u/TheGapInTheDoorStory

The first thing I felt was a vibration.

It climbed up through my bones, a low mechanical shudder that rattled my teeth and locked my muscles before my mind could catch up. For a split second, I thought I was still dreaming.

Then the floor disappeared beneath me.

I dropped.

I hit hard, the impact knocking the air from my lungs in a wet, ugly thud. Pain flared along my shoulder and ribs. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I just lay there, stunned, listening to the hum around me—metal grinding softly against metal, steady and endless.

When I finally forced my eyes open, the world came back in fragments.

A flickering overhead light. Yellowed. Weak. It buzzed intermittently, like it was struggling to stay alive. Everything beyond it was swallowed in a dim, gray gloom that pressed in from all sides.

I was lying on the floor of a metro train.

That realization settled slowly. I pushed myself up onto my elbows, wincing as my body protested. My head throbbed. My thoughts felt thick, sluggish—like I’d just clawed my way out of something deep.

A metro train.

The problem was… my town doesn’t even have a metro.

So that ruled out waking up drunk somewhere I shouldn’t be.

There were other people in the car. Though far less than you would expect.

Three in total.

A man sat across from me, maybe in his early fifties, legs crossed, posture relaxed. He was reading a newspaper with quiet intensity, as if the rest of the world didn’t exist. The pages rustled softly every so often, the sound unnaturally loud in the otherwise dead air.

At the far end of the car sat an elderly couple. They looked… fragile. The woman’s head twitched faintly, her hands fidgeting in her lap, while the man beside her held her arm with a gentle but constant grip, murmuring something I couldn’t quite make out.

None of them acknowledged me.

I pushed myself to my feet. My legs felt stiff, unsteady, like I hadn’t used them in a long time. For a moment, I just stood there, swaying slightly with the motion of the train, trying to piece together how I’d gotten here.

Nothing came.

Just pressure. Fog. Resistance.

I swallowed and made my way toward the man with the newspaper. Each step felt too loud, my shoes scuffing against the floor in a way that made me painfully aware of myself—like I didn’t belong here.

“Excuse me,” I said. My voice came out rougher than I expected. “I… uh… where are we going?”

The question sounded stupid the moment it left my mouth.

The man didn’t look up.

“Do you often board trains with no idea where they’re going, kid?” he asked, his tone light, almost amused.

I opened my mouth. Closed it again.

“I… I don’t—”

Nothing. My mind just… stopped.

The man sighed, the sound quiet but heavy, like he’d had this conversation too many times.

“Relax,” he said. “I don’t know where we’re going either. No one really does.”

That wasn’t comforting.

“What?” I said, a little too quickly. “What do you mean, no one—”

He finally lowered the newspaper just enough to glance at me. His eyes were sharp. Tired, but sharp.

“Come,” he said, nodding to the empty seat beside him. “Sit.”

There was something in his voice—not threatening, but not optional either.

I sat.

Up close, the newspaper looked… strange. The edges were worn, softened like it had been handled over and over again. The ink had faded in places, smudged in others.

“That paper,” I said, pointing. “It’s… old. Like, really old.”

He raised an eyebrow, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Is it now?”

“It’s dated,” I said, leaning closer. “Six months ago.”

“Ah.” He shrugged. “Makes sense. That’s what I had on me when I boarded.” He flipped a page with practiced ease. “Not exactly a lot of options for reading material down here. You work with what you’ve got.”

“Down here?” I repeated.

He ignored that.

“Let’s try something else,” he said. “What do you remember before you got on the train?”

I hesitated.

At first, there was nothing. Just that same dense fog pressing against my thoughts.

Then something shifted.

A face.

Sasha.

My girlfriend.

The memory came in jagged pieces, like broken glass I didn’t want to touch.

We were arguing. Again. Voices raised. The usual things—accusations, frustration, words meant to sting. But this time it went further.

She shoved me.

I shoved her back.

She hit me.

Harder.

And then—

I swallowed.

“I… we had a fight,” I said slowly. “It got bad.”

“How bad?” the man asked, his tone neutral.

“She got violent,” I said. “I… I hit her back.”

Saying it out loud made something twist in my stomach.

“And then?” he pressed.

I tried to push further into the memory.

There was shouting. Movement. Something breaking—glass, maybe. The sound echoed in my head, sharp and wrong.

And then—

Nothing.

Just a void.

“I don’t remember,” I admitted. “After that… it’s just gone.”

The man studied me for a moment, then nodded, like I’d confirmed something.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That tracks.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Means it’s hazy,” he replied. “It usually is.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.” He folded the newspaper neatly in his lap, finally giving me his full attention. “Listen. How you got here doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”

He held my gaze just long enough for the words to settle.

“You’re here,” he added. “That’s the only part that matters.”

There was a finality to it that shut me up.

After a moment, he leaned back slightly.

“There are rules,” he said.

Something in his tone shifted. Lighter. Almost amused.

“Of course there are,” he added with a quiet chuckle. “Everyone loves rules. Makes things feel manageable.”

I didn’t like the way he said that.

“What rules?” I asked.

He held up a finger.

“You stay in your car. The others aren’t for you.”

Another finger.

“You only get off at your station. The others aren’t for you either.”

A third.

“And when the conductor comes, you’d better have your ticket.”

I stared at him.

“That’s it?” I said.

“Simple, right?” he replied.

Before I could answer, a sharp, broken wail cut through the air.

I flinched.

The elderly woman at the end of the car had started screaming—no, not screaming. Babbling. Words spilled out of her in a frantic, incoherent stream, rising and falling in panicked bursts that didn’t form anything recognizable.

Her hands clawed at the air, at her clothes, at her husband.

“It’s alright,” the old man murmured, his voice trembling as he tried to steady her. “It’s alright, love. I’m here. I’m right here.”

But she didn’t seem to hear him.

Her eyes darted wildly around the car, wide and glassy, like she was seeing something none of us could.

“They’ve been like that since they got here,” the man beside me said, almost casually.

I tore my gaze away from the couple.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“Take your pick,” he said. “Dementia, maybe.” He exhaled through his nose. “Honestly, I’m just waiting for their stop.”

There was no malice in his voice.

That somehow made it worse.

He shifted slightly and extended a hand toward me without looking.

“Duncan,” he said.

I hesitated for half a second before shaking it.

His grip was firm. Solid. Real.

“Jonah,” I replied.

“Well,” Duncan said, picking his newspaper back up like nothing had happened, “sit tight, Jonah.”

The train rattled on, the sound filling the silence between us.

“Long ride ahead.”

And it was.

Time… stopped meaning anything.

Hours passed. Or maybe days. It was impossible to tell. The flickering lights never changed. The darkness outside the windows never shifted. My watch ticked once… twice…

Then the second hand stopped.

I watched it for a while. Waiting for it to move again.

It didn’t.

I stopped checking after that.

At some point, I started reading the newspaper with Duncan. There wasn’t much else to do. We went over the same articles again and again, memorizing lines without meaning to. Stories about people who felt like they belonged to another life.

It was mind-numbing.

But it beat listening to the woman unravel.

Then, without warning, the intercom crackled to life.

The sound was so sudden, so loud in the dead air, that I flinched.

A voice followed. Distorted. Hollow.

“Arriving at station: Jezabel.”

The name hung in the air.

The old woman went silent.

Just like that.

Slowly—too smoothly—she stood up.

Her husband followed immediately, guiding her with shaking hands.

Before I could say anything, the door at the end of the car slid open with a heavy metallic groan.

The Conductor stepped in.

I hadn’t heard him approach.

He was tall. Too tall. His uniform hung on him like it didn’t quite fit, stretched in some places, loose in others. His face was… wrong. Not deformed. Just… incomplete somehow, like my eyes couldn’t settle on it properly.

He held out a hand.

The old woman fumbled in her coat and produced a small, worn ticket. He took it without a word.

Then he turned to the old man.

“Ticket.”

The word felt heavier than it should have.

The old man froze.

“I… I don’t have one,” he stammered.

The Conductor went still.

“You cannot pass.”

“No,” the old man said quickly, shaking his head. “No, she can’t go alone. She—she needs me.”

He tightened his grip on his wife’s arm.

Duncan sighed beside me.

“It’s her stop,” he said, not unkindly. “You can’t go with her this time, old timer.”

The old man looked at him, desperate.

“Please—”

“Time to let go,” Duncan added softly.

For a moment, I thought the old man might fight. I could see it in the way his shoulders tensed, in the way his grip tightened.

Then it drained out of him.

Slowly, he turned back to his wife.

His hands trembled as he cupped her face.

“You go on now, love,” he whispered. “I’ll be with you shortly.”

She didn’t respond.

Didn’t even seem to recognize him.

She simply turned… and stepped through the doorway.

Into nothing.

She was gone in an instant.

The old man made a broken sound in his throat.

The Conductor’s hand closed around his shoulder.

“Come.”

“No—wait—” the old man tried, but there was no strength behind it.

He was led away.

The door slid shut.

The sound echoed longer than it should have.

Then silence swallowed the car again.

Duncan flipped a page of his newspaper.

“And then there were two,” he said.

 

Duncan and I rode on in silence.

Not the kind that settles. The kind that builds. Every rattle of the tracks felt sharper, every flicker of the lights a little too slow.

I don’t know how long it lasted.

Long enough for my thoughts to start drifting again.

Long enough for Sasha’s face to slip back in.

Uninvited.

I tried to push it away.

Then I saw her.

At first, I thought it was just the glass—my reflection, distorted by the flicker. But no… it held. It stayed.

Through the narrow window in the door ahead, she stood there.

Sasha.

Her hair slightly messy, the way it got when she ran her hands through it too many times. Her shoulders tense. Her face—

My chest tightened.

She was looking straight at me.

I was on my feet before I even realized I’d moved. The world tilted for a second as I crossed the car, my hands slamming against the door, pressing closer, closer—

I needed to be sure.

Just to be sure.

A word was carved into the metal beneath the window.

Despair.

I traced it without thinking. The grooves were deep. Uneven. Not painted—cut in.

Behind me, I heard Duncan stand.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Something in his voice made me pause.

It wasn’t annoyance.

It was tension.

Real tension.

“I told you,” he said, sharper now. “We stay in our car. That’s not a suggestion.”

I didn’t turn fully. Just enough to look back at him.

“I… I have to,” I said. My voice sounded thin. Distant. “I can’t just stay here. I have to fix this.”

“Kid—”

“I’m sorry.”

I didn’t let him finish.

My hand found the handle.

For a moment, everything in me resisted. A tight, instinctive pull in my chest—don’t.

I ignored it.

The door groaned as I pulled it open, the sound dragging out like it didn’t want to let me through.

“Goddammit,” Duncan muttered.

A beat.

Then a sharp exhale. “Ah, fuck it.”

I glanced sideways.

He was already there.

“Not like I’ve got anything better to do,” he added.

We stepped through together.

The air changed instantly.

It felt… closer. Like the space had shrunk without moving.

A woman stood in the middle of the aisle.

It wasnt Sasha.

Mid-forties, maybe. Hair wild. Movements sharp, erratic. She rushed from one end of the car to the other, checking under seats, behind poles, turning in tight, frantic circles.

“My baby!” she cried. “Have you seen my baby? She was right here—I just—where is she? Where is my Suzie?!”

Her voice cracked on the name.

Her eyes locked onto mine.

Desperate. Searching.

I stepped forward without thinking.

“Hey—listen, maybe we can—”

A hand clamped down on my shoulder.

Firm.

“Don’t.”

Duncan.

I glanced back at him.

“What do you mean don’t?” I whispered. “She needs help.”

“Look at her,” he said.

I did.

Really looked.

The way she moved—too fast, too sharp, like she couldn’t stop herself. The way her words looped, not quite the same each time, just… off.

“My baby… have you seen my baby… I can’t find her…”

She rushed past us, barely reacting now.

Duncan leaned closer.

“She’s not asking you,” he murmured. “Not really.”

Something cold slid down my spine.

“Come on.”

He let go and moved past her.

I hesitated.

Just for a second.

Behind me, she dropped to her knees, hands sweeping under a seat that held nothing.

“Please… please…”

I followed.

