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  Even just the concept of hours seemed alien to her now. It was sun in the sky or it was dark – that was time to her. And this was brutal – feeding chemicals into its body hurt too much for it to move.

  Yes, this thing would kill her in an instant – but this was wrong.

  This thing had earnt its place on earth. Humans had lost their right.

  Silently to herself, she made the decision – she’d start with the Lisker.

  “Doctor Rose,” someone said, walking up to him, showing him a clipboard. “Can I get your thoughts on something?”

  “One minute, Cia,” he said, moving to the person at his side.

  She watched him, checking that he was completely distracted. She edged forward, closer to the Lisker.

  She took the knife from the back of her trousers.

  She edged closer still.

  She reached her free hand out and touched the side of the Lisker. Its skin was rough, sharp. Coarse and bumpy. It pricked her finger, and she understood just how devastating this creature would be to have to fight.

  She reached the knife into the air.

  “What’s she doing?” someone shouted.

  Her dad quickly looked over at her.

  “Cia!” he shouted.

  It was too late.

  She shoved the knife into the nearest tube of chemicals, emptying the tube of its drug, then did the same with a few more.

  “Cia!” he screamed out.

  Cia finally dropped the façade and allowed her expression to change from doting, wounded daughter to the warrior she truly was.

  “Cia?” he asked.

  He’d never seen this look on her face.

  Then again, this world changes you.

  “Cia, what the hell are you doing?” he demanded, somewhere between betrayal and fright.

  She turned to him and ensured that his eyes met hers.

  “Giving you all what you deserve.”

  THEN

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Once she’d finally found her way back, Cia sat and stared at the man in front of the dome, or the bunker, or whatever the hell it was. She stared at him and waited. Waited for Dad to re-emerge, for him to walk out and put his arms around her.

  Or maybe he’d pass a message on, someone would go whisper in the man’s ear, then he’d happily wave her over, explain it was all a big mistake, a big misunderstanding.

  She waited. And she waited some more.

  The whole time, just wondering how long he was taking.

  He said he was coming back for her. He said to just wait, didn’t he? That’s what he said. He said to wait, and he’d be back.

  So she’d wait.

  She didn’t want him to miss her when he returned.

  She looked around herself. The trees were towering over her, their branches forming menacing claws, twisting into a monster from her nightmares. An eerie brush of wind caressed her leg like fur, but when she looked down, all she saw was her exposed calf.

  Screeches and growls sounded far away, yet so near. She had no idea what those screeches and growls were from. What they wanted.

  Were they coming for her?

  She realised that this was the longest she’d ever been left unsupervised. That normally a teacher or her dad or the child minder she used to have when she was really little would be there, would come back, make sure she was okay.

  But no one was making sure she was okay.

  The queue for the bunker diminished. The man looked up at the sky, noticing the strokes of darkness. There was a chill in the air that spoke of night, and he turned to re-enter his home.

  “Wait!” Cia cried out.

  The man looked back, confused, then spotted her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Has my dad come for me yet?”

  A grin grew between his cheeks that she didn’t like.

  “Your dad ain’t coming for you,” he stated.

  “He is. He promised. Can you ask him? His name is Daniel Rose – Doctor Daniel Rose. If you could just–”

  “Sod off, would you! Look at you. You ain’t getting in here.”

  He shut the door behind himself.

  Look at you.

  She looked down at herself. She didn’t understand what was wrong with her.

  Where was Dad?

  Why hadn’t he come back for her like he said?

  Another cold wind encapsulated her and she grew goosepimples. She rubbed her arms in an attempt to warm herself up.

  A bird call sounded, but she couldn’t find the bird. Even the singing of birds was sinister.

  But she knew there were far more sinister creatures. She’d seen them on the news.

  She looked back at the door. It was shut.

  She ran up to it and pulled on it, pulled, did all she could to rip it back off, to open it.

  But it wouldn’t open.

  She looked around herself once more. At the twisting trees forming treacherous shadows over her.

  Dad wasn’t coming back.

  And now she was all alone.

  NOW

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Alarms quickly became deafening, accompanied by a woman’s urgent monotone voice:

  “Creature escape, evacuate. Creature escape, evacuate.”

  Cia looked back at her dad. Saw the look on his face, the look of devastation, of years of work trickling through his fingers like sands of time, losing everything in a moment.

  “Cia, what have you done?”

  Everyone ran for the exit, desperate to save themselves, escaping the room of monsters.

  “Room shutting down in sixty seconds. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight…”

  He’d said it would take less than minutes for the Lisker to come around and free itself from its bondage. Now she just had to wait.

  “Cia, how could you–”

  “How could I?” she shouted. “How could you!”

  “How could I what?”

  “You abandoned me! You left me to fight for myself! You act like you’re pleased to see me, but I could have been dead – I was out there, and I could have been dead, and you’d moved on with your life and gone about your work like it didn’t even matter!”

