STAGE 1
The words tore through Stanley's mind like a voice made of glass. Piercing his brain from inside out. Then a high-pitched vibration moved through his teeth, drilling into his skull until his vision blurred white.
His eyes snapped open.
Fire clawed at his throat. He sucked in a jagged breath and immediately choked on the cold air. He shifted onto his side, palms scraping against rough concrete.
Hands first. Whitish and shaking, but intact. Five fingers each. No blood anywhere. He touched his face—smooth skin, straight nose, cheeks warming under his palms. His chest rose and fell hard beneath his ribs. Legs were there. Everything was there.
A gust of wind slammed into him.
Stanley looked up.
He was in the middle of a ruined stadium. Big enough to hold thousands. The upper structure had cracked apart, thick black weeds growing through the concrete like veins. Above, skeletal beams stretched across the sky where a roof used to be. Gray flags whipped violently in the wind.
How did he get here? What stadium was this? What city?
A book flickered in his memory. A cup of coffee. Then nothing.
The silence shattered.
A low hum rose into a roar. Shuffling. Movement. The sound of a crowd shifting all at once.
Stanley turned his head.
The field was packed with people. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Standing shoulder to shoulder in uneven lines. They weren't in uniforms or costumes. Business suits. Pajamas. Winter coats and grease-stained work shirts.
A man three feet away stared at his own hands, mumbling. A woman ahead called out a name over and over.
So many people. They had to know a way out. Someone must have a phone. If he just—
A boy in a red hoodie stood nearby, staring at Stanley with wide, white eyes. To the boy's left, an old man in a suit tried to stand, confusion written across his face.
The man never finished standing.
His head jerked once. Then it burst.
The skull split apart from the inside, fragments of bone and brain matter spraying outward in a wet explosion. Blood misted into the air. His body went rigid for half a second, then collapsed in a heap.
The woman beside him stopped crying. She looked down.
"Hey?"
Her head exploded.
The wet crack echoed. Her knees buckled first, then her body followed, crumpling face-first onto the concrete.
Stanley's breath caught in his throat.
Gunshot? Missile? What
A scream ripped through the air so close Stanley thought his eardrums would burst.
The girl directly behind him. She was staring at the person beside her, whose head had just come apart in her face.
Then hers exploded too.
Skull fragments sprayed across Stanley's back. Warm fluid—thick and metallic—splattered against his neck.
He didn't wipe it away. He couldn't move.
The dominoes were falling.
To his right, four people dropped. To his left, six more. It swept through the crowd like a harvester cutting through sugarcane. Age didn't matter. Where you stood didn't matter.
A woman five feet away reached out for help, eyes locked on someone who might save her. Then her head detonated. Her body slumped mid-reach.
The crowd fractured.
The lines dissolved into a primal scramble. The roar of voices grew louder than the dying, mixed with the rhythmic wet thuds of bodies hitting concrete.
Stanley's breathing turned rapid. His vision narrowed.
A man sprinting blindly slammed into his shoulder.
Stanley snapped back, stumbled, nearly went down. The dead girl's hair brushed his hand as she lay motionless on the ground.
RUN.
His legs moved.
The arena became a swirling chaos. A massive crowd surged toward a tight opening on the north side. Another group tried to scale the jagged concrete seating, fingernails tearing against stone.
Stanley got swept up in the northern surge.
Panic spread through the crowd like it was a single organism. A man struggled to turn back, yelling for someone behind him, but the human tide was too strong. He lost his footing and went down.
A boot landed on the man's chest. Another on his throat.
Stanley kept moving. No time to stop. He used the force of the people behind him to stay upright and stepped over those on the ground.
The air grew hot. A nasty mix of sweat and copper. The crowd pushed toward the exit, but the space was getting tighter.
The pressure built. Stanley's ribs groaned. He was being carried by the weight of bodies behind him. His feet barely touched the ground.
"Move!" someone screamed next to him.
The guy in front lost his balance and disappeared beneath the surge. The crowd didn't stop.
Stanley felt his foot hit something hard. He tried to pull back, but a shoulder slammed into him from behind.
He went down.
Concrete rushed toward his face. Legs everywhere. Boots kicking. Someone planted a foot on his back, using his spine as leverage to climb higher.
Stanley couldn't scream. There wasn't enough air. He rolled, tucked his chin, and clawed at the ground in front of him.
A gap opened between two sets of legs. He lunged for it.
He crawled on all fours, ignoring the ache in his ribs and the raw burn of his palms. He went low, like a rat through a forest of moving legs, toward the edge where the pressure thinned.
Then he was through.
He burst out of the tunnel.
The pressure vanished. Stanley scrambled to his feet, sucked in a deep breath, and coughed up the dust clogging his throat.
He was out.
The light was harsh here. A flat white glare that made everything hard to see. Gray smoke drifted down like ash, coating the ground in a layer of fine, silvery particles.
Stanley stood there, gasping. Behind him, the stadium roared, but the sound felt distant now. Like it was happening on the other side of a wall.
His eyes lifted.
The city was a steel graveyard.
Huge chunks had been ripped from the skyscrapers surrounding the area. Glass spilled out onto the streets in glittering piles. A building a few blocks away leaned at a sharp angle, a fire-gutted hole torn through its side.
Stanley wiped the blood from his neck with the back of his hand. His fingers were still shaking.
Where am I…