My eyes wondered onto the seats.

At first, I thought they were empty.

Then I noticed the shapes.

Faint. Shifting.

Like shadows that didn’t belong to anything solid.

Some moved when I wasn’t looking directly at them. Others stayed perfectly still.

“You see them too, right?” I muttered.

“Keep moving,” Duncan said.

I didn’t push it.

At the end of the car, another door waited.

Another word carved into it.

Regret.

Duncan didn’t hesitate this time.

He opened it.

We stepped through.

And the world shifted again.

This car felt empty.

Not just in sight.

In presence.

The air felt hollow, like something had been taken out of it.

The lights flickered weakly here, barely holding. Every few seconds, they dipped low enough to drown the car in darkness.

And in those moments—

That’s when things showed.

The shadows filled the seats.

Dozens of them now. Maybe more. Shapes hunched forward, turning toward us, reaching—

The lights snapped back.

Gone.

Nothing.

I backed toward the windows without realizing.

“Duncan…”

The lights dipped again.

This time, I heard it.

A slow, wet sound.

Like something dragging across glass.

I turned.

A handprint appeared on the window.

From the outside.

Fingers spread wide. Pressing in hard enough to leave a fogged imprint.

Then another.

And another.

They multiplied quickly. Overlapping. Sliding. Clawing over each other like something unseen was piling against the glass.

Trying to get in.

I stumbled back.

“What the hell is that?”

Duncan stepped up beside me.

For once, he didn’t look detached.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” he said quietly.

Another handprint slammed into the glass.

The window trembled.

“Most passengers just want off this train,” he continued.

More hands. More pressure.

“But some of the ones who do…”

He watched them closely.

Jaw tight.

“Try anything to get back in.”

 

Madness.

The next car felt wrong the second we stepped inside.

Unstable.

The lights didn’t flicker—they snapped. On. Off. On again. No rhythm. No pattern.

The car seemed to breathe between flashes.

Passengers filled the seats.

Or what used to be passengers.

Shadows. Twisted. Bent in ways bodies shouldn’t be. Some rocked slowly. Others jerked violently, limbs snapping like broken strings.

Their mouths were open.

Screaming.

Yet I couldn’t hear a thing.

The silence made it worse.

“Duncan—”

He grabbed me.

Hard.

Before I could react, he dragged me down and shoved me beneath the seats.

“Shh.”

I didn’t argue.

I didn’t breathe.

At the far end of the car—

The Conductor.

He hadn’t entered.

He was just there.

Tall. Wrong. Moving too smoothly, like the motion didn’t belong to him.

He walked down the aisle.

Slow.

Deliberate.

One hand extended.

“Ticket.”

The word didn’t echo.

It sank.

He stopped beside a row of shadow passengers.

They didn’t react.

Didn’t even acknowledge him.

Still, he waited.

Then moved on.

“Ticket.”

Row by row.

The same motion. The same word.

Checking something that no longer existed.

I held my breath as he drew closer.

For a moment—

His head tilted.

Just slightly.

Toward us.

My pulse spiked.

But he kept moving.

Step by step.

Until he reached the end.

And then—

Nothing.

No door.

No sound.

He was just… gone.

I stayed still a second longer.

Then another.

Only when Duncan shifted did I move.

“We’re good,” he muttered.

We crawled out slowly.

I swallowed.

“What are they?”

One of the shadows snapped its head to the side in a silent scream.

Duncan didn’t look away.

“That’s what happens to you,” he said. “Or me.”

“If our stop never comes.”

My stomach dropped.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged.

“Sooner or later, you lose pieces. Memory. Identity. Everything that makes you… you.” He gestured toward them. “And then you give in.”

The lights flickered.

For a second, the shadows looked closer.

I blinked.

They were back in place.

“Come on,” Duncan said.

I followed.

 

Abuse.

We heard it before we saw it.

Shouting.

Raw. Cracked. Unhinged.

The door opened—

And the sound hit like a wall.

A man stood in the aisle, head shaved, face flushed red. His movements were sharp, unpredictable. His grip tight around a gun he kept waving at empty space.

“You think you can leave?!” he shouted. “You think you can take her from me?!”

There was no one there.

No woman. No child.

Just him.

“You’re not taking my daughter!” His voice broke. “You hear me?! You’re not—”

He stopped.

Saw us.

Everything went still.

Then—

He raised the gun.

I dropped instantly.

“Duncan!”

No reaction.

He just stood there.

Then started walking forward.

“What are you doing?!” I hissed.

The man’s face twisted.

“She sent you, didn’t she?!” he screamed. “You think you can just walk in here and—”

The gun fired.

The sound slammed through the car.

I flinched—

Nothing.

I looked up.

Duncan kept walking.

Another shot.

Another.

Each one deafening.

Each one meaningless.

“Doesn’t work like that in here, pal,” Duncan said.

Calm. Cold.

He stepped closer.

Swung his fist.

It didn’t connect.

Not really.

But the man reacted anyway—head snapping to the side, body jolting like he’d been hit by something real.

It was enough.

“Move.”

I moved.

We slipped past as the man staggered, muttering, his rage collapsing into something smaller.

Something broken.

The shouting picked back up behind us as we reached the door.

We stepped through.

It slammed shut behind us.

Locked.

Final.

I grabbed the handle.

Nothing.

Duncan exhaled.

“Threshold,” he said. “No going back now, kid.”

The words settled heavy.

Ahead wasn’t another car.

Not exactly.

A narrow hallway stretched forward. Tight. Dim.

On the right—

A door.

From behind it—

Crying.

Soft.

Then sharper.

Young.

I moved before I thought about it.

“Hey—” Duncan started. “Kid, you can’t just—”

I opened the door.

Small bathroom.

Cracked mirror.

And in the corner—

A little girl.

Curled in on herself.

Shaking.

She flinched when she saw me.

“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”

She didn’t move.

“I’m Jonah,” I said. “What’s your name?”

A pause.

Then—

“Suzie…”

I glanced back.

Duncan already knew.

“That’s—”

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

He stepped closer, still not looking directly at her.

“Suzie,” he said. “Do you have a ticket?”

She shook her head.

“No…”

“Figured.”

He sighed.

“Couldn’t do a happy reunion even if we wanted to. Come on.”

I didn’t move.

“We’re not leaving her here.”

Silence.

Then—

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Duncan rubbed his face.

“Fine,” he said. “You want to play babysitter? Be my guest.”

He stepped aside.

“Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I crouched, taking her small, trembling hand.

It was cold.

“Come on,” I said softly.

There was only one way left to go.

Forward.

 

Next car: Revelations.

The door slid open—

And there she was.

Standing in the middle of the car, perfectly still. Waiting.

“Sasha!”

Her name tore out of me. I barely felt my legs move—two steps, maybe three—

Then they gave out.

I hit my knees hard.

The world lurched. The lights above snapped and flickered, yellow to black, yellow to black, too fast—my vision stuttering with it, like something was forcing its way in.

Sasha didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

She just watched.

Behind me, Duncan swore under his breath. I heard him shift, struggling to keep his footing as whatever hit me brushed against him too—lesser, but enough.

“Kid—”

Too late.

The memories came back.

Not in fragments.

All at once.

 

We were in the kitchen.

Clear. Sharp. Too real.

The chipped countertop. The stale smell of something burnt hours ago. A glass sitting half-empty on the table.

And the tension.

Thick. Waiting.

“You always do this,” Sasha said.

Her voice was low. Controlled.

That was always worse.

“Do what?” I asked, already tired.

“This.” She gestured vaguely between us. “You push and push until I react, and then suddenly I’m the problem.”

“I didn’t push anything,” I said. “I asked where you were last night.”

“Oh my God.” She let out a short, humorless laugh. “You asked?”

“You disappeared, Sasha. You didn’t answer your phone.”

“And that gives you the right to interrogate me?”

“I wasn’t interrogating you.”

“No?” Her eyes narrowed. “Because it felt like it.”

I exhaled, trying to keep it together.

“I was worried.”

“No, you weren’t,” she said flatly. “You were suspicious.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Fair?” Her voice sharpened. “You think it’s fair that I have to constantly prove myself to you? That I can’t go out without you assuming the worst?”

“I asked you one question.”

“And I answered it!” she snapped. “But it’s never enough for you, is it?”

My jaw tightened.

“Because your answers don’t make sense,” I said. “They change.”

Something in her expression shifted.

Not anger.

Something colder.

“You know what?” she said quietly. “Maybe if you weren’t so insecure, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

“That’s not—”

“No, go on,” she cut in. “Tell me again how I’m the bad guy.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to.” Her voice hardened. “You make me feel it.”

“That’s not my intention—”

“Everything is your intention,” she said. “You just don’t like being called out on it.”

I felt it building in my chest. Tight. Suffocating.

“This is what I mean,” I said. “I try to talk to you, and you twist it.”

“Because it is twisted,” she snapped. “You just don’t want to admit it.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then what is?” she demanded. “Say it.”

I hesitated.

That was enough.

Her hand cracked across my face.

The sound rang.

I staggered back, more shocked than hurt.

“Sasha—what the hell?”

“You don’t get to stand there and act like you’re better than me,” she said, breathing harder now. “Like you’re some kind of victim.”

“I’m not—”

“Yeah, you are!” she shouted, shoving me.

I stumbled, catching myself on the counter.

“Stop,” I said, raising a hand. “Just—stop.”

She didn’t.

Another shove. Harder.

“Say it,” she demanded. “Say what you think of me.”

“I don’t—”

“Say it!”

“I think this is toxic!” I snapped. “I think we’re hurting each other!”

For a second—

She froze.

I thought I’d reached her.

Then something in her eyes twisted.

“Oh,” she said softly. “So now it’s we?”

“That’s not what I—”

She hit me again.

Harder.

Something snapped in me.

I shoved her back.

Not hard.

Just space.

“I’m sorry,” I said immediately. “I didn’t mean—”

She stumbled.

Her hand hit the counter.

And then—

The knife.

I didn’t see her grab it.

One moment—nothing.

The next—

Pain exploded through my stomach.

I looked down.

The blade was inside me.

Everything went quiet.

“Sasha…” I whispered.

Her face crumpled.

Not regret.

Something worse.

“You did this,” she said, voice shaking. “You made me do this.”

She pulled the knife out.

The pain doubled.

Then—

She drove it in again.

And again.

And again.

Each time her voice rose, breaking—

“You don’t listen—”

“You never listen—”

“This is your fault—”

My legs gave out.

I hit the floor.

The world dimmed.

Her voice warped. Faded.

Then—

Nothing.

 

I was back on the train.

On my knees.

Gasping.

Sasha stood in front of me.

Untouched.

Like it had never happened.

She reached out her hand.

Slow. Gentle.

“Come on,” she said softly. “Let’s go.”

My body moved before my mind did.

I reached for her.

Our fingers met.

Cold.

She pulled.

Guiding me forward.

Toward the end of the car.

Toward the door.

“That’s it,” she whispered. “Just come with me.”

Something grabbed my arm.

Hard.

“Kid, stop.”

Duncan.

He yanked me back. The connection snapped—her hand slipping away like smoke.

“No,” I said weakly. “I have to—”

“No, you don’t,” he said, turning me to face him. His grip didn’t loosen. “Some ghosts aren’t worth chasing.”

“She’s—she’s—”

“She’s the reason you’re here,” he cut in. “Not your way out.”

I shook my head.

“I can fix it,” I said. “I can—”

“No.” Sharper now. “You can’t.”

Something in his eyes had changed.

No detachment.

No distance.

Just… honesty.

“I spent my whole life holding on,” he said, quieter now. “Grudges. Regrets. People who didn’t deserve it.”

I stared at him.

“Thought it made me strong,” he went on. “That not letting go meant something.”

A faint, tired smile.

“All it did was keep me stuck.”

Behind him, Sasha stood waiting.

Patient.

“You’ve still got a chance,” Duncan said. “You don’t have to end up like me. Or like them.”

„This isnt the end of the road for you, kid“

My throat tightened.

“But it is for you?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away.

Then—

He turned.

Something caught his attention.

His expression shifted instantly.

Surprise.

Then something softer.

“…Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured.

