Gale heard static come through Ollie's phone once again. Kyle's voice came through.

  "We're fucked! There's a whole bunch of dead people walking that aren't dead! They broke through the door even though they're dead! Too many!" Multiple gunshots fired over the radio. "We need backup now! Pssht over!"

  The line went silent for two seconds until static came through it again. "If any of you are still alive, get your asses over here! East corridor! Pssht over!"

  "Let's go," Ollie shouted, already heading for the exit. Gale and Rachel followed suit, but all three suddenly stopped.

  The door they had skipped earlier crashed across the room. The smell hit first, rot and decay so strong that even Gale could no longer hold down the bile. This shit was worse than the beasts in the Eclipsed.

  Bodies came through the doorway. They looked human but weren't. Skin falling off, revealing the rotting muscles underneath. The eyes were a lifeless white, some didn't even have eyes as the eye sockets were fully exposed. These weren't like the ghouls back in the Eclipsed. At least those ones still had a semblance of something living. These were just walking dead.

  "Fuck me," Ollie muttered, raising his gun.

  The first zombie moved fast, way too fast for something dead with only half of whatever it was. Its jaw hung loose, teeth clicking as it ran at them.

  Gale tapped the storage box at his side. The menu appeared, and he picked his weapons tab. The Weber materialized immediately, catching the light from Rachel's hand.

  "Watch your six!" Rachel shouted as the flames grew from looking like a candle on her hand to a bonfire on her arms.

  The zombie reached Gale. He turned and cut through its neck. The head fell off, but the body kept going for two more steps before dropping.

  [Extracting Origin from Prey...]

  Gale smiled. First, they died immediately after decapitation, unlike the ghouls where you needed to smash the brain. These just needed decapitation. Second, he finally saw the Origin extraction notification after weeks of who knows how long. Didn't give much Origin, but who cares. Numbers go up is good.

  More zombies filled the narrow hallway. Some crawled on the walls like spiders. Others dragged broken legs behind them.

  Rachel pushed her hand forward. Fire shot out and burned three zombies to ash. The smell of burnt rot filled the space.

  "Move!" Ollie shouted, firing his Deagle. The bullet went through one zombie's head then curved to hit another. "Too many for this space!"

  Gale cut down two zombies with one slash, and three more. One grabbed his jacket, and a fist came flying, exploding the zombie's head.

  [Extracting Origin from Prey...]

  Rachel backed up, throwing another fireball at a cluster. "We need more room!"

  "This way!" Ollie kicked a burning zombie aside and pointed down the hall. "Back to the fork!"

  They moved, fighting as they went. Gale slashed anything that got close. Rachel kept the rear covered with blasts of fire every few steps. Ollie's bullets homed in on the heads.

  The smell got worse as more bodies packed the hallway. Hands reached for them, mouths open with the signature low groan of a zombie.

  "How many of these fuckers are there?" Ollie grunted as a magazine floated into the empty magwell.

  "Too many!" Rachel blasted another group with fire. The zombies lit up on fire, flesh sizzling, yet it didn't stop the zombies immediately. They sprinted a few more metres before finally succumbing to the fire.

  Gale ducked under, cutting off another head. The headless body clawed at him too closely. A kick to the chest launched it backwards, hitting a cluster and causing the group to tumble down.

  They reached the fork where the exit led to. The twins would've been ahead in the right corridor. Looking back, there were at least 30 zombies sprinting at them and probably more coming from behind that group based on the sound of footsteps and groans.

  "We should really leave those assholes for dead," Ollie said, firing a volley at the horde, but feet still moving to the right corridor.

  "You don't mean that, right? Do you?" Rachel blasted another group of zombies, bigger this time. The blast created a pile-up of bodies that covered the hallway, giving them a moment to breathe while the zombies on the other side tried to claw their way through.

  "No, I don't," Ollie replied immediately. "But if they die, I'm going to kick their asses."

  They ran down the right tunnel in single file. Water dripped from pipes overhead, making puddles that splashed under their boots.

  "No gunshots," Ollie said. "Bad sign."

  "Or they're hiding," Rachel suggested.

  The tunnel ended at a metal door like the one they'd come through. Ollie got there first, gun ready. No noise came from inside.

  "Kyle! Clyde!" Ollie yelled. "You in there?!"

