We moved through the garage like ghosts.

  I set a pace I knew Sarah could manage. It was a steady, rhythmic gait—fast enough to stay ahead of the drifting gas from the vents, slow enough that she wouldn't lose her breath and panic.

  "Stay three feet behind me," I whispered. "If I stop, you stop. If I drop, you climb on top of the nearest car. Do not stay on the ground."

  "Why the cars?" she breathed.

  "Strays," I said. The word felt heavy. "The things they become... they’re territorial. They hunt like pack animals, but their joints are stiff in the early stages. They don't like to climb. They like to corner."

  We reached the ramp leading to P4. I stopped at the edge, peering around the concrete lip.

  A sound drifted up from the darkness below. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch. It was the sound of bone on concrete.

  "Jax," a voice whispered from the shadows behind us.

  I spun, the crowbar raised.

  "Wait! Don't hit me! It's Miller!"

  Miller stumbled out from behind a row of parked cars. He looked like a wreck. His "World's Best Dad" mug was gone, replaced by a bleeding gash on his forehead where he’d clearly tripped in the dark. He was clutching a heavy stapler like it was a 9mm.

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  "I followed you," he wheezed, his eyes darting toward Sarah. "I saw the message on the door. Jax, man, thank God. We have to call 911. My phone isn't getting a signal—"

  "The phones are dead, Miller," I said, not lowering the bar. "The satellites are the first thing the System 'recycles' for scrap metal. If you want to live, you shut up and stay behind Sarah."

  Miller looked like he wanted to argue, but then he looked at me. Really looked at me. He saw the duct-taped arm, the iron bar, and the way I was standing—balanced, lethal, and entirely devoid of the "Jax from Marketing" he knew.

  "Okay," he whispered. "Okay."

  I turned back to the ramp. The scritch sound was getting closer.

  I knelt down, pulling Sarah and Miller into the shadow of a concrete pillar. "Listen to me. The System is live now. You should see a window in your peripheral vision. Don't try to read it all. Just look for 'Level' and 'Status'."

  "It says... 'Integration Grade: F'," Sarah whispered.

  "Mine says 'Potential Food'," Miller whimpered.

  "Ignore the flavor text," I said. "The System is a bully. It wants you to feel weak so you don't fight back. Right now, there’s a pack of Strays coming up that ramp. They’re not zombies. They’re hunters. They’ll try to circle us. They use the shadows because their eyes are sensitive to the new light."

  I reached into my bag and pulled out one of the water bottles. I didn't drink. I poured a small amount onto the concrete in front of us.

  "Watch the water," I said.

  A few seconds later, the water rippled.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  It wasn't a footstep. It was a heartbeat. The collective heartbeat of a pack moving in unison.

  "They’re here," I said.

  Down the ramp, three figures emerged from the violet gloom. They moved on all fours, their spines arched like frightened cats, their limbs elongated and pale. They didn't have hair anymore. Their skin was a translucent, leathery grey that looked like it had been stretched too tight over a frame of rusted iron.

  They weren't mindless. They stopped at the base of the ramp, sniffing the air. One of them—a female that might have been the receptionist from the lobby—tilted her head. Her jaw dropped open, revealing rows of needle-like bone teeth.

  She wasn't looking for food. She was looking at the territory.

  "They think this is their nest," I whispered to Sarah. "They think we're intruders."

  "Can we fight them?" Miller asked, his voice shaking.

  "No," I said, looking at the way they moved. They were Level 3. Coordination like that didn't happen in Level 1 unless the System was cheating. "Not all of us. You two need to get to the exit gate. It’s a manual override. You’ll have to crank it."

  "What about you?" Sarah asked, grabbing my sleeve.

  I looked at her. I allowed myself one second of being the man who loved her. "I’m the distraction. Go. Now!"