleading intensity. "Please, let her stay with our unit. Im begging you."

Brooks didn't answer. He looked at me with a heavy, unreadable frown.

Behind him, Sierra, the girl with the spatial ability, let out a sharp scoff. "Maddie, be realistic. This is an elite strike team. Its bad enough we have to carry a 'Natural' like you, but now you want to bring in some random stray from the streets? Were trying to make it to The Meridian, not run a halfway house."

Maddies face went cold. "Sierra, if shes a 'burden,' then give her back her chocolate and well both leave. Right now."

"You!" Sierras face flushed. She turned to Brooks, her voice turning into a sugary whine. "Brooks, listen to her! Shes choosing a stranger over the team again!"

"Enough. Both of you."

Brooks finally spoke, his voice final.

"She contributed high-value assets to the common pool. We have an obligation to provide protection in exchange. Maddie, your friend can stay."

He turned on his heel. "Move out. No more talk."

Maddie beamed at me, grabbing my hand. Sierra just rolled her eyes and gave me a look of pure venom.

I quietly extended a thread of my consciousness, scanning Sierra as she walked away.

She was pathetic. Her 'space' was barely the size of a closetthe lowest tier of her ability. I could crush her with a flick of my wrist.

But then I looked at Maddie, who was grinning at me for the first time in years.

Fine. Id let the little brat live. For now.

The convoy rattled down the abandoned highway for two days before we hit the outskirts of a ghost town.

Maddie hadn't changed. She was still a talker. Over the hum of the engine, she filled in the ten-year gap. Shed gone to college, met Brooks her sophomore year, and married him right after graduation.

Then, two months ago, the Pulse hit. The virus followed.

Brooks had been one of the lucky oneshed awakened as a high-tier Ferrokine, able to bend metal to his will.

As for Sierra? She was Brooks' stepsister. No blood relation, but theyd grown up together.

"Theyre close," Maddie whispered, her smile fading slightly. "Sometimes I feel like the odd one out. Especially after you disappeared. I felt so alone, Wren."

She sighed, her eyes drifting to the window. "I have a son. Toby. Hes four. He was at a summer camp in the city when the outbreak started. Brooks went to get him, but the camp had already been evacuated."

"The camp director sent a message saying theyd been moved to The Meridianthe big military safe zone. Thats why were heading there. To find my boy."

Maddie looked at me, her eyes shining with a sudden, fierce hope. "He knows all about you, Wren! I tell him stories every night. About my best friend, the bravest girl in the world."

"I told him you loved paper cranes. Hes folded hundreds of them. He said hes going to give them all to 'Auntie Wren' the second he sees you."

I looked at her bright, aching smile.

Deep inside my mind, in the places where the doctors had tried to burn everything away, I felt something stir. A ripple in a stagnant pond.

"Okay," I said.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small, foil-wrapped square of chocolate Id hidden. I pressed it into her hand.

Maddies eyes went wide.

"For Toby," I said, my voice sounding a little less like a machine.

That night, we camped in a gutted-out processing plant.

Maddie crept over to my corner like a thief, sliding two pieces of hard tack toward me. "Eat this, Wren. Before Sierra counts the rations again."

My metabolism was no longer human. I could go weeks without food or water, fueled by the kinetic energy I absorbed from the air.

But I looked at her concerned face and took the bread.

Maddie sat beside me, shoulders touching mine. "Where were you, really? You don't just 'escape' a place for ten years and show up in the middle of a zombie swarm."

I stared at the bread.

My mind flashed back to the bunker. The white lights. The smell of ozone and burning flesh. The frantic voices of the 'doctors.'

"Subject 09 is reacting to the K-serum!"

"Increase the neural dampeners to max!"

"Warning! Psychic surge detected! Immediate containment breach"

And then, the boom. The sound of reinforced glass turning to dust.

When Id come to, the lab was silent. Just bodies in white coats and a red emergency light spinning. Id taken a coat from a corpse and walked toward the surface.

Maddie, I had whispered to the empty air. I have to find Maddie.

"I was in a facility," I said quietly. "It was... specialized. I couldn't leave. But I'm out now. I came looking for you."

"Oh, Wren." Maddie threw her arms around my neck, burying her face in my shoulder.

"I knew you hadn't forgotten me. Brooks used to say you probably got adopted by some rich family and didn't want a 'poor' friend like me anymore. I never believed him."

She pulled back, her eyes fierce. "He doesn't get it. He doesn't understand us."

No. He didn't.

He didn't know that I had survived a hundred lethal injections because of a promise we made when we were kids.

"Wren, were going to live to be a hundred. Were going to be best friends forever."

I had to live. I couldn't break a promise to Maddie.

In the middle of the night, Maddie fell asleep against my shoulder. I adjusted her gently, making sure she was comfortable, then stood up.

In the shadows, Brooks was watching me. His gaze was sharp, suspicious. He walked over, his boots echoing on the concrete.

He was doubting me.

I stood my ground, my mental energy beginning to coil in my palms, ready to lash out.

And then, the sirens screamed.

"Breach! We have a swarm!"

The heavy trucks blocking the entrance were tossed aside like toys. A sea of grey, rotting flesh began to pour into the plant.

The unit scrambled. Six 'Awakened' against hundreds of monsters.

