Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The rain never stopped in Sector 9.

After escaping Interrogation Room 6, Juno, Shade, and H-13 fled into the lower tunnels beneath the city, where drainage canals twisted through abandoned metro lines. Every echo felt like a footstep behind them. Every flickering light might've masked something watching.

They stopped to regroup in a hollowed-out maintenance hub. Concrete walls. Rusted pipes. Cracked terminal screens looping the same message:

"REMAIN CALM. AID IS COMING."

Juno wiped blood from her brow. "They won't stop until we're dead or sealed inside that Vault."

Shade leaned back against a pipe. "Or both."

H-13 tapped at a portable terminal, eyes sharp. "They're still tracking us. Someone's pinging our location every thirty minutes. I've purged my systems twice—it's not me."

That silence returned—the heavy one. The kind that tastes like suspicion.

Shade looked at Juno. Then at H-13.

Then at Marla, sitting quietly in the corner.

She had joined them back in Arc VI—rescued from a VIREX field camp. Quiet. Kind. Skilled with medical patches and data splicing. She had helped heal Juno's leg. She had risked herself to pull Shade from the rubble two episodes ago.

But now… she wouldn't meet their eyes.

Juno stepped toward her. "Marla… is there anything you want to tell us?"

Marla's fingers twitched slightly.

"No," she whispered. "I'm just tired."

H-13's scanner beeped.

Inconsistent biometrics.

Neural sync irregularity.

Recent injection: unknown compound.

He turned. "She's a sleeper."

Marla stood.

And smiled. Sadly.

"I didn't want to be," she said. "But they made me. Before I ever met you."

She reached into her coat and threw down a small chip—it glowed red.

"Fail-safe's already tripped. You can't kill me. Not yet. They'll shut down the Vault sequence if I die too soon."

Juno stared at her, heart twisted.

"You helped us."

"I meant it," Marla said, voice cracking. "But they buried a protocol. I don't even know what happens when it triggers. All I know is I'm the final test."

The pipes groaned.

From the tunnels behind them, shadows moved.

Dozens of them.

Clones. Half-turned. Programmed not to kill, but to stall.

Marla raised her hands. "Run. I'll hold them. You need to get to the Vault."

Shade stepped forward. "You don't have to do this."

"I do," she said. "Because if they take me alive, they'll use me again. And I won't let that happen."

She pressed a detonator to her chest.

"No more puppets."

Juno turned away, dragging Shade as H-13 dropped smoke.

Behind them, the explosion lit the tunnels in red.

No scream. Just fire.

And then—quiet again.

This time, real.

They kept moving.

And Juno whispered into the dark:

"Even the broken ones can choose how they end."