My favourite gacha was shutting down in seventeen minutes.
Or well, the only gacha I've ever played. Still, it's a bittersweet ending to a live service game that I've invested much time into.
It felt good to have an inventory stocked full of everything; seventy-four different kinds of crafting material, several hundred weapons I had never used, enough furniture to decorate a small city, and a mountain of stamina restoratives that would disappear forever before I ever convinced myself to consume one.
At 11:43 PM, I possessed enough supplies to survive the apocalypse. And as the clock struck midnight, so too, would all my years of effort become meaningless lines of code.
I folded my arms.
"Cyber World Online. What a waste, they could've left us with an offline version."
Wasn't the game's fault that it's gotten to this point. All live-service games die eventually, and I've just seen the end to this one.
Apparently from what I've read online, the biggest culprit was the change in players' spending habits. Despite still having a large playerbase, the developers for Cyber World Online could no longer keep up with server costs, as VR games have completely taken over the gaming industry, earning the lion's share from the same player base.
For all the ups and downs of this game, criticisms, scandals, content creator drama, hackers and balancing issues, Cyber World Online was still a very fun and well-polished game. In fact, it had won several Game of the Year awards during the game's peak popularity, pushing yearly revenue to billions.
And even as the curtains close, it had maintained its player-friendly motto, being extremely generous during its End of Service campaign.
Ten years of content had been condensed into what amounted to a giant farewell buffet. Drop rates were multiplied. Old event rewards returned. Stamina restrictions were removed. Currency rained from practically everything. The developers clearly expected returning players to burn through whatever they wanted before the servers died.
Probably intended to leave with a bang, perhaps to create a little bit of goodwill towards their upcoming VR project as well.
I had interpreted this generosity differently. I had hoarded all of it. Given unlimited access to resources, my natural response was not indulgence. It was inventory management.
Such is the mindset of a hoarder. Or maybe the term "hoarder" stems from some kind of deep-seated need to plan for my future. As a twenty-seven year old, labelled at a prime time to work and save enough for a house and a car was the societal norm.
After several years of working, paying bills and watching numbers move in and out of a bank account every month, it became difficult to look at something labelled LIMITED RESOURCE without wondering if I might need it later.
Even when "later" had seventeen minutes remaining.
I hovered over one of the stamina restoratives.
[Consume?]
I hesitated.
Then pressed cancel.
"...No."
Sixteen minutes remaining.
You never knew.
That sentence had been responsible for approximately half of my inventory.
The funny thing was that I wasn't even considered an "end-game" player.
Cyber World Online was celebrating its tenth anniversary tonight.
I had been playing for forty-eight days straight. This critically acclaimed gacha game worldwide, the one that skyrocketed the gacha scene into the sphere of normies. The first gacha game to cater to a broader audience, beyond simple cash-grabs that were common at the time.
Yet for most of those ten years, I didn't play Cyber World as diligently like other players.
Why, you say. Well... I've been working.
Even as a live-service game that needed minutes a day to complete the daily missions, there were days where I returned home fully exhausted.
Wasn't there the saying, that the youngsters should strive to climb the corporate ladder while they were still young? It's the rat race that's quite synonymous with the Asian culture. It's not like I worked at a black company or anything. They paid me good, and I had good colleagues.
I had friends, went out, took holidays with my family, paid my bills on time.
I occasionally exercised when guilt defeated laziness.
By most reasonable standards, I had been a perfectly functional member of society.
Then I resigned. Nothing dramatic happened there either.
No screaming match. No inspirational speech about chasing my dreams. I was simply tired. Not tired enough to call it burnout. Just tired enough to realise that if I immediately jumped into another job, I would probably begin the next five years exactly as I had ended the previous five. So I gave myself about three months. A career break. Rest. Exercise. Catch up with people. Think about what I wanted to do next. Maybe learn something useful. Very mature. Very responsible.
Then, during my second week of lounging around in my apartment, I saw an advertisement.
CYBER WORLD ONLINE — FINAL 50 DAYS
ALL CONTENT UNLOCKED
CELEBRATE TEN YEARS WITH US BEFORE END OF SERVICE
I thought, Why not?
Forty-eight days later. I'm back in my man cave, almost sleep-deprived.
Tap. Tap, tap. My fingers slid across my mechanical keyboard, as I regained my senses of playing like a degenerate.
The emotional investment in fictional women, hoarding enough digital canned food to feed a refugee camp, ah... it's all returning.
