Ares had finished the last of the beans two days earlier.
He sat in the cellar with the empty barrel in his hands.
His hands shook when he held them still.
His stomach cramped whenever he moved too quickly.
The empty tins lay stacked in the corner like proof of how far he had already fallen.
He checked the crossbow, counted the remaining bolts, and took the metal spear instead.
The spear did not need reloading.
It only needed to stay in his hand.
He climbed the stairs slowly, testing each step before he put his weight on it.
At the top he listened for a full minute, then eased the door open and stepped into the gray morning.
The street was empty.
No birds.
No movement in the doorways.
Wind pushed dust along the broken asphalt in thin, restless lines.
He moved along the wall, keeping low, and reached the open ground beyond the collapsed roof.
That was where he saw the dog.
It stood at the edge of the rubble, head lowered, nose working the air.
The same animal he had seen before near the old military support position.
Lean, scarred along one flank, ribs showing under the short coat.
Their eyes met across the distance.
Ares stopped.
“Ah,” he said under his breath.
“You’re hunting too.”
The dog did not growl.
It did not come closer.
It only watched him, ears forward, body still.
Ares kept the spear angled down but ready.
He had already decided the animal was not dangerous to people the way the others were.
That did not mean he would trust it.
He watched the dog move along the rubble.
It was searching for something.
He waited a few seconds, then followed at a distance, placing each foot carefully so the gravel would not shift under him.
The dog noticed almost at once.
Its ears flicked back once, then it continued as if his presence was simply another fact of the morning.
Ares kept space between them.
When the dog slowed near a thicket of dead brush and twisted rebar, he dropped into the low cover and went still.
His stomach cramped hard enough that he had to lock his jaw against the sound.
The dog had already seen the rabbit.
It was enormous.
Nearly waist-high to Ares, thick through the body and heavy enough that he knew he could never have carried the whole thing alone.
Its fur was patchy and dark, ears torn at the edges.
It fed on something low in the weeds, unaware, the muscles in its haunches shifting with every small movement.
The dog dropped into a crawl.
Belly almost touching the ground.
One slow step.
Another.
Shoulders rolling under the scarred hide.
Ares watched every muscle.
He felt his own breath go shallow.
His fingers tightened on the spear until the metal bit into his palm.
When the dog moved, it moved all at once.
The burst of speed was clean and brutal.
It closed the gap in three strides, jaws locking around the rabbit’s neck.
The larger animal kicked once, hard enough to lift both of them half off the ground.
Dirt and dry leaves exploded around them.
The dog planted its hind legs, shook its head in a savage arc, and the rabbit’s body went limp with a dull crack.
The dog did not wait.
It tore into the body immediately, eating with focused, almost frantic urgency.
Ribs cracked.
Wet sounds filled the quiet.
Ares stayed in the brush, spear across his knees, and did not move.
His mouth watered hard enough to hurt.
When the dog finally lifted its head, blood dark on its muzzle, it stepped away from the carcass.
It looked at Ares.
Then it looked back at the rabbit.
It did not growl when he stood.
Ares waited.
The dog waited too.
Seconds stretched.
Wind moved through the dead brush.
Somewhere farther off, something large shifted and went still again.
Finally Ares stepped forward, spear still in hand, every muscle ready to drive the point home if the animal changed its mind.
On the ground lay one hind leg, mostly intact, and a strip of flank the dog had not finished.
Everything else was gone, bone and sinew already claimed.
His eyes burned.
He looked away for a second and swallowed.
Then he took the leg.
It was still warm.
He checked the cut carefully, turning it in the gray light.
No fresh blood ran.
Nothing that would leave a trail strong enough for something larger to follow.
The dog had already moved farther off.
It sat on a rise of broken concrete, watching him leave, ears forward, body still.
Ares carried the meat back the way he had come, staying close to cover, checking his backtrail twice.
Once he froze at the sound of shifting rubble two streets over and waited until the silence returned.
He reached the building, went down the stairs without looking back, and barred the door behind him.
Only then did he set the spear aside.
He built the fire small and careful in the old metal drum.
The meat seared.
Fat hissed and spat.
The smell filled the low space and made his hands shake harder than the hunger had.
He ate slowly, forcing himself to chew, to feel the heat settle into his stomach, to let the cramps ease one by one.
When he finished he sat with his back to the wall and looked at the empty space where the leg had been.
Grease shone on his fingers.
The spear rested within reach.
Ares wiped his hands on his trousers and picked up the weapon.
Tomorrow he would have to hunt for himself.
His stomach was no longer cramping.
For the first time in two days there was food inside him.
His hands had stopped shaking.
His breathing had settled.
There was strength in his arms again.
The spear rested beside him.
The crossbow lay within reach.
Tomorrow he would have to hunt again.
He knew that.
But his eyes had already moved to the small package on the floor.
The medicine.
Green Gene.
Ares picked it up.
The container was small enough to fit inside his palm.
The liquid inside was dark green, almost black in the weak light that leaked down the stairs.
He turned it slowly between his fingers.
The glass was cool.
Smooth.
Unmarked except for a thin white code he could not read.
He remembered Hana’s words.
The candidates.
The deaths.
The five survivors.
And 67.
He looked at the container again.
He did not know what it would do.
Not exactly.
He only knew the risks.
It could change him.
It could make him stronger.
