Sofía (The Muscle) POV
The steel table wasn't enough.
The barricade groaned, metal legs screeching against concrete as the weight of the horde pressed from the outside. The gap at the top of the door widened—just an inch, then two.
Through the crack, I saw them. Fingers. Too many fingers.
They were pale, elongated, and wet, scrabbling blindly for purchase. The smell hit us first—not the dry rot of the bunker, but the copper tang of fresh blood and the sour musk of packed bodies.
"Back!" I roared, grabbing Camila by the collar of her vest and throwing her behind the line. "Elena, find me a weapon that shoots or explodes, or we are dead in thirty seconds!"
"I'm working on it!" Elena was on her hands and knees near the back wall, frantically tearing at the rotting wooden pallets.
CRUNCH.
The top hinge of the iron door snapped. The heavy slab of metal leaned inward at a forty-five-degree angle, held up only by the table and my own shoulder.
A face squeezed through the gap.
It was a woman, or it had been. Her jaw was unhinged, hanging loose like a snake's, and her eyes were clouded with white cataracts. She didn't scream; she clicked—a wet, guttural sound from the back of her throat.
"Hello, sweetheart," I grunted.
I drove the tip of my machete through the gap, piercing her eye socket. She went limp, but she didn't fall. The pressure of the bodies behind her kept her pinned there, a meat shield for the next one.
Then, the table legs buckled.
"Brace!"
The door crashed down. It didn't fall flat; it created a ramp. And they poured in.
It was a flood of grey limbs and snapping teeth. I swung the machete in a figure-eight pattern, the 'wind-shield wiper' technique I'd learned in jungle warfare school. Chop. Hack. Sever.
Black blood sprayed the walls. I took a head, then an arm. But for every one I dropped, two more crawled over the corpses. They were fast—faster than standard shamblers. These were fresh turns.
"Sofía!" Miguel screamed.
I risked a glance back. A crawler—a small one, maybe a child—had slipped past my legs. It was scrambling toward Miguel and Camila.
I couldn't turn. If I turned, the main wave would bury me.
"Julián!" I yelled, desperate. "Wake up!"
Julián (The Carrier) POV
I was freezing.
The Halon gas had chilled me to the marrow. My teeth were clicking together like dice in a cup. I felt small, weak, and human.
I watched the crawler scuttle toward Miguel. It moved like a spider, joints popping.
Do something, a voice in my head whispered. It wasn't my voice. It was the static. The cold makes you weak. The fire makes you a god.
I looked at my hands. Pale. Trembling. Useless.
"Julián!" Camila shrieked as the crawler lunged, grabbing her ankle.
I didn't make a conscious choice. Instinct took the wheel. I threw myself at the crawler.
I tackled it, pinning its small, thrashing body to the cold concrete. It snapped at my face, teeth clicking inches from my nose. I could feel the heat radiating off it. It was feverish, burning with the virus.
Warmth.
The sensation hit me like a drug. Just touching its skin sent a jolt of pleasure up my arms.
Don't take it all, Elena's warning echoed in my memory. You are a thermal sink.
If I took too much, I would lose my mind again. I would become the monster that tried to cook Miguel.
Just a sip, I thought. Just enough to fight.
I tightened my grip on the crawler's arms. I visualized the heat inside its body—a red, swirling energy. And I pulled.
It wasn't physics; it was predation.
The crawler shrieked—a high, piercing sound of agony. I felt the energy rush into me. My veins lit up, not with the blinding violet of before, but a dim, controlled purple. The shivering stopped. My muscles expanded, the weakness evaporating.
The crawler slowed down. Its movements became sluggish. Its skin turned ashen grey as I leeched the thermal energy right out of its biology.
It went limp, frozen solid in my grip.
I shoved the corpse aside and stood up. I felt... balanced. Not burning. Not freezing. Just charged.
I looked at the ramp of corpses where Sofía was drowning in enemies.
"Elena!" I shouted, my voice booming with a resonance that wasn't entirely human. "Get the hatch! I'll buy you time!"
I didn't need a weapon. I was the weapon.
I charged the line.
Dr. Elena Vargas POV
I heard the impact behind me—meat hitting meat with the force of a sledgehammer—but I didn't look. I couldn't.
"The blueprints," I muttered to myself, tearing a rusted crowbar from a crate marked 'Machinery Parts.' "Think like a smuggler. Think like a rat."
This bunker was built in the 80s. The Cartel didn't just store drugs here; they moved them. If the river was the entrance, there had to be a way to move product up into the city without being seen.
I scanned the floor. Concrete. Dirty, stained concrete.
"Where is it?" I hissed.
I dragged the crate aside. Nothing.
Then I saw it. The airflow.
The Halon gas had settled on the floor like a white fog. But in the far corner, near the bolted-down steel shelves, the fog was swirling. It was being sucked down.
A draft.
"Camila! Miguel! Here!" I waved them over.
I ran to the corner. The concrete here looked different—a slightly different shade of grey. A false slab.
"Help me move this shelf!"
Camila, bleeding from a cut on her forehead, grabbed the shelving unit. Miguel, still wrapped in Sofía's jacket, grabbed the other side.
"One, two, heave!"
