Pain bloomed across my ribs with every breath. A hand steadied my shoulder. Voices overlapped—low, relieved, grateful.
"Allāhu akbar—he's awake!"
I turned my head. A boy knelt nearby—seventeen, maybe eighteen, same hollow cheeks I saw in still water. His eyes found the scar trailing from my collarbone to my jaw, white and raised and intentional.
"Who did that to you?"
I held his gaze. "Someone who thought he could break me."
"Did he?"
"He was upgrading."
The boy blinked. I looked away—gratitude was debt, debt was leverage.
Jack knelt beside me, holding my white mask like it was fragile glass.
"You dropped it when you fell," he said quietly. "Didn't let anyone touch it."
Only when the porcelain rested against my chest did the tightness in my lungs ease. I slid it on. The world narrowed again. Safe.
I tried to stand.
My thigh wound reopened—blood spreading through the bandage, warm, wrong. I hissed. Not from pain. From inefficiency.
Jack's hand on my shoulder. "You're not ready."
"I was ready three years ago."
I cut the bandage off with my dagger. Walked bleeding through the survivors' camp. Let them see. Let them remember.
Later—time measured in breaths, not hours—I caught whispers.
"…the cat's eating parasites…"
"…saw it chew one—"
I turned my head.
Flake lay beside me, curled into a black-and-white knot, breathing slow. Peaceful. Innocent.
"No," I murmured. "He wouldn't."
Jack met my eyes. "We're not saying it's true. Just… watching."
I said nothing more. Watching was protocol. Belief was vulnerability.
At dawn, I stood.
Every movement hurt, but pain was data now—location, severity, acceptable margin. I dressed methodically. Daggers. Bow. Twin katanas. Black cloth. The mask, last. Blood had dried on my thigh. I didn't clean it. Evidence of function.
The survivors gathered without being asked. Heads bowed. The boy from before stepped forward, something in his hands—a woven bracelet, red and black.
"For protection," he said.
I took it. Tied it around my katana hilt, not my wrist. Tool, not talisman.
I stepped into the fog.
Flake leapt onto my shoulder.
I did not look back.
Three years passed like a held breath.
I stopped counting kills at four hundred. The fog screamed regardless.
I sat atop a mound of humanoid corpses, my black katana resting across my knees. The bodies were wrong—limbs twisted, skulls split, parasites crushed into tar-like stains.
Flake crunched through another parasite and hopped into my lap, purring—deep, unsettling.
Blade. Armor. Cloth. Even the strips tied around Flake's forelegs.
The mask bore a single mark—hand-painted, uneven.
0
"I watched you change," I said quietly. "Paws swelling. One hit kills. You licked my blood that first night."
Flake blinked up at me.
"Contract," I finished. "Sealed."
I stood; the cat climbed to my head like he belonged there.
"Three years. No other humans." I adjusted my grip on the katana. "Time to find civilization again."
MADINA
I chose Madina.
Makkah held too many ghosts.
Earthquakes tore the road apart. Cracks swallowed cars. Bodies lay where the ground had rejected them.
I walked anyway.
At the city gate, guards attacked first. I disarmed them cleanly—no killing. Once they saw human eyes behind porcelain, rifles lowered, radios crackled, escorts formed.
Inside, life pulsed wrong.
Markets. Power. Systems. Noise.
A glowing board hovered above the central square:
1. White Tigers — Makkah
I didn't stop walking.
Jafer, Head of Madina Operations, studied me from behind a reinforced desk.
"You're small for that steel."
"I know."
"Story first. Then a fighter's card."
"Card first. Then the story."
A camera flash.
"Delete it," I said before the screen showed the image.
Jafer's eyebrows lifted. "Only for me."
I said nothing. Silence was leverage.
The fighter's card came. A basic phone. Then—
Steam.
A plate of biryani.
I ate slowly. Every bite burned—sensation, unwelcome. I shared meat with Flake, watching his jaw work, calculating protein intake, energy expenditure, survival metrics. Washed my hands. My face. Replaced the mask before the steam cleared.
Protocol.
Grand Mosque, afternoon sun.
I made wudu, cloth and mask still on, entered the courtyard. The dome above had cracked in the first earthquake—a single fissure running from apex to base, shadow pooling in the gap like a wound that wouldn't close.
I stared at it longer than I should have.
Dajjal's eye, I thought. Watching from the fracture.
Then I moved on. Superstition was inefficient.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
After that,
A voice cut through the air.
Familiar.
Impossible.
My mind didn't blank.
It overclocked.
Voice frequency match. Karachi, 2019. 94% certain.
6% chance it's mimic, parasite, trap, wishful thinking.
I didn't feel.
I calculated feeling, and found it inconvenient.
Flake returned, rubbing against my leg in pattern—three times, pause, twice. Code we developed over three years. Three years of watching him respond to parasite frequency, to human heartbeat, to wrongness.
I read the data: Female. Familiar. Location.
Not telepathy. Exploitation. Training. Animal behavior weaponized.
I moved.
At the market reception counter, I forced calm.
"I want a team. That one."
Codename given.
Zero.
The leader—beard graying, eyes kind, dangerous—stepped forward.
"Real name?"
"No."
A moment. Then a nod.
"My daughter, Sania. My nephew, Hassan."
The name Hassan triggered cascade.
Hassan. Age 12, 2019. Same courtyard. Different mosque.
Samiya's cousin. Wedding. His hand in mine—sticky with gulab jamun, pulling me toward the drums.
Laughter.
Before.
My fist clenched. Leather creaked like bone breaking. Knuckles white. I didn't release it—couldn't—because releasing meant choosing what to do with my hand, and the options were unacceptable.
I kept my head down.
Sania noticed.
Not the fist—the stillness. The absolute absence of my breath when Hassan spoke. The way my weight shifted 2 degrees toward the exit, then locked.
She leaned to Hassan, whisper almost silent: "That boy doesn't breathe when you speak."
Hassan laughed, young and loud and alive. "He's just shy."
Sania watched my hands—trembling, controlled, counting something in the air between us.
"No," she said. "He's counting."
Weapons declared. Mission assigned.
As we stepped into sunlight, Sania glanced back at the masked boy who never looked up—and wondered what inventory required such desperate arithmetic.