They weren't "elite." Brooks was decent, but the others were amateurs. Within minutes, they were being pushed back. Their energy was flagging.

Three monsters broke the line, lunging toward Sierra and Maddie.

"Brooks! Help!" Sierra shrieked.

"Brooks!" Maddie cried out.

Without a second of hesitation, Brooks swung his arm, metal shards flying from his belt to impale the creature threatening Sierra. He saved her, then turned, his face contorting in horror as he realized Maddie was still in danger.

Squelch.

I didn't use my powers. I just grabbed a rusted piece of rebar from the floor and drove it through the skulls of two zombies in one fluid motion.

They dropped like stones.

Maddie was clutching my sleeve, her face white. "Wren, are you hurt? Did they scratch you?"

"I'm fine," I said, shaking the black sludge off my hand.

More were coming. The smell of blood was calling them.

"Get to the cars!" Brooks yelled, his voice cracking. "Ill cover the rear! Go! Now!"

Maddie was silent for the rest of the night.

We didn't stop until dawn, pulling into a secluded farmhouse. I could feel her grief, her realization.

I reached out and took her cold hand. "Ive got you," I said. "Ill protect you."

Maddie looked up. She wasn't an idiot. She knew what had happened at the plant. Given the choice between his wife and his stepsister, Brooks hadn't even blinked. Hed chosen Sierra.

"I know Sierra has the supplies," Maddie whispered, her voice trembling. "I know shes 'essential' because of her ability. I tell myself it makes sense to protect her first. But... it hurts, Wren. It hurts so much."

She looked at me, tears brimming. "Am I being selfish? Am I being crazy?"

I shook my head. "No. You're not."

In my world, Maddie was the only thing that made sense.

I remembered being four years old, abandoned at the group home because I wouldn't speak. The doctors called it 'selective mutism.' The older kids called it 'being a target.'

It was Maddie, three years older and half a head taller, who had picked up a brick and chased a group of bullies across the yard.

"Touch her again and I'll crack your skulls! You hear me?"

I remembered being nine. The director had called me into his office at midnight. There were two men there, men with hungry eyes. The director told me to be a good girl and do what they said.

The door had flown open. Maddie was there with a rusted shovel, screaming like a banshee, swinging at anything that moved. Shed nearly killed one of them.

That night, shed held my hand and brushed my hair.

"Don't be scared, Wren. If you're ever in trouble, just call my name. I'll always come."

I looked at her now, mimicking the tone shed used all those years ago.

"Maddie, don't be scared. If you're in trouble... just call my name."

She froze. Her lip began to tremble.

"Wren..."

Before she could say anything else, the light was blocked out.

Brooks was standing there with the rest of the unit. They looked grim. They looked like a jury.

Maddie stepped in front of me again. "What is this? What do you want?"

Sierra stepped forward, her voice dripping with mock concern. "Maddie, sweetie, we know you love her. But don't you think something is... off?"

Maddies jaw set. "Off how?"

Sierra looked at Brooks. He didn't say a word, but his hand was already hovering over his belt, metal beginning to hum.

A scrawny man from the unit stepped up. "Think about it, Maddie. Were a team of Awakened and we barely survive out there. Your friend has been wandering the Red Zone for two months with a bag of chocolate and she doesn't have a scratch on her?"

"She claims shes a 'Natural.' No powers. Does that sound like the truth to you?"

Maddie squeezed my hand. "What are you implying?"

Brooks stepped forward, his eyes cold. "We have to prioritize the safety of the collective, Maddie. For a month, weve taken the back roads. Its been quiet. Then she joins us, and suddenly were hit by a coordinated swarm?"

"The radio says the virus is evolving. There are 'Evolved' now. Creatures that look like us, talk like us, but lead the hives."

He raised a sharpened metal spike, pointing it directly at the space between my eyes.

"I think your 'friend' is an Evolved. A Trojan horse sent to wipe us out."

"That is the most insane thing Ive ever heard!"

Maddie didn't flinch. She shoved Sierras hand away, her voice rising to a scream.

"The world is ending and you're making up ghost stories? You saw her save me last night! If she were one of them, Id be dead!"

"Maddie, you're blinded by sentiment," Sierra sighed.

Brooks voice was like iron. "Move, Maddie."

The spike was inches from my face.

Maddie stood her ground, her body shaking with fury. "You want to get to her? You go through me. I mean it, Brooks. Try me."

I watched her back, felt the heat of her anger. And for the first time, I felt a spark of something that wasn't programming. It was a raw, burning protective instinct.

I tapped Maddies shoulder.

"Maddie. Step back."

"No, Wren! Theyll kill you!"

"They won't," I said. I gripped her wrist, sending a tiny, soothing pulse of energy into her system to calm her heart. "I promised I'd protect you."

I walked past her.

Brooks kept the spike leveled at my head. Sierra was smirking, waiting for the show.

Creeeeeak.

I pushed open the farmhouse gate.

A hundred yards away, a group of straggling zombies caught the scent of living blood. They began to hiss, their broken limbs twitching as they turned toward us.

"If shes not one of them," Sierra challenged, "then she won't mind walking out there. If they attack her, shes human. If they don't..."

"Do you really want to find out?"