Sera’s creature purred approval deep enough to feel. Good. Let him be honest. Lies are for humans and traitors.
The ventilation system kicked harder into ergency mode.
She felt the pressure shift first, air pulling toward vents in a steady suction ant to isolate contamination. Instead, it did the opposite.
The pathogen rode the airflow like it belonged there. Sera heard screams bloom down parallel corridors they hadn’t reached. Sowhere behind a wall, people were dying simply because the building was breathing for Aerenyx now.
He tilted his head like he could hear the sa map she could sll. "They’re feeding their lungs," he said, genuinely pleased. "They think sealing doors will help, but you can’t seal the air."
Sera looked up at the vents as they passed beneath them. "So it’ll reach everything."
"Unless sothing kills it." His black eyes slid to her again, and his grin sharpened. "Do you want to kill it?"
She considered the question the way she considered any interesting toy. "Not yet."
"Good." He stepped closer as they walked, enough that his arm brushed hers again. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a promise he was letting her get used to. "I want you to see what it does."
A larger hall opened ahead, lined with glass on one side and reinforced doors on the other.
This was a traffic artery for the facility, ant to funnel personnel toward command, labs, or containnt. It was full of people now.
Soldiers in ash armor ford a shallow line under a CDC officer in a red-striped coat.
dical staff clustered behind them with sealed carts, so trying to haul equipnt, others just looking for a place to run that didn’t exist.
"Halt!" the officer shouted, voice amplified through a helt mic. "Containnt breach! Form line—"
Aerenyx exhaled.
The line died like a candle snuffed in a storm.
The soldiers closest to him blackened and crumbled where they stood, their bodies collapsing inward until armor clanged empty on the floor. Those farther back erupted with boils that burst into green arcs across white walls.
A few tried to retreat, but their stomachs softened and poured out through their mouths before they made it three steps. The officer lasted the longest. He staggered back, choking, trying to keep posture while his visor fogged and then went opaque with rot.
He tried to speak again, and his jaw slid off his face as his bones liquefied behind it. He folded into a heap that leaked out under the seam of his coat.
Sera watched the spread with a small tilt of her head, cataloguing without effort. Close range ant collapse and crumble. Mid range ant boils and lt. Farther away ant suffocation and internal liquefaction.
There was pattern in it, even if the pattern didn’t care to be polite.
Aerenyx looked at her like he was waiting for a verdict.
"You’re fast," she said with approval.
His grin went wider, pleased and a little sharp. "I was starving in him. Every instinct chained. Every breath filtered. It was miserable." He stepped closer, voice dropping only for her. "This is better. I can finally be what I am in front of you."
"You were always what you are," Sera replied, and it wasn’t comfort or admiration. It was fact. "He just pretended you weren’t."
Aerenyx laughed once, low. "Yes. He liked to do that a lot."
He walked again, and she paced him. The floor was slick with what had been people, but neither of them hesitated.
Their creatures humd in the sa frequency now, a quiet internal alignnt that felt like two predators circling the sa carcass without needing to fight about it.
They reached a set of bulkhead doors that had slamd shut ahead of the dying line. The panels were thick composite, reinforced for biological lockdown. Aerenyx put his palm to the seam. Corrosion blood under his hand in branching veins.
The door softened, sagged, and peeled away from its track in a slow slump. He didn’t strain. He didn’t push. The door simply gave up.
The room beyond was a wide lab bay with glass partitions and clean benches, the kind of place built to survive the world dying outside its walls. A cluster of CDC staff had taken shelter there, faces hidden behind masks, eyes wide, so holding scalpels like they might help.
One woman raised a pistol with shaking hands.
Aerenyx didn’t look at the gun. He looked at Sera. "Do you want to do this one?" he asked like inviting her to taste sothing.
She shook her head once. "I want to watch you."
His smile softened—not into human gentleness, but into satisfaction. "Good girl."
The words were blunt. Possessive. Normal between predators. Sera didn’t bristle. She almost smirked instead.
Aerenyx turned back and took one step into the room. The staff inhaled. They died. So folded where they stood. Others convulsed and ruptured.
The woman with the pistol dropped it as her fingers dissolved.
Every body went down in seconds, and the room filled with the wet sound of tissue collapsing.
Aerenyx breathed in again, deeper this ti. He was feeding without eating. Power ran through him in the way fire ran through Zubair when he’d tasted fresh at. Sera recognized that look.
She’d worn it herself.
He turned to her with black eyes bright and hungry. "Do you like what I am?" he asked, and the question wasn’t shy. It was a test. It was a claim he wanted her to either bite or accept.
Sera studied him for a long second, amused by the directness and the timing. The floor was still steaming from fresh deaths, alarms still screaming, and this was what he wanted to know.
It made sense.
It made more than sense.
It felt like the most natural conversation to have right after being born.
"I don’t know yet," she said calmly. "But I like watching."
"Watch," he murmured, then nodded. "Learn. Then decide." He stepped close enough to feel her heat without touching it, and his voice lowered. "I’ll still be here when you do. After all, we both know who you are going to pick... don’t we... Trouble?"
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