The ruined highway cut through the dead land like a long gray scar.

  Rust had been walking for hours. Boots crushing white dust and broken glass. Hundreds of abandoned vehicles lined both sides—sedans, buses, armored transports—all frozen mid-escape. Some crashed, some simply left with doors wide open, as if their owners had vanished into thin air.

  What bothered him wasn’t the wreckage.

  It was the silence.

  A heavy, suffocating silence. The kind that falls right before something hungry opens its eyes.

  Rust wasn’t afraid. His pulse stayed calm, steady. He knew this silence. Somewhere in his shattered memory, he had lived inside it.

  His eyes scanned automatically. Hands moved on instinct, checking glove compartments, trunks, seats. He found a half-empty bottle of stale water and shoved it into his pack. While searching a ruined SUV, he paused.

  Why the hell am I dressed like this?

  He looked down at the tactical gear, the combat knife strapped to his thigh, the handgun at his hip.

  Was I in the middle of a war when everything went to shit?

  He slammed the door shut.

  Then he noticed it.

  Wiping thick white dust off the front grille revealed a faint corporate logo etched into the metal. He moved to the next car. Same logo. A truck. A sports car. A destroyed ambulance. Every single vehicle—regardless of make or model—carried the exact same insignia.

  A chill crawled down his spine.

  One company… owned everything?

  An hour later, the highway widened into a massive quarantine checkpoint.

  Concrete walls rose six meters high, crowned with rusted barbed wire. Empty watchtowers stared down like blind eyes. In the center, huge faded black letters stretched across a concrete arch:

  P.A.R.A.D.O.K.S

  EPIDEMIC CONTROL POINT — INFECTION SCREENING REQUIRED

  Rust stopped.

  Epidemic?

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Is that what killed this world?

  He didn’t bother with the line. One light jump and he cleared the entire steel barrier in a single bound. He landed silently on the other side, staggering only slightly.

  Too light. Too strong.

  Before he could question it, a sound reached him.

  A soft, broken sob.

  It came from the row of isolation cabins behind the booths. Rust’s hand dropped to his knife. He moved like a shadow, boots making no sound.

  The crying grew louder. More distorted.

  It was coming from the last cabin.

  The steel door was locked from the outside. Rust grabbed the handle and pushed. He didn’t mean to use full strength—but the lock exploded with a sharp CRACK. The door flew open, slamming against the wall.

  The crying stopped.

  The stench hit him like a hammer. Old blood. Rotting meat. Decay.

  Inside was a slaughterhouse.

  Blood painted every surface. In the center, crouched over a pile of mangled organs and a tiny severed child’s head… was the thing.

  It slowly turned.

  Milky white, empty eyes. A jagged tear of a mouth filled with interlocking razor teeth. Skin completely gone, replaced by pulsing red muscle and strange black fibrous tissue that looked like twisted bark. Oversized hands ended in cruel claws.

  Thick black drool slid from its jaws.

  Then its throat shifted with a wet, glitching sound… and it spoke in the perfect, terrified voice of a small child:

  “M-m… mom…?”

  Rust’s blood turned to ice.

  The Mimic’s muscles coiled like springs.

  It launched.

  Rust’s mind went blank.

  But his body didn’t.

  Muscle memory took over. Thousands of hours of killing flooded his nerves. In one fluid motion he drew the knife in reverse grip, stepped forward, and met the creature mid-air.

  SHLUCK.

  The heavy blade carved upward, splitting the Mimic’s skull from nose to crown in a single brutal stroke. Bone, brain, and black tissue parted like wet paper.

  The ruined body flew past him and crashed into the metal wall, twitching once before going still.

  Rust stood frozen, knife dripping black blood.

  He blinked.

  “What… the fuck?”

  He looked at his own hand, then at the bisected corpse. His chest rose and fell, but not from fear—from raw confusion.

  The Mimic’s body began to dry out instantly. Flesh crumbled at the edges, turning into fine white dust within seconds. A breeze from the open door swept through and scattered the ash across the floor.

  Only the stench and bloodstains remained.

  Rust stepped outside, heart hammering. He remembered waking up covered in that same dust.

  If these things turn into dust when they die…

  …was I covered in dead monsters?

  He found a cracked side mirror on a military jeep and wiped it clean.

  Messy black hair. Pale skin. Tired eyes that were definitely human.

  He exhaled shakily, forehead against the cold metal.

  But the relief only lasted a second.

  “If I’m not one of them,” he whispered into the dead silence, “then why the hell am I this strong? Why did my body move like a machine built for slaughter?”

  He sheathed the knife, wiped the black blood on his pants, and looked toward the hazy, ruined city skyline beyond the checkpoint.

  Questions wouldn’t bring his memories back.

  Only the road north would.

  Rust stepped past the P.A.R.A.D.O.K.S barricades and kept walking.

  The long gray scar of the highway waited.