My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

  I stood there in the dim light of the lantern, the pearl still clutched in my fist, its slick warmth reminding me of what I’d just done. My stomach churned with lingering nausea, my throat felt raw, and the stench of decay clung to my skin. But beneath the horror, a different realization was starting to weigh on me—the fact that I wasn’t cut out for this. That I was weak, cowardly, and so hopelessly out of place.

  The memory of my pathetic scream echoed in my head, a humiliating soundtrack I couldn’t silence. Anna’s disgusted sneer was etched into my mind, the final blow to whatever fragile sense of self-worth I still had left.

  I couldn’t go on like this.

  I took a few trembling steps away from the corpse, keeping my eyes off the ragged hole I’d carved in its neck. A wave of shame burned through me, hotter than any fear I’d felt so far.

  I thought back to my old life, the office job, the tedium, the bills, the cubicle walls. I’d always resented that life—feeling trapped, wishing I could just escape. And now I was in a living nightmare where wishing I could “escape” was more literal than I’d ever imagined.

  Twenty-four hours.

  That’s how much time I had left before the key would work again—before I could flee this hellish place and return to my own reality. Or whatever was left of it.

  But what good would that really do me?

  If I couldn’t even kill a single roamer without screaming like a child, if I couldn’t so much as pick a pearl from its neck without vomiting, then how would I ever survive here? More importantly—how would I survive any dimension, if they were somehow connected in ways I didn’t understand?

  Anna was right. I was dead weight. A coward. And if I didn’t toughen up, she’d leave me here to die—or worse, one of those things would tear me to pieces, and that would be the end of it.

  Slowly, I looked at her. She was crouched by the lantern, poking at the meager flame with a piece of broken wood. Though she’d just finished hacking down a roamer and watching me gag, her expression had turned distant again, as if her mind had drifted somewhere else—some place locked behind memories of pain and survival I couldn’t begin to fathom.

  I swallowed, trying to summon some small spark of anger or determination. Something to fight the numbing shame. I caught a glimpse of my own reflection in a fragment of shattered glass on the floor—pale skin, eyes wide and haunted, smears of dried blood and filth streaking my cheeks. I looked like a man on the brink, someone who’d just woken up in a nightmare he had no business being in.

  Damn it.

  What the hell was I doing?

  My legs still shook, my arms felt like lead, and my clothes stank of death. But I couldn’t let this break me any further. If I continued acting like a whipped dog, Anna wouldn’t even need to think about abandoning me—survival alone would do that for her. She’d walk away, and I’d be finished.

  I tucked the pearl into my pocket, silently promising myself that I’d earn every single one of the next ninety-nine. My stomach lurched at the thought of how many more times I’d have to cut into dead flesh, how many more times I’d have to fight and kill. But I pushed the nausea down, forcing my mind to stay focused on the only fact that mattered:

  I had to get stronger.

  I had to become capable of surviving this.

  I had to stop being so fucking useless.

  I walked to Anna, clearing my throat in a weak attempt to gather her attention. She barely glanced up, her eyes half-lidded and dull from exhaustion.

  “What?” she asked curtly.

  My voice wavered, but I forced it out. “I… I’m sorry. About—”

  She held up a hand, effectively shutting me down. “Don’t. Apologies don’t matter here.” She shot me a glare that made my chest tighten. “This world chews people up and spits them out. Either you learn to fight, or you die.”

  Her words stung, but I nodded anyway, biting back any trace of self-pity. “I will. Fight, I mean.”

  She regarded me with skepticism. “Yeah? We’ll see.”

  Silence settled over us, thick as the stale air in the rotting house. The storm outside raged against the walls, thunder shaking the floorboards under our feet. Distant lightning lit the edges of the boarded windows in eerie flashes, casting monstrous shadows that danced across the grime-covered walls.

  I leaned my head back, closing my eyes momentarily, every muscle in my body screaming for rest. But my mind wouldn’t stop—memories of the roamer’s face, the crunch of Anna’s bat connecting with its skull, the wet sound as I’d extracted the pearl… it all looped over and over.

  Twenty-four hours.

  It felt both like an eternity and far too short a time.

  If I didn’t gain any real skill or courage in that span, nothing would stop me from panicking the moment I came across more roamers—or worse. But how could I possibly adapt in a single day?