  “Cia, it did matter, I–”

  “Don’t lie to me, Dad!” She was screaming now.

  “This was safety for me. Out there it would be death for both of us, it didn’t make sense for–”

  “Didn’t make sense? You were my dad! I would have followed you wherever you went!”

  “Fifty-two. Fifty-one. Fifty…”

  The Lisker’s hiss boomed. Its body twitched.

  “Why don’t you leave?” she asked. “It’s what you do, isn’t it?”

  “Cia, I was glad you survived, I was hoping–”

  “What? That we could join hands and be just like we used to be?”

  “No, I–”

  “I have someone to care for, and I would never leave him. Never! If someone offered me safety without him, I would face the outside.”

  “Cia, you have no idea–”

  “No, you have no idea! You do not know what I had to do to survive! You have no idea!”

  “Forty-five. Forty-four. Forty-three...”

  The Lisker’s tail flicked, freeing itself, and destroying a nearby room of equipment as it did. Beakers and chairs and glasses and tables smashed with no effort.

  “Do you know what it’s like to have to fuck someone so they don’t kill me? So I have a chance to survive?”

  “Oh, Cia, I–”

  “Stop saying me name! My mum gave me that name – my dad is dead. Dead!”

  He shook his head.

  “Why don’t you just leave, Dad? Why don’t you just leave?”

  He looked over his shoulder. The metal shutters were beginning to descend over the exits.

  “Thirty-seven. Thirty-six. Thirty-five…”

  “Cia, all I ever wanted was for you to be here. Just us two again. Against the world.”
/>   She shook her head.

  “The only person against me is you.”

  The Lisker thrashed its tail once more, beating a wall above a Thoral, shattering the slate and freeing its restraints.

  It was time to leave. Cia turned and ran, as fast as she could, aiming for the exit.

  Her dad followed.

  He looked over his shoulder, watching as the Thoral pounded the wall, freeing more of its kind. The Lisker’s body became freer, looser, its head lifting, headbutting the wall.

  A Maskete freed itself of its chain and flew about the room.

  “Twenty-five. Twenty-four. Twenty-three…”

  The shutters were halfway down. She was halfway toward them.

  The monsters hissed and growled and screeched. The Wasters cried their war cry.

  She could see her father shaking. See him sweating. See the desperate fear over his face.

  She pitied him.

  In that moment, she saw him for what he was.

  A coward.

  “Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen...”

  She reached the exit before he did. She stopped and turned, looking back at him.

  He reached out for her.

  A Thoral dove at him, thudding the floor beneath him and sending him to his feet.

  “Nine. Eight. Seven...”

  “Cia, please…”

  From his place on the ground he reached out for her. Tears decorated his cheeks. Terror partied over his face. The invitation to his death had been delivered and he’d checked the box attending.

  “Cia, I’m sorry…”

  A Maskete landed atop him and took him in its claws. Its friends descended on his body, beating at him with their mouths.

  “Five. Four. Three...”

  At the far side of the room, she saw the Lisker free itself and batter through the shutters, destroying the only means of containment. Dozens more of the creatures left through the gap, fleeing into the rest of the underground bunker.

  “Two. One.”

  In fact, the only side of the shutters that was able to shut was the side Cia had left through. And the last sight she saw before the shutters came down was that of her dad, pleading for his life as he was torn apart.

  She removed her friendship bracelet, placed it on the floor, and said her goodbyes.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  “Please evacuate to the first floor. Please evacuate to the first floor.”

  Dalton knew the process for evacuation. It was one of the first things they were trained on: Get to the top floor, then wait in line to be let out. It wasn’t first-come, first-served – there were different lines in order of importance. Higher government officials took priority over the next, and higher-ranking officers took priority, etcetera, etcetera – Dalton could guess which line he’d be in, and he didn’t imagine it was very high. Which meant, to stand a chance of escaping or survival, he’d need to be at the front of that queue.

  He also knew the only way that this alert would be sent out would be if a creature, or set of creatures, were loose.

  This meant monsters were running about somewhere in the eighty-six floors of the building.

  This meant Cia was trapped in there too.

  And he didn’t know why, but that was stopping him from joining his low-level queue.

  Who else would he take with him? His family? His friends? Hell, Joe could save himself. And his family – they were gone years ago.

  It seemed, as little contact as he’d had, that Cia was his only friend.

  So he stood, in the middle of the floor, watching people run past him in streams of chaos, listening to the loud woman’s voice that didn’t shut up and just clogged his thoughts.

  “Evacuation, get to first floor. Evacuation, get to first floor.”

  Why bother rescuing Cia? Would she bother rescuing him?

  Or was this just because he had a crush on her?

  “Fuck it,” he muttered. He couldn’t go back for her. He needed to survive.

  But survive for what?

  He charged to the stairs, following the crowd. He couldn’t stay for her. He couldn’t. He couldn’t go back.

