The truck rattled over broken asphalt, the weight of silence pressing down on everyone inside. The survivors sat huddled, guarded, their eyes wary and distant. The Neutralizers watched them, quiet but alert. Razor sat near the front, his gaze locked on the road, but his thoughts lingered on the encounter with the Elite Crawler. The way it watched them. It wasn’t just instinct. It was something more. Something worse.

  “How long have you been out here?” Razor's voice cut through the heavy silence.

  There was a pause. The leader of the survivors, a sharp-eyed woman with dirt-streaked cheeks, glanced at her group before answering. Her voice was rough, worn down by exhaustion and grief.

  “Since the beginning. There were fifteen of us. Now... just four.”

  The words dropped heavy in the air. One of the younger survivors clenched their hands, staring down at the floor.

  “What happened?” Razor pressed, though he already knew the answer.

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  “They took them,” the man beside her said. His eyes were hollow, his voice low and cracking. “The Shadows. Sometimes we’d hear the screams. Other times, it was just... silence. They’d be there one moment, gone the next.”

  His gaze drifted, lost in memories. Shadow watched him carefully, fingers resting against his rifle. He knew that look. The same one he saw in the mirror after losing his own people.

  The woman’s voice came again, softer this time. “I saw one. It wasn’t like the others. It didn’t attack right away. It just... stood there. Watching. Like it was thinking. Studying us.”

  The air in the truck seemed to freeze. Gator shifted, his jaw tightening. His mind flashed back to the depot. The grin. The sharp, mocking grin. The way it had stood there, head tilted, almost curious. He could still hear the low, animalistic growl, feel the heat of its gaze.

  “We’ve seen one like that too. Bigger. Smarter. It knew what it was doing,” Gator said quietly.

  The survivor shook her head, as if trying to shake off the memory. “It wasn’t just hunting. It was learning.”

  Razor’s grip on his weapon tightened. The confirmation hit hard. The infection wasn’t just evolving. It was adapting. Planning. And if that was true, everything they knew was already outdated. He glanced at his team, wondering how many of them would survive the next encounter.

  “They’re not supposed to be that smart,” Shadow muttered. The words came out low, edged with disbelief.

  The survivor leader’s gaze dropped, her voice rough. “Yeah? Tell that to my brother. He froze when it looked at him. Like it saw something in him. Like it knew him. And then it… took him.”

  Her voice cracked, but she forced the words out, burying the pain beneath sheer will. Another survivor clutched something in their hand, holding it tight—a small, worn bracelet. The metal glinted faintly, a keepsake from someone lost.

  “We survived because we ran. Hid. Left the dying behind because there was no choice. And I still wonder… was it worth it?”

  No one spoke. No one could.