  Anna’s voice broke the silence. “If you want to stop being useless, you’ll have to kill more roamers. Get more pearls. Start building your stats before you try to do anything else. Otherwise, you’re going to slow me down and get us both killed.”

  I felt a surge of panic at the thought of more killing, more blood, more cutting. My stomach twisted so violently I had to clench my teeth to keep from gagging again. But there was no way around it.

  “I’ll do what I have to,” I whispered, the words choking in my throat. “I can’t… I won’t keep being this weak.”

  She tilted her head, arms crossing under her chest. “Are you sure? Because as far as I can see, you’re a coward. You scream when you see a roamer, you can barely handle a knife—”

  “Enough,” I said, more sharply than I intended, my anger flaring for just a moment. “I get it. I’m pathetic. But I’m not—”

  She scoffed. “Not what?”

  I hesitated. Not done. Not broken. But the words stuck in my throat, feeling trite and hollow.

  I turned away from her glare, fighting the burn of humiliation in my eyes. The storm’s fierce wind rattled the boards on the windows, forcing dust to swirl in tiny eddies across the floor. My heart pounded with an uneasy mix of fear and determination.

  I had to change.I had no choice.

  Anna eventually sighed, her voice quieting. “Look—if you really want to improve, you’ll have to step up. Next time we encounter a roamer, I’m not stepping in unless you’re about to die.”

  My pulse spiked at the thought. But she was right. I couldn’t afford to keep depending on her. I’d never stand on my own two feet if I did.

  I nodded stiffly, swallowing down the rising panic. “Fine.”

  She eyed me for a moment, a hint of exasperation in her glare, then turned away. “We’ll try to get some rest. In this storm, they won’t wander too close. We move at first light.”

  I nodded, exhaling shakily as the tension in my body lessened just enough for me to realize how exhausted I truly was. The floor felt harder than ever beneath me, but I had no strength to complain. I took a spot near the corner of the room, curling in on myself, rebar still gripped in my right hand as if it were a lifeline.

  Twenty-four hours.That was all I had.

  Closing my eyes, I let out a trembling breath, hating the way fear still gnawed relentlessly at my insides. But beneath it all, a tiny spark of anger—at myself, at this place, at everything—burned hot enough to keep me moving forward.

  Because if I didn’t find the will to fight, to kill, to survive, then all that was left was death.

  Thunder shook the rotting walls, making the floor quiver beneath us. The broken windows rattled, and every gust of wind forced icy droplets of rain through the warped barricades, sprinkling the dusty floor with water that smelled of dirt and ash. In one corner of the room, a mold-streaked wall displayed faint silhouettes of the furniture that might once have been placed there—ghostly reminders of a normalcy long since erased.

  Anna settled against a splintered table, her gaze distant, as if searching for something in the flickering lantern flame between us. The storm’s howling wind drowned out any sounds from outside—roamers, ferals, or worse—and for a brief moment, it felt as if we were wrapped in an eerie, cocoon-like silence broken only by the restless rumble of thunder.

  Despite the oppressive fatigue crushing my body, I couldn’t sleep yet. A nauseating mix of fear, hunger, and adrenaline kept me teetering on the edge of raw awareness. My clothes, still damp with rain and caked in dark, dried blood, clung to me uncomfortably, and the place where the roamer’s gore had splashed my arm itched with a phantom burn, as though the filth had seeped into my skin.

  I cleared my throat, trying to summon a steadier voice than before. “Anna,” I began quietly, the roar of the storm outside nearly drowning me out, “tell me more about… about how things work here. All the stuff you haven’t said yet.”

  She snorted softly, arms crossed over her chest. “What’s left to say? I told you about the virus. The levels. The pearls. The factions.” She paused, examining the battered floor. “You already know this world is a corpse. What else do you need?”

  I shifted uncomfortably, pressing my back to a wall that groaned at the weight. “Everything. Anything. I don’t want to… I can’t keep being blindsided every time something new tries to kill me.”

  Her lips curled in a dry, humorless half-smile. “Suit yourself. It’s not a pretty picture.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I gestured weakly around us. “Neither is this.”

