The Mimics

Chapter 6

Aurora POV

The air inside the military-grade canvas tent was stale, smelling of old canvas and the metallic tang of the canned peaches Theo and I had shared for breakfast. It had been exactly twenty-four hours since Dad had been loaded onto a transport headed for Washington D.C. He was part of a tactical advisory group meant to meet with the President and the Joint Chiefs to coordinate a global response—or whatever was left of one.

"Rory, when is Dad coming back?" Theo asked, poking at a loose thread on his sleeping bag. He was trying to be brave, but his voice had that small, brittle edge it only got when he was truly scared.

"Soon, bud," I said, reaching over to ruffle his hair, though the lie tasted like ash. "He’s just helping the big bosses figure out how to turn the lights back on. He’ll be home before you know it."

The words had barely left my mouth when a commotion erupted outside. It wasn't the usual rhythmic shouting of drills or the rumble of supply carts. This was chaotic. Shouting, the heavy thud of running boots, and a sound I’d never heard before—a wet, hacking cough that seemed to vibrate through the very ground.

I stood up, pulling Theo behind me as I zipped open the tent flap.

The camp was in a frenzy. A group of survivors—maybe thirty of them—were being funneled toward the medical sector by soldiers wearing gas masks. They looked like ghosts. Their clothes were tattered, but it was their faces that stopped my heart. They were grey, their eyes bloodshot and unfocused. Some were doubled over, vomiting a dark, viscous fluid onto the dirt, while others just stared blankly ahead, their bodies jerking with violent, uncontrollable tremors.

Theo’s hand tightened in mine, his knuckles white. "Rory? Are they okay? Why are they shaking like that?"

I forced a deep breath, trying to keep my own hands from shaking. I needed to be the wall between him and the horror. "Yeah, Theo. They... they probably just caught a nasty bug out there. You know, like the flu. The doctors are going to give them some medicine and they'll be fine. We just need to stay in our tent for a bit, okay?"

But they weren't fine. None of us were.

That was the start of the Second Phase. The ship hadn't come to talk; it had come to harvest. Within a week, the "bug" had swept through the camp like a wildfire. It was a neurological virus, a biological scalpel designed to dismantle the human brain. Millions died within the first few days, their systems simply shutting down from the sheer intensity of the fever and the hallucinations.

In a way, they were the lucky ones.

The virus didn't always kill. Sometimes, it just... rewired. We started hearing the stories from the soldiers who returned from the perimeter. People weren't just dying; they were changing. Their skin grew mottled and tough, their pupils blown wide until their eyes were nothing but black pits. They lost the ability to speak, to think, to love. All that was left was a primal, twitching hunger and a mindless aggression.

They became the monsters.

I watched from the shadows of our tent as one of the "changed" was brought in—a woman who had been a nurse only two days prior. She didn't walk; she lunged, her movements jagged and unnatural, like a puppet with broken strings. She let out a sound that wasn't human—a wet, clicking rasp that made the hair on my arms stand up. When a guard got too close, she snapped at him with a strength that shouldn't have been possible, her teeth clicking together like a trap.

The soldiers started calling them "Changelings," but to the rest of us, they were just the walking dead. The virus had stripped away their souls and left behind a nightmare.

As the screams from the medical tent grew louder, I pulled Theo back inside and zipped the flap shut, clutching him to my chest. I realized then that Dad wasn't coming back from D.C. The world wasn't waiting for a plan. It was just waiting to die.

The darkness of the tent was shattered by the frantic grip of my mother’s hands on my shoulders. I bolted upright, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

"Rory, get up. Now," she whispered, her voice thick and ragged.

She didn't wait for me to clear the sleep from my head. She shoved a heavy rucksack into my arms and pressed something cold and heavy into my palm. My fingers closed around the grip of the handgun Dad had taught me to use.

"Take Theo," she hissed, her breath hitching. "You have to go to the next Safe Zone. The one near the hills. Don't stop for anyone."

"Mom? What’s happening?" I scrambled to my feet, pulling a sleepy, confused Theo toward me. "Are you coming? Where's the rest of the gear?"

She hesitated, her silhouette trembling in the dim moonlight filtering through the canvas. She turned her head away, trying to stifle a wet, rattling cough into her shoulder. When she looked back, she wiped a stray tear and a smudge of dark fluid from her nose.

"I'm right behind you, Rory," she said, her voice cracking. "I just need to grab the medical supplies. Go."

I looked into her eyes, and I knew. The virus was already in her blood, rewiring her mind, turning her into one of the things we feared. She wasn't coming with us. She was staying behind to die while she was still her.

"Mom, no—"

The air was suddenly ripped apart by the staccato rhythm of rapid gunfire. It wasn't at the perimeter; it was coming from the center of the camp. Screams erupted, followed by the wet, clicking sounds of the Changelings.

