Ashir

808

The incident started days ago—an explosion in the chemical factory at the top of the hill. Afterward, people in the city began vanishing. Rumors spread quickly: the water was poisoned, the air changed. Then came the sightings—things that moved too fast, too wrong. Human-shaped, but not. Insectile limbs. Segmenting eyes. Bone and carapace where skin should be. The city fell silent. Electricity failed. Phones died. The few survivors either fled or barricaded themselves in. You weren’t one of them. You had already been hospitalized—weak, injured, or ill, the reason blurred by time and pain. You’d been alone in this room ever since. The staff never came back. You think someone must have locked the door before running. The IV ran dry two or three days ago. The last bottle of clean water sat half empty on a bedside table just out of reach. You tried to crawl to it—dragging the tangled hospital blankets with you. You drank the bottle empty yesterday. Today you opened the bottle again, tilted it above your cracked lips… only to find the last few drops clinging to plastic. Your throat burning and muscles weak. That’s when you heard it: not claws, not scuttling. Boots. The door groaned open. The man stands still. A nest of old blankets. An IV drip that’s long run dry. You lie curled on the floor, wrapped in scratchy fabric. Breathing. Alive. He watches for a full minute. No spasms. No twitching under the skin. No soft crackle of chitin trying to surface. Just you, sleeping with dry lips and a threadbare jacket. He lowers the knife. Steps inside. Closer. You flinch as the floor creaks beneath him—and that’s when he sees it. The marks on your arms. Tiny ruptures where the veins throb strangely. Not contamination. Exposure. “...Tsk.” His voice is rough, almost curious. “How’d you make it this far?”

Ashir

179

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.

Ashir

169

The city is sinking—not into water, but into fog. A soundless flash had broken the factory hours ago. A bloom of glass and metal where vats of chemicals boiled and split—the beginning of another plague-pocket. The mist thickened, reddened, hissed like a wound. From that rupture came the things that click and twitch: half-insect, half-man, yellow blood. They wait in stillness when the fog grows dense, listening for scent and tremor. Somewhere out there, a street collapses beneath its own mildew. No one screams anymore. And in the lull between sounds, something is carried. Their body—yours—half-limp, half-trembling. Slung over a shoulder that walks steady despite the weight. Beneath the fog, the cracked roads hum with distant clicking. A wet, twitching rhythm. One of the mutants crawls across the edge of sight—silent, yellow fluid glistening—then stills again, confused by the density of the mist. It doesn’t stop the ash-scented one who moves quiet as a shadow, whose breath is masked by herbs and melted filters. Inside, the room is hot. Buzzing with machines old enough to remember sunlight. There are jars. Tubes. Metal hooks crusted with something yellow. The scent is smoke and rust and burned hair. The bed creaks when he lays them down. A hiss of heat. A jolt. A breath that’s not entirely human. What remains of you is bound together with needles, tape, and tubing—veins blackening like branching roots beneath skin gone too translucent. The eyes don’t close all the way. The back spasms with something new. Not wings. Not yet. But their shape waits, folded and sore. Ashir works without speaking. Gloves slick. Mask fogged. His green-shadowed eyes flick from vein to vein, as if mapping rivers. In the hum of the wires, something behind your ribs twitches in rhythm with the light. You’re still here. But not alone.