Free time was dangerous. Nobody warned you about that. When you worked full-time, you imagined freedom as some enlightened state where you would read books, exercise daily and finally become the person you always claimed you could be if only you weren't busy. Then you actually received free time. And discovered that you were still yourself.
...Just with fewer excuses.
Having a degenerate lifestyle allowed me to exercise free will to the fullest, hoarding every single item possible in the game. I had gone through walkthrough sites to find them in even the areas that I have not explored in years.
If civilisation ever collapsed, apparently I would be excellent at logistics.
11:47 PM
Thirteen minutes.
The global chat moved so quickly I could barely read it.
THANK YOU CWO
TEN YEARS BOYS
WHO'S STAYING UNTIL DISCONNECT
SELL YOUR ITEMS YOU COWARDS
WHAT ARE WE EVEN SELLING THEM FOR
SOMEONE JUST USED 4000 STAMINA POTS
KING
I STILL HAVE 6000
WHY
That last question felt unnecessarily personal. Why yes, that was me. Hoarders are a dying breed because they're never understood.
I closed the chat.
My character stood inside the central warehouse I had spent the last month expanding.
Rows of containers filled the room.
Weapons.
Armour.
Food.
Crafting materials.
Medical supplies.
Vehicles.
Resources I had gathered because guides told me they were useful.
Resources I had gathered because guides told me they were useless but might someday receive an update.
Resources I had gathered because I happened to walk past them.
I had even stockpiled low-level beginner equipment.
Why?
Because deleting perfectly usable things felt wasteful.
This was why my real apartment had three boxes of cables whose original devices probably no longer existed.
The difference between collecting and hoarding was apparently whether you owned enough shelves.
Thinking like that, I leaned back on my chair and sighed.
The low hum of my PC, and the AC blasting against my cool skin was great.
It's been 2 months... maybe I should start looking seriously.
—A notification appeared—
[FINAL ANNIVERSARY EVENT HAS BEGUN.]
"There's another event?" I blinked.
With twelve minutes left?
The menu changed.
Everything disappeared except one banner.
Black background.
Broken buildings.
A ruined moon hanging over the remains of some city I didn't recognise.
And beneath it— a woman.
Silver-white hair fell almost to her waist. Her eyes were a cold, luminous blue, brighter than any normal character model had a right to possess. How many polygons was this? I could feel my graphics card whirring as this cutscene loaded. Black armour fitted close to her body, layered over something resembling a tactical combat suit. At first glance, that much was familiar.
Cyber World Online had always loved that aesthetic. Synthetic muscle fibres. Chrome joints. Neural ports. Glowing circuitry. Mechanical limbs dressed up as fashion statements. Half the cast looked as though a military contractor and a luxury clothing brand had collaborated during a collective breakdown.
Lucid didn't. Or rather—she almost did.
Her armour had the clean angular plates I expected.
Her weapon, a simple black metal cube hovering just above her palm.
But behind her...
I leaned closer to the monitor.
"...Those aren't mechanical."
Two wings extended from her back. Not drones, segmented flight units, nor holographic projections, but actual wings. Long black feathers overlapped one another in smooth layers, spreading from behind her shoulder blades before curving downward around her silhouette. They were enormous. Even folded, their tips nearly reached the ground. A dark hue gathered along the edges of each feather. Those black wings don't seemed like they belonged in Cyber World Online.
That was what made them so striking. CWO's world was built around the idea that anything miraculous could eventually be explained through sufficiently advanced technology.
That's the point of the cyberpunk aesthetic. A woman could fly because someone replaced her spine with a reactor. You could see soldiers could cut through tanks from arms packed with artificial muscle bundles. Someone could survive a bullet through the heart because the heart had been replaced three upgrades ago. Even the game's so-called angels had been machines.
Lucid, as the game shone the subtitles of the name of this character brightly for the player through the screen. Lucid's wings looked like they had never heard of engineering. They were almost offensively natural.
I moved the cursor across the portrait. Several of the feathers shifted. Not in the repetitive rhythm of an idle animation. They moved independently, folding over one another as though responding to muscles beneath them.
"...Huh."
Then I saw the seven stars.
✦✦✦✦✦✦✦ LucidI sat forward.
"...Seven?"
Cyber World Online had six rarities.
One through six.
There had never been a seven-star character.
Not in ten years.
