His lips were bitten through, his mouth full of blood. He looked at me with raw, broken grief and shook his head—barely, almost imperceptibly.

He didn't want me to go out there.

"Give him an adrenaline shot. Don't let him die."

Darkness crept in.

The slaughter hadn't produced the results she'd wanted. Muriel's face was tight with fury.

I pressed my hand over my nose and mouth, fighting the urge to vomit.

I went back to the video call from earlier.

I'd screen-recorded it.

I studied every frame.

The fingers visible on the other end were thicker, longer than my brother's.

The hair length didn't match the photos that had been sent to me either.

They looked more like they belonged to the squad leader standing beside Muriel.

My brain detonated.

I had to confront that man myself.

I had to find out who he really was.

But at that moment, up on the wall, a blade flew with surgical precision.

The cloth strips shredded apart.

Their only connection—severed in a single cut.

The bait thrashed forward, bending desperately at the waist, but his empty sleeves caught nothing.

Gravity did the rest. The bundle hit the ground with a wet thud and burst open in a spray of red.

"AHHH!"

He convulsed like he'd been electrocuted, thrashing wildly, his screams so raw they barely sounded human.

At the same instant, I let out a guttural snarl.

Every zombie holding position went berserk, surging toward the gate in a frenzy.

"There it is! That bastard really can command the undead. Too bad for him—"

The squad leader beside Muriel cursed under his breath.

The guards were well-trained. Rifles up. A wall of gunfire.

But the zombies weren't attacking the walls.

They swarmed over one another, climbing shoulder to shoulder, stacking into a grotesque living ladder.

The sheer, suffocating numbers rendered the shotguns useless.

The guards stared, bewildered by the unnatural behavior.

"What are they doing?"

"No—their target is HIM!"

Muriel screamed the order, lunging for the crane lever, trying to hoist the bait up and out of reach.

Too late.

Thousands of dead hands seized the bait's body, their collective force wrenching against hers.

The crane arm snapped.

"Kill him! Don't let him turn!"

The squad leader's voice cracked with panic.

An arrow split the air and punched straight through the bait's skull.

He killed him.

He was destroying the evidence.

Rage whited out my vision. I charged forward without thinking, without caring.

One thought. Only one. Climb that wall and kill the squad leader.

With the bait gone, the hunt was over.

They pulled back fast.

The scene left behind was carnage.

The zombie legion had taken devastating losses.

The man lay in the center of it all, like the ruined heart of a flower blown apart.

"No. Please don't let it be—please, God, don't let it be—"

I stumbled through the piled corpses and pulled what was left of him into my arms.

Gently, I brushed the hair from his face. His skin was chalk-white, frozen in the agonized expression he'd worn when he died.

Identical to the brother in my memory.

"Don't... please..."

Tears streamed down my face. I traced along his unseeing eyes, past his cheek, behind his ear.

There, near the ear, a scabbed-over scar.

And behind it—a small, familiar bump.

The moment my fingers found it, a ringing flooded my ears and swallowed every other sound. All that remained was the hammering of my own heart and the ragged saw of my breathing.

The last shred of hope I'd been clinging to crumbled to dust.

It was a hereditary trait in our family.

Dad had it. My brother had it. So did I.

"How... that's impossible... it can't be..."

Tears poured down my face. My lips trembled around words that wouldn't form. I couldn't breathe.

I tried to check for other marks on his body.

But his arms were gone. His legs were gone.

"AHHH!"

I collapsed into the heap of corpses and screamed until my throat tore.

This was fake.

This had to be one of Muriel's schemes.

I had to get inside the Bastion.

I had to confirm my brother was alive with my own eyes.

Drums and gongs echoed from within the walls. Celebrations. Humanity had reaped a bountiful harvest from the battle.

Brilliant lights flickered above the Bastion, painting the sky in garish color.

Outside the gate, corpses blanketed the ground in every direction. A wasteland of the dead.

I stripped a jacket off one of the fallen zombies and swapped it for my blood-soaked shirt.

People were celebrating inside. Not a single guard at the gate.

I pulled out my communicator and brought up my identification. Swiped it at the scanner.

A harsh red light. Entry denied.

