The complex was concealed behind steel and concrete, somewhere beneath the quarantined section of the city. Edward didn't ask where. It felt clandestine. It felt like something that existed before this crisis even started.
The air inside smelled of bleach and fear.
He was met by Kyle, who looked more skeletal than before. His sleeves were rolled up, his mask low on his chin. He did not extend a hand. He merely nodded, his eyes combing Edward's face for something unspoken.
"This way," Kyle said. "Speak softly after the second hall. They do not all sleep at the same time."
He did not say who they were.
The corridors were quiet, but not still. He glimpsed movement through frosted glass — stooped figures, limbs cabled with wires, some pacing like animals, others still as department store mannequins. One stared at the ceiling. Another lightly tapped its head against a rubber-padded corner.
Kyle took him to an observation area separated by reinforced glass. Two holding cells were inside — one was vacant. The other held a woman.
She sat still, legs folded beneath her, back as straight as a rod.
Mid-thirties. Black hair pulled into a low, loose bun. Thin arms, but not weak — muscles knotted along her shoulders in strange ways. Her skin was pale, but unmarked. No foam, no lesions. No mad glare.
"Sam," Kyle said. "She's. different."
Edward stepped closer to the glass.
As he did — she turned her head.
Not towards Kyle. Not towards the sound.
But directly to Edward.
Her eyes locked onto his like she'd been staring at the wall until he filled the room.
A sharp breath found its way out of her lungs, audible through the room's intercom.
She stood up slowly.
Then, quietly: "Edward."
Kyle blinked. "She… can't see through the glass. We don't tell them names. How the hell—"
Edward didn't answer. He couldn't. His mouth had dried.
Sam approached the glass without hostility. Without confusion.
Nothing but a burning awareness.
"I knew you were coming," she whispered, her voice low and dry but unbroken. "He told me."
Edward stepped closer. "Who told you?"
Her eyes flicked.
"The one in the back of your voice. The one stitched into you."
Edward's face turned white.
Kyle looked between them. "Edward, what the hell is she talking about?"
Yet Sam went on, voice rising not in volume, but in clarity. "You burned. I felt it. The first time you shifted. The moment you changed. The air changed with you. We sense the difference in you."
Edward opened his mouth, but Sam placed her hand on the glass. Not a slam. A touch.
"You smell like him now," she whispered. "But your body is still yours. For now."
Kyle tried to speak again — some procedural response, some denial — but Edward didn't hear him.
Because behind Sam, in a far cell, another infected began to snarl. An uncoiled sound, something burning in the throat.
And another — pacing, dragging fingers on the reinforced floor.
Edward didn't look back. But he could sense it.
They didn't all know him.
But they smelled him.
And the ones that could not speak…
…wanted to tear.
"I don't understand what's happening to me," Edward said, voice low. "But I'm not like you. Not yet."
Sam tilted her head, lips forming something between sympathy and amusement.
"You will be," she said gently.
Then she turned, walked calmly back to the center of the room, and sat again — cross-legged. Composed.
Kyle looked stunned. "No one talks like that. Not any of them. And she said your name."
Edward didn't respond.
The Shadow Man moved behind his chest.
"That one listens. Her connection is open. She heard us before your bones remembered my shape."
Why her?
"Some minds don't close all the way when they break."
Kyle finally got his voice back. "Edward, we need to do scans. We need to know what you are. Because whatever this pathogen is… it no longer sees you as human."
Edward didn't flinch.
"I know."
He turned to leave. Sam's voice drifted after him.
"When it starts again, you'll hear us. All of us. Like wires under the ground."
He didn't turn back.
He couldn't.
Not yet.