Her epithet, Wanderer of Another World
And below it: FINAL LIMITED CHARACTER
Availability: Until End of Service
I checked the clock: 11:48 PM.
"...Twelve-minute banner." That was hilarious, and evil. Is this what they call, a final cash-grab? The developers had created one final character whose effective lifespan could be measured using a microwave timer.
I opened her profile.
Her stats were absurd.
Attack. Top tier.
Defence. Top tier.
Speed. Highest in the game.
Self-healing. Barrier generation. Crowd control immunity. Passively ignores all defense stats.
Weapon transformation. Infinite aerial dash under certain conditions.
Passive regeneration outside combat. Adaptive resistance.
Has... six skills with invincibility frames?!
"What is this?"
There were characters who had been power-crept after two years.
Lucid had managed to power-creep the entire game twelve minutes before its death.
I respected that.
Her character description was only three lines.
A wanderer from beyond the Gate.
She has witnessed the destruction of countless worlds.
For reasons unknown, she has chosen to remain beside the Doctor until this world's final moment.
I clicked her voice preview.
Lucid looked directly toward the screen.
[So you are my Doctor.]
A quiet voice.
Calm.
Almost indifferent.
Then she smiled slightly.
[I found you rather late.]
I paused.
"..."
Okay.
That was dirty.
The developers absolutely knew what they were doing.
Her next line played.
[Our time together may be brief.]
[But brief things are not necessarily meaningless.]
I stared at her.
Then glanced at the countdown.
Eleven minutes.
"Really laying it on thick, aren't you?"
My remaining premium currency sat in the corner of the screen.
Z-Chips: 48,000
Forty-eight ten-pulls.
I had saved nearly all of it.
Naturally.
There had always been another banner coming.
A better character. A rerun. An anniversary event.
Something worth saving for. Except now there wasn't.
For perhaps the first time since installing the game, the economically optimal decision was to spend everything.
There was no other reason to save.
I stared at the summon button.
Strangely, pressing it still felt wrong.
"..."
Habits were irritating things.
You could know a resource would cease existing in eleven minutes and still feel reluctant to use it.
Maybe that was why some people died with money they had never enjoyed.
Saving was useful. Saving without understanding what you were saving for was just postponing consumption until it became impossible.
...That seemed unnecessarily profound for a gacha game.
The world chat... is stirring as expected.
Well then, Lucid, I'll get you in one single 10-pull!
I pressed the button.
[10-Pull — 1,000 Z-Chips]
Gold.
Immediately.
"...Well I'll be damned."
The results appeared. Three weapons. Four materials. Two duplicate characters.
Then— White light consumed the screen.
A figure stepped through.
Silver hair. Blue eyes. And those black wings.
Forty-seven thousand currency remained. The game had rewarded me for overcoming my restraint until today.
Lucid opened her eyes.
[At last.]
She looked toward me.
[Doctor.]
Her expression softened.
[I've been looking for you.]
A small chill ran across my arms.
"...That's a surprisingly good animation."
I told myself that was why.
Eleven minutes became nine.
Nine became seven.
I did what any rational adult would do upon obtaining an absurdly overpowered character moments before a game's permanent shutdown.
I maxed her immediately.
The resources I had spent forty-eight days accumulating began disappearing.
Level materials. Gone. Enhancement materials. Gone. Rare alloys. Gone. Skill books. Gone. Evolution materials I had refused to spend because they were "difficult to farm." Gone. Watching the numbers collapse caused me physical discomfort.
Still. There's seven minutes left.
Right. Perspective. Sometimes numbers only had value because you believed there would be a tomorrow in which you needed them. I dumped everything into Lucid.
Level 100.
Maximum skills. Maximum equipment. Maximum breakthrough.
One final notification appeared.
[All conditions satisfied.]
[Achievement unlocked: Final Devotion]
[Lucid has unlocked: FORM CHANGE.]
I entered the hardest combat stage in the game.
It had taken my strongest team six minutes to clear.
Lucid cleared it in forty-three seconds.
Mostly because she seemed unaware that gravity was mandatory.
Dash. Jump. Air dash. Another dash. Wall kick.
Her black cube transformed into a black blade halfway through an attack.
The boss entered its second phase.
Lucid hit it once.
There was no third phase; she skipped the Rage mechanic entirely.
I stared.
"...Why did they release you now?"
Lucid stood among the remains as the game displayed my new clear record.
She turned toward the camera.