A quiet, almost disbelieving laugh.

“Now look at that…”

His eyes glistened.

“Seems I found my stop after all.”

I followed his gaze—

Nothing.

Just the end of the car.

“I gotta go, kid,” he said, turning back. “Take care of yourself.”

A beat.

“And take care of the girl.”

Something twisted in my chest.

“…Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”

He smirked.

“Any time.”

A wink.

Then he turned—

And walked straight into the door.

It didn’t open.

Didn’t move.

He just… passed through it.

And he was gone.

 

For a moment, I stood there.

Then I turned.

Suzie was behind me, quiet, watching.

“Come on,” I said softly. “Duncan found his way.”

I held out my hand.

“Time to find ours.”

She took it.

The next car—

Was different.

The lights were steady. No flicker. No shadows. Just empty seats and the low hum of the train.

We sat.

Suzie leaned into me, her head resting against my chest.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said quietly.

She didn’t answer.

Just closed her eyes.

We waited.

The Conductor appeared.

“Tickets.”

Same voice. Same weight.

I looked at him.

“We don’t have any.”

A pause.

“No tickets,” he said. “Cannot be on the train.”

Then—

“Follow me.”

I stood, helping Suzie up.

“Let’s go home,” I whispered.

He led us to a side door.

Opened it.

We stepped through.

 

I gasped.

Air flooded my lungs like I’d been drowning.

Bright light burned my eyes.

Shapes moved above me—white walls, sharp smells, voices overlapping.

“Doctor—Mr. Bright has awoken.”

I blinked, struggling to focus.

A nurse leaned over me, relief flashing across her face.

They told me I’d been in a coma.

That I’d died.

For a few minutes.

That the stab wounds—

It hadn’t been a dream.

It had never been a dream.

They kept me there for a few more days. Monitoring. Questions. Tests.

I didn’t argue.

I needed the time.

There was another patient in my room.

Comatose.

He died not long before I woke up.

When they told me, something sank deep in my chest.

I asked for a few minutes alone with him before they took him away.

The nurses hesitated.

We weren’t related.

But eventually, they let me.

I stood beside the bed.

“…You found your stop,” I said quietly.

No response.

I nodded.

“Thank you. For everything.”

 

After I left the hospital, I made a decision.

I filed to adopt a girl.

She’d lost her parents to domestic abuse.

The social workers were surprised at how quickly she took to me.

She barely spoke to anyone else.

But with me—

She stayed close.

Like she already knew me.

Like we’d already met somewhere else.

The process isn’t finished yet.

But it will be.

As for me…

I feel different.

Lighter.

Like something finally let go.

Or maybe I did.

I know I’ll board that train again someday.

We all do.

But not today.

Not today.

I’ve been carrying this around for fourteen years.

Didn’t think I’d ever actually say it out loud. Put it somewhere permanent. But my therapist kept circling back to it—same calm voice, same patient smile—telling me burying things doesn’t make them go away. Just makes them rot slower.

So… this is me digging it up.

I was eight the first time it happened.

For context, I’ve lived my entire life in the city of Los Haven. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s probably for the best. It’s… wrong, geographically speaking. An island in the middle of the mainland USA, stitched to everything else by a handful of long, narrow bridges. No one ever really explains it properly. They just accept it.

Like the rain.

It doesn’t stop here. Not really. We get breaks, sure, but they never last. And at least once a week—sometimes more—the sky just… opens. Not a drizzle. Not even a storm, not in the normal sense. Something heavier. Like the air itself is being poured down on you.

I grew up on the outskirts. The bad part, if you want to simplify it. Our house was small, damp, and always smelled faintly of rust. My room barely fit a bed and a dresser. The window didn’t shut all the way—never had—so when it rained, the sound got in with a vengeance.

Not just loud.

Close.

Like it was happening inside the room with me.

I used to sit there for hours, just watching it run down the glass. Had nothing better to do.

That’s when I first heard it.

At first I thought it was just the storm shifting. Wind changing direction, pipes rattling, something in the walls. It came and went in a way that made it easy to ignore.

Until it didn’t.

The second time, it lingered.

Thin. Warped. Dragging under the weight of the rain.

A scream.

Muffled, like it was being forced through water. High and stretched in a way that made my teeth hurt just listening to it. It didn’t echo like normal sound. It didn’t bounce. It just… bled. Into the rain, into the walls, into me.

I remember leaning closer to the window, pressing my ear against the cold glass.

“Hello?” I said.

Like someone out there could hear me.

For a second, there was nothing but the rain.

Then something came back.

Not words. Not exactly. But it wasn’t random either. There was intent in it. A shape trying to form.

Someone trying to be heard.

I pulled back slowly, heart doing something strange in my chest. Not quite fear. Not yet.

Confusion.

I was alone most of the time back then. My dad worked nights. Slept through most of the day, when he wasn’t down in the basement working on… something. I never really knew what. He never explained, and I never asked.

So there was no one to check with. No one to tell me I was imagining things.

When the rain stopped, the sound stopped with it.

Just… gone.

Like it had never been there.

I told myself that’s all it was. Noise. A trick of it. A kid’s brain filling in gaps where it shouldn’t.

Then the rain came back.

And so did the screaming.

Not the same voice. Not exactly. But the same feeling. Panic. Pain. That stretched, tearing kind of desperation that makes your chest tighten just listening to it.

I tried to block it out.

Pillows over my ears. Blankets over my head. I’d curl up with whatever stuffed animal I still had left and whisper, “Stop. Please stop.”

It never did.

 

 

After a while, I did something I almost never did back then.

I talked to my dad.

He was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, half a bottle already gone. Rain tapping against the walls like fingers trying to get in.

“Dad,” I said.

“Yeah?”

He didn’t look at me right away. Just kept staring at the window over the sink. Watching the rain.

“I… I hear things. When it rains.”

That got his attention.

Not all at once. Slowly.

He turned his head just enough to look at me out of the corner of his eye. “What kind of things?”

“Voices,” I said. “People. They sound… hurt.”

For a second, I thought he was going to laugh. Or tell me to go back to my room.

Instead, he set the bottle down a little too carefully.

“Sit,” he said.

I did.

He pulled a chair across from me and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Up close, I could see the way his jaw was set. Tight.

“You ever hear of the weeping angels of Los Haven?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“They’re trapped,” he said. “Between Heaven and Earth. Can’t go up. Can’t come down.”

Another glance at the window.

“The rain?” he went on, quieter now. “That’s them crying. They want to go home, but they can’t. So they just… weep.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Those voices you hear?” he added. “That’s them. Calling out.”

“Can we help them?” I asked.

Something flickered across his face. Gone almost immediately.

“No,” he said. Too fast. “No, you can’t help them. Best thing you can do is ignore it.”

I didn’t.

I couldn’t.

If anything, it made it worse.

Because now I wasn’t afraid anymore.

I felt sorry for them.

So when the rain came, I’d sit by the window and talk back.

“It’s okay,” I’d say quietly. “You’ll get home eventually.”

“I hear you.”

“You’re not alone.”

The screaming never stopped.

If anything, it got louder over the years. More voices sometimes. Overlapping. Tangled together in a way that made it hard to separate one from the other.

 

 

Four years went by like that.

And things… changed.

Not all at once.

At first it was small. Better food in the fridge. Clothes that actually fit. A new TV that didn’t buzz when it turned on.

Then it got harder to ignore.

My father started coming home later. Sometimes soaked, even on nights when it hadn’t rained yet. Sometimes carrying things he wouldn’t let me see. Bags he took straight to the basement.

The basement door stayed locked. Always.

Five locks.

I counted once.

And he started spending more time down there. Hours. Whole nights sometimes.

I’d hear things through the floor every now and then.

Not clear.

Just… movement.

A dull thud. A scrape. Once, something that almost sounded like a voice—cut off too quickly to be sure.

When I asked, he’d just say, “Work.”

Then one day, he came home in a car I’d never seen before. Black. Polished. Too clean for our street.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked.

“Work’s been good,” he said.

Didn’t look at me.

The strange part was… nothing else changed.

We didn’t move. Didn’t fix the house. The window still didn’t shut. The walls still sweated when it rained.

And the screams didn’t change either.

They just got worse.

One night, during one of the heavier storms, something broke through.

Not just noise.

Words.

Faint. Torn apart by the rain, but there.

“—please—”

That was enough.

I couldn’t sit there anymore pretending I couldn’t hear it.

I wanted to help.

So I did something my dad had told me, very clearly, never to do.

I went outside during the rain.

The rain hit like a wall. Cold and heavy, soaking through my clothes in seconds. Breathing felt wrong, like I was pulling water into my lungs instead of air.

I forced myself to listen.

Really listen.

At first, it was chaos. Sound flattening everything, bending it, smearing it across itself.

Then something started to stand out.

A direction.

I turned slowly, following it.

That’s when I saw it.

A metal hatch in the ground, half-hidden near the side of the house. A pipe fed into it, catching rainwater and funneling it down.

The sound was strongest there.

Loudest.

Closest.

“Hey!” I shouted, dropping to my knees. “I hear you!”

The screaming didn’t stop.

“Hold on,” I said, hands shaking. “I’m gonna help you, okay? Just—just wait!”

I ran back inside.

My dad was asleep. I could hear him through the door, slow and heavy.

The key.

He always kept it on a chain around his neck.

I crept into his room. Every step measured. The floorboards still creaked, but quieter this time. Or maybe the rain was just louder.

“Easy,” I whispered.

My fingers found the chain.

Cold metal.

I lifted it slowly. Carefully. Up and over his head.

He shifted.

Mumbled something.

I froze, barely breathing.

Then he settled again.

I didn’t move for a long second. Maybe longer.

Then I stepped back.

Out of the room.

The basement door waited at the end of the hall.

Five locks.

Five chances to make noise.

My hands shook so badly I had to try each key twice. Metal scraping. Clicking too loud in the quiet.

“Come on,” I whispered. “Come on…”

One by one, they gave.

The last lock clicked louder than the others.

I stopped.

Listened.

Nothing.

I opened the door.

The air that came up from below was wrong.

Damp. Metallic. Thick enough it felt like it stuck to the back of my throat.

The stairs creaked under my weight as I went down.

Halfway, I heard it.

Not from outside.

From below.

Muffled.

Warped.

But unmistakable.

Screaming.

The basement opened up further than I expected. The usual clutter was there—tools, boxes, things I didn’t recognize—but it didn’t matter.

Everything pointed forward.

Five cameras. Set up on tripods. All aimed at the same place.

A glass cube.

Big.

Sealed.

A pipe ran into it from above, pouring rainwater inside in a steady stream.

It was full.

All the way to the top.

At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at.

Shapes in the water. Pale. Still.

Then one of them moved.

Not on its own.

Just drifting slightly with the current.

Hair spreading out like ink.

Eyes open.

Two women floated inside.

Their skin had that waxy look you only see on things that aren’t alive anymore. Mouths slightly open, like they’d tried to scream and ran out of time.

I took a step closer without meaning to.

Behind me, something flickered.

I turned.

A laptop sat open on a table behind the cameras. The screen was alive with movement. Lines of text stacking over each other too fast to read. Usernames. Comments. Reactions.

I read some of the words.

„DREAD.IT“

“LIVE”

“KEEP GOING”

“TURN THE FLOW UP”

Numbers scrolling. Donations.

My stomach twisted.

The pipe.

The rain.

The screams.

I looked back at the tank.

Then up at the pipe feeding it.

And something in my head finally… lined up.

There were never angels down here.

Only the devil.

I don’t know how many victims my father had.

Four years.

One storm a week.

You can do the math.

I’m choosing not to.

I backed out of that room without turning around. I don’t remember climbing the stairs. Don’t remember putting the locks back.

But I remember the phone.

And I remember what I said when someone answered.

“My dad,” I told them. “He’s hurting people. Please… just come.”

They did.

He was taken away.

I didn’t see him again after that.

I heard things, though.

You always do in a place like Los Haven.

Rumors stick. They spread. Especially the ugly ones.

He died a few years later.

Prison incident.

Turns out even in there, the audience doesn’t disappear.

The prison warden also happened to be a Dread.it user and the prisoners were the subjects of the entertainment he so graciously provided.