I swiped again.

Red.

This was the credential Piers had registered for me, backed by his highest-level clearance. He'd told me once:

"You hate humans, but you'd never hurt them. I'm giving you top-level authorization. You can enter the Bastion anytime, anywhere."

But now I was locked out.

I stood at the gate for a long time. Silent.

My heartbeat grew heavier, louder, drowning out the drums inside.

I sent Piers a message, expecting nothing.

To my surprise, he replied almost instantly. A fresh verification code, followed by a text:

"The Information Division's been running a credential audit lately. Old passes got deactivated. Use this one for now."

That reply hit me like absolution.

I sucked in air, gasping, and felt reason flood back into my skull.

Piers was alive. He always handled my problems the moment they came in. Always.

The streets inside were packed with people, shoulder to shoulder.

No one noticed the gate crack open just wide enough for a body to slip through, then seal shut again.

And no one noticed the zombie disguised as a human trailing close behind me.

I called up the layout map Piers had sent me once and made straight for the laboratory. Room by room, I searched, until I found him in a sealed glass chamber at the end of the corridor.

"You came to see me!"

He bounced over like a rabbit, pressing himself against the glass, beaming at me.

My eyes dropped to his hands first. Clear palm lines. All ten fingers intact.

Then his body. Beneath the loungewear, both legs stood straight and whole.

My knees nearly buckled.

This was my brother. This was him.

Only—

"Why are you locked in here?"

Before he could answer, Muriel rushed in, breathless.

"Piers has a sensitive constitution, and with the baby to look after, he caught a bit of a cold this afternoon when he went out. Just a precautionary quarantine." She paused, studying me. "Weren't you supposed to be out of town? You said you couldn't make it back."

I smiled. "You forget what Mom used to say? Whichever one of us gets married first, the other has to be his best man."

Through the glass, I raised my hand gently and pressed my palm against his.

"I knew you'd come!" He tilted his head, grinning wide. "I already picked out your suit. You're going to be the second most handsome guy at my wedding!"

He cocked his head to the side, eyes squinting with delight as he pictured it.

My smile froze.

Our mother died when we were four years old. She never lived long enough to say anything like that.

The glass was thick and cold. My hand was already ice.

But his palm, pressed against the other side, was still flushed pink with warmth.

"Stay this time, okay? Just get rid of those disgusting zombies already!" He pouted, wheedling, one finger tracing lazy circles against the glass where my palm rested.

That was his habit. Exactly his habit.

He couldn't remember words that were never spoken, but the little gestures were perfect.

"The zombies are my trump card," I said quietly. "If anyone ever hurts you, I can send them to settle the score."

"Zombies have no humanity! Even if you control them, they'll turn on you eventually!"

"Tell me something." I held his gaze, studying every flicker across his face. "Did you know they used live bait at the gate today?"

He froze for a split second, processing, then quickly said, "Oh, I know about that! Didn't they kill a bunch of zombies? Everyone's been celebrating!"

The last trace of a smile drained from my face.

My brother and I had different ambitions, but we respected each other's choices. I would never stop him from devoting his life to the Bastion, and he would never ask me to destroy my undead and submit to humanity.

My brother was the kindest, most tender-hearted person I'd ever known. He'd volunteered himself as a guinea pig to help develop a vaccine.

Someone that good would never hear about a person being strung up as bait and shrug it off like it was nothing.

My hands began to tremble. My heart hammered against my ribs. But I still couldn't let go.

"Come with me. Please."

He frowned. "What are you talking about? It's nothing but zombies out there. How could that be better than the Bastion? We have clean clothes, vegetables, real meat..."

Muriel chimed in immediately. "He's right. Piers still has a child to take care of, and we're about to get married—"

"Is it that you don't want to leave," I cut in, my voice turning to ice, "or that you can't?"

My hand shot up. A throwing knife sang through the air and severed a power cable running along the ceiling.

The room plunged into darkness.

The brother who'd been chatting with me a heartbeat ago vanished. Gone. In the far corner of the ceiling, a black machine blinked its red light in frantic pulses.

I pointed at the empty room, my expression glacial. "Muriel. Is this how you've been taking care of my brother?"