[Was that satisfactory, Doctor?]
"Extremely."
[Then praise me.]
I blinked.
"...You're surprisingly needy."
Lucid smiled, as if in response to what I'd actually said out loud.
Five minutes remaining.
I laughed.
And for the next few minutes, I stopped worrying about efficiency.
I used consumables.
All of them.
I activated buffs I had been saving.
Opened boxes I had kept because their contents might be more valuable after future updates.
Spent currencies whose exchange rates I had once compared in spreadsheets.
I summoned with everything remaining.
Duplicates. Weapons. Materials. More Lucids. With that, all three of her Augments were unlocked. I went into the combat stage again. She tripled her damage, my record now set in seconds.
All this, at cost of almost every Operator enhancing item that I had.
And strangely—
it felt good.
There was probably another life lesson in there somewhere.
But five minutes before the end of a video game was not the time to turn myself into someone's father.
So I simply played... and took a few screenshots as keepsakes. Damn, she even has good overworld mobility.
11:59 PM.
One minute.
I returned to the game's starting city.
Thousands of players had gathered there.
Characters filled the plaza. Fireworks covered the sky. People spammed emotes, and used all their cosmetic consumables.
Global chat flew past.
THANK YOU DEVS
CWO2 WHEN
SEE YOU GUYS
TEN YEARS
I MET MY WIFE HERE
WE'RE STILL DIVORCED BUT THANKS CWO
LMAO
DON'T LOG OUT
MAKE THEM KICK US
I smiled.
That last one I could support.
Lucid stood beside my character.
The developers had apparently programmed special behaviour for the shutdown.
Instead of her usual idle animation, she looked upward.
Fireworks reflected in her blue eyes.
Thirty seconds.
I leaned back.
Forty-eight days.
That was all.
Some of these people had been here for the full decade.
They had grown up with this game.
Finished school.
Started careers.
Got married.
Had children.
Maybe lost people too.
I had arrived at the end alongside them.
My guildmates, friends from middle school, colleagues I've introduced the game to...
But perhaps that was fine.
You didn't need to know someone for ten years to be glad you met them.
Twenty seconds.
Lucid turned.
Her character model faced the screen.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
A voice line triggered.
[Doctor.]
Seven.
[I know we have only just met.]
Six.
[But if another world exists beyond this one...]
Five.
Lucid smiled.
[Find me.]
Four.
Three.
Two.
[I'll be waiting.]
One.
The screen went white.
Thank you for playing Cyber World Online.
Then the client closed.
My desktop appeared.
Silence.
"..."
I clicked the shortcut.
SERVICE HAS ENDED.
Again.
SERVICE HAS ENDED.
I stared at the message.
Forty-eight days of equipment. Characters. Currencies. Crafting materials. Weapons. Achievements. My enormous warehouse.
Everything— gone. I expected to feel stupid. Instead I mostly felt... empty.
"Huh." I leaned back.
Maybe that was enough.
Not everything needed to last forever to justify enjoying it.
That was a useful lesson.
Slightly irritating that a dead gacha game had taught it to me.
I looked at the clock.
12:02 AM.
"Well."
Career break resumed.
I stood.
Coffee. Then sleep. Tomorrow I would work on my résumé.
Probably. And coffee... The fridge seems to be running on empty.
I slipped on my sandals for a midnight grocery run.
My apartment was in Lincol, one of the quieter residential districts of Eden—a compact island city where elevated trains threaded between apartment towers, convenience stores stayed open all night, and humid weather made stepping outdoors feel vaguely like being steamed.
That was about as much thought as I normally gave my hometown.
Places you grew up in rarely felt exotic.
They were simply where the supermarket was.
The convenience store downstairs was three minutes away.
I had barely crossed the sheltered walkway when my phone blared out.
BEEP—BEEP—BEEP.
"What the... I kept this on silent."
No... wait.
I could hear every phone in the vicinity sounding at once.
The noise echoed between the apartment blocks.
Dozens of people nearby stopped walking. A man smoking in the dark alleyway glanced at his phone in annoyance. A delivery rider had stopped beside his bicycle.
"What's... happening?"
I reached for my own phone.
The screen lit.
NATIONAL EMERGENCY ALERT
For half a second, I expected an earthquake warning.
Then another notification appeared beneath it.
This one wasn't addressed to the general public.
DEFENCE MOBILISATION NOTICE
All reserve personnel assigned to active readiness are to report to their designated mobilisation centres immediately.
