I turned quickly toward the scream—and what I saw is something I will probably never forget.

  Tony Wind, the boy who minutes earlier had been murmuring disconnected words… was tearing into his own father’s neck.

  He was chewing.

  Blood streamed from the corners of his mouth.

  His eyes were wide open—deep, hollow, empty.

  And the worst part?

  He was crying and laughing at the same time.

  A trembling, childish sound mixed with torn, hysterical laughter.

  It was the most horrifying thing I have ever witnessed—and it made every muscle in my body tremble.

  The boy no longer looked human.

  His body was undergoing changes I didn’t even know how to describe.

  His hands and feet had elongated unnaturally, the fingers far too thin—like living blades.

  His nails and teeth had transformed—sharp, long, animalistic.

  Crimson veins pulsed beneath his skin, thick and swollen, like living roots about to burst through.

  And his tongue…

  His tongue stretched outward, thin and viscous, with a star-shaped bifurcated tip—and at the end, a small harpoon that moved as if it had a will of its own.

  His mother stood beside him, completely frozen in shock, incapable of reacting.

  Her muscles trembled, her face pale, her eyes wide as she suffered a nervous breakdown.

  “Elise,” I whispered without thinking. “Come on.”

  I grabbed the girl’s hand and ran toward the back of the transport.

  She was in shock—too weak even to speak.

  Her eyes had lost all life.

  They shifted from a soft brown to an empty gray… as if her soul had been torn out by the scene.

  When we reached the back of the bus, I realized the worst part:

  There was no exit.

  There was no escape.

  All I could do was watch—helpless—as that… thing that was no longer Tony Wind turned toward his own mother.

  And with one fast, brutal movement, it decapitated her.

  Her head rolled across the metal floor while the father’s body still twitched beside it.

  I trembled uncontrollably.

  I covered Elise’s eyes with my hand, even knowing it was already too late.

  One of the Acrox guards drew his firearm, breathing heavily, ready to shoot—when the other grabbed his arm hard.

  “No,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “We don’t know what the noise might attract. We’re only minutes from the facility. Use the stun weapon. And the batons.”

  “Y-yes, sir…” the soldier replied, swallowing hard.

  The air grew heavy.

  The silence before violence.

  And Tony—or whatever that thing was now—seemed to be searching for its next victim.

  The soldier holstered the firearm with trembling hands and switched to a shock baton strapped to his belt.

  The other pulled a taser from his waist—but it wasn’t a normal one.

  It was large, heavy, almost the length of a forearm.

  I had never seen anything like it.

  Maybe it was meant to restrain dangerous animals… or something worse.

  I was too stunned to think clearly.

  The soldier raised his arm, aimed, and fired.

  The darts pierced the creature’s flesh—the thing that had once been Tony—but there was no reaction.

  At least not until he pulled the trigger.

  The electric current surged through the distorted body, which immediately convulsed and collapsed to the floor, thrashing violently.

  The shock baton followed, pressed against the creature as electrical cracks echoed through the transport.

  Minutes of horror.

  Minutes that felt like hours.

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  Until, finally, the body stopped moving.

  It lay still, faint smoke rising from it.

  The smell of burned, rotten flesh filled the armored bus.

  I heard Elise’s weak, hoarse voice against my chest:

  “I-is it over?”

  She tried to turn her head to look, but I held her tighter, stopping her.

  I tried to answer… but nothing came out.

  My throat was locked by terror.

  The more experienced guard let out a nervous laugh.

  “See, kid? Don’t be hasty. I knew we could handle it… whatever that thing was.”

  He took the baton from the younger soldier’s hands and walked over to the still-smoking body.

  He nudged it with the tip of the weapon.

  Then sighed in relief.

  “That thing isn’t a threat anymore.”

  He handed the baton back, rested a hand on his colleague’s shoulder, and said:

  “Good job.”

  The younger soldier lowered his head, breathing deeply, trying to compose himself before holstering the weapon.

  That’s when everything happened.

  As he leaned down to secure the baton, he felt something warm and wet splatter across his face.

  At the same time, a hard impact struck the metal edge of the bus, just inches from his head.

  He instinctively looked up.

  And froze.

  The older soldier’s head was tilted to the side… with a perfect hole where his left blue eye had been.

  Blood and brain matter spilled from the opening.

  His body dropped to its knees like a puppet.

  The thing—that abomination—was still alive.

  It had fired a harpoon from the tip of its tongue, piercing the soldier’s skull from behind.

  The creature was now even more distorted.

  Its neck inflated and deflated in grotesque spasms, swelling as if it were about to explode.

  Muscles writhed beneath the skin, pulsing like serpents trapped inside a body.

  It was as if the creature was using its last strength for something.

  Something I still couldn’t understand.

  The younger soldier stumbled back two desperate steps—and slipped.

  He slammed hard onto the metal floor, spreading the pool of blood.

  He tried to get up, slipping in the viscous gore, but his hands shook too violently.

  That was when we heard the communicator crackle through the transport.

  “But… but what the hell was that? What’s going on back there? Hey…! Hey, guys?! Respond!”

  The soldier, in absolute shock, ignored the voice.

  He was focused only on drawing his weapon.

  His fingers slipped, slick with blood and adrenaline.

