Chapter 2: Five Hundred Deaths
746 Words
The gray dust drifting through the broken window settled on my pale skin.
I stared at the ceiling—cracked plaster, stained with water and soot—and tried to reconcile the weight of my physical body with the terrifying lightless void I had inhabited for what felt like centuries.
"Drink," a voice commanded softly.
A cup made from a cut-open tin can was pressed against my lips. The water was lukewarm, heavy with the metallic taste of rust and purification chemicals, but it felt like liquid velvet down my parched throat.
The man holding it was broad-shouldered, his beard streaked with gray, a deep jagged scar running from his left temple down to his jawline. His leather coat smelled of gun oil, sweat, and dried blood.
"Take it slow, Leo," he said, setting the tin down on a wooden crate that served as a nightstand. "Your stomach isn't ready for real food yet. Honestly, none of us are."
"Who... who are you?" My voice sounded like dry gravel grinding together.
The man paused, his single good eye softening for a fraction of a second before hardening into cold steel once more. "I'm Marcus. Your uncle. Though I don't blame you if you don't recognize me. The world has aged us all ten years for every one that passed."
Uncle Marcus.
Faint memories began to surface through the fog of my shattered mind. My father's younger brother. A man who used to show up at family dinners in tailored suits, smelling of expensive cologne. Now, he wore body armor patched together with rivets and scrap metal, a heavy revolver holstered at his hip.
"Five years..." I rasped, trying to wiggle my toes. They responded sluggishly. "I was... in a car crash."
"You were," Marcus nodded, pulling up a wooden chair with a broken backrest. "Rainy night on Highway 95. A semi-truck jackknifed. You took the brunt of the hit. They put you in an induced coma at Saint Jude's Hospital. That was three months before the sky fell."
"The sky?"
Marcus let out a short, humorless laugh. He leaned back, resting his hand on the butt of his sidearm.
"Two years into your coma, the old world ended. Russia hit the States. Nuclear payloads raining down on New York, Dallas, California, Arizona, Colorado... dozens of major hubs wiped off the map in less than an hour. The retaliatory strikes finished off whatever was left of global civilization."
He gestured toward the window, where dark plumes of smoke still drifted lazily toward a choked, gray sky.
"The fallout killed billions. The winter killed billions more. What’s left of humanity is fighting over bones."
I stared at him in stunned silence.
Five years.
While my body lay hooked to tubes in a dying hospital, my mind had been trapped in the abyss. I remembered the endless nightmare loops—the razor-clawed beasts in the dark, the rivers of lava, the collapsing labyrinth of iron, the freezing depths of lightless oceans.
I remembered dying. Hundreds of times. Five hundred? A thousand?
In the abyss, if a blade came at my throat from the dark, I had to dodge by feeling the shift in the air. If the ground collapsed, I had to react before my eyes even registered the drop. Every single death had carved hyper-honed survival instincts into my subconscious.
My uncle thought I had been resting peacefully in a vegetative state. He had no idea that while my body sat still, my mind had been forged in the absolute hottest fires of hell.
"How am I alive?" I asked, looking at my gaunt frame beneath the coarse blanket. "If the world ended... how did I survive in a bed?"
Marcus stood up, walking over to the window. He looked down at the ruined streets below, his posture regal yet burdened.
"Because I didn't let you die," Marcus said quietly. "When the bombs dropped, I raided the hospital. I pulled your life-support equipment out, grabbed every battery and medical generator I could find, and brought you here. For three years, while the world tore itself apart over a crust of moldy bread, I kept you breathing."
He turned back to me, his gaze fierce. "You're my blood, Leo. And in this filth of a world, blood is the only code left."
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