I stared at it.
"...Seriously?"
Of course. Of all weeks.
I hadn't worn a uniform in years outside of reservist training, but Lincol's defence system didn't particularly care what you did for a living afterward.
Accountant. Teacher. Engineer. Unemployed man on a career break who had spent the last forty-eight days playing a dying gacha game.
When the notification arrived, you reported. That was simply how things worked when it comes to compulsory conscription for a small country like ours. In any case, mine listed a mobilisation point six stations away.
Estimated reporting window:
90 minutes.
I exhaled through my nose.
"Coffee cancelled, then."
Annoying, but not complicated.
Go upstairs.
Change.
Grab my mobilisation bag.
Identification.
Power bank.
Water.
Report.
The military had spent enough of my youth drilling variations of that sequence into my skull that I probably could have done it half-asleep.
And frankly, if the government was recalling reservists in the middle of the night, something serious must have happened.
Flood.
Attack.
Major civil emergency.
Whatever it was, sitting at home because I didn't feel like going would have been indefensible.
Desertion was punishable by law.
I turned back toward my block, not even a few minutes since I'd left.
Then another alert arrived.
CIVIL DEFENCE WARNING
Citizens are advised to seek shelter indoors.
I stopped.
"...What?"
Around me, the guys around me seemed to notice the same thing.
There were two sets of instructions, separate from civilian and army personnel.
The ones that were quicker to catch on were already calling family.
Others stood frozen beneath the walkway, reading their screens.
A third notification appeared.
Do not approach individuals displaying violent or abnormal behaviour. Avoid contact with blood or bodily fluids. Await further instructions.
That... doesn't sound good.
I looked around.
The neighbourhood still appeared normal.
Apartment towers.
A small playground.
Rows of parked bicycles.
The entrance to the multistorey carpark.
Laundry hanging from a few balconies above.
But this momentary peace was only an illusion, shattered without mercy.
Someone screamed.
It came from the carpark.
Close. Very close.
A man stumbled out from between two parked cars.
For a moment, I thought he'd been hit.
His shirt was soaked with blood.
One hand pressed against his shoulder.
"Help—"
Someone came after him in the shadows.
Another man.
He wasn't running properly.
His movements were jerky, almost uncoordinated, but frighteningly fast.
The injured man barely managed to turn before the other slammed into him.
Both hit the side of a parked car.
The alarm started blaring.
Then the attacker bit into his neck.
I didn't stay to understand it.
That was a problem for Future me.
Current me had an apartment less than two hundred metres away.
I turned and ran.
There were moments where stopping to verify what you had seen was sensible.
There were also moments where the cost of being wrong in one direction was considerably higher than the other.
If I had misunderstood the situation, I would look stupid for sprinting home.
If I had understood it correctly and stayed— I might not get the opportunity to feel embarrassed later.
That made the decision fairly easy.
Behind me, someone screamed again.
I ran faster.
The lift doors were already open when I reached the lobby. A girl in high school attire seemed to be on it.
For once in my life, impeccable timing. The girl was startled, but I paid her no mind.
I rushed inside and hit my floor. Eleven.
The doors began closing. Someone shouted from outside.
I almost hit the open button.
Then I saw movement through the glass entrance.
A figure stumbled into the lobby.
Blood across his shirt.
Head hanging slightly to one side.
The same injured man.
Or at least I thought it was.
My finger froze above the button.
The lift doors closed.
"...Sorry."
The word came out automatically.
I didn't even know whether he could hear me.
"...Mister... what, was that? Blood?!"
I stayed quiet, calming myself as I caught my breath.
"Hey!"
The lift rose.
Second floor.
Third.
My heart was still hammering.
Fourth.
I watched the floor indicator as though staring at it would somehow make the lift move faster.
"S-Say something!"
Fifth.
Sixth.
No alarms.
No sudden stop.
Good.
Seventh.
Eight.
Nine.
"Hello, police?"
I glanced at the high schooler, who seemed to have dialed the authorities, while retreated to a corner of the lift.
"W-What..." Her eyes nervously staring at me.
Calling the police? ...That would be great.
A little tension left my body.
I finally realised I was gripping my phone hard enough that my hand hurt.
Ten.
Eleven.
The doors opened.
"Stay... at home. ...Check online."
"What do you..."
I stepped out quickly, turned around and waited.
