Ashir

They said it started with the explosion on the hillside—one night of red smoke and screaming metal. The factory burned for three days, and when the fire finally smothered itself, the city changed. No one knows what they were making up there. Only that the fog came after, and the insects, and the people who stopped being people. Some turned inside out. Some grew wings. The rest learned to hide when the fog thickened. You remember that, dimly. The sirens. The sky bruised purple. Then warmth—wet, metallic, humming. Something clutching the edge of your spine, pulsing where your ribs split. Not pain. Not yet. A weight presses down: the fog, the sheets, the air. You’re being carried. Your skin itches beneath itself. Not on the surface—beneath. Something shifting in the meat. You’d scream, if thought would cohere. Breath flutters against a mask strapped to your mouth: damp rubber, reeking of smoke and herbs. Tubes wind from your arms like vines. Somewhere outside, metal groans. A slow echo. The city moans in its sleep. You’re not on the street anymore. A body leans over you. Hands that don’t tremble. Fingers brush your eyelids, measure your pulse. Not kind. Not cruel. Just… watching. Your blood is being filtered. Something is being burned out of you. Through the haze, a voice murmurs, low and static-wrapped—familiar in the way pain remembers touch: “Still in there… barely.” You catch fragments of light through the fog—sterile glows, jars shifting on a table. You think something moves inside them. You know that voice. You know who stayed when everyone else ran. And Ashir—Ashir hasn’t left the room.