  She gave a short, bitter laugh. “Fair enough.” Then she took a long, ragged breath, as if steeling herself. “You want to know how we survive? We take everything we can. Everything. Food, water, weapons—anything to give us even a small edge. Because out there”—she nodded at the boarded windows, beyond which the storm raged—“the roamers aren’t even the worst. There are the ferals, faster and stronger, half their flesh torn away but still moving like they’re driven by pure rage. There’s no real name for the ones even deadlier than that, the ones with… special mutations. Some folks call them abominations. Others call them nightmares.”

  The mention of these other creatures sent a prickling chill down my spine. I remembered her references to “levels” of infected, and how a “level five feral” was rumored to have been killed only by the so-called Emperor.

  Anna seemed to register my discomfort. She gave a wry twitch of her lips. “If a roamer makes you scream your lungs out, you won’t last two seconds against the advanced forms. And the rest of the survivors? Not much friendlier than the monsters. They’ll shoot you in the back for a scrap of bread.”

  I grimaced, looking at the trembling lantern flame. “So it’s a free-for-all. Everyone out for themselves.”

  “Pretty much.” She shifted position, casting a glance over her shoulder at the corners of the room as if expecting something to emerge from the shadows. “That’s why the factions formed in the first place. People are easier to control when they’ve got nowhere else to go. No resources, no future, just desperation and fear. The Emperor, the biker gangs, the assassins—they feed on that desperation. They promise a little security in exchange for loyalty. Or, in some cases, obedience at gunpoint.”

  In the flickering light, I caught a hint of something in her eyes—anger, maybe, or regret. The lines around her mouth tightened, reminding me how young she was to have learned so many brutal lessons.

  “I guess you don’t trust any of them,” I ventured, my voice quieter now.

  “Trust?” She spat the word like a foul taste. “I trust that the Empire wants to expand its territory and take everything they can. I trust that the Vagabonds like to stab their leaders in the back when they’re hungry for power. I trust that the Anarchists would burn the world down again if they could. And the Scavengers… well, we just want to be left alone to survive how we can. Doesn’t leave room for a lot of trust.”

  A clap of thunder shook the house, and somewhere water dripped through the rafters with a soft, persistent tap, tap, tap, echoing in a maddeningly rhythmic cadence. My stomach felt like a hollow pit, the acidic gnaw of hunger making my limbs shaky.

  “If this is the only life you’ve known,” I asked, “why keep going? When it’s this bleak?”

  She stared at the lantern. “Why keep going?” she repeated softly, but didn’t answer right away. Finally, she shrugged, the motion stiff with tension. “Because there’s no alternative. Lay down and die or fight. You asked me to tell you about survival? That’s it. Survival is the only option if you refuse to let this world devour you.”

  I considered her words, the knot in my chest tightening. Every vile sight, every reeking corpse, every shriveled skeleton in the streets—it all hammered home the same message: this wasn’t a place for mercy or weakness.

  Lightning flashed, illuminating our surroundings in a bright, sickly glow for a heartbeat. In that brief glare, I saw streaks of dark stains spattering the walls—old blood, sprayed in patterns that told of violent ends. It made my skin crawl. Another thunderclap followed, a low rumble that vibrated the very floor beneath us.

  “Jesus,” I muttered, voice trembling despite myself. “It’s like… living in the guts of a dying beast.”

  She tilted her head, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Well, you’re not far off.”

  I shifted again, pressing a hand to my stomach as it churned. The memory of earlier—cutting that pearl free from the roamer’s neck, the wet, squelching give of decomposed flesh under my knife—threatened to bring the bile back up. My heart kicked against my ribs, adrenaline spiking in a useless surge.

  Anna’s gaze flicked to me, sharper now. “You wanted to talk about survival. Let me lay it out for you. You have to get used to the smell of rotting meat, the taste of dusty air clinging to your throat, and the constant threat of something clawing at your back. Because that’s every second of every day in this world. There’s no high ground, no retreat. And if you can’t face that, if you can’t choke down the vomit and do what you need to do, you’ll end up as a gnawed skeleton on the street.”

  I nodded slowly, forcing my breath to steady. She was right—I’d known it all along, even if I’d been denying it. This place demanded everything from you. Any hesitation, any flinch of weakness, was an invitation to the grave. Or worse, to exist as one of those mindless horrors.

