Chapter 8 - The Cat and Mouse Game
Someone else was inside the bunker with us.
I stared at the bloody message on the wall, the horrific truth finally settling deep into my bones.
My mother was not just alive; she was hunting us.
"We need to barricade this door," Cole commanded, immediately pushing a heavy metal desk against the entrance.
Elias was convulsing on the table, the black veins now creeping up past his jawline.
I frantically searched the remaining intact drawers of the medical room, praying for a miracle.
I pulled open the bottom drawer of my father's old desk and found a thick, leather-bound journal.
The cover simply read, "Patient Zero."
I flipped through the pages, my eyes scanning my father's frantic, messy handwriting.
He documented decades of agonizing research, brutal experiments, and terrifying observations.
"She does not age," one entry read.
"The virus regenerates her cellular structure, but it destroys the emotional centers of her brain."
"She is no longer the woman I married; she is a perfect, predatory machine."
I read the final entry, written just days before my father's supposed death.
"She is getting smarter," he wrote.
"She figured out how to manipulate the ventilation system."
"I have to fake my death and leave Maya in charge."
"Maya is the only one who shares the genetic marker required to survive an attack."
I slammed the book shut, feeling entirely betrayed by the man who raised me.
He had turned me into bait.
A sudden, rhythmic tapping sound echoed from the air conditioning vent above our heads.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Cole aimed his weapon directly at the metal grate in the ceiling.
"Maya," a sweet, melodic voice whispered from inside the dark vent.
It was a voice I had not heard since I was four years old, singing me to sleep.
"Open the door, sweetheart," my mother cooed.
May you like
"Mommy wants to give you a hug."
The heavy metal desk we pushed against the door suddenly launched backward as if hit by a freight train.
