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Echoes of the Unknown [iv]
Chapter 6(iv) – Suppressed Truths
POV: Scarlett
We emerged from the passage in silence. The ground gave way to broken tiles and weeds. Cold morning light filtered through a gray sky, dust hanging in the air like ash after a burn.
A church stood ahead—its cross crooked, stained glass shattered. Behind it, the town buzzed—not with noise, but tension. Movement. Panic.
Soldiers shouted. Gunfire cracked through the fog.
Undead—dozens of them—flooded the streets. But not like the ones we'd seen before.
These were different.
Some bent too far backward. Some crawled with insect speed. Some looked barely human. Others still had enough face left to remind us what they used to be.
They didn't lurch.
They hunted.
The soldiers adapted fast, but it wasn't enough. Their formations bent, buckled. Some survivors panicked and fled. Others opened fire, frantic, screaming. A few tried to drag supplies with them, not ready to leave anything behind.
No one noticed us slip from the stone path behind the church.
No one noticed how calm Grey looked. Or how Luke gripped something in his pocket like it held answers.
I didn't ask.
Because I wasn't sure I wanted to know yet.
**
Back underground, it had been chaos.
The control room looked like it had been built before things fell apart—and abandoned mid-task. Wires spilled like veins from cracked walls. Screens flickered between static and data. The air reeked of heat and dust and something metallic—something wrong.
Luke moved like he belonged there. Focused. Fast. Fingers tapping at the keyboards, scanning files, muttering to himself. I hadn't seen this side of him before—almost like the room was speaking a language only he understood.
Then the rescued man—the one we'd found half-dead—jerked upright.
And slammed his hand on a red switch.
The alarms started. Lights turned blood-red.
"What the fuck!?" Jonah barked.
The doors hissed open.
And everything spilled in.
Undead, yes—but not like before.
They were stronger. Smarter. One had metal bolted through its limbs. Another crawled on all fours, sprinting like a beast. One dragged a leg but moved with calculated direction. One wore a torn lab coat—face melted, but eyes still sharp.
They didn't just attack.
They tested us.
Blair reached them first.
Her blades cut arcs through the air. She didn't hesitate. Not even a breath of panic. She fought like she'd done it before. Like this was muscle memory.
I fired from behind, arrows singing. Two down, three. I missed one—it got close—but Grey was already there, blade cutting it clean. I didn't even hear him move.
He looked at me. "Stay focused."
I did.
Because something in me had changed too. I wasn't shaking. I wasn't frozen. I was calm—dangerously so.
Luke shouted over the chaos. "I've got it!" He pulled a flash drive he got from God knows where from the console, stuffing it in his pocket. "We're leaving!"
The fighting didn't stop—we pushed through it. Grey took point, precise and ruthless. Blair covered the side. Jonah cleared a path with sheer strength. Jane held the rear, shouting warnings. I moved with them, still firing.
And then we found the exit.
A maintenance tunnel that fed back up through the ground.
**
Now, the surface felt like another world. One where the air was thin and the silence had weight.
We watched soldiers pour bullets into the mobs. Some undead dropped fast. Others didn't.
And still they came.
Some survivors dragged their scavenged items with them. Some ran with empty hands, faces pale.
The soldiers barked orders. "To the carriers! Regroup!"
We didn't argue. We slipped into the flow of movement. Quiet. Watchful.
Luke didn't speak. His hand stayed on his pocket.
Grey didn't say a word. His eyes scanned the chaos like it was familiar.
Blair adjusted the blades she hadn't let go of. Jonah didn't loosen his grip on the crowbar. Jane's hands were red, but not hers.
And me?
I watched all of it.
I didn't suspect them. Not really. We were all trying to figure this out in real time.
But I noticed.
Blair's form was clean. Too clean. Luke knew what to grab, what to search for. Grey… he didn't just survive. He adapted faster than anything I'd ever seen.
And I was changing too.
I didn't feel scared. I should have. But instead I felt… tuned in. Like part of me had accepted the horror, and the rest of me was just catching up.
We didn't speak as we climbed into the carriers.
But something had followed us out of that underground.
Not a creature.
Not a sound.
A truth.
And none of us knew what to do with it.
Not yet.
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