  When he finally managed to pull the gun free…

  …it was already too late.

  The creature snapped its head upward.

  Its jaw opened impossibly wide, tearing through its own skin.

  Tendons snapped.

  Its throat swelled like a balloon about to burst.

  And then it screamed.

  It was pure horror—a sound that should not exist in this world.

  A sound that entered my mind like sharpened blades, tearing through thought and flesh at the same time.

  My vision shook.

  My stomach turned.

  My knees buckled.

  Elise covered her ears and screamed, but her voice was swallowed by the roar.

  The soldier… was too close.

  The gun fell from his hands instantly.

  He clutched his ears, bending over in pain, his face twisted in indescribable agony.

  The scream lasted only a few seconds.

  But it felt like an eternity.

  Then, suddenly…

  Silence.

  The creature collapsed forward—dry, colorless, shriveled like a drained corpse.

  The crimson veins that once pulsed faded out, leaving only a dead, gray, rigid shell.

  Its horrifying aura vanished instantly.

  It was as if death itself had ripped away everything that remained.

  The soldier knelt on the floor, crying—a hoarse, desperate, almost childlike sob.

  He murmured disconnected words, trembling.

  In the cockpit, the driver raised his voice:

  “Hello?! Someone answer me! What the fuck is happening back there?! Respond!”

  The soldier finally grabbed the transmitter with shaking hands and brought it to his mouth.

  His voice came out broken, drowned in tears:

  “I-it’s over… finally… it’s over…”

  There was a pause—short and heavy.

  Then the driver exploded:

  “Over what, you idiot?! You’re a trained unit! Tell me what happened! And inform your superior that we’re almost at the facility—I need authorization to ent—”

  The radio crackled again:

  “Unit 07… we’re detecting unstable spikes in your area. Report immediately. Unit 07… respond…”

  A dry impact hit—so strong it threw me to the floor.

  The entire bus shook as if it had been torn from the rails of reality itself.

  Before I could understand anything, I heard that thunderous beating of wings—the same as before, the same that should not exist.

  Elise screamed.

  I grabbed her instinctively.

  When I looked forward, half of the bus simply no longer existed.

  The cockpit had been torn away like paper.

  All that remained of the driver was half a silhouette, blood pouring out.

  Whatever had done that… did not belong to this world.

  Another impact.

  The world spun.

  I tried to hold onto Elise, but my hands slipped—I had no strength left.

  At some point I hit my head, and everything went black.

  When I began to regain consciousness, I saw fire… blood… and the crimson glow warping everything around me.

  My vision wavered, my stomach churned, and for long seconds I didn’t even know where I was.

  Until I heard a scream.

  A child’s scream.

  Elise.

  Adrenaline exploded inside me.

  I tried to get up in a rush—only to realize my foot was trapped beneath a piece of twisted metal.

  The crimson mist was already seeping inside, clouding my vision.

  Even so, I saw Elise standing, unsteady, moving toward me.

  Farther away, I saw the soldier.

  He looked even worse than I was: kneeling, one arm broken, breathing wildly.

  He shouted disconnected words, curses, nervous laughter—and fired upward wildly.

  Then he stopped.

  The sound…

  Something descended from the sky.

  The pressure it exuded made the ground vibrate and my body tremble.

  The air rippled.

  I heard something dragging across the asphalt.

  When I finally managed to focus, I saw…

  Something no one should ever see.

  Something my mind tried to reject instantly.

  A sharp pain tore through my chest.

  My veins began to darken—crimson blooming as if alive, pulsing and burning beneath my skin.

  Echoes began to reverberate inside my mind—nonsensical words, echoes that were not mine.

  How is this possible?

  I wasn’t sick… I wasn’t one of them…

  I looked at Elise.

  She stood frozen, trembling…

  And her body began to distort, as if something inside her were fighting to get out.

  Everything happened so fast—too fast.

  She cried, begged for help, as her skin split into thin crimson lines.

  And then…

  She collapsed.

  She simply came apart.

  Her body dissolved into blood and twisted tissue, unable to resist the corruption.

  All I could do was watch.

  Paralyzed.

  Accepting that my end would come right after.

  The soldier… he realized it too.

  With a trembling hand, he raised the gun to the back of his neck and fired.

  I gave a bitter smile.

  At least he managed to die as a human.

  As the crimson swallowed my vision and I began to surrender, I heard gunfire.

  One shot.

  Then another.

  Then dozens.

  Hundreds.

  A chorus of bullets echoing in every direction.

  Red lasers.

  Drones.

  Automated turrets.

  Heavy weapons.

  Everything firing at the creature.

  The light of the gunfire illuminated it—and for the first time, I could see it clearly.

  It was an amalgamation of flesh—a gigantic falcon-like form, almost featherless.

  Swollen, twisted flesh formed pulsating wings, bones visible through the bloody rags of muscle.

  Crimson veins writhed across its entire body, crawling like parasites.

  They burst, reformed, generated more and more crimson miasma—denser, heavier, more corruptive than the fog itself.

  The thing beat its wings, tearing through the air, and every movement spread corruption like living poison.

  And all I could do was stare.

  Trapped.

  Weak.

  And feeling the crimson flowing through my own veins.