We dragged the heavy metal unit aside. Beneath it was a circular iron hatch, the wheel rusted shut.
"It won't budge!" Camila cried, pulling at the wheel.
I jammed the crowbar into the wheel's spokes for leverage. "Push!"
I looked back at the battle.
It was terrifying.
Sofía was a whirlwind of steel, but Julián... Julián was something else.
He was fighting with a terrifying efficiency. He grabbed an infected man by the neck and the chest. For a second, the violet veins in Julián's arms flared, and the attacker convulsed, then dropped, motionless and grey.
He was draining them. He was using the enemies as batteries to keep his strength up, regulating his temperature by venting the excess heat into his punches.
But there were too many. A massive infected—a former dockworker by the look of him—slammed into Julián, tackling him into the wall.
"Julián!" I screamed.
"Open the damn door, Elena!" Sofía yelled, kicking a crawler in the face.
I put all my weight on the crowbar. The metal groaned. My palms slipped on the rust.
Pop.
The seal broke. A hiss of stale air rushed up.
"It's open!" I spun the wheel. It screeched, threads grinding against decades of grit. I threw the hatch open.
Darkness. A ladder leading down into a black abyss.
"Go! Miguel first!" I ordered.
Miguel scrambled down the ladder without hesitation. Camila followed.
"Sofía! Julián! Fall back!"
Sofía decapitated a woman in a nurse's uniform and scrambled backward, her chest heaving. She was covered in black gore.
"Move, big guy!" she grabbed Julián's shoulder.
Julián turned. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with a dangerous, manic energy. He had absorbed a lot of heat.
"Go," he growled, his voice vibrating. "I'll hold them."
"We go together or we don't go!" Sofía grabbed his belt and yanked him toward the hole.
The horde surged over the ramp of bodies.
"Down! Now!" I shoved Sofía toward the ladder. She slid down.
I looked at Julián. He was vibrating. The violet light was creeping up his neck again. He was losing the balance.
"Julián, exhale!" I commanded. "Vent the heat!"
He opened his mouth and let out a breath. It steamed in the cold air, a cloud of hot vapor. He blinked, the madness receding slightly.
He jumped for the ladder.
I followed him, grabbing the hatch lid as I descended.
The infected reached the hole. Fingers clawed at the rim. A face appeared in the opening, snarling.
I slammed the iron hatch shut.
CLANG.
I spun the locking wheel from the inside just as a heavy weight slammed onto the lid above us.
THUD. THUD.
Dust rained down on my face. We hung there on the ladder, suspended in the dark, listening to the muffled screams of the frustrated horde above.
"Move," Sofía's voice came from below. "We aren't safe yet."
Sofía (The Muscle) POV
We descended for what felt like fifty feet. The air down here was different—damp, earthy, and smelling of sulfur.
My boots hit solid ground. I clicked on my chem-light.
We were in a tunnel. But not a sewer. This was older. Brick arches, cobblestone floor.
"The Old Catacombs," Elena whispered, dropping down beside me. "These pre-date the city. The smugglers just re-purposed them."
I checked the team.
Miguel was leaning against the wall, pale but breathing. Camila was cleaning the blood off her face.
And Julián.
He was standing apart from us, staring at his hands. The violet glow was fading, pulsing slowly like a heartbeat slowing down. He was sweating profuse amounts, steam literally rising from his shoulders in the cool tunnel air.
"You okay, monstruo?" I asked, keeping my voice soft.
He looked up. He looked exhausted. Terrified.
"I could feel them," he whispered. "When I grabbed them... I could feel their hunger. And I... I ate it."
"You did what you had to do," I said firmly. "You saved us."
"I liked it," he confessed, his voice cracking. "Sofía, for a second... I wanted to grab you, too. You were so warm."
The silence stretched. I tightened my grip on my machete handle, not out of aggression, but out of fear. He was telling me he was a vampire, but for heat.
Elena stepped between us. She pulled a penlight from her pocket and shined it in Julián's eyes.
"Pupil response is normalizing," she noted clinically, though her hand was shaking. "Julián, you've discovered a mechanism for homeostasis. If you 'micro-dose' the thermal intake—taking just enough to power the muscles but not enough to trigger the hyper-aggression—you can control the Alpha state."
"It's a slippery slope, Doc," I muttered.
"Survival is always a slippery slope," Elena snapped. She turned her light down the tunnel. "We need to keep moving. The hatch won't hold them forever, and if they find another way down..."
"Where does this go?" Camila asked, looking into the dark.
Elena pulled a folded, water-damaged map from her pocket—something she'd grabbed from the bunker before we left.
"If the old legends are true," Elena said, tracing a line with her dirty thumb, "this tunnel goes under the river. It leads to the Industrial District."
"The Industrial District?" I frowned. "That's the heart of the Hive. That's where the infection started."
"Exactly," Elena looked up, her face grim. "If there's a cure, or a way to broadcast a signal to the military, it's at the CDC outpost in the center of the district."
"We're walking into hell," I said.
"We're already in hell," Julián murmured, wiping the steam from his face. "Might as well go to the center of it."
I took point. "Stay close. Watch the ceiling. If you hear clicking, you drop."
We walked into the darkness.