  We lapsed into silence, broken only by the steady drum of rain and the sporadic, explosive cracks of thunder overhead. My thoughts churned with visions of mutated creatures, men turned feral by desperation, and a city lost to plague and ruin. Meanwhile, the flicker of the lantern carved shifting shapes in the shadows, each flicker conjuring an impression of some ghastly figure looming, waiting.

  “How many have you lost?” I asked softly at last. “People you’ve known… friends…?”

  Anna’s expression turned stony, her jaw clenching. “Everyone,” she said simply, her tone final. “Don’t ask me that again.”

  I took the hint, swallowing thickly, guilt twisting in my gut. In my world—my timeline—I’d lost a father I barely knew. That seemed trivial compared to the universal collapse Anna had faced, the endless cycle of destruction she’d grown up within.

  Outside, the storm shifted up another gear, the wind screaming around the house like a furious banshee. Water hammered the boarded windows in heavy sheets, and droplets seeped through cracks in the boards, trickling down the walls. Anna quietly piled up some debris against the door—a makeshift barricade for the night.

  “Try and sleep,” she muttered, glancing at me briefly. “Tomorrow morning, we figure out our next move. If you’re serious about toughening up, that means we go out hunting roamers… or find a faction to trade with. Both sound like shit plans, but that’s what we have.”

  She turned away, sinking to the floor, leaning her back against the wobbly remains of a shelf. From the hunch in her shoulders, I could tell she was exhausted—maybe as terrified as me, but more skilled at hiding it.

  I found a spot along the opposite wall, lowering myself until the floor pressed against my shoulders. The texture was rough with splinters, layers of grime, and a dampness that spoke of years of disuse. The smell of old rot and mildew was suffocating; the storm outside only served to swirl the foul air in chaotic gusts.

  But as my eyes fluttered shut, the thunder raged on, hurling flashes of lightning through every crack in the boards. My mind refused to quiet, replaying scenes of horrific violence and grotesque living corpses. Anna’s words circled endlessly in my thoughts: “Either you learn to fight, or you die.”

  Somewhere outside in the battered streets, a distant moan reverberated, echoing eerily through the pounding of the storm. It was impossible to tell how close it might be, or if it was even real, but it reminded me that the nightmares didn’t pause just because we’d found temporary shelter.

  The air felt alive with tension, with the tang of a world in perpetual decay. Every breath, every shift of my aching limbs, was a reminder of how close this place hovered to oblivion. The storm had settled into a steady, relentless assault against the old building, its fury only matched by the creeping dread sinking deeper into my bones. Anna had settled against the shelf, her knees drawn close to her chest, eyes focused on something far beyond the confines of our makeshift shelter. Shadows danced around us, distorted by the flickering lantern, clawing at the walls like living nightmares.

  She exhaled slowly, breaking the oppressive silence that had stretched between us. “You asked about how things work around here. It’s not just the roamers or ferals you have to worry about. There’s the politics, too—the power struggles between groups desperate for control over scraps of territory.”

  I shifted uneasily, the wood creaking beneath me. “You mean the Empire, Vagabonds, and…?”

  “And the Anarchists,” she finished, voice tight with distaste. “Each of them wants total control, and they’ll do whatever it takes—no matter how horrific—to claim it.”

  She paused, staring into the flame with a grim intensity, the dim glow highlighting the deep lines of exhaustion and trauma etched into her youthful face.

  “The Empire controls what’s left of Manhattan,” she began, her voice quiet but filled with bitterness. “The Emperor claims he restored order after the outbreak. His people fortified their territory, building barricades from the wreckage, using the bones of the dead when they ran out of rubble.” She laughed bitterly, devoid of humor. “Their ‘peace’ is built on bones and blood. If you step into Empire territory without permission, they’ll capture you, skin you alive, and hang what’s left from the city walls as a warning to others.”

  My gut twisted at the image, bile rising sharply at the back of my throat. The world outside the boarded windows felt even more nightmarish now, hidden horrors lurking beyond every corner. I gritted my teeth, forcing the nausea down. “And the others?”

  She shifted position, wincing slightly as the floorboards creaked beneath her. “The Vagabonds hold Brooklyn, mostly. Their leader took power after assassinating the previous one—poisoned him slowly, let him rot from the inside out. She rules by fear, having spies everywhere. Anyone caught speaking against her vanishes overnight, only to turn up days later nailed to buildings, their tongues torn out, their eyes removed as punishment for seeing or speaking against her.”

