xenophobic Homicide

Chris’s POV "Anyday could be my last, the world is far gone beyond repair, no matter how brave I appear, I'm still scared." I never say those words out loud. Not because they aren't true, but because fear became dangerous a long time ago. In this world, fear spreads faster than disease. People see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice, and once they do, it starts infecting them too. So I keep it buried where nobody can reach it. People look at me and see a member of the Crimson Daggers. They see a survivor. A soldier. A fighter carrying enough scars to convince anyone that pain and fear stopped affecting me years ago. They see confidence. Strength. They see someone capable of standing in front of death and daring it to try harder. They don't see the truth. The truth is that every morning I wake up surprised that I'm still alive. I sat quietly at the edge of an old school rooftop, staring over the dead remains of Chicago. Before the invasion, I used to hate this city. It was loud, crowded, and full of people moving too fast like they had some invisible destination waiting for them. Back then I thought the city felt suffocating. Now I miss every part of it. I miss the traffic. I miss the noise. I miss hearing strangers complain about things that didn't matter. Funny how the world ends and suddenly the things you once hated become the things you miss the most. Below me, Chicago looked like a giant corpse abandoned by time itself. Buildings stood half-destroyed, their glass windows shattered and their sides torn apart from attacks years old. Burn marks covered walls and roads. Rusted vehicles sat motionless in endless traffic jams that never moved again. Nature had begun reclaiming parts of the city, but even that looked wrong now. Strange black alien vines crawled along concrete and walls like veins spreading beneath skin. Some parts of the city still smoked. Not because of fire. Nobody knew why. A passenger train rested halfway off a collapsed overpass in the distance, frozen in place like the world had ended in the middle of someone's escape attempt. One of its broken doors swung slowly back and forth as the evening wind moved through the city. Creeeak.Creeeak. Creeeak. The sound echoed through the silence. Beside me sat our temporary safehouse—an abandoned school that somehow survived years of war. Inside, the Crimson Daggers prepared for tomorrow's mission. A simple supply run. At least that was what Byson called it. Simple. Nothing was simple anymore. I glanced through the rooftop entrance leading downstairs. I could hear movement inside the building. Footsteps. Equipment shifting. Voices. GhostShot sat near one of the classroom windows carefully cleaning his sniper rifle with his usual unsettling focus. Watching him clean weapons always felt like watching a surgeon prepare for an operation. Calm. Precise. Almost too calm. Jamaru sat nearby sharpening two combat knives against a whetstone. The metal scraping sound echoed softly through the hallways. Across the room, the twins argued over a map spread across old desks pushed together. As usual, they disagreed about everything. Even directions. Byson moved around checking supplies while occasionally shouting instructions nobody asked for. "Check your ammo." "Check your radios." "Check your bags." The man acted like everybody suddenly forgot how survival worked. But that's who we were now. That was what the Crimson Daggers had become. Survivors. Scavengers. Ghosts. Tomorrow's mission was supposed to be easy. An old military storage site several miles east had sent a distress signal two nights ago. Recon drones picked up movement there and possible supplies still hidden underground. Food. Medical equipment. Batteries. Simple in. Simple out. At least on paper. But I stopped trusting simple plans a long time ago. Because every disaster starts with someone saying, "This should be easy." I leaned back against the cold concrete wall and closed my eyes. Big mistake. Because sleep doesn't feel like sleep anymore. Not for me. Not after the visions started. Ever since the invasion began, I've seen things. Dreams. Fragments. Pieces of tomorrow. Faces I've never met. Deaths before they happen. Sometimes they're small things. Tiny warnings that save lives. Sometimes they're horrors. Horrors that always come true eventually. I still remember my first vision. Three days before New York disappeared, I saw fire raining from the sky. I saw oceans splitting apart and people screaming as darkness swallowed entire city blocks. I told people what I saw. Nobody listened. Three days later, millions vanished. Since then I stopped trying. Because seeing the future isn't a gift. It's punishment. Then suddenly A scream. My eyes snapped open. My entire body froze instantly. Not because of the sound. Because I recognized it. My blood turned cold. No. No no no Suddenly everything around me disappeared. The rooftop vanished. The city vanished. Darkness swallowed everything. The vision had returned. I stood in the middle of a ruined street covered in ruins Hundreds. Maybe thousands. wreckage lay scattered across roads and sidewalks. Buildings burned around me while smoke swallowed the sky overhead. The smell of ash and metal filled the air. Then I heard whispers. Not around me. Inside me. "The Seed..." "The Door..." "Awakening..." I turned. And I saw her. A girl stood in the middle of the destruction. Long dark hair. Back facing me. Completely still. I tried moving. Couldn't. Tried speaking. Nothing. Slowly... she turned around. And my heart nearly stopped. Because her eyes... Her eyes contained entire galaxies. Stars. Darkness. Things human beings were never meant to understand. Then something appeared behind her. Something massive hidden within shadows. I couldn't understand its shape. My mind refused to. But I saw its eyes. Red. Watching me. Watching everything. Then it smiled. And suddenly "Chris!" I jolted awake. My chest tightened, Sweat covered my face. Byson stood over me now. Behind him I could see the others staring. GhostShot, Jamaro, The twins. Silence. I looked around, The rooftop.The city.Reality. Byson narrowed his eyes. "The visions again?" For a moment I said nothing. Then I looked toward the eastern horizon where darkness slowly swallowed the city. Tomorrow's mission. Simple mission. Simple plans. Simple lies. Because deep down, somewhere beneath the fear twisting inside my chest... I had a terrible feeling. Tomorrow wasn't going to be simple at all.