  Then he remembered where Cia had been going today.

  Her father is taking her to see them…

  That meant she was probably in the midst of it. If the creatures had been let loose, then she would be one of the first in their path.

  He stopped running.

  Dammit.

  Why was this such a difficult decision?

  He compromised with himself – he’d find out where she was, and if she was alive. Then he’d make his decision. One of the CCTV rooms was only a few doors down, it would be easy enough to find out.

  He arrived at the door and went to knock – then wondered why he was knocking. He kicked the door open and, sure enough, it had been abandoned.

  Upon the television screens dotted around the room were images of people running.

  Then he saw them – the creatures. They were already on the sixtieth floor. He watched as a group of Thorals devoured a fleeing family. He shook his head at the sight of their suitcases. They packed a suitcase to leave in an emergency? Clueless.

  Their blood splattered the screen and he flinched away.

  He searched for the screens that displayed the facility on the eighty-sixth floor.

  There she was. Sprinting through the corridor, away from the chaos, toward the stairs. He saw the corridors adjacent to hers, saw how full of predators they were, and worried that she wouldn’t make it very far.

  She left the screen, into the stairs.

  Where could she be heading?

  Then he remembered.

  The boy. Room 346.

  He reloaded his ammunition and left for the third floor.

  Chapter Fifty

  A brief few days of sleep and a day of respite had served Cia well. Not that she wasn’t tired, she was exhausted – but she had reinvigorated her determination to fight through it.

  So she ran, toward the stairs. She saw people jamming themselves into the lift and it didn’t appeal to her. It wasn’t just the claustrophobia, it was the notion that she wasn’t in control of her movement. The stairs would be more exposed, but it would be up to her where she was.

  She’d fought these creatures long enough now that she knew them, and that gave her the advantage. As far as she was concerned, the shelter everyone in here had been granted for the last number of years had left them inept at dealing with this situation, and she predicted that the survival rate would be low.

  Behind her, the chaotic clatters of destruction created a symphony of suffering. There was no looking back, it wasn’t needed, it was obvious what was happening; the sound of walls collapsing, people screaming, screeches of Masketes, growls of Thorals, hisses of Liskers, war cries of Wasters – it was all combining to a stunning crescendo, and glancing back at its climax of noise would do her no good.

  She barged through the doors and peered up at the stairs, crisscrossing upwards as far as she could see. There were eighty-three floors between her and Boy, and the lift didn’t seem like such a bad idea anymore.

  The screams grew closer through the corridor behind her.

  She couldn’t stand there and think about the exhausting ascension she was facing – she just had to do it. Had to get up those steps as quick as she could.

  And there was only one way she could logically do it.

  A step at a time.

  So she began, running upwards, then turning and going onto the next set, onto the next set.

  At least there weren’t many steps between each floor.

  Each set of doors she passed had a narrow pane of glass displaying further suffering in fleeting images. She didn’t have time to stop, but morbid curiosity couldn’t help but make her glance.

  Then again, the suffering, of course, was only for the humans. The creatures were having a great time. It was like an all-you-can-eat buffet, and they were piling up their plates and going for seconds.


  She wiped a line of perspiration from her forehead. Ignored her panting. Persisted upwards.

  She reached another floor and the doors smashed open, taken off their hinges by a flying body, inside out, narrow tubing flailing from its belly and weak tissue holding onto the remnants of a leg.

  She stumbled over the body and carried on.

  There was nothing she could do to save them now.

  There was nothing she could do to save anyone.

  She was so close. Boy was so close, she could almost see his face, his hands over his ears, his eyes closed, refusing to listen to the sounds, to the suffering, refusing to acknowledge what these people had done to him.

  A Lisker bite being contagious?

  If exposure to Lisker venom was harmful, then Cia and Boy would be dead already – what with the quantity of bones discarded by Liskers they’d walked past.

  Instead, they tied him up liked a museum exhibit. Prodded and poked him like an act in a freak show. Gave him nothing but observatory treatment.

  Boy would not have understood anything about what they were doing to him.

  And, with that thought, any remnants of remorse she still felt for her actions left.

  She didn’t want humans to die out – but she wanted those unworthy of the few places left on this Earth to feel her vengeance.

  The last few floors came, and the sounds became fainter.

  This was good. It meant the creatures hadn’t reached Boy’s floor yet.

  But it was just a matter of time.

  She reached the floor and kicked open the door.

  “Evacuate. Evacuate. Evacuate. Evacuate.”

  The woman’s voice wasn’t even directing them where to go anymore.

  Did this mean the top floor was full? That there was no way out for anyone?

  The way out could come later. Right now, Boy was the focus.

  She ran down the corridor, past fleeing scientists with their laboratory coats waving behind them.

  The man who showed her Boy the previous day ran past her. His face was flooded with tears, scarred with anguish. She felt a vague sense of triumph at his suffering, though it didn’t last long as she resumed her focus.