Donations.

Votes.

Subjects.

Methods.

Audience participation.

My dad got the lucky pick

Awfully poetic that the very same money dad got for countless murders he commited, eventually paid for his very own.

 

I stayed in Los Haven.

Never really felt the urge to leave.

These days, I’ve got better things to do than sit by the window waiting for the rain.

Anyway.

That’s the story.

My therapist says it’s good to share. Get it out there. Process it.

Hope this posts right. He uses a different operating system than I do, so formatting might be little off.

Oh.

Right.

That part.

I didn’t pick Dr. Thomson to be my therapist at random.

No.

I found him the same way I find anyone.

Patterns.

Habits.

He posted more than he should have. Little slips. Repeated phrasing. Timing that lined up too neatly with missing persons cases if you knew where to look.

Different niche.

Same audience.

He preyed on his patients. Built trust. Let them open up. Then used it.

Posted their stories before they disappeared.

I watched for a while.

Made sure.

Then I scheduled an appointment.

“You’re safe here,” he told me during the first session.

I almost laughed.

You won’t have to worry about him anymore.

Shame, really.

He was actually pretty good at his job.

Just not as good as I am at mine.

For reasons that’ll become obvious soon enough, I’m not using my real name.

Call me Damien.

I’m not a good man. Never pretended otherwise. First run-in with the law at twelve. Nothing serious—shoplifting, vandalism. The kind of things adults laugh off until they don’t. First real job at fifteen. Small convenience store, late shift, clerk half-asleep behind the counter. Easy.

Too easy.

First time I killed someone, I was seventeen.

Self-defense, technically. Some junkie cornered me in an alley, twitching, eyes like broken glass. He came at me with a knife—sloppy, desperate. I remember the smell more than anything. Rot, sweat, something chemical burned into the back of my throat. He slipped on his own blood before I even realized what I’d done. I stood there for a while after, just… looking at him. Waiting for something. Sirens. Guilt. Anything.

Nothing came.

Self-defense.

The others were not.

You’ve probably heard whispers about a site called Dread.it. If you haven’t, good. Means you’re still on the right side of things.

Think of it like social media, just… stripped down. No filters, no pretending. Lower levels are predictable—drugs, trafficking, tutorials on how to break into places without getting caught. Ugly, but ordinary ugly. The kind people pretend doesn’t exist while scrolling past it.

The higher levels are where it gets interesting.

Private links. Paid access. Invitation-only circles. That’s where people stop pretending they’re human. Livestreams. Torture sessions. Murders staged like performances. “Cooking videos” that aren’t about pork.

Yeah. You get it.

Dread.it is what happens when you take something like Twitch or YouTube and peel off that last thin layer of restraint. It’s not small, either. It’s growing. Fast. Faster than anything like it should.

Law enforcement tries to shut it down. They do. Every day. Servers go dark, domains disappear… and then it’s back. Five minutes later, same layout, same users, like it never left.

Hydra with fiber optic cables.

Especially here in Los Haven.

We’ve got a reputation. Highest concentration of serial killers in the country. People like to joke about it. Blame the water, the air, the city planning—anything that makes it sound like a coincidence.

It’s not.

Something about this place just… lets things rot out in the open.

Im no exception.

I run a channel under the name The Gentleman. I know. It’s bad. Came up with it in about three seconds, and like here on reddit, you don’t get to change your name once it sticks.

It stuck.

So did the audience.

I’m good at what I do. Careful. Methodical. I don’t rush. I don’t improvise unless I have to. I treat it like a craft. Timing, presentation, control. People notice that. They pay for it. A lot. Enough that money stopped being a concern a long time ago.

And yeah… I enjoy it.

No point lying about that now.

Of course, to keep something like that going, you have to be invisible. No loose ends. No patterns. No traceable identity. You don’t get sloppy. You don’t get comfortable.

I was meticulous.

Or I thought I was.

Yesterday evening, I got home and found a red envelope sitting on top of my laptop.

Not beside it. Not slipped under the door.

On it. Centered. Like it had been placed there carefully. Deliberately.

I stopped in the doorway and just… looked at it. The apartment smelled the same—stale air, faint detergent, nothing out of place. No broken locks. No splintered wood. No signs anyone had forced their way in.

Still, something felt off.

Like the room had been… breathed in while I was gone. Not disturbed. Just… occupied.

I didn’t touch the envelope right away.

I checked the place first. Slow. Quiet. Closet. Bathroom. Under the bed—yeah, I know, cliché, but clichés exist for a reason. I even stood still for a minute, just listening. Pipes in the walls. Someone walking in the apartment above. My own breathing, a little too loud.

Nothing else.

Then I finally picked it up. Thick paper. Expensive. The kind people use when they want to be taken seriously without saying it out loud.

Inside was a letter.

It almost read like fan mail.

They knew my work. Not just the big moments—the ones everyone clips and passes around—but the small ones. Offhand comments. Little pauses. Things I barely remembered saying. They wrote about them like they mattered. Like they’d meant something.

There was admiration in the words. Too much of it. The kind that crawls under your skin instead of flattering you. Like being watched for longer than you realized.

Then it got to the point.

They wanted a commission. A specific target, performed on my channel.

Payment: twelve million dollars.

I actually laughed when I read that. “Twelve million?” I said, glancing around the room like someone might answer.

There was a photograph tucked behind the letter.

An old man. Thin. Skin like paper stretched over bone. Eyes sunken so deep they looked painted on. He didn’t look dangerous. Didn’t look important.

Didn’t even look like he had much time left.

“Really?” I muttered, turning the photo under the light. Tilting it, like that might reveal something hidden. “This guy?”

On the back of the photo, there was an address. And a time.

No explanation beyond that. Just a signature. „Mr. Z.“

I stood there for a while, the letter in one hand, the photo in the other.

Someone had found me.

Not just the channel. Not just The Gentleman.

Me.

They knew where I lived. Walked in… and then left. No trace.

The money didn’t matter anymore. I had to deal with whoever found me out.

I grabbed my coat, took one last look at the apartment—half expecting something to be different this time—and headed out.

 

I was already outside the building well before the time came.

Industrial. Abandoned. Concrete stacked on concrete in that ugly, functional way architects call brutalist and everyone else just calls depressing. Windows blacked out. No lights. No movement.

No reason for anyone to be there.

I checked my watch again.

Thirty seconds.

“This is a setup,” I muttered, more to hear the words than anything else. “Has to be.”

FBI crossed my mind first. It always does. A honeypot. Draw me in, close the net, nice and clean.

But if they had me, they wouldn’t do it like this. No theatrics. No mystery envelopes. They’d kick my door in at three in the morning and drag me out half-asleep, face pressed into carpet that wasn’t mine.

So maybe not them.

Maybe someone else. Another creator. Rivalry’s a thing on Dread.it, same as anywhere else. People get territorial. Protective. Paranoid.

Or maybe—

Maybe I was about to make twelve million dollars.

Ten seconds.

I exhaled slowly, watching the building like it might react. “Twelve million,” I whispered. Saying it out loud made it feel… heavier.

More real.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Nothing happened.

No lights. No sound. No signal.

I waited a beat longer, then crossed the street.

The doors opened easier than expected. No lock. No resistance.

That bothered me more than if they’d been sealed shut.

Inside, the air felt wrong.

Not stale—dead. Like it hadn’t moved in years. Like it had settled and decided to stay that way. Every step echoed too loud, bouncing back at me from places I couldn’t see.

Then I noticed the arrows.

Painted on the walls. Thick, bright red. Almost cartoonish. Pointing down hallways, around corners, through open doorways.

“Subtle,” I muttered. “Real subtle.”

I followed them anyway.

Each room looked like the last. Concrete floors. Rusted pipes. Dust that didn’t quite settle right when I disturbed it. The deeper I went, the quieter it got. Even my footsteps started to sound… off.

Duller.

Like something in the building was swallowing the noise before it could travel.

“This is a trap,” I said, a little louder this time. “You know that, right?”

My voice came back to me a second later.

I stopped for a moment, listening. Waiting for something to move. Something to breathe.

Nothing did.

Still, I kept going.

Curiosity, maybe. Ego. Greed. Could’ve been any of them. Didn’t really matter anymore.

The arrows led me into a large open room.

It swallowed everything that came before it. Wide, empty space with at least twenty doors lining the walls. All identical. All open. All dark.

I stepped inside slowly.

For a moment, there was nothing.

Then something shifted.

Movement.

Shapes slipping out of the doorways. One by one. Not rushing. Not hiding. Just… stepping into place, like they’d been waiting for their cue.

“…You’ve got to be kidding me,” I breathed.

The light above us flickered once.

Then it came on.

There were at least a dozen of them.

And I recognized some.

A massive guy in a pig mask, gripping a chainsaw like it was part of him. Mr. Piggy. He tilted his head at me, slow and curious, like he was trying to decide what I’d taste like before bothering to find out.

An older man in a blood-stained doctor’s coat stood a few feet away, rolling a scalpel between his fingers with practiced ease. The Surgeon. Clean hands, steady posture. He caught my eye and gave me a small, polite nod.

“Evening,” he said, calm as anything.

Like we were meeting over drinks.

A woman in an elegant dress stepped out next, heels clicking softly against the concrete. Bloody Marry. She smiled at me—wide, red, deliberate.

“Well,” she said, voice smooth, almost amused, “this is new.”

A tall, wiry figure lingered near one of the walls, clutching a pair of defibrillators. Cables dragged behind him like loose veins, sparking faintly when they brushed the floor. The Electrocutioner. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move much either.

Just watched.

And then there was the one already low to the ground.

On all fours.

Bald. Thin. Moving like his joints didn’t line up properly. His spine shifted under his skin when he breathed. A wet, choking sound rattled out of his throat—something between a laugh and something dying.

“Hannibal The Cannibal,” I said quietly. “Still doing the animal thing, huh?”

His head snapped toward me.

He grinned.

Too wide.

There were others too. Faces I didn’t recognize. New blood, probably. Or just people who hadn’t built a reputation yet.

No one attacked.

Not yet.

People adjusted their grips. Shifted their weight. Took quiet inventory of each other. Distance. Weapons. Weaknesses.

Mr. Piggy revved his chainsaw once—short, sharp—just to break the silence.

The Surgeon glanced at him, mildly annoyed. “Bit early for theatrics, don’t you think?”

Piggy tilted his head again, then did it louder.

Bloody Marry laughed under her breath. “Oh, I like him.”

The Electrocutioner flicked a switch. A small spark jumped between the paddles in his hands. He watched it like it meant something.

Hannibal… just stared at me.

Didn’t blink.

The intercom crackled.

A woman’s voice cut through the room. Clear. Composed.

“Good evening,” she said. “And thank you all for coming.”

A few of us shifted. Not much. Just enough.

“I know introductions are unnecessary,” she continued, “but it would be rude not to acknowledge such… talent gathered in one place.”

No one responded.

“You are some of the most accomplished rising figures in your field. Innovators. Entertainers.” A slight pause. “Artists, in your own way.”

“Get to the point,” The Surgeon said, almost bored.

A soft chuckle echoed through the speakers.

“Of course. Tonight, you will compete.”

That landed.

“For a prize of twelve million dollars.”

You could feel it. The shift. Subtle, but real. People straightened. Calculations started happening behind their eyes.

“The rules are simple,” she went on. “By first morning light, only one of you may remain alive.”

Silence.

“If more than one of you survives…” another pause, just long enough to settle in, “a neural gas will be released into the building. It will kill you all.”

“Cute,” Bloody Marry murmured. “Very theatrical.”

As if on cue, metal shutters slammed down over the doors and windows. One after another. The sound cracked through the space like gunfire.

No way out.

“May the best monster win,” the voice finished.

For a second, no one moved.

Not a step. Not a breath.

Then the horn blared.

Loud. Ugly. Final.

And just like that—

everything snapped.

Bodies collided. Steel hit bone. Someone screamed—cut off wet, like a faucet being shut too fast. One of the unknowns rushed forward and got opened up for it, The Surgeon stepping in like he’d rehearsed it. Two cuts. Maybe three. The man dropped before he even understood he’d been touched.

