State Forensic Laboratory – 2:17 a.m.
The corridor lights are the colour of a corpse's lips.
Inside the containment wing, every surface is brushed steel and glass, yet the air feels thick, like breathing inside a lung.
A single observation window glows.
Behind it, six scientists move in slow, ritual silence.
They wear full biohazard suits that make them look like pale insects.
Their faces are lit from below by the violet bioluminescence leaking from the sample trays.
On the centre table: a petri dish no larger than a silver dollar.
Inside it, a single drop of blood refuses to die.
It has grown a delicate, black lattice (threads thinner than spider silk, pulsing in perfect synchrony).
Every pulse pushes the lattice a millimetre farther across the agar.
Dr. Marlene Voss's voice crackles through the intercom, thin with exhaustion and something close to prayer.
"It's not terrestrial. Not even close.
The chromosomal arrangement is dodecagonal, twelve perfect arms.
No known organism on Earth uses base-twelve symmetry.
And the cells… they're singing."
She presses a key.
A low, wet chord fills the speakers, the sound of something enormous exhaling under miles of water.
Every person in the room flinches as if slapped.
Sheriff Good stands outside the glass, coat open, hat dangling from two fingers.
A wad of wintergreen tobacco bulges beneath his lip like a tumour.
He has not moved in nine minutes.
"Play it again," he says.
The chord repeats.
This time the lattice in the dish flares brighter, threads writhing like hooked worms.
Good spits black juice into a styrofoam cup.
The sound is wet, intimate, obscene.
"Burn it," he says.
"All of it. Slides, drives, backups, the dish, the goddamn table if you have to."
Voss turns, visor fogged.
"This could be the discovery of the century."
Good's eyes are winter river stones.
"It's the end of the world in a drop, Marlene.
Burn it."
He walks away.
The tooth in his pocket clicks against the silver dollar he uses to flip when he's thinking.
It leaves a faint red smear on the leather that will never quite wipe clean.
Harlan House – 6:58 a.m.
The mirror in Kayden's room is cracked in a spiderweb that starts at the top left corner and crawls downward like frost.
He stands in front of it, hoodie half-zipped, hair falling in deliberate black strands across his face.
A curtain.
A burial shroud.
His reflection looks healthy.
Too healthy.
Skin poreless, eyes radioactive green, like someone edited the saturation and forgot to save the original file.
He pulls the hood up.
The fabric still smells faintly of hospital bleach and someone else's blood.
Downstairs, the kitchen is lit by a single bulb that flickers every seven seconds exactly.
His mom stands at the stove, back curved like a question mark.
Apron tied too tight.
Hands moving through the motions of spreading peanut butter on toast with the exhausted grace of someone who has done it ten thousand times before sunrise.
She doesn't turn when he enters.
"Breakfast, baby."
The sandwich is cut diagonally.
The way he's loved since he was five.
He takes a bite.
The sweetness floods his mouth and for one heartbeat the hive static in his skull goes quiet.
She finally looks at him.
Her smile is a cracked thing, beautiful and terrible.
"Rent notice came," she says, voice light, like she's talking about the weather.
"Red one this time. Three months."
The peanut butter turns to ash.
He sees her hands: knuckles split, nails chewed to the quick, a burn scar on her thumb from the night shift fryer.
He sees the second place still set at the table, fork aligned perfectly, waiting for a ghost who will never eat again.
His throat closes.
She turns back to the sink, shoulders shaking once, just once.
"I picked up doubles at the store. We'll make it. We always do."
Kayden stares at the half sandwich.
Wants to scream I'm sorry I'm not enough, sorry I'm the reason you're tired, sorry the world keeps trying to kill me and leaving you to clean up the mess.
Instead he is silent.
She dries her hands on a dish towel that used to be yellow.
Crosses the linoleum in three soft steps.
Cups his face with palms that smell of lemon soap and desperate love.
"Pressure makes diamonds, Kay."
Her voice cracks on the last word.
She kisses his forehead like he is still small enough to carry out of nightmares.
He closes his eyes and pretends he believes her.
East Ridge High – 7:45 a.m.
The courtyard is a cauldron of whispers and phone screens.
"…blood just folded into him—"
"…driver wasn't in the car when they pried it open—"
"…Harlan's cursed, man, I'm telling you—"
Kayden moves through the crowd like a knife through smoke.