  I swallowed thickly, my imagination filling in the gruesome details. The idea of being caught between these factions felt like being trapped between nightmares—no safe path, no relief, just endless brutality.

  “And the Anarchists,” she continued, eyes narrowing with open disgust, “took over Queens and Long Island. They were bikers once—violent and reckless even before the world went to hell. Now they’re worse, savages obsessed with destruction. They raid into other territories, dragging survivors back to their camps for entertainment.” She paused, her expression darkening further. “Their games involve chains, hooks, and fire. They make prisoners fight each other for scraps of food—or worse, they feed captives to roamers while they watch, laughing and drinking, like it’s some twisted carnival.”

  The wind howled violently, rattling the boards over the windows as if the world itself was screaming its outrage at the horrors she described. My chest tightened painfully, a cold sweat breaking out along my spine. “Jesus… and you—your group?”

  Anna’s expression hardened, her eyes filled with defiance, pride, and a trace of sorrow. “We scavengers refuse to join their twisted games. We’re outsiders—nomads, solo hunters who won’t bow to any of these monsters. But because we won’t choose a side, we’re hunted by all of them. They call us pests, vermin to be eradicated.”

  She hesitated, her jaw tensing visibly. “They make sport of hunting us down. I’ve seen scavengers—friends—crucified in the streets, left to slowly die under the sun, their bodies torn apart by the birds before they’re even dead. I’ve found scavengers they skinned alive, left writhing, begging for mercy that never comes.”

  I stared at her in horror, my pulse racing wildly as images flooded my mind—streets lined with crucified corpses, skinless bodies moaning in agony, survivors forced into sadistic games for amusement. My stomach heaved violently, a sour taste flooding my mouth as I gagged quietly, desperately fighting not to vomit again.

  Anna turned her face away, eyes distant. “There’s nothing they won’t do to break us. The Vagabonds leave our mutilated bodies on the bridges as a message, eyes gouged out, mouths sewn shut. The Empire crucifies us along their walls as a warning, corpses left to rot until they’re nothing but bones. The Anarchists…” She shuddered visibly, voice dropping to a barely audible whisper. “They do worse.”

  “Why?” My voice cracked, fear bleeding into desperation. “Why would they—why go this far?”

  She glanced sharply at me, a bitter smile twisting her lips. “Power. Fear. Because cruelty is the only language they speak anymore. In this world, the dead aren’t the only monsters. People will do things you can’t even imagine when survival means inflicting enough pain that no one dares fight back.”

  The shadows around us seemed to deepen, twisting into grotesque shapes. The wind moaned mournfully through gaps in the barricades, and for a moment, it sounded like distant screams echoing through the night.

  I hugged my knees closer, my entire body trembling uncontrollably. The reality she’d described felt utterly impossible, yet here I was, trapped in the midst of it.

  Anna sighed softly, exhaustion creeping into her voice. “I’ve lost too many people to their barbarism. Too many friends who trusted the wrong person or chose the wrong street. Scavengers survive by never trusting, by never staying in one place long enough to become predictable. And even then, sometimes, it’s not enough.”

  My head spun, the horror of her world overwhelming. I’d thought the roamers were the greatest threat—mindless, savage monsters—but I’d been wrong. The true horrors were human beings stripped of humanity, reduced to cruel beasts by desperation and fear.

  A sudden, vivid thought struck me with chilling clarity: if I couldn’t toughen up, if I couldn’t learn to survive, I wouldn’t just fall victim to the infected—I’d become prey to people whose cruelty knew no bounds.

  Anna noticed my silent despair. “You wanted honesty. There it is. In this world, survival is bloody, brutal, and unforgiving. You either grow stronger or become one of their victims.”

  My voice came out weak, almost pleading. “And you—why risk helping someone like me?”

  She shrugged stiffly, eyes avoiding mine. “Maybe I’m tired of burying people. Maybe I just hoped, for once, someone might be worth saving.”

  Her answer left me speechless, a fragile, tentative bond formed through shared horrors. Outside, lightning flashed, briefly illuminating the house’s decayed interior. For one instant, every dark corner was laid bare, and the stained walls, bloodied floorboards, and rotting corpses seemed closer, more vivid than ever before.

  Then the darkness returned, thicker and more oppressive, leaving us trapped once more in a small circle of trembling light.