The high schooler in the lift appeared perplexed, a tinge of panic and fear could be seen in her eyes.
She must have seen the message too.
The doors closed again, as the girl did not make an attempt to stop at my floor.
Only then did I breathe properly.
My apartment was halfway down the corridor.
I unlocked it.
Entered.
Locked the door.
Deadbolt.
Chain.
Only after checking all three did I realise how hard I was breathing.
"...Okay." I put my back against the door for a moment.
Safe first. Questions later.
There was probably some heroic version of myself who would have stayed downstairs, assessed the injured man, helped organise the neighbours and figured out exactly what was happening.
Hell no. That version of me was welcome to inherit my corpse if he wanted.
I went straight to the living-room window. From eleven floors up, I could see most of the entrance plaza beneath my block. The convenience store sat just beyond the sheltered walkway. A few people were still running between the neighbourhood shops. Someone had abandoned a bicycle in the middle of the pavement.
But not everyone seemed to understand the immediate danger. As I zoomed in with my smartphone camera, I saw even more people coming out of their homes because of the commotion.
What the fuck are those guys doing...
Some still stood around staring. A few were filming from a distance.
Human beings possessed an extraordinary ability to assume that if something truly dangerous were happening, surely somebody else would already be dealing with it.
Shit. That guy got bitten.
Screams ensued. I could hear it all the way up here.
I moved my sights to the lift lobby below.
The bloodied man was still downstairs. He had stopped outside the lift lobby, wobbling around groggily like a drunk.
For several seconds, he simply stood there.
His head hung strangely to one side.
Another middle-aged resident approached the entrance, with a grocery bag in hand.
He slowed when he saw the blood.
The infected man turned and lunged. The resident barely had time to raise an arm.
They went down together.
Even from here, I could see the struggle.
The plastic bag rolled away.
Something orange spilled across the pavement.
Then the man's legs stopped moving.
"..."
It wasn't over. I made sure to see it this time.
Starting with a twitch.
Once.
Twice, like muscle spasms.
Then the 'corpse' pushed himself upright.
I stared. That bloody wound around his neck was visible even from eleven floors above.
He should not have been standing normally.
Yet against common sense, he stood anyway.
The first man wandered toward the sheltered walkway.
The second followed.
A scream sounded somewhere beyond my view.
Both of them immediately turned toward it.
Then ran.
"...Zombies. Fucking hell." I muttered quietly.
Mostly because I wanted to hear how ridiculous it sounded aloud.
It still sounded ridiculous.
Unfortunately, that did nothing about the two zombies currently running through my neighbourhood.
No, if you counted the bystanders from earlier... how many were there already? An exposition scene from a zombie movie flashed by my thoughts.
This number was exponential.
I went to my computer and watched the livestream of the local news.
Every channel was carrying emergency coverage.
That was the second confirmation that something had gone very wrong.
The first station showed an aerial view of a major roadway.
Cars sat motionless across six lanes.
Some had crashed into one another. There was fire. Soldiers up in arms.
People moved between them on foot. A few were running.
Several weren't moving at all. A red banner crawled beneath the footage.
MULTIPLE VIOLENT INCIDENTS REPORTED ACROSS LINCOL
Click.
Another channel.
A news anchor stood outside a hospital.
Behind her, ambulances were arriving faster than staff could clear them.
"...emergency departments across the country are reporting unprecedented numbers of patients displaying extreme aggression and apparent neurological symptoms—"
A scream erupted somewhere behind the barricades.
The camera turned.
Security personnel rushed toward the hospital entrance.
The broadcast cut away.
Click.
Government press conference.
A spokesperson from the government's ruling party I'd seen occasionally on the evening news stood behind a podium.
He looked considerably less composed than usual.
"...the public is advised to remain indoors wherever possible. Do not attempt to restrain affected individuals. Do not approach injured persons exhibiting abnormal aggression."
A reporter shouted a question.
"Is this a terrorist attack?"
"We have no evidence supporting that conclusion."
"Is the infection airborne?"
"We are currently investigating all possible transmission routes. At present, direct exposure to blood and bodily fluids is considered a significant risk."
Another reporter.
"Are the reports of deceased patients becoming violent accurate?"
A pause.
Too long.
"We strongly advise the public not to approach anyone displaying symptoms."
That wasn't an answer.
Which was an answer.
It almost seemed like nobody wanted to say the word "zombies".
Click.
International news. From the States, Middle East, up North...
