Chapter 2

I stared at Lila’s flawless smiling face on my comms screen for a long, long time, forcing myself to steady my racing heartbeat, to quiet the storm of unease swirling in my chest.

She is safe. She is happy. That tortured woman on the wall is not her. It’s all just my imagination running wild in the lonely wasteland.

I slipped the comms device back into my jacket pocket and raised the binoculars once again, refocusing on Fort Haven’s northern wall. The patrol squad changed shifts, fresh soldiers taking up positions along the battlement, watching the dark empty wasteland beyond the concrete barrier.

The broken woman still hung from the crane’s cable, a blood-caked, fly-infested husk dangling in the wind, her blood dripping slow and thick onto the stone below, leaving dark permanent stains on the wall foundation.

I was ready to turn away, to retreat back into the safety of my zombie horde hidden deeper in the ruins, to bury this horrific sight in the back of my mind and pretend none of it ever happened.

Until a single tall figure stepped onto the wall’s highest battlement.

Broad, imposing shoulders, rigid military posture, heavy steel-toe combat boots thudding sharply against the stone pavement. He wore a fitted black tactical uniform, combat straps crisscrossing his chest, a polished steel dagger wrapped with red cord strapped prominently to his hip.

Kane Reid.

Three years had not softened him in the slightest. If anything, the end of the world had carved him colder, harder, more ruthless than ever before. His jawline was sharp enough to cut glass, his eyes cold and empty as frozen stone, sweeping over the pile of dead zombie bodies at the wall base with complete indifference—like he was counting discarded trash, not living creatures once turned undead.

He walked slowly, deliberately, straight toward the bound, broken woman still hanging from the crane cable.

I assumed he had come to inspect the bait trap’s effectiveness, to calculate how many wild zombies had been lured toward the gate, to assess whether their cruel living bait strategy had worked as planned. Everyone in the wasteland knew Fort Haven hunted rare immune survivors, using them as lab rats, blood donors and live bait without a single shred of remorse.

I expected a quick mercy stab to end her suffering, or a small tissue sample cut for antibody testing. I expected cold calculation, clinical observation—nothing more.

What happened next turned every drop of blood in my veins to solid ice.

Kane drew his dagger slowly, blade glinting coldly under the wall floodlights. Without hesitation, without the slightest flicker of guilt, pity or humanity, he drove the sharp steel straight into the woman’s mangled, fragile stomach.

He stabbed her like she was a slab of raw meat on a butcher’s block. No pause, no second thought, no mercy.

Her broken body arched violently backward on the steel cable, a raw, desperate, soul-wrenching scream tearing out of her ruined throat, echoing across the silent wasteland.

That sound.

That exact pitch, that trembling helpless nasal whimper buried beneath the agony—it was identical, perfectly identical, to the way Lila cried when we were children. When she fell off the old wooden swing set in our backyard, scraping her knees raw and splitting her skin open, she cried exactly like this: long, trembling, hurt, terrified, betrayed by the world around her.

No two people on the entire planet could cry with that exact tone, that exact broken cadence. Impossible.

I bit down hard on my own tongue until I tasted sharp iron blood flooding my mouth, fighting to hold back a strangled sob. My hands shook so violently that the binoculars wobbled uncontrollably in my grip, the lens blurring the scene on the wall. I twisted the focus to maximum zoom, staring at her body with desperate, terrified intensity.

She was skeletal, unnaturally thin, starved down to skin and bone. Collarbones jutted sharply from her emaciated frame, every rib visible beneath her torn, blood-soaked clothing. But her stomach—her abdomen bulged outward in a soft, gentle rounded arc, the perfect shape of a woman five months pregnant.

The exact same shape Lila had secretly photographed and sent to me in a private encrypted message weeks prior, whispering that she was going to have a child, that she hoped I would meet her baby someday.

Coincidence. It has to be nothing more than a terrible coincidence.

My mind spiraled out of control, forcing every clue together against every desperate denial I clung to: same unique facial bone structure, same one-of-a-kind cry, same five-month pregnant belly, same rare Zombie Dominion ability that could lure wild zombies from miles away.

Kane pulled the dagger free from her stomach, the blade glistening thick with fresh human blood and glistening fat tissue. The broken woman curled in on herself as much as her severed limbs allowed, what little remained of her mangled hands clutching her swollen stomach with every last ounce of fading strength.

