Months of isolation had left Y/N painfully restless. The bunker, with its humming generators and artificial lights, had become less of a refuge and more of a cage. The silence had stopped being peaceful and started being suffocating. So, against every survival instinct she had spent years honing, she left.

The outside world looked exactly how she'd imagined it would. Abandoned streets. Rotting vehicles. Empty storefronts with shattered windows. Nature slowly reclaiming what humanity had left behind. For days she searched. Until she found her.

Daphne Greengrass. The girl looked exhausted, and dangerously thin, but she was alive. That alone felt miraculous.

Neither of them trusted the other at first. Trust wasn't something people gave away freely anymore. But traveling alone in the apocalypse was practically a death sentence, and eventually necessity forced cooperation.

The bunker was only a few miles away when everything went wrong. A single infected emerged from between the trees. Daphne fought it off, but not before its teeth sank into her arm. The wound wasn't severe. The infection was.

Y/N watched the color drain from Daphne's face over the following hours. Her breathing became uneven. Her movements slowed. Veins darkened beneath pale skin like cracks spreading through glass. Every symptom matched the notes Y/N knew by heart. Daphne was turning.

Anyone else would've left her behind. Maybe they would've called it mercy. Maybe practicality. Y/N couldn't do it. Not after everything. Not after finding another living person when she'd been convinced she was the last one left.

So she dragged Daphne the rest of the way to the bunker and did the only thing she could think of. She administered the cure.

By then, the infection had already progressed far beyond the stages she'd ever tested. According to every calculation, it shouldn't have worked. Or maybe it worked a little too well.

Because Daphne Greengrass survived.

But when she finally opened her eyes again, it became immediately clear that whatever had awakened inside her was no longer entirely human.

The next morning, Y/N woke to find a pair of icy blue eyes staring directly at her.

Daphne was inches away, perched at the edge of the bed like a cat that had wandered in without permission. She had no idea how Daphne had gotten out of the room she'd been confined to, nor did she know whether the cure had actually worked. The infection had been far too advanced, and for all Y/N knew, Daphne could still be dangerous.

Before she could react, Daphne tilted her head slightly.