Mom lunged forward, pulling Theo and me into a crushing, final hug. She buried her face in my hair, her body racking with a sob she couldn't hide anymore. "Stay with Theo no matter what, Aurora. He is your heartbeat. I love you both so much. More than the world."

It wasn't a "see you soon." It was a goodbye.

Tears blurred my vision, hot and stinging. The gunshots were getting closer, punctuated by the heavy thump of soldiers’ boots.

"Go!" Mom pushed us toward the back flap of the tent. "Run and don't look back!"

I grabbed Theo’s wrist, my grip desperate, and we dove out into the night. The camp had turned into a slaughterhouse. Under the swaying floodlights, the scene was pure chaos. The soldiers hadn't just lost the perimeter; they had lost their minds. Paranoid and terrified, they were opening fire on everyone—the infected, the healthy, the elderly. They weren't defending us anymore; they were "cleansing" the zone.

"Rory, I'm scared!" Theo shrieked as a stray bullet sparked off a metal crate next to us.

"Keep your head down!" I screamed back, dragging him through the mud and smoke.

We reached the edge of the woods, the shadows of the trees offering a sliver of hope. But at the very edge of the tree line, I stopped. I couldn't help it. I turned back.

The floodlight caught her. My mother was on her knees in the dirt, her hands raised. Three soldiers stood over her, their rifles leveled. She wasn't fighting. She wasn't turning into a monster. She was just a mother.

For one heartbeat, our eyes met across the screaming gap of the camp. She didn't look afraid. She looked at me and gave me a tiny, soft smile—the one she used to give me when I’d stick a landing at a gymnastics meet. A smile that said she was proud of me.

Then the soldiers opened fire.

The sound of the volley drowned out my scream. I felt the world tilt, a jagged hole opening up in my soul where my mother used to be. But Theo’s hand was still in mine, trembling violently.

I didn't have time to mourn. I didn't have time to break. I tightened my grip on the gun, turned my back on the fire, and pulled my brother into the darkness of the trees.

The damp earth swallowed the sound of our footsteps as we plunged deeper into the brush, the canopy above blocking out the stars. Behind us, the orange glow of the camp was fading, but the sound—the staccato pop of rifles and the unnatural, high-pitched shrieks of the infected—seemed to follow us like a ghost.

Theo was stumbling, his small legs unable to keep up with the frantic pace I was setting. He yanked on my arm, his boots skidding on a patch of slick pine needles.

"Rory, stop! Stop!" he sobbed, his voice cracking. He planted his feet, nearly pulling me over. He turned his head back toward the faint light of the fires, his face a mask of pure, desperate confusion. "We have to go back. We forgot Mom! She’s still back there, she’s going to get lost in the dark!"

I stopped, my lungs burning, the weight of the handgun in my waistband feeling like a lead sinker pulling me down. I looked at him—really looked at him. His blonde hair was matted with sweat and dirt, and his eyes were wide, searching the shadows for the woman who had always been his North Star.

"Theo, we can't," I whispered, my voice thick. "She told us to go. She... she’s going to meet us at the next spot. She’s faster than us, remember? She’ll catch up."

"No! She was crying, Rory! I saw her!" He tried to wrench his wrist out of my grip, his chest heaving. "I want to go back! I'm not leaving her with the monsters!"

I felt a sob rising in my own throat, a jagged, sharp thing that threatened to rip me apart. I could still see it—the way her body had jerked under the soldiers' fire, the way that final smile had been meant only for me. I didn't have the heart to tell him. How do you tell a seven-year-old that the world is so broken that the people meant to protect us are the ones who took our mother? How do you tell him she isn't coming back?

I dropped to my knees in the dirt, grabbing both of his shoulders and forcing him to look at me. I needed to be the wall. I needed to be the soldier Dad wanted me to be.

"Theodore, look at me," I said, my voice steadying with a coldness that terrified me. "Mom gave me a job. She told me to get you to safety. If we go back, we’re disobeying her. Do you want to do that?"

He sniffled, a large tear tracking a clean line through the soot on his cheek. "No..."

"Then we move. We move until we find the next camp. We stay in the shadows, and we don't make a sound." I reached up and wiped his face with the hem of my shirt. "I am not letting anything happen to you. I promise. But you have to trust me. Can you do that?"

He looked at the dark woods, then back at me. Slowly, he nodded, his small hand reaching out to find mine again.

"Is she really coming?" he whispered, his voice so fragile it nearly broke me.

I swallowed the lie, feeling it coat my throat like poison. "She's right behind us, Theo. Just keep walking."

We turned back into the darkness, two shadows among many, fleeing the only home we had left. Every snap of a twig made my finger twitch toward the gun. I was eighteen years old, and I was no longer a cheerleader or a student. I was a guardian, a liar, and the only thing standing between my brother and the end of the world.