She had endured endless lashings, brutal dismemberment, slow deliberate cuts from dull blades without making a single sound. She had borne pain no normal human could survive without whimper. But this brutal stab into her womb broke every last wall she had built inside herself.

She was not screaming merely from physical agony. She was screaming to protect her unborn child, to shield the life growing inside her from further harm.

The soldiers lining the wall laughed loudly, whistling, jeering, mocking her helpless desperation like spectators at a carnival freak show.

My nails tore deeper into my palms, raw and bleeding now, completely numb to all physical pain. The scent of her torment rippled through the air in invisible waves, stirring my zombie horde into greater unrest by the second. My mental suppression had never broken in three years of commanding my army.

Until this night.

Several low-tier zombies broke completely free of my dominant control, charging blindly toward Fort Haven’s wall, drawn by the silent mental call of another Dominion user crying out in agony. Three more arrows flew from the wall archers, dropping them instantly, their decaying bodies collapsing lifeless to the dirt.

I knew the terrible truth in that moment.

Only another person carrying Zombie Dominion could override my mental command over the undead.

Only Lila.

I abandoned all caution, all secrecy, all fear of being spotted by Fort Haven’s guards. I wove frantically through piles of broken concrete, jagged metal scraps and dry human skeletons littering the ruin ground, closing the distance to Fort Haven’s northern wall fast—three hundred meters, two hundred meters, one hundred and fifty meters.

I drew close enough now to see every brutal detail with my own eyes, no longer needing the binoculars.

And then she lifted her head.

Broken, bleeding, hanging helpless and mutilated on the steel crane cable, she ignored the laughing soldiers, ignored the dead zombie bodies piled at the wall base, ignored everything around her. Her hollow, pain-filled eyes locked directly onto my hidden position in the ruined building.

She saw me. She recognized me.

Her mangled body thrashed wildly against the restraining steel cables, fighting with every last fading ounce of strength she had left. The metal crane frame creaked and groaned under her desperate struggle. Dozens of soldiers rushed forward instantly, pinning her broken stumps down with rough hands, shouting cruel insults and threats as they restrained her.

She had no lips left to speak, no tongue left to form words, no mouth left to call my name. But thick, heavy tears streamed down her blood-caked cheeks, carving raw red tracks through the layers of dried gore crusted on her skin.

Her eyes held everything I could ever need to read: overwhelming relief at finally seeing me after three years apart, aching longing for the sister bond we’d shared since childhood, sorrow and guilt for failing me, endless regret for trusting Kane Reid and walking into Fort Haven blindly.

I stood rooted to the ruined ground, my throat clamped tight as if an invisible hand was squeezing the life out of me, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to look away.

Kane stepped forward once again, cold and unfeeling as stone. He twisted the embedded dagger brutally, grinding the sharp blade deeper inside her wounded womb, twisting it round and round without mercy.

A sickening crunch of broken cartilage and fractured bone drifted over the cold wasteland wind. Her body went limp for a heartbeat, shock overwhelming her agony, before fresh blood poured down the steel cable in thick red streams, staining the wall stone dark crimson.

She did not scream this time. She bit down hard on what remained of her ruined mouth, blood flooding her broken jaw and dripping down her chin. Her eyes never left mine for a single second.

Almost imperceptibly, she shook her head.

A tiny, faint, subtle movement only I could notice.

Don’t come out. Don’t expose yourself to the soldiers. Don’t try to save me. Run. Hide. Survive.

Even broken, dismembered, tortured, bleeding out, dying slowly on that crane—she was still protecting me. Just like when we were small children. When stray feral dogs chased us down alleyways, she pushed me behind her small frame and faced the danger alone. When school bullies harassed us, she took every punch and insult so I would not be hurt.

She had always protected me. Even at the cost of her own life.

I covered my mouth with a blood-stained hand, silent hot tears streaming down my face unchecked. My comms device still displayed Lila’s perfect, radiant wedding photo, her bright innocent smile mocking the unspeakable horror unfolding right before my eyes.

Kane wiped the blood from his dagger blade with cold precision, turned his back on her fading suffering, and walked away without a single backward glance.