"Reyan Sharma?"
"Yes! Please, where is she!?"
"How do I know you're not infected?"
"I'm not—just tell me if she's safe!"
The eye studied him through the crack. Long enough that Reyan wanted to scream. Long enough that doubt crept in.
Then the door closed.
Reyan's heart stopped.
He heard the chain sliding free.
The door opened.
A man stood there. Late thirties, maybe. Tired eyes with dark circles underneath. Unshaven, three days of stubble on his jaw. A kitchen knife gripped in his right hand, knuckles white around the handle.
Behind him, the apartment looked like a war zone. Furniture shoved against windows. Sheets and blankets nailed over the glass. Scattered supplies on the floor — water bottles, canned food, a first aid kit torn open.
And in the corner, barely visible in the dim light, a small figure wrapped in a blanket.
"Papa?"
The voice was small. Scared. But alive.
Reyan's heart shattered and rebuilt itself all at once.
He tried to move forward, but the man stepped into his path, knife raised.
"Stay back," he warned. "I need to be sure first. When were you bitten?"
"I wasn't—"
"Everyone says that." The man's eyes were hard. "Show me your arms. Your neck. All of you. Prove it."
Reyan lifted his arms slowly, turned around. The blood covering him was dried now, dark and crusty. He pulled up his sleeves, showed his neck, his forearms.
"Clean," he said. "I'm clean."
Samir and Taj did the same behind him, weapons lowered to show they weren't a threat.
The man studied them. His eyes moved from person to person, checking every exposed inch of skin. Looking for the telltale darkness of veins, the milky white of infected eyes.
After what felt like an eternity, he slowly lowered the knife.
"Okay." He exhaled. "Okay, you're clean." He stepped aside but didn't put the knife down. "But I'm watching you. All of you."
Reyan didn't care.
He moved past him and dropped to his knees.
His daughter ran into his arms.
He held her tight, so tight he was afraid he might hurt her, but he couldn't let go. She was warm and solid and real. Her heart beat against his chest. She was alive.
"I'm here," he whispered into her hair. "I promised I'd come back."
She clung to him, her small hands gripping his bloody shirt.
Then her voice, muffled against his shoulder, broke the silence.
"Papa… where's Mama?"
Reyan froze.
"She said she wanted to play hide and seek," his daughter continued. "She told me to lock the door and wait for you or her. But… she hasn't come back yet."
The words hit like bullets.
Reyan couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe. His throat closed up completely.
Behind him, he heard the stranger close and lock the door. The chain rattled. The deadbolt clicked.
Outside, the city burned. Screams echoed in the distance. Smoke rose into the darkening sky.
Inside, for just this moment, Reyan had kept his promise.
But even as he held his daughter close, even as she whispered questions he couldn't answer, other questions burned in his mind.
Who was this man?
Where was he when Priya died?
How had he gotten into their apartment?
VAISHALI DISTRICT
In a house with boarded windows and a barricaded door, Ahmed set up his mobile camera again.
His hands were steadier now. More purposeful. He'd found this place hours ago after running from a pack of runners. The front door had been unlocked. A mistake. Or maybe an invitation.
Inside, he'd found supplies. Canned beans. Bottled water. Medical equipment still in sealed packages. A generator in the basement that still had fuel.
This house had belonged to a doctor. Dr. Mehta, according to the diplomas on the wall. Ahmed had found the body upstairs in the master bedroom — sitting in a chair by the window, a bullet hole in the temple, a revolver in the hand. The man had chosen his own end before the infection could choose it for him.
Ahmed didn't judge him for it.
He understood.
"Secured a house in Vaishali district. The evolution's accelerating." Ahmed said to the camera. His voice was calmer now. More controlled.
He flipped through his notebook —hours of observations crammed into pages torn from a lab journal. Hastily sketched diagrams of infected movement patterns. Behavioral notes scrawled in the margins in handwriting that got shakier as the entries went on.
"Type One remains basic. Slow. Driven purely by hunger. Type Two — the runners — they're faster, more aggressive. They track by scent now. I've confirmed it. They followed a blood trail for three blocks without stopping."
He paused. Swallowed.
"But Type Three…" His voice dropped. "Type Three is different."
Ahmed leaned closer to the camera.
"I watched one. From a rooftop across the street. It wasn't hunting. It was watching. Observing the others. When prey appeared — a dog, starving and desperate — the Type Three didn't attack immediately."
He tapped his notebook.
"It waited. Let the Type Ones and Twos chase the dog into an alley. A dead end. Then it moved to block the exit. It trapped it. That means strategy. That means planning. That means it's learning."
Ahmed's hand trembled slightly as he set the notebook down.
"If this keeps up, we're not fighting a virus anymore. We're witnessing evolution in real time. Accelerated evolution. Something that should take generations is happening in days."
Outside, a scream rose and died abruptly. Ahmed didn't flinch. He'd stopped flinching hours ago.
"I have samples," he continued. "Notes. Documentation. Maybe even a way to understand this. Stop it. But I need a lab. Equipment. Time."
He laughed — a short, bitter sound.
"Time," he murmured. "That's exactly what we don't have."
He reached forward to turn off the camera, then paused.
"If you find this footage, my name is Ahmed Ansari. I was a researcher at Nexus Research Facility. I was there when it started. Patient zero. The first injection. The first… transformation." He swallowed hard. "And if you're watching this, I'm probably dead. But maybe my work can help someone. Maybe it can stop this before it spreads beyond Niraya."
He looked directly into the lens. His eyes were hollow but determined.
"They're not going to stay stupid forever. They're adapting. Learning. So you need to do the same. Adapt or die. Those are your only choices now."
The camera clicked off.
The phone chimed softly as it started charging from the portable battery pack he'd found in a drawer.
Ahmed sat back in the dark, listening to the city decay outside, screams, the low groans of the infected prowling the streets.
He opened his notebook again and began to write.
If he was going to die in this city, he'd make sure his death meant something.
He'd make sure someone learned from his mistakes.