Reyan opened the door and stepped out.
Everyone looked up. His daughter, curled on the couch with her rabbit. Vikram by the window, knife still in hand. Taj slumped against the wall, glasses crooked. Samir standing near the kitchen, arms crossed.
"The south side's a warzone," Samir said. "We barely made it three kilometers. Vaishali's what — eight, nine more?"
"Then we plan better," Reyan said. "We go tomorrow morning. Early."
He moved to the window and looked out.
The sun was sinking behind the buildings, painting the city in dull orange and blood-red shadows. Smoke columns were clearly visible now, rising from multiple blocks. Fires burned openly in the streets below. Shapes moved in the distance—too many of them to count—wandering intersections, spilling out of alleyways as the light faded.
Everything was visible.
Too visible.
Night would come soon, and with it, whatever hunted better in the dark.
Reyan stepped back from the window.
"We don't move after sunset," he said quietly.
Reyan looked between them. "We have one shot at this. We do it right or we don't do it at all."
Something passed between the three of them. An understanding. A commitment.
They'd survive this together or die trying.
"Tomorrow, then." Samir stepped forward and clasped Reyan's shoulder. "Thank you, brother."
"Don't thank me yet."
Reyan turned to address the room. "We're going out tomorrow. To find Samir's sister in Vaishali district. Anyone who wants to come, you're welcome. Anyone who wants to stay and hold down this place, that's fine too. No judgment either way."
"I'll come," Vikram said immediately. "Sitting here waiting to die isn't much of a life."
"You sure?" Reyan asked. "You don't owe us anything."
"Maybe not. But I owe myself something." Vikram looked at his hands.
Reyan nodded. "Then we should rest. We have a long day ahead."
Reyan stood at the window. The city stretched out before him, broken and burning. Smoke rose from dozens of fires. Sirens had been wailing all evening — now they'd gone silent. One by one, the sounds of civilization were dying out.
Niraya was dying.
And they were trapped inside its death rattle.
VAISHALI DISTRICT
Ahmed sat in his stolen house with a bowl of instant noodles in his lap, watching a rerun of some old comedy show. The volume was barely above a whisper, but he could still hear the laugh track — tinny, hollow, wrong.
On screen, a man slipped on a banana peel.
Ahmed laughed.
The sound came out too loud. Too sharp. He laughed harder, tears streaming down his face.
This was it. This was what was left. The world ending while he sat in a dead man's house eating cup noodles and watching people pretend to fall down for entertainment.
The laughter died in his throat.
He set down the bowl. He wasn't hungry anymore.
His phone sat on the coffee table, red light blinking. Still recording.
He picked up the bowl again. Took another bite. Chewed mechanically.
"You're probably wondering why I'm eating. Why I'm watching TV. Why I'm not frantically working on some miracle cure." He smiled at the camera. It didn't reach his eyes. "Simple answer: there is no cure."
He let that sink in.
"The virus was designed to rewrite neural pathways. That's not something you undo. You can't un-scramble an egg. You can't un-burn a bridge. And you can't un-rewrite a human brain." Another bite. Another empty chew. "Every scientist at Nexus knew this from day one. We knew that if something went wrong, there'd be no fixing it. We did it anyway."
His voice dropped.
"For the funding. For the prestige. For our names in the history books." He laughed again, but this time it sounded broken. "Well, we made history. Just not the way we planned."
He gestured at the TV, where actors were still mugging for an audience that no longer existed.
"So I'm doing what any rational person would do. I'm accepting it." He looked directly into the camera. "They're all dead. Everyone. Your family. My family. Everyone we knew. Dead or turned, which amounts to the same thing. And us? The ones still breathing?" He pointed at the lens. "We're just waiting for our turn."
He set down the bowl and leaned forward.
"But here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud." His eyes had something manic in them now. "Even if I can't cure them, I can stop them. The best way to stop a virus is simple — eliminate the host. Every last one. Kill them all. Burn this city to the ground if that's what it takes."
His smile widened.
"Scorched earth policy. It's the only way to be certain. Document their patterns. Learn their weaknesses. Find out what makes them tick." He drew a finger across his throat. "And then? Extinction. Theirs, not ours. Because if humanity's going down, we're taking them with us."
He reached forward.
Clicked off the camera.
Then turned back to the TV.
Picked up his noodles.
And laughed along with the laugh track like nothing was wrong.
Like the world wasn't ending just outside his barricaded door.
Like he wasn't losing his mind one recorded message at a time.