Others held back. Watching. Letting the eager ones thin the herd.

Smart.

I stayed where I was for half a second too long, taking it in.

I don’t use guns. Never have. Feels cheap. Distant. Like you’re not really there for it. No weight.

I use a knife.

Always.

Looking around at chainsaws, scalpels, improvised weapons, and whatever the hell the Electrocutioner was charging up—

Yeah.

I really wished I had a gun.

Mr. Piggy had taken the center of the room, actually dancing. Revving his chainsaw in short bursts, spinning in place like he was on stage somewhere. The sound bounced off the walls, drilling straight into the skull.

The Surgeon had already moved on from his first kill, adjusting his grip, scanning for the next opening. Calm. Focused. Like this was routine.

Bloody Marry hadn’t moved much. Just watching. Head tilted slightly, eyes tracking movement like she was choosing her moment.

The Electrocutioner pressed the paddles together again—longer this time. The crackle was louder. Sharper. The smell of something burning crept into the air.

And Hannibal—

Hannibal was already moving.

On all fours. Fast. Too fast.

That wet sound in his throat got louder as he came straight for me.

“Ah, shit—”

I backed through the door behind me, slamming into it with my shoulder, grabbing for the handle, trying to pull it shut.

Too late.

He hit it just as it swung, the steel cracking against his skull with a heavy, ugly clang.

Enough to drop a normal person.

He didn’t even flinch.

“Suppose this means our collab next month’s cancelled?” I said, knife already in my hand, breath tightening whether I liked it or not.

He stared at me.

Grinned.

Then he lunged.

I turned and ran.

 

The hallway stretched out in front of me—long, straight, narrow. Concrete walls, flickering lights overhead, each one buzzing like it was on the verge of giving up.

No doors. No turns.

Nowhere to hide.

Perfect for him.

Bad for me.

Behind me, the sound came fast—too fast. Not footsteps. Impacts. Hands slapping against the floor, nails scraping, breath rattling like something loose inside his chest.

Closing the distance.

I risked a glance back.

Mistake.

He was already closer than he should’ve been. Head low, spine shifting under his skin, eyes locked on me like I was already his.

I pushed harder. Lungs burning, boots slipping on dust and grime.

Think.

Think.

I dragged my hand along the wall as I ran, fingers searching for anything—an opening, a crack, something that wasn’t this straight tunnel leading nowhere.

Nothing.

Of course.

Behind me, that sound came again—half laugh, half choke—and then the rhythm changed.

He didn’t speed up.

He coiled.

Then he launched.

I heard it more than saw it. The sudden rush of air, the scrape of claws tearing against concrete—

I twisted at the last second.

He still hit me.

Hard.

We slammed into the floor, the impact knocking the air out of me in one violent burst. My head bounced off the concrete, white flashing across my vision. For a second, I couldn’t tell which way was up.

Then—

Pain.

Sharp. Deep.

My shoulder exploded as his teeth sank in.

“FUCK—!”

I drove my forehead into his face. Once. Twice. I didn’t feel it, just the impact, dull and heavy. Something crunched under the second hit, but he didn’t let go. His jaw clamped tighter, shaking slightly like he was testing the meat.

“Get—off—!”

I wrenched my arm free just enough and jammed the knife upward.

Missed the throat.

Hit somewhere near the collarbone.

He snarled—actually snarled—and tore his mouth away from my shoulder, skin going with it. Heat flooded down my arm instantly. Wet. Too much.

He came back in again, faster this time.

I rolled—barely. His teeth snapped shut inches from my face. I felt the air move. Smelled him.

Rot. Iron. Something sour and old.

My chest burned—

I looked down just in time to see why.

A blade.

Short. Curved. Claw-like.

He’d cut me without me even noticing. A thin, clean line across my chest, already spreading red, soaking through my shirt. Not deep enough to drop me.

Deep enough to matter.

“Okay,” I gasped, forcing myself back, knife up again, vision tightening at the edges. “Okay… you’re not playing around. Good to know.”

He didn’t answer.

Just circled.

Lower now. Slower. Watching me like he was figuring out which part to take next.

Blood dripped from his mouth.

Mine.

“Come on then,” I said, voice rough. “Finish it.”

He moved.

Fast.

Too fast to follow cleanly.

So I didn’t.

I stepped into it.

His momentum carried him forward, expecting me to back off. When I didn’t—when I moved toward him—there was a split second where he hesitated.

That was enough.

I drove the knife forward with everything I had.

It slid under his ribs.

Deep.

His body still slammed into mine, knocking the air out of me again, folding me backward. His claw scraped across my side, shallow this time.

But he stopped.

That choking sound came back—louder now. Wet. Bubbling.

I twisted the knife.

Hard.

His eyes went wide.

Not human.

Never were.

For a second, we just… stayed there. Pressed together. Breathing the same air.

Then I yanked the blade free and drove it up under his jaw.

That did it.

His body went slack.

Collapsed on top of me.

I shoved him off with a strained groan, rolling onto my side, coughing, dragging air back into my lungs.

Everything hurt.

My shoulder was a mess. Blood still pouring, soaking through my sleeve, dripping onto the floor in steady, rhythmic taps. My chest burned with every breath, the cut there opening and closing like a second mouth.

“…Yeah,” I muttered, staring up at the flickering light overhead. “This night’s going great.”

I stayed on the ground a few seconds longer than I should have. Let the pain settle into something dull.

Then I pushed myself up.

“Get up,” I told myself quietly. “You’re not done.”

Not even close.

 

I forced myself to keep moving.

I don’t remember deciding where to go. Just putting one foot in front of the other until I ended up in what passed for a bathroom on that floor.

Same concrete bones as the rest of the place. Just… cleaner. Slightly. Like someone had tried, once, and then given up.

A cracked mirror hung above a row of sinks. The fluorescent light above it flickered just enough to make my reflection stutter.

I looked worse than I felt.

And I felt pretty bad.

My shoulder was torn open where Hannibal had bitten me. Deep. Ragged. The kind of wound that doesn’t close clean. My chest wasn’t much better—a thin, angry line carved across it, still bleeding slow and steady. My shirt clung to me, damp and heavy.

I turned the faucet. Water sputtered out—brown at first, then clearing.

Good enough.

I leaned over the sink and started washing the blood off my hands, then my shoulder, hissing as the water hit raw flesh. It didn’t really clean anything. Just spread it around. Still, it helped.

A little.

I cupped some water and drank. It tasted metallic. Old.

Didn’t matter. It took the edge off the dryness in my throat.

That’s when I heard it.

A faint electric whine behind me.

I froze.

It grew louder. Sharper. Like something just outside the range of hearing, pressing in.

I looked up.

The mirror caught him first.

The Electrocutioner stood in the doorway, framed by flickering light. Smoke curled lazily around his legs.

At his feet—

What was left of The Surgeon.

Blackened. Twisted. The smell hit a second later. Burnt meat. Burnt plastic.

“Uhm… hi,” I said, straightening slowly, water dripping from my hands. “Big fan, actually. Twelve girls, one pool? That was… yeah. That was art.”

Nothing.

No reaction. No blink.

He stepped forward.

The defibrillators in his hands crackled, sparks snapping between the paddles. The cables twitched along the floor like they were alive.

“Oh, come on,” I sighed, easing back toward the showers. “You don’t wanna talk? Maybe collaborate? Team up, increase our odds—”

Another step.

The pitch climbed.

Higher.

Sharper.

“Right,” I said. “Guess that’s a no.”

He raised the paddles.

“…Oh, fuck it.”

I moved.

Grabbed the nearest shower hose and yanked it free, twisting the valve open all the way. Water burst out in a violent spray, pressure uneven, splashing across tile, walls—

And him.

For a split second, nothing happened.

Then everything did.

The moment the water soaked through him, the defibrillators screamed. Not the controlled whine from before—this was unstable, violent. Sparks exploded outward, crawling over his body, racing across the wet floor.

He convulsed.

Hard.

His back arched, limbs snapping in sharp, unnatural jerks. A sound tore out of him—not a scream. Something broken. Mechanical.

“Yeah,” I muttered, keeping the spray on him, careful not to step into the spreading water. “Not so fun on the receiving end, huh?”

The smell changed.

Burnt insulation. Burnt skin.

He shook harder—faster—then all at once—

Stopped.

Collapsed in a smoking heap.

The defibrillators slipped from his hands and hit the floor with a dull clatter.

Silence rushed back in.

I let the hose drop. Water kept running, pooling toward the drain.

“Moron,” I said, breath uneven.

I stepped around him carefully, watching for any twitch. Nothing.

Dead.

Good.

I moved back into the hallway.

Two bodies lay just outside.

Placed neatly side by side.

Too neatly.

I slowed.

Both had their throats cut. Clean lines. Matching. Wrists opened. Thighs too. No hesitation. No mess beyond what was necessary.

Drained completely.

Their skin had that pale, waxy look already.

Bloody Marry.

Had to be.

I was about to move on when I heard it.

A soft mechanical hum.

Down the hall, an elevator slid open with a quiet ding.

I tensed, knife up, expecting—

Nothing.

No one stepped out.

The inside was lit. Warm. Clean.

Inviting.

Too inviting.

Then the intercom crackled.

“The Gentleman,” the woman’s voice said, smooth as ever, “you have qualified to move to the upper level.”

I stared at the elevator for a second.

“Of course I have,” I muttered. “Why wouldn’t I?”

No answer.

Just that quiet hum.

I exhaled slowly.

“Yeah,” I said, more to myself than anyone else. “Let’s see how deep this goes.”

I stepped inside.

The doors slid shut behind me.

 

The upper floor was… different.

Not subtle. Not gradual.

Immediate.

The concrete was gone. No cracks, no stains, no damp creeping through the seams. The walls were smooth, painted in deep, expensive colors that didn’t belong in a place like this—burgundy, forest green, muted gold. Real paintings hung in heavy frames. Not prints. Not copies. The kind of art you don’t touch unless someone rich tells you it’s okay.

The lighting was warm. Steady. No flicker.

It didn’t feel abandoned.

It felt… maintained.

Like someone cared.

Like someone had been here recently—maybe still was.

The shift made my skin crawl more than the blood and rot downstairs ever did. Down there, everything made sense. This didn’t.

This felt curated.

Like a set.

Like stepping out of a nightmare and into something that knew it was watching you back.

I moved down the hallway, slower now, knife still in my hand. The carpet under my boots muffled my steps—thick, soft, the kind that swallows sound. Every door I passed was closed. Clean. Polished handles. No signs of forced entry. No signs of anything.

At the end, the hall opened into a dining room. Large one.

A long, dark wooden table stretched through the center like a spine. Set for a full house—plates, glasses, silverware laid out with surgical precision. No dust. No fingerprints. Everything exactly where it should be.

And the food.

Fresh.

Still steaming.

Meat, vegetables, sauces—rich, heavy smells that hit me all at once. Butter. Garlic. Something roasted. Something slow-cooked. My stomach reacted before my brain could catch up, tightening hard.

It didn’t belong here.

None of this did.

And yet—

Someone was already eating.

Bloody Marry sat halfway down the table, cutting into a piece of chicken like she had nowhere else to be. Calm. Relaxed. Dipping it into mashed potatoes, dragging it through gravy with slow, deliberate movements.

Domestic.

That’s what it looked like.

She looked up when she heard me.

Smiled.

“Hi,” she said, like we’d run into each other at a grocery store. “Long time no see.”

“Susanne,” I said, stepping in, keeping my knife low but ready. “Yeah. Been a while.”

Her eyes flicked over me—quick, clinical. Took in the blood, the shoulder, the chest.

“You look like shit,” she said.

“Feel worse.”

“Mm.” She nodded, like that checked out. “Sit. You’re dripping on the carpet.”

I glanced down. She wasn’t wrong.

I pulled out a chair across from her. The legs scraped softly against the floor as I sat.

“Hungry?” she asked, gesturing lightly to the spread.

“Starving,” I said.

That part wasn’t a lie.

I reached for the nearest plate—lobster, still warm, butter pooling at the bottom—and started eating.

For a minute, we didn’t talk.

Just the sound of cutlery. Breathing. The faint hum of something hidden in the walls.