  Ollie went into the dome room first, gun up. Rachel lit up the flames on her hand again, while Gale followed casually behind. The twins were clearly still alive, hiding even. Not sure why, though, as there were moving entities within the vicinity apart from the zombies they passed.

  Looking at the room, it was like a war zone. One of the four metal pillars bent at a weird angle, almost touching the floor. Monitors sparked, screens broken. Control panels lay in pieces with wires hanging out. Bullet holes covered the walls and equipment. Dozens and dozens of zombies littered the floor by the lower platform. At least 50 zombies, all of their heads blown apart or sliced in half.

  "Fuck," Ollie scanned the room with his gun.

  A shot hit the wall next to Ollie's head.

  "Stop right there!" Kyle shouted from the far corner. "Identify yourselves!"

  "It's us, you idiots!" Ollie shouted.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "Prove it," Clyde aimed his long gun at the group. "The real Ollie would have left us for dead. Said so himself."

  Ollie lowered his gun slightly. "Oh for fuck's sake. The real Ollie also knows you're both too stupid to die properly. Now cut the crap before I decide to shoot you myself."

  The twins glanced at each other, lowering their guns.

  "Fuck you, Ollie," Kyle grinned.

  "Fuck you too," Ollie grumbled, putting his gun away. He walked deeper into the room, kicking a head away. "What the hell happened? You assholes broke everything!"

  Clyde came out from behind the desk. "Not our fault. These fuckers came out of nowhere. Fast too."

  "And strong," Kyle rubbed his shoulder. "One of them threw me across the room. Almost gave me a booboo."

  Rachel walked farther into the dome. "Where did they come from?"

  Kyle pointed to a twisted security door hanging from one hinge on the far side. "Through there. Storage area or something. They were all smushed in there."

  A wet, slapping sound came from behind Rachel. Everyone turned toward the tunnel they'd just come through. Shadows moved against what little light came from Rachel's hand. The zombies from before managed to claw out the corpse blockade, now sprinting at the only entrance of the room.

  Gale gripped Weber tighter. Rachel stepped back, hands glowing brighter. Ollie raised his gun.

  But Clyde just smiled.

  "I've got this," he said, lifting his long gun.

  The weapon made a humming sound, blue light building along the barrel. When he pulled the trigger, a bullet pushed through the barrel, creating a shockwave on its trail.

  The zombies turned to dust. Not burned or blown apart, just disintegrated to dust from the wave that passed by. When it ended, nothing was left but empty space.

  Holy shit. First time Gale ever seen something as destructive as that. Maybe Rachel in the final moments of the Eclipsed, but that was something else.

  Clyde lowered the gun as smoke rose from its barrel. "Needed to cool down anyway."

  Ollie stared at the twins, more like a glare, then turned to the darkness of the corridor. "You still shouted like you were dying over the walkie?"

  Kyle grinned. "Wanted to see if you'd actually come."

  "Please," Clyde said. "Like a bunch of zombies could actually get us."

  "Yeah, yeah," Kyle laughed. "You should have seen your faces, though. 'Oh no! Zombies! We're all gonna die!'"

  Ollie slapped his face with a palm. "Whatever. You two check what's left of those terminals. Maybe something survived your little playdate with the undead."

  Without waiting for a response, Ollie went to some machines against the wall that weren't as damaged. The twins went to the opposite side of the room.

  Gale turned to Rachel. "Come on. Let's see what we can find."

  They stepped over the piles of bodies and debris, going deeper into the dome into one relative corner. He looked at the pile of CRT monitors, some still intact, others completely broken. Behind them, there was an intact pile of cardboard boxes filled with stacks of paper.

  "Look at this," Rachel said, pulling out a folder. "Research logs."

  "Right." Gale followed and took a different box, sorting through the contents. Most were technical documents, equipment schematics he didn't understand. At the bottom, he found a leather-bound journal. From the way it was worn out, it was still relatively new compared to the other documents they found in this place. The leather was still soft, and the pages barely yellowed.

  He opened it to the last entry:

  July 22, 2064

  Success! The gateway stabilized for exactly 17 minutes today. We kept power consumption minimal, just enough to create the aperture but not sustain it. And something came through. It was just a rat, ordinary in every way except for its origin. The creature scurried away before we could contain it, but this proves the concept works. We can create a doorway between here and... somewhere else.