Jake spots him first, breaks into a grin so bright it hurts.
Emily is half a step behind, eyes already glassy.
Jake's hug is rib-cracking.
"Thought we'd have to visit you in a box, dude."
Emily's punch to his shoulder is soft.
"Never again," she whispers, fierce.
They fall into step, the old triad, and for thirty blessed seconds the world is almost right.
Then Tyler materialises like a storm cloud.
Varsity jacket hanging open, skateboard tucked under one arm, smirk sharp as broken glass.
"So, freak." Loud enough for half the courtyard to hear.
"What's it feel like when death looks you in the eye and changes its mind?"
Jake steps forward, fists balled.
"Walk away, Tyler."
Tyler ignores him, leans in until Kayden can smell energy drink and cruelty.
"Next time maybe it finishes the job."
Laughter ripples from his pack like spilled oil.
Emily's voice cuts clean.
"Touch him and I'll make sure your dental records need updating."
Tyler flips them off and saunters away, still laughing.
The bell rings.
The moment calcifies.
Third Period – History
Mr. Park makes Kayden stand.
The room goes tomb-quiet.
"We're all grateful you're back, Mr. Harlan. What happened two weeks ago shook us all. Let's just take a moment…"
Thirty stares pin Kayden to the floor.
He wants to vanish into the linoleum.
He sits.
Opens his notebook.
Tries to disappear.
Outside the window, beneath the ancient oak, something stands.
It is tall the way nightmares are tall, wrong angles, too many joints.
Skin like liquid shadow that drips upward.
No face, just the idea of one, a tear in the air where a mouth should be.
It tilts its head in perfect mimicry of Kayden listening to thoughts.
He blinks.
It is gone.
The oak's shadow lies empty on the grass.
"Mr. Harlan?" Mr. Park's voice, sharp now. "Something wrong?"
Kayden's tongue is sand.
"No, sir."
Jake catches his eye, flashes a small thumbs-up that says I've got your back.
Kayden forces a nod.
But the cold has already crawled inside his bones and made a home.
Ravenswood Bridge – 12:29 p.m.
Sunlight hammers down like judgment.
A lone semi roars across the bridge, trailer loaded with fresh-cut pine, air brakes hissing like dragons.
The driver is whistling something old and lonely.
Then the sky tears.
Something falls, no sound until it hits the asphalt with a wet, intimate slap.
It lands as a fist-sized pod of black membrane.
Then it blooms.
In two seconds it is the size of a refrigerator.
In four, it is a pulsing, glistening sac the colour of spoiled plums.
Black threads erupt outward, thick as cables, weaving across the bridge in frantic, living spirals.
They smoke where they touch metal.
The driver slams brakes.
Tires scream.
The truck jackknifes, smashes the guardrail in an explosion of glass and pine.
Silence.
He staggers out, blood running from a cut above his eye.
The sac breathes.
Slow, deliberate lungs the size of a house.
At its centre, a violet light throbs like a dying star.
He takes one step.
Another.
"What in the hell…"
The threads freeze.
Every single one turns toward him with the precision of compass needles.
The violet light flares, bright enough to cast knife-sharp shadows in full daylight.
The threads rise.
Cafeteria – 12:31 p.m.
Jake is mid-story, using a french fry as a skateboarder.
Emily snorts milk out her nose.
Kayden laughs, actually laughs, the sound rusty and astonished.
For four entire minutes the world is nothing but bad pizza and the two people who make existing bearable.
Then the cold arrives.
It pours down his spine like liquid nitrogen.
Every hair electrifies.
The fluorescent lights overhead flicker once.
Seven seconds.
The world drops into absolute black.
No screams.
No movement.
Just the wet sound of something enormous inhaling.
Light snaps back.
Everyone is exactly where they were.
Except the boy two tables over is staring at his tray like food is a new concept.
His eyes are solid obsidian from lid to lid.
He blinks.
The black drains away like ink poured down a drain.
No one else saw.
Jake's voice returns mid-sentence. "—so Tyler eats absolute shit, right?"
Kayden's fork clatters to the floor.
His heartbeat is no longer his own.
Deep inside his skull, in a voice that tastes like wintergreen and old blood, something that has been waiting two weeks finally speaks.
Six seconds tomorrow, darling.
Sleep tight.