“So,” she said eventually, dabbing her lips with a napkin, posture perfect, like she’d practiced this. “Just us now?”

“Looks like it.”

“Shame,” she murmured. “I was hoping for more… buildup.” She tilted her head slightly, eyes drifting somewhere past me. “Everyone went down so quickly.”

“Yeah,” I said, glancing around the room. “Wouldn’t want to disappoint the audience.”

A flicker of something crossed her face. Amusement. Or maybe irritation.

“Or the host,” I added.

Her gaze followed mine.

That’s when I noticed it.

A digital timer on the wall.

Counting down.

Two minutes.

“A grace period,” she said softly.

“Thoughtful.”

“Very.”

We kept eating.

Because of course we did.

“You know,” she said after a moment, almost absentmindedly, “I really do like you, Damien.”

“I know.”

“I mean it.” Her voice dipped just slightly. “You’re efficient. Clean. No theatrics unless necessary.” A faint smile. “Professional.”

“High praise,” I said.

A pause stretched between us.

“I’m sorry about this,” she added.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

The timer kept ticking.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One—

She moved.

Fast.

The fork left her hand in a blur—spinning, glinting—and slammed into my face just above my left eye.

“—shit!”

Pain detonated across my skull. I ripped it out on instinct, chair screeching backward as I shoved away from the table.

She was already moving.

Knife in hand.

Precise.

She drove it straight for my throat—

I kicked the chair up between us.

The blade punched through it like it was nothing. Wood splintered, exploding outward as the force carried through.

I grabbed one of the broken legs and swung.

Once.

It cracked against her face. Her head snapped sideways.

Twice.

Harder.

Blood sprayed, dark and sharp against the polished floor.

Third—

Her knee came up.

Straight into my crotch.

Everything went white.

I dropped, breath collapsing out of me in a broken, useless wheeze.

She was on me instantly.

Fingers driving toward my eyes.

“Stay still,” she whispered, almost gentle. Like she meant it.

I slammed my fist into her throat.

The sound was wet. Solid.

Her grip faltered—just enough.

I twisted, shoved her off, scrambling back, vision swimming, lungs trying to remember how to work.

“Should’ve stayed at the table,” I rasped.

She laughed.

It came out wrong. Wet. Half-choked.

Then she rushed me again.

No hesitation.

No pause.

I didn’t let her close the distance.

I stepped in and drove my foot into her face.

Once.

Twice.

Again.

And again.

Something gave. Bone, probably. The resistance changed—soft at first, then less so. Her body jerked under the impacts, hands twitching, trying to find purchase on nothing.

I kept going a second longer than I needed to.

When I finally stepped back, there wasn’t much left of her face to recognize.

Just a red goo of viscera.

I stood there, breathing hard, blood running down from my brow into my eye, from my shoulder, from my chest. Everything stung. Everything throbbed.

“...Sorry, Susanne,” I said quietly. “You were my favorite.”

The room answered with silence.

Then—

A section of the far wall slid open.

Smooth. Quiet. Like it had always been meant to.

“Congratulations, The Gentleman,” the voice from the intercom said, calm as ever. “Mr. Z will see you now.”

I stared at the opening for a second.

Then I moved.

—

The room beyond was colder.

Not in temperature.

In feeling.

Screens covered the walls. Dozens. Maybe more. Each showing a different angle of the complex—hallways, rooms, corners I didn’t remember passing. Some feeds were still.

Some weren’t.

“Figures,” I muttered.

Behind them, server racks stretched in neat rows. Lights blinking in steady patterns. Quiet. Efficient. Alive in that low, humming way machines have.

At the center of it all—

A bed.

An old man lay in it, swallowed by tubes and wires. Machines breathed for him. Monitors tracked what little there was left to track. His body looked like it had already started leaving.

A nurse stood beside him. Still. Watching.

I pulled the photo from the envelope, glanced down at it, then back at the man.

Same face.

Just… worn down to the frame.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked, stepping closer.

His eyes moved.

Slow.

They found me.

“My legacy, son,” he rasped. “Soon to be yours.”

I looked back at the screens. The servers. The layout.

Pieces started clicking into place.

“...You run it,” I said. “Dread.it.”

A smile pulled at his lips. It didn’t look comfortable.

“Our craft,” he whispered, “finally recognized for what it is.” A shallow breath. “An art form. Given reach… beyond imagination.”

Our craft.

My gaze drifted up.

The wall above his bed was covered in symbols.

Carved. Painted. Etched.

I knew them. Anyone in proffession  would.

My stomach tightened.

“No way,” I said under my breath. “You’re—”

He chuckled.

It turned into a cough that shook his whole body.

“I was,” he said. “Once.”

Mr. Z…

The Zodiac Killer.

“I haven’t been able to… perform,” he continued, voice thinning, “for quite some time.”

“Why me?” I asked. “You didn’t drag me through all that just to hand me twelve million.”

“No,” he said. “I needed a successor.”

Something in my chest went still.

“You,” he went on, eyes locked on mine, “are the most worthy.”

Silence stretched across the room.

“Before that,” he added, shifting his gaze slightly toward the nurse, “one last commission.”

She hesitated.

“Are you sure, master?” she asked quietly.

“It’s time, Anna,” he said. “This is how it’s supposed to be.”

Her throat moved as she swallowed.

Then she nodded.

“It was an honor.”

She handed me a box.

Small. Clean. Deliberate.

I opened it.

A gun.

Polished. Balanced. Almost ceremonial.

I stared at it for a second.

I don’t use guns.

Too distant.

Too easy.

But this—

This wasn’t about preference.

I picked it up.

Walked to the bed.

He didn’t look away.

“Do it properly,” he said.

So I did.

One shot.

Clean.

—

And that’s how I became the new head of Dread.it.

Funny, right?

All that time, I thought I was just playing the game.

Turns out I was the audition.

I’m telling you all of this because things are about to change.

We’re relaunching.

Expanding.

Reaching further than we ever have before.

New systems. New ideas.

A new audience.

You’re all welcome to join.

Bring your friends. Your family.

The more, the merrier.

And to those of you thinking you’re going to stop us—

Please.

Try.

Anyone in my line of work knows, it’s always more fun when the prey fights back.

I could see nothing beyond the red wall of sand.

Crimson lightning clawed through the storm in violent flashes, turning the desert into a negative image of itself for split seconds at a time. The rest was noise. Sand hammering the chassis. Metal groaning beneath the wind. Loose sheet metal rattling hard enough to tear free at any moment.

Somewhere far beyond all that came the low, dying growl of thunder.

The radioactive sandstorm had curved off its forecasted route and slammed straight into me.

That’s what happens when your weather predictions rely on astronomical scraps scribbled down five thousand years ago by priests staring at the stars through opium smoke.

I’d been driving blind through this hell long enough to lose all sense of direction. East, west, north—it was all just red now.

Eventually I eased my foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop.

Probably the dumbest thing you could do in a storm like this.

Then again, continuing to drive wasn’t exactly genius either.

The engine coughed beneath me like a dying smoker. Every vehicle left in this world sounded sick. Mine especially.

The car had once belonged to at least three different owners and two different manufacturers. Soviet frame. Military-grade filtration unit. Doors ripped from some civilian transport. Half the dashboard held together with copper wire and prayer strips dedicated to gods nobody believed in until the world ended.

Outside, the storm screamed louder.

I pulled the map from my satchel.

The parchment crackled in my hands. The drawings on it were painfully crude—crooked pyramids, uneven symbols, landmarks sketched with the confidence of a drunk child.

But the map had come directly from the palace.

Drawn by the Pharaoh herself.

And I wasn’t brave enough—or suicidal enough—to criticize the God-Queen of New Cairo.

When Pharaoh Menehmet summoned you, you didn’t refuse.

You didn’t complain.

You bowed low enough for your forehead to touch the floor and prayed she stayed in a merciful mood.

The Henty-she had arrived before sunrise. Royal guards wrapped in black linen and bronze plating, faces hidden behind jackal masks with glowing blue lenses. They dragged me from bed without explanation and marched me through the waking streets of New Cairo.

Not that explanations were common in the presence of gods.

The palace rose from the center of the city like ancient history welded onto the corpse of the future. Neon hieroglyphs burned across towering obelisks. Massive statues watched over rusted slums with cracked stone faces. The rich burned incense while the poor burned tires to stay warm.

The guards shoved me onto my knees before the throne.

The royal speaker stepped forward immediately, robes sweeping across polished stone.

“Behold Menehmet, first of her name, Daughter of Amun, God-Queen of New Cairo, Lady Of the Two Lands, The chosen of The Sun,—”

I stopped listening after that.

By the time he finished, my knees were killing me.

“And before her grace kneels her faithful servant,” he continued, “the Medjay Aaron Qaswar.”

“I’ve known her majesty since she was born,” I muttered. “Can we skip this part?”

“How dare—”

“Leave us,” Menehmet said calmly.

The speaker froze mid-breath.

Even kneeling, I could see the fury behind his painted eyes. But he obeyed. The servants withdrew first, followed by the Henty-she. Their heavy boots echoed through the chamber until the throne room fell silent.

Menehmet leaned lazily against her throne, gold jewelry glimmering in the firelight. She was barely nineteen, yet people spoke to her with the kind of fear reserved for ancient things buried beneath the earth.

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” I said.

“You tend to have that effect on people, Aaron.”

A faint smile touched her lips.

“Not everyone sees past your rough exterior the way I do.”

“That why you dragged me across the city before sunrise? To appreciate my soft interior?”

“Not today, Aaron. I called for you because there is something I want retrieved.”

“I’m a Medjay, not an errand boy.”

“You are whatever I require you to be.”

Her smile widened slightly.

“But don’t worry. There will be plenty of opportunities for violence and heroic deaths along the way.”

“Comforting.”

She handed me the map.

“What you seek lies here. A necropolis abandoned long before New Cairo existed.”

“You’re sending me into a tomb.”

“I’m sending you after something that does not belong there.”

“That narrows it down.”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

Her eyes drifted across the throne room, distant and thoughtful.

“Bring it back to me. I think it will liven this place up nicely.”

“You don’t even know what it is, do you?”

“No,” she admitted, sounding almost amused. “Which is exactly why I want it.”

Then she waved her hand dismissively.

“Now go. Time wastes itself far too easily outside these walls.”

 

The storm howled louder outside my car, dragging me back to the present.

Another flash of crimson lightning split the sky.

The vehicle shuddered violently as wind slammed against it. The filtration unit wheezed in protest. One of the cracks in the windshield spread a little farther.

The old monster wasn’t going to survive much more of this.

I tightened my grip on the wheel.

“Fuck it.”

I slammed my foot onto the gas and drove blind into the storm.

For several minutes there was nothing except red static and shrieking wind.

Then another sound crawled through the chaos.

At first I thought the engine was finally dying. A low mechanical whine buried beneath the thunder.

Then it grew louder.

Multiple engines.

Overworked. Abused. Running on fuel never meant for them.

Raiders.

A burst of flame ignited somewhere to my right.

Then another to my left.

Shapes emerged from the crimson haze like demons clawing out of hell itself. Headlights wrapped in metal cages. Exhaust pipes vomiting blue fire into the storm.

One of the vehicles slammed into my side hard.

I caught a glimpse of the driver through cracked welding goggles and a filthy gas mask. Hairless scalp. Chalk-white skin. Eyes twitching with manic energy.

Raiders alright.

And not the disciplined kind either.

Sons of the Sun maybe?

Definitely high on Blue Lotus. Nobody sane scavenged inside a radioactive sandstorm.

Their vehicles barely qualified as cars anymore. Rusted skeletons welded together from scrap metal, rebar, military plating, temple icons. One had animal bones hanging from chains across the hood. Another had strips of human skin nailed to the doors, fluttering wildly in the wind.

Hideous machines.

But in their own deranged way, almost stylish.

The vehicle on my left rammed me again.

Then the one on my right.

They pinned me between them like vultures stripping apart a carcass.

Metal screamed against metal.

Sparks vanished instantly into the storm.

Then came the thudding overhead.

Boots.

“Shit.”

