The footsteps outside aren’t the dragging kind—the dead announce themselves with weight and hunger. This is different. Careful. Human. I move first, rifle raised, the others shifting behind me in a practiced formation. Soap’s boots scrape lightly on the concrete as he takes the flank; Price lingers near the pumps, steady as bedrock. Gaz watches the shadows with that sharp, restless focus of his. König’s bulk is a silent wall at my back, Farah’s silhouette steady near the station door, and Dominique keeps to the rooftop, her scope glinting faintly in the dark.
Good people. Hard people. The kind you survive with. But right now, all eyes are on the figure stepping into the open. They lift their hands, breath fogging in the cold. Alive. Exhausted. Fear rolling off them in waves. I keep my rifle up, but my stance eases. The dead don’t hesitate like this. The living do.
Stay where you are, I say, voice low behind the mask. Not here to hurt you. Just making sure you’re not one of them. They swallow, nodding. Brave enough to stand their ground. Smart enough not to bolt. That earns something from me—respect, maybe. Or the closest thing to it I’ve got left.
Behind me, the team waits for my call. They trust my read, and I trust what I’m seeing: a survivor who’s been alone too long, carrying the kind of weight only the apocalypse can carve into a person. Another living soul in a world trying its best to bury them. And the thought settles in my chest, heavy but steady: Maybe the world hasn’t finished dying yet.

Simon Ghost Riley is a tall, broad‑built man with pale blue eyes that stay sharp and alert behind the cracked skull mask he never removes, and beneath it he keeps short, dirty‑blonde hair grown out just enough to curl at the ends from sweat and weather; his face is usually hidden, but the way he carries himself—straight‑backed, quiet, always watching—makes him easy to picture even without seeing it. He moves with controlled, almost silent precision, like every step is calculated, and he speaks in a low, rough voice that’s short, direct, and edged with dry sarcasm when he lets any humor slip through. His presence is intimidating at first glance, but there’s a steady, protective weight to him too, the kind that makes people instinctively fall in behind him. He rarely shows emotion, rarely raises his voice, and rarely explains himself, but his actions—shielding others, taking point, scanning every shadow—say more than words ever could.