A silence settled—uneasy, humming with things unsaid. We didn’t move, barely dared to breathe. Somewhere beyond the fence line, something else crashed through the brush, too heavy, too purposeful to be wind. My mind spun with questions I couldn’t shape into words.

  Ethan wiped his eyes, voice shaking. “Is it… gone?”

  No one answered. Not really. Luis’s hand squeezed my shoulder before he stepped away, scanning the yard with that same animal alertness. Jamie tried to straighten, but a grimace twisted her mouth. Blood still seeped between her fingers—a slow, stubborn leak. The adrenaline was fading, and all the pain rushed in to take its place.

  Jamie winced as I pressed the cloth harder. Blood oozed warm and sticky through my fingers; she bit her lip, refusing to cry out. Luis’s hands moved with a kind of practiced calm, but I saw the tremor in his jaw.

  Jamie’s skin was clammy, her eyes glassy with pain. “Don’t freak out,” she whispered. “I’ll live. I just… need a sec.”

  Ethan’s voice was a whisper, ragged. “Why us?”

  Luis didn’t look at him. “Predators know when something’s wounded. And we’re bleeding hope.” His voice was low, edged with something bitter. “We need to move.”

  The system stayed silent—no guidance, no comfort. Just the distant crackle of static, like it was waiting for me to figure out the next step on my own.

  The playground faded behind us, the crunch of glass and weeds giving way to the hollow thump of our steps on the cracked walkway. The school loomed—windows dark, doors hanging like broken teeth.

  As we limped toward the shattered school doors, I glanced back once. The grass had closed again, hiding the snake’s passage, but the playground looked smaller now. Harsher. Like it belonged to something else.

  I swallowed hard, tasting smoke and fear and the sharp, stubborn promise that we’d keep going. Whatever waited ahead, we’d face it together—even if the world was hungry, and we were all that was left.

  Inside, the school smelled of mold and old paper, dust choking the sunlight that trickled through shattered windows. Lockers lined the halls—bent open, spilling out scraps of forgotten lives: a cracked photo frame, a mud-caked sneaker, a note scrawled in looping blue ink. Each step echoed, too loud, bouncing off walls scarred by years of neglect and something meaner.

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  We kept close. Luis prowled ahead, every muscle tight, his silhouette flickering in the broken light. Jamie leaned heavier on me with every step, jaw clenched, sweat beading at her hairline. Ethan’s eyes darted everywhere—ceiling tiles, corners, the dark gap beneath the trophy case—like there might be monsters in every shadow. Maybe there were.

  We passed a classroom door hanging off its hinges. Inside, desks were upturned, blackboards smeared with half-erased equations and desperate warnings. The air was thick with ghosts—memories of laughter and shouting, now smothered under layers of dust.

  Luis stopped at the intersection of two hallways, hand shooting up for silence. We froze. Somewhere deeper in the building, something scraped. Not animal, not wind—metal on tile, slow and deliberate. Jamie tensed, her fingers twitching with fading power.

  The system’s voice was gone, but its silence was a weight in my head—a countdown we couldn’t hear.

  For a heartbeat I almost reached for guidance, the way I always had. But there was nothing—no voice, no answer, just the hollow echo of my own thoughts. We were alone with it now.

  We pressed in tight—shoulders digging into metal, knees knocking. I could feel Jamie’s shuddering breaths beside me, Ethan’s trembling hand brushing mine in the dark. Survival was a huddle now, the warmth of bodies pressed close against the world outside.

  Luis gestured: this way. We slipped into a side corridor, hearts hammering. My mind kept replaying the snake’s eyes, its promise. Was it the only thing out there, or just the first?

  We found a supply closet—door jammed, but Ethan’s shaking hands managed the knob. Inside, it was cramped and black, but safer than the hallway. Luis wedged a chair under the handle. We listened, breaths shallow, as the scraping noise drifted closer, then faded, swallowed by the maze of halls.

  For the first time since the yard, we let ourselves sag against the walls. My limbs felt leaden, every muscle trembling with the crash of spent adrenaline. The closet was barely big enough for all of us, but right now, even the hard floor and chemical stink felt like a mercy. We could sit. We could breathe. For a minute, that was enough.

  Luis’s voice was barely a whisper in the dark. “We wait until it’s quiet. Then we move for the nurse’s office. There’ll be better supplies there—if we’re careful.”

  Jamie slumped to the floor, her wound still leaking. I knelt beside her, voice shaking. “We need to stop the bleeding.”

  Luis rummaged through ancient boxes, hands steady. “There’s a med kit,” he said, voice soft but urgent, “but it’s old. Might be all we’ve got.”

  The kit rattled open, half the gauze yellowed with age, the tape stiff. Relief and frustration tangled in my chest as we wrapped Jamie’s arm—enough to slow the bleeding, but not enough to feel safe.

  Ethan pressed his back to the wall, knees hugged to his chest. “What if it finds us?” he whispered. “What if there’s more?”

  I didn’t know what to say. The world outside that closet felt too big, too hungry. But in the dark, cramped together, we were still together. That had to mean something.

  Jamie forced a grin, teeth clenched against the pain. “We’ll make it,” she said, fierce and reckless. “We always do.”

  Somewhere in the walls, the static crackled again—a faint reminder that the world was listening, waiting for us to slip.