  August 15, 2064

  Henderson has fallen ill. High fever, disorientation. Medical says it's just a flu, but three others showed the same symptoms yesterday. We've implemented quarantine protocols, but it's getting worse. Davis died this morning. His temperature spiked to 112 before his heart gave out. Something's wrong here.

  August 30, 2064

  Five more dead. Bodies taken north for disposal per protocol. The sickness spreads fast. It only takes 48 hours from first symptoms to appear and then death. Management insists we continue the experiments while the medical team works on containment. I've begun to wonder if that rat brought something with it. A pathogen? Something we have no immunity to?

  September 12, 2064

  God help us. Williams went to check the burial site yesterday and reported movement. Not wildlife, but the dead themselves. I didn't believe him until he showed me the footage. They move. They hunt. They're coming back.

  I found the rat today. It was normal except for one thing: it carries the pathogen but isn't affected. I've isolated it for study. If I can determine how it resists the infection, perhaps I can synthesize a cure before we're all...

  The journal ended there. Gale closed it. Not very useful other than telling him what the hell was up with those zombies.

  Across the dome, Ollie whistled. "Found something!"

  Gale and Rachel joined him at a workbench against the wall. Ollie held what looked like a clear glass tube, about the size of a water bottle. The surface had tiny etchings, millions of them, barely visible except when light hit them right.

  "What is it?" Rachel asked, moving closer to Ollie.

  Ollie turned the tube in his hands, squinting at it. "Something big. Really big." He ran a finger over the etchings. "It's artificing work. Old school but advanced."

  "Can you read it?" Gale asked.

  Ollie nodded slowly. "Parts of it. It's a reality puncture tool. These runes and glyphs…" he pointed to markings near the top, "…create a focal point. And these describe the target."

  "Target?" Rachel asked.

  "A location. But it's blank here, see?" Ollie pointed to a smooth patch. "There'd be an input mechanism, probably electrical, to say where you want the rift to open." He put the tube closer to his face. "The whole thing runs on dust. See these channels? Dust flows through them, powering the runes. The more condensed the dust, the longer the rift stays open. I've done shit like this too but never really cared for applying dust to tech."

  "So this is how they made those rifts," Gale said. "Artificially. But what's the point?"

  "They aren't just rifts," Ollie corrected. "Controlled rifts. To specific places. That's a whole different level of technology. There's two ways to get dust. In rifts, but the Arcanes lock that in secret. Or when the rift core is destroyed in a specific way. If the input dust is small enough, they would technically be able to harvest more dust than they use which means…"

  "Typical Ollie nerding so hard just like in Vancouver," Kyle shouted from across the room. "If you'd just did what you were supposed to do, like I don't know, grab the shit and dipping, none of that would've happened."

  "Fuck off, Kyle," Ollie said. "If you two had checked the perimeter like you were supposed to, we wouldn't have had fifty Jiuling up our asses."

  "Blah, blah, blah," Clyde said. "Still whining about that?"

  "You got shot because you didn't listen," Kyle said. "Not our fault."

  "Not your fault?" Ollie's voice rose to a yell. "You sold me out for a fucking promotion!"

  "Water under the bridge," Clyde waved his hand. "And we didn't get the promotion anyway."

  "Because you're idiots," Ollie muttered, turning back to the glass tube.

  While they argued, Gale went to another stack of boxes. One caught his eye. A cardboard box with a single letter on it, "H." It was different compared to the other uncategorised or unnamed boxes.

  He crouched down and opened it. Inside were more folders, older than the others. Reports, protocols, theoretical papers, all of which were neatly organized. He flipped through them quickly. Then he saw it.

  'Hathie.'

  Gale stared at the simple title. That was the simple title of the paper. It was his last name, one his dad always told him not to change and to be proud of the name. The survivors of the wild, dad said. It was a last name he hadn't heard anyone had except for his family. It could be a common name, but then why did his dad say not to change it?

  "Find something?" Rachel asked, crouching beside him.

  Gale didn't answer. Beneath the papers were clearly photographs clipped on with a paperclip. His hands shook as he reached for the picture with a silhouette that was all too familiar.

  "Gale?" Rachel asked again.

  He gulped before looking up at her. "Yeah. I think I found something."