It could give him something that might keep him alive in a world where almost everything had become stronger than him.
Or it could kill him.
Ares looked around the cellar.
The ruined walls.
The empty barrels.
The spear.
The crossbow.
Nothing here could protect him forever.
A bird could tear his eyes out from above.
A wolf could break his neck before he raised the spear.
Something the size of a dog could crawl into the shelter while he slept.
Even the mosquitoes had changed.
One bite could carry whatever the animals carried now.
Outside, the trees themselves had grown thicker, taller, their roots cracking concrete as if the ground no longer belonged to the old world.
Everything was larger.
Everything was stronger.
Everything was trying to survive.
Ares looked down at the Green Gene.
He could wait.
He could hide.
He could keep hunting scraps until something finally found him.
Or he could take the risk while he still had strength in his body and food in his stomach.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Fuck it.”
He twisted the cap open.
The smell rose first—almost sweet, thick, artificial.
He raised the container.
For one second he stopped.
His throat worked.
Then he drank.
All of it.
He lowered the empty glass and tilted it toward the light.
Not a drop remained.
The taste surprised him.
Sweet.
Almost like candy left too long in the sun.
He swallowed once more and waited.
Nothing happened.
Five seconds.
Ten.
He almost laughed at the silence.
Then something moved inside his stomach.
Ares froze.
His hand went flat against his abdomen.
Heat spread outward from the center of his gut.
Slow at first, like a warm coal settling.
Then faster.
The warmth thickened.
It pressed against the walls of his stomach from the inside.
His muscles tightened without permission.
He bent forward.
His fingers dug into the concrete floor until the skin over his knuckles whitened.
The heat became unbearable.
Ares tried to breathe.
He could not.
His stomach clenched so hard his entire body folded around it.
He dropped onto one knee.
Then both.
A sound escaped his throat—short, sharp, involuntary.
He grabbed the spear shaft with both hands, not for protection, but for something solid to hold while the heat kept rising.
It spread into his chest.
Then his arms.
Then his legs.
Every muscle tightened at once, as if someone had reached inside him and pulled every fiber taut.
Ares screamed.
The sound struck the concrete walls and came back at him, raw and broken.
He fell onto his side.
His back arched hard enough that his shoulders left the floor.
His fingers clawed at the concrete, nails scraping, skin tearing.
Something was moving through his veins.
It felt hard.
Sharp.
Like thin metal being forced through every vessel in his body, scraping the walls as it went.
His arms shook violently.
His jaw locked.
He tried to force air through his teeth.
Another wave hit before the first had finished.
The heat turned white.
It flooded his spine, his neck, the base of his skull.
Ares screamed again, longer this time, until his voice cracked and failed.
He rolled onto his stomach and pressed his forehead against the floor.
Sweat poured off him in sheets.
His clothes clung to his skin, already soaked.
The smell of his own body filled the small space—salt, fear, and something chemical underneath.
Hours passed.
He lost track of them.
Sometimes the pain weakened just enough for him to draw a full breath.
Then it returned harder, deeper, as if the liquid inside him had found new paths to travel.
His body soaked the floor.
Puddles formed under his chest and hips.
His hands stopped obeying him.
He tried to reach for the spear again and watched his fingers close around empty air three times before they finally found the metal.
He dragged it closer and locked his grip around it until his knuckles split.
His vision blurred.
The cellar ceiling moved above him in slow circles.
Or maybe he was the one moving.
He could no longer tell.
Pain came in waves that no longer had clear beginnings or ends.
One moment it was fire under his skin.
The next it was ice driven into the joints of his elbows and knees.
Then both at once.
His muscles locked and released in violent spasms that lifted him off the floor and slammed him back down.
Each impact drove the air from his lungs.
Each recovery brought a new surge of heat that made him want to tear his own skin open just to let something out.
He thought about Hana.
The notebook.
The forty-seven candidates.
The five survivors.
67.
He understood now why the records had stopped so abruptly.
People had taken this same risk in rooms like this one.
Some had survived long enough to be transferred.
Others had died here, alone, on concrete floors exactly like the one under him.
Their last moments recorded only as numbers and times.
Ares’s breathing grew slower.
His eyes began to close.
He knew what that meant.
If he let them close now he might never open them again.
His hand moved weakly across the wet floor.
He found the spear.
His fingers wrapped around the metal with the last strength he had.
He pulled himself against the wall, inch by inch, until his back was braced and his head could rest against the cold concrete.
Sweat ran into his eyes.
He forced them open.
The pain was still there.
Hot.
Deep.
Everywhere.
The pain had reached his bones.
Every movement sent another sharp pulse through his arms and legs.
It lived behind his eyes.
It lived in the places where his blood should have been quiet.
Ares opened his eyes one more time and spoke into the empty cellar.
“No.”
His voice was barely audible.
He tightened his grip on the spear until the metal bit into the open cuts on his palms.
“I don’t die here.”
Then another wave hit him—larger than the ones before, heavier, absolute.
His body slammed against the floor hard enough to drive the breath from him in a single broken sound.
His back arched once more.
His free hand slapped the concrete and stayed there, fingers splayed and trembling.
Ares lay still.
His chest moved once.
Then again.
His eyes remained open.
His fingers were still wrapped around the spear.
Outside, the wind moved through the ruined street.
Ares did not move.