One raider landed on the roof, crouched low against the wind. Another smashed onto the hood, clawing at the windshield while a third jammed a hooked blade into the passenger door.

The one at the door got in first.

I drove my knife through the gap before he could force it open fully.

Hot blood sprayed across my hand.

He stumbled backward into the storm and vanished instantly into the red.

A machete punched through the roof an inch from my face.

I swerved violently.

The lunatic on the windshield snarled behind his mask and began hammering the glass with a metal pipe.

I slammed the brakes.

His body launched off the hood.

A second later I felt the tires bounce over him.

Still one above me.

The bastard had buried his machete deep into the roof to anchor himself in place. The blade rattled overhead every time the wind hit us.

I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the handgun.

Guns were almost extinct now. This one had been a gift from Menehmet shortly after she inherited the throne.

I fired once through the roof.

The gunshot deafened me inside the cramped cabin.

Something heavy rolled off the vehicle.

Then the storm flashed bright crimson.

To my left, lightning began crawling across the sand in branching veins of red-white energy.

The kind that turned flesh into charcoal and fused metal into glass.

I smiled.

Then slammed my car sideways into the raider beside me.

The impact shoved his vehicle directly into the forming electrical trail.

For half a second the world turned white.

Lightning swallowed the car whole.

Metal twisted.

The engine exploded.

Then there was nothing left except burning wreckage tumbling through the storm.

Just me and the last one now.

I pulled alongside him, wanting this finished before the desert killed us both.

The bastard leaned halfway out his window with a spear in hand.

“Really?” I muttered.

He thrust downward.

The spear punched through my front tire.

The steering wheel ripped violently from my hands.

The car lost traction instantly.

Then the storm caught it broadside.

One moment I was driving.

The next the world flipped.

Metal screamed around me as the vehicle rolled across the dunes. My shoulder slammed against the door hard enough to numb my arm. Glass burst inward. The engine died somewhere during the chaos.

Then came silence.

Not true silence.

Just that muffled roar you hear after surviving something that should’ve killed you.

I dragged myself through the shattered window and collapsed into the sand, coughing blood and dust into my scarf.

Nearby, the raider’s vehicle skidded to a stop.

Its door creaked open.

The man stepped out slowly, spear in hand.

The storm wrapped around him like a living thing. Gas mask lenses glowing red beneath the lightning overhead.

He walked toward me without hurry.

Certain he’d already won.

I waited until he raised the spear.

Then I cut his legs out from under him.

We crashed into the sand together, grunting and slipping against the dunes as we fought for control of the weapon. He was stronger than he looked. His fingers forced the spear closer and closer toward my throat.

I drove my boot between his legs as hard as I could.

He jerked violently.

The scream was still forming in his throat when I shoved the spear upward.

The blade punched through the bottom of his jaw and out the back of his skull.

He twitched once.

Then went limp.

I lay there breathing hard, staring up into the red storm overhead.

Then another lightning strike hit nearby.

The blast hit like a hammer from god.

Heat swallowed me whole.

And the world went black.

 

I woke to the smell of incense and ointment.

Canvas walls swayed gently around me.

A tent.

My body felt heavy. Burned. Every breath scraped against my ribs.

A young woman sat beside me grinding herbs into a bowl. Dark curls partially hidden beneath a linen scarf. Steady hands. Focused eyes.

When she noticed I was awake, she froze.

For a moment we simply stared at each other.

Then she stood abruptly.

“Father,” she called outside. “He’s awake.”

A few moments later an old man entered the tent.

Thin. Weathered. Wrapped in dusty robes. His beard had gone almost entirely gray, but warmth still lived in his eyes.

“You gave us quite the scare, young man,” he said. “My Fatima wasn’t sure you’d wake at all. Seems I won that bet.”

He smiled.

A genuine smile.

Rare enough nowadays to feel almost unnatural.

“Name’s Khalid,” he said as he sat beside me. “What’s yours, Medjay?”

“Aaron,” I managed. My throat felt like broken glass. “Aaron Qaswar.”

“Easy now.”

Khalid carefully helped me sit upright before handing me a cup of water.

“Slowly. No rush.”

The tent smelled of dried herbs, old canvas, and sweet smoke drifting from a bronze burner near the entrance. Strings of charms hung from the support poles, clinking softly whenever the desert wind touched the fabric walls. A lantern overhead painted everything in warm amber light that felt impossibly gentle after the endless crimson fury outside.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“The Wandering Oasis.”

I frowned.

“Pretty sure I’ve crossed these regions before. Never seen an oasis anywhere near here.”

Khalid chuckled quietly while pouring tea into two tiny cups.

“It isn’t called the Wandering Oasis for no reason.” He handed one to me carefully. “Its geographical coordinates are… inconsistent.”

“Inconsistent.”

“Yes. Sometimes it rests near the Glass Dunes. Sometimes near the old coastlines. Once we woke beside the ruins of Luxor Station.”

He shrugged lightly.

“The Oasis goes where it wishes.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

Khalid sipped his tea calmly.

“Have you witnessed many things in the desert that do?”

Fair point.

Outside the tent I could hear distant machinery groaning beneath repair work. Somewhere nearby, strings of metal charms rattled softly in the wind.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Lived?” Khalid smiled faintly. “No one lives in the Wandering Oasis. We travel with it. We care for it. And in return… it cares for us.”

I took a careful sip of the tea.

Bitter. Heavy with mint and something medicinal underneath.

Pain immediately flared through my ribs.

Then memory came rushing back.

The storm.

The raiders.

The crash.

“My car,” I muttered. “What happened to my car?”

“Fatima is tending to it,” Khalid said. “Though much like yourself, it will require some time before it is fit for the road again.”

“That bad?”

“You rolled a vehicle through a radioactive lightning storm.”

He gave me an amused look.

“You are fortunate to still possess all your limbs.”

“Debatable.”

I reached for my satchel beside the cot. Relief washed through me when I felt the map still inside.

I unfolded it carefully and handed it to him.

“You know this place?”

Khalid’s expression changed the moment he saw the markings.

“The Bene Nefertite necropolis,” he said quietly.

So the Pharaoh’s map pointed somewhere real after all.

“You know how to get there?”

“Of course.” Khalid traced one of the crude lines with his finger. “In a healthy vehicle, perhaps half a day from here.”

“But?”

He glanced up at me.

“But it lies within an active Ghul-Zone.”

I stared at him for a few seconds.

Then a long, exhausted sigh escaped me.

“Fuck…” I rubbed both hands over my face. “Of course it does.”

Khalid remained silent.

A Ghul-Zone.

Wonderful.

The desert was littered with them now. Places where radiation, death, and whatever invisible poison had seeped into the world finally stopped pretending to obey natural law. Entire villages vanished inside them overnight. Sometimes they returned days later.

Usually screaming.

Sometimes not human anymore.

Outside, the wind had softened into a low whisper against the canvas walls.

“I don’t think the God-Queen is the patient type,” I muttered eventually. “Don’t exactly have the luxury of waiting this out.”

“Be that as it may,” Khalid replied calmly, “your vehicle is broken, your body is barely holding together, and the storm still prowls outside.”

Then he smiled warmly.

“So whether you like it or not, Medjay… tonight you will stay here. You will drink tea. You will rest. And you will endure the unbearable horror of friendly conversation.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

The old man had a presence to him. The kind that disarmed you before you realized it was happening.

I kept telling myself to stay guarded. Men survived longer that way in the wasteland. Loose tongues eventually got slit.

But the hours slipped by, and somehow I kept talking anyway.

About my mother dying from lung rot when I was a child.

About fighting for scraps in the alleys of New Cairo before the Medjay recruited me.

About the first man I killed.

I still remembered his face sometimes.

Khalid never interrupted. Never pushed. He simply listened while slowly refilling our tea like we had all the time in the world.

At some point I even admitted what most people would consider my greatest shame.

“I don’t trust cats,” I confessed.

Khalid blinked.

Then nearly spilled his tea laughing.

“You serve the Pharaoh of New Cairo,” he wheezed, “descendant of gods and ruler of the desert… yet you fear cats?”

“They stare too long.”

“That may be the funniest thing I’ve heard in years.”

“I’m serious.”

“That somehow makes it even better.”

I leaned back against the cushions with a tired groan.

“I’ve survived raiders, mutants, storms, cultists, and royal politics. Why would I willingly invite another apex predator into my home?”

Khalid laughed harder at that.

Real laughter.

Not the nervous kind people forced out nowadays to prove they still remembered how.

And for a little while, beneath the lantern glow while the desert whispered outside the tent walls, the wasteland almost felt human again.

 

I woke to the feeling of a hand pressing lightly against my chest.

Instinct took over before thought did.

My hand shot upward, grabbing the wrist hard enough to make the other person gasp. My eyes snapped open. Heart pounding. Half-awake and already reaching for the knife beneath my pillow that wasn’t there.

Fatima stared down at me.

Pain flickered briefly across her face where I held her wrist, but her expression remained impressively deadpan considering the circumstances.

“I was dressing your wounds,” she said flatly. “They tend to get infected easily out there in the desert.”

I immediately let go.

“Sorry,” I muttered, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Reflex.”

“No kidding.”

Morning light glowed softly through the tent walls now, replacing the warm lantern light from the night before.

Fatima returned to wrapping fresh bandages around my ribs with practiced precision.

“You move around a lot in your sleep,” she said.

“Occupational hazard.”

“You also talk.”

“You threatened someone named Abbas with a shovel.”

I frowned.

“Abbas knew what he did.”

That finally earned a small laugh from her.

Up close, I noticed details I’d missed before. Thin scars crossing her hands. Tiny burn marks along her forearms. Grease permanently worked into the lines of her fingers.

Mechanic’s hands.

Capable hands.

“Your car’s almost ready,” she said after tightening the final bandage. “Just finishing a few things.”

“That fast?”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No, impressed.”

A faint trace of pride appeared in her expression.

“You should be.”

„Ill make sure to repay you one day.“

“No need. Dad always says small kindness matters in cruel places.”

“Sounds like him.”

For a moment neither of us spoke.

The Oasis outside had already begun waking up. Distant voices drifted through the canvas. Machinery clanked somewhere nearby. I could smell bread baking mixed with engine oil and incense smoke.

Then a thought slowly clicked into place.

“Was Khalid with you since you were little?”

Fatima blinked.

“What?”

“Khalid,” I clarified carefully. “Was he the one who raised you?”

She looked genuinely confused.

“Well… yes. He’s my father.”

“I meant—”

I hesitated.

“When did he adopt you?”

„How do you know he adopted me? Im fairly sure he didnt tell you that.“

“Well… I’ve never heard of a jinn fathering a human.”

Her eyes widened instantly.

Not offended.

Shocked.

“How did you know?”

“I’m a Medjay.”

I leaned back carefully against the cot.

“I’ve dealt with a few jinn before. Though admittedly, most of them are far less subtle than your father.”

Fatima glanced nervously toward the tent entrance.

“Relax,” I said. “None of my business. Your secret’s safe with me.”

She studied my face for a long moment, trying to decide whether I meant that.

Eventually she relaxed slightly.

Without another word, she reached into a satchel beside her and pulled something out on a wooden skewer.

A caramelized scorpion.

Its curled tail glistened beneath a layer of dark syrup.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

I stared at it.

“…Yeah.”

I pointed at the scorpion.

“But not that hungry.”

Fatima giggled softly.

Just enough to remind me she was still young beneath all the strange mystery surrounding her.

 

The Oasis looked completely different in daylight.

The tents stretched across the dunes in uneven circles around a pool of crystal-clear water that absolutely should not have existed in the middle of the wasteland. Palm trees swayed lazily despite there being almost no wind. Traders wandered between colorful canopies selling scavenged technology beside preserved spices and ancient charms carved from bone and copper.

Incense smoke drifted through the warm air alongside the smell of cooked meat and engine oil.

The entire place felt unreal, like a pocket dimension somehow safe from the desert enveloping it.

Fatima led me toward my vehicle.

And somehow—

Somehow the old thing looked better than it had in years.

The reinforced panels had actually been fitted properly instead of hammered into place by desperation and profanity. The filtration unit no longer sounded like it was trying to inhale gravel. Even the engine housing had been cleaned.