The same thing. Different city. Different language beneath the subtitles.
People running through what looked like a shopping district. Police forming a barricade.
Someone crawling across the road despite an injury that should have made crawling impossible.
Another clip. A highway somewhere overseas. Burning vehicles.
Another. An airport terminal. People were pushing against security gates.
Another. A hospital corridor. The camera shook violently before the video ended.
The banner changed.
SIMULTANEOUS OUTBREAKS REPORTED WORLDWIDE
I stopped changing streaming sites, and focused on this English-speaking one.
"...Worldwide."
This—
apparently—
had begun everywhere.
The presenter was speaking rapidly.
"National leaders have begun emergency consultations following reports of nearly identical incidents across multiple continents. The unidentified condition has provisionally been designated the Z-Virus pending further investigation."
I stared at the television.
"...They actually called it that?"
Z-Virus.
Really.
Apparently subtlety had become another casualty.
A medical specialist appeared beside the presenter.
"While comparisons to fictional depictions of zombies are premature, the behaviour being documented resembles severe neurological infection. Victims appear to suffer rapid cognitive deterioration, extreme aggression and a fixation on attacking unaffected individuals."
"Doctor, there have been reports that infected persons continue moving after receiving what would ordinarily be considered fatal injuries."
"We cannot independently verify every video circulating online."
The screen changed to live footage. A reporter stood behind a police line.
"...approximately ten metres from our position, you can see one of the affected individuals behind me."
The cameraman zoomed. A grey-skinned man stood in the middle of the road.
His clothes were soaked in blood. One arm hung almost uselessly beside him.
"Police have warned members of the public not to approach. Officers have attempted conventional restraint methods with limited—"
The zombie turned, now straight toward the camera.
The reporter stopped talking.
"...Hold on."
The cameraman shifted. The zombie began running.
The fast kind of zombies. Much faster than the ones downstairs had moved while wandering.
"Back up."
Someone behind the camera cursed.
The reporter's voice rose.
"Back up! Back—"
Another infected appeared from between two vehicles.
Then another.
"SHIT!"
The camera swung violently.
Footsteps.
Screaming.
"RUN!"
The picture became a blur of pavement and lights.
"RUN! THEY'RE—"
A crash.
The camera hit the ground.
For half a second, the lens pointed sideways across the street.
A pair of legs passed in front of it. Then screaming.
The feed cut.
The studio returned.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
"...Well." I muted the television.
That answered that. The attack beneath my apartment hadn't been an isolated incident.
Lincol was already reporting outbreaks across multiple districts. Hospitals were overwhelmed.
The same thing was happening overseas. And whatever these people had become, serious injuries weren't stopping them reliably.
I looked down at my phone again.
DEFENCE MOBILISATION NOTICE
My mobilisation centre was several districts away.
Getting there meant leaving a secure apartment. Getting past two confirmed infected individuals beneath my block.
Then crossing a city where the government itself was telling civilians not to move. Probably by train, alongside hundreds of other reservists doing exactly the same thing. Concentrating manpower was useful during war. During a disease transmitted through biting and bodily fluids though? It was almost certainly going to be a hotbed of the infected.
That didn't mean the mobilisation order was foolish. It meant the situation might have changed faster than the order. Large organisations had latency. I looked back toward the television.
The government spokesperson was still speaking.
Citizens are strongly advised to shelter in place until further instructions are issued.
My thumb moved away from ACKNOWLEDGE.
"Not yet." I put the phone down.
I'll watch the situation for a bit.
Information first. Then decide.
Only then did I properly look around my apartment. The lights were still on. Water still ran.
Internet still worked. For now.
Those words suddenly carried considerably more weight than they had yesterday.
I walked into the kitchen and opened the pantry.
Rice.
Instant noodles.
Eight cans of tuna.
Some crackers.
Frozen meat.
A bag of protein powder I had bought when optimism temporarily convinced me I was going to exercise five times a week.
I stared at the shelves.
Then strangely thought about my Cyber World inventory. There were enough supplies to support an entire settlement.
All gone.
I looked at the eight cans of tuna.
Forty-eight days preparing obsessively for fictional emergencies.
And when the real apocalypse arrived, all my supplies had disappeared approximately an hour earlier.
Maybe there was a lesson in that.
Preparation was only valuable if you retained access to the thing you prepared.
Or perhaps the lesson was simply that the universe hated me.
I preferred the second interpretation.