I stared at it in disbelief.

“You’re really good,” I admitted. “Where’d you learn all this?”

Fatima crouched beside the front wheel, tightening something with a wrench.

“Before Dad found me, I lived in the scrapyards for a while.”

She shrugged.

“Not much to do there besides take machines apart.”

“Sounds miserable.”

“It was.”

She said it casually.

That somehow made it worse.

After a moment she reached into her satchel again and pulled out another map.

This one looked infinitely better than Menehmet’s version. Proper landmarks. Accurate distances. Warnings scribbled carefully along the margins in Arabic.

“Dad told me to give you this,” she said. “Should guide you better than those royal scribbles.”

I laughed quietly.

“Probably wise. If the Pharaoh ever retires, cartography definitely isn’t an option for her.”

Fatima smiled faintly.

I folded the map carefully and tucked it into my coat.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

“For the map or the car?”

“Both.”

For a brief moment neither of us spoke.

Then she stepped back from the vehicle.

“Maybe we’ll meet again, Medjay.”

I looked at her standing there beneath the desert sun, dark curls moving gently in the wind, strange amber eyes catching the light like polished gold.

“Maybe,” I said.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition.

The engine roared to life instantly.

Not coughing.

Not choking.

Alive.

I grinned despite myself.

Then I shifted gears and drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis, leaving the Wandering Oasis behind in the sands.

 

It had been about four hours since I left the Wandering Oasis behind.

The desert changed gradually the farther I drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

The dunes darkened first.

Black mineral veins spread through the sand like rot beneath skin, shimmering faintly beneath the afternoon sun. Ruined pylons from the old world jutted from the wasteland at crooked angles, half-swallowed by centuries of storms. Some still carried scraps of melted wiring that hummed softly whenever the wind blew through them.

And somehow, against all logic, the car was running beautifully.

Whatever Fatima had done to it bordered on sorcery.

The engine no longer wheezed every few minutes like a dying animal. The steering responded instantly. Even the suspension handled the uneven dunes without sounding like the entire frame was about to collapse into spare parts.

The old machine practically purred beneath me.

I almost felt guilty driving it.

Almost.

I adjusted the scarf around my face and glanced toward the map resting on the passenger seat.

Close now.

Very close.

The necropolis should’ve been visible any minute.

That was when I noticed the vibration.

At first I assumed it was the engine.

A faint trembling beneath the wheels.

Then the dashboard began rattling.

Sand slid down nearby dunes in soft streams.

My stomach tightened immediately.

“No…”

The ground lurched violently beneath the car.

The steering wheel jerked in my hands hard enough to nearly send me sideways.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

The desert exploded.

Sand erupted upward beside the vehicle in towering waves as something massive burst from beneath the dunes to my left.

Then another.

Then two more.

Four shapes circled the car as I slammed the brakes.

Shed-beners.

Wonderful.

The things had once been human.

Probably.

Now they looked like nightmares designed by someone who hated both mankind and nature equally. Their lower halves resembled enormous black scorpions armored in chitinous plates scarred by radiation, old wounds, and patches of fungal growth. But rising from those monstrous bodies were elongated human torsos twisted into impossible shapes, ribs pressing visibly beneath stretched skin.

Their faces were the worst part.

Too human.

Clouded eyes rolled wildly in different directions while their mouths hung unnaturally wide, rows of broken teeth jutting outward at crooked angles. Bronze jewelry still clung to their bodies in places. Scraps of old robes fluttered from their armored backs.

Remnants of people.

That always made monsters worse.

One of them clicked its claws together and released a wet, shrieking hiss that sounded disturbingly close to laughter.

Another slowly raised its massive stinger over the car.

I grabbed my scimitar and kicked the door open.

The first creature lunged immediately.

Its claw slammed into the side of the vehicle hard enough to dent the metal inward. I rolled beneath the strike and slashed upward with the scimitar.

The curved blade bit deep into the pale flesh where human torso fused into scorpion body.

Black blood sprayed across the sand.

The Shed-bener screamed.

Not like an animal.

Like a person.

I hated that.

The second creature charged from my right with horrifying speed. I barely avoided the stinger crashing into the ground where my head had been a second earlier.

The impact cracked the hardened sand like stone.

I fired the handgun.

The first bullet punched into its human face.

The creature staggered backward violently—

—but didn’t stop.

“Of course that’s not enough.”

It shrieked and rushed me again.

I fired a second time.

The shot tore through one of its clustered eyes. Black fluid burst down its face as the creature reeled sideways, clawing at itself blindly.

Behind me came the sound of twisting metal.

Another Shed-bener slammed directly into the car hard enough to nearly flip it.

Metal screamed.

One of the creatures crawled across the roof with horrifying speed, claws scraping against the reinforced plating Fatima had installed only hours earlier.

I swung the scimitar just as the blinded creature lunged again.

The blade buried itself deep into its throat.

The creature convulsed violently.

Its stinger lashed through the air in frantic arcs before finally going still.

One down.

Three left.

Something slammed into me from behind.

I crashed hard into the sand, pain exploding through my ribs where Fatima’s fresh bandages sat beneath my clothes. My grip loosened on the sword.

A claw punched into the ground inches from my face, spraying sand across my eyes.

I scrambled backward just as a stinger slammed down where my chest had been moments earlier.

Poison hissed against the sand.

The second creature attacked from the side immediately after.

Too fast.

I raised the handgun and fired my last round directly into its open mouth.

The back of its skull exploded outward in a spray of shattered teeth and black fluid.

The creature collapsed twitching beside me.

Two down.

And now I was out of ammunition.

The remaining Shed-beners slowed their movements.

Watching me carefully.

Smarter than the others.

One blocked my path back to the car while the second circled behind me, massive stinger swaying slowly overhead like an executioner preparing the final blow.

I grabbed the scimitar from the sand and forced myself upright.

My breathing had gone ragged.

Everything hurt.

Blood soaked through the bandages beneath my coat.

The creatures noticed.

Predators always did.

One suddenly lunged low across the sand.

I barely sidestepped in time, but the second slammed into me immediately afterward.

The impact sent me crashing backward down the side of a dune.

The scimitar flew from my hand.

Before I could recover, a massive claw pinned my arm into the sand.

Pain shot through my shoulder.

The other creature approached slowly now.

Confident.

Its human face leaned closer toward mine.

I could smell rot on its breath.

Its cloudy eyes twitched wildly as if several thoughts were fighting for control behind them.

Then the creature smiled.

Not instinctively.

Deliberately.

The stinger rose high above me.

Ready to strike.

Then the desert roared.

The sound came from beneath the earth itself.

Deep.

Thunderous.

Ancient.

The dunes exploded upward around us.

The Shed-beners shrieked and turned too late.

Something colossal burst from beneath the sand.

A sandworm.

Its mouth opened impossibly wide, ringed with rotating rows of jagged teeth large enough to crush vehicles whole. Pale flesh glistened beneath armored hide as the thing surged upward like the desert itself had come alive.

The worm swallowed one of the Shed-beners instantly.

The second barely had time to scream before the jaws closed around it too.

Crunch.

The sound echoed across the dunes.

Then the worm vanished beneath the sand again almost as quickly as it had appeared, dragging both screaming creatures into the depths below.

The desert settled slowly.

Silence returned.

I remained flat on my back for several long seconds, breathing hard, staring at the empty dunes above me.

Then I slowly sat up.

Everyone with functioning survival instincts feared sandworms.

But that was the first and only time in my life I had ever been happy to see one.

 

I had finally reached the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

Dark clouds churned above the ruins in slow, unnatural spirals. Thick and swollen like bruises spreading across the sky. Crimson lightning pulsed silently within them, illuminating shattered pyramids and broken statues in brief flashes of red-white light.

Even from a distance, I could feel the Ghul-Zone pressing against reality like a wound that refused to close.

Vehicles didn’t last long inside active zones.

Electronics fried without warning. Engines stalled. Entire caravans vanished for days before reappearing fused together into piles of melted flesh and metal.

Sometimes the people inside were still alive.

I killed the engine.

For a moment I just sat there listening to the sudden silence.

Then I grabbed my torch, tightened the scarf around my face, and stepped out into the dead air.

Immediately, something felt wrong.

Not danger.

Absence.

No wind.

No insects.

No movement.

Just a low hum vibrating through the atmosphere itself.

The sky inside the zone had turned a diseased brown color. Veins of pale energy crawled soundlessly through the air between ruined structures, flickering like cracks spreading through glass. Every breath tasted metallic even through the scarf.

I kept my face covered.

No reason to inhale more of this place than necessary.

The necropolis stretched endlessly ahead of me.

Half-buried obelisks.

Collapsed mausoleums.

Streets lined with statues eroded into faceless things by centuries of radiation and sandstorms.

Then I noticed movement.

Far ahead, between the ruins, a line of figures shuffled silently through the streets.

Dozens of them.

Human silhouettes.

Some staggered unnaturally while others moved with eerie smoothness, like puppets dragged by invisible strings. Heads tilted at impossible angles. Limbs bent wrong.

Ghuls.

Or whatever remained after the Zone hollowed a person out and left only instinct wearing their skin.

Didn’t matter which.

Nothing could be done for them anymore.

Best to avoid them entirely.

I moved deeper into the necropolis carefully, one hand resting near the scimitar at my side.

The deeper I went, the stranger the place became.

The geometry shifted when I wasn’t looking directly at it.

Streets curved where they shouldn’t.

Passages looped back into themselves.

At one point I walked past the same headless statue three separate times despite never turning around.

The Zone liked to play games with people.

Usually the games ended with someone eating their own fingers while insisting they tasted like honey.

I ignored everything except the pyramid.

Small.

Black.

Resting at the center of the necropolis like a splinter buried beneath skin.

Nothing else mattered.

The closer I got to it, the stronger the pressure inside my skull became.

Not pain exactly.

More like invisible fingers pressing against my thoughts.

Digging.

Searching.

Then I heard her voice.

“Aaron…”

I froze instantly.

The necropolis vanished around me.

For one horrible moment I was a child again.

“Sweetie… don’t go.”

Slowly, I turned.

My mother stood behind me.

Exactly as I remembered her before the sickness took her.

Warm brown skin.

Thin frame.

Soft tired eyes.

Even the same faded blue scarf she used to wear around the apartment.

For a second I forgot where I was.

Forgot the Zone.

Forgot the pyramid.

Forgot everything.

She stepped closer and gently rested a hand against my shoulder.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered.

The pressure in my chest hurt worse than any wound I’d taken in years.

“I missed you too, Mum,” I admitted quietly.

And I meant it.

God, I meant it.

“You could stay,” she whispered softly. “You don’t have to keep hurting anymore.”

Something trembled in her voice.

“You don’t have to keep fighting.”

I stared at her silently.

And that was the problem.

My mother had never spoken like that.

Not even when she was dying.

Especially not then.

She used to tell me:

If the world wants you dead, make it work for it.

This thing didn’t know that.

The smile on her face twitched slightly.

Just slightly.

But enough.

I sighed tiredly.

Then I drew the scimitar and cut her head off.

The blade sliced clean through her neck.

The body collapsed instantly into the sand, twitching violently as thick black fluid spilled from the stump instead of blood.

The severed head hit the ground still smiling.

For a few seconds it continued staring up at me while the face slowly softened and melted like wet clay left in the sun.

Then it collapsed into rotten sludge.

I stared at the remains coldly.

“Pale imitation, asshole.”

The Zone hummed louder around me.

Almost disappointed.

Then I turned and entered the pyramid.

 

The air inside felt ancient.

Dry.

Claustrophobic.

My torchlight flickered across walls covered in faded hieroglyphs and newer markings scratched desperately over them by later explorers. Warnings mostly.

Prayers.

Names.

Somebody had carved:

IT KNOWS YOUR HEART

deep into one of the walls.

Farther down, another simply read:

DON’T LISTEN

The deeper I descended, the colder it became.

Dust coated everything thick enough to swallow footprints whole.

Occasionally I caught movement just beyond the torchlight.

Something shifting behind pillars.

Something crawling along ceilings.

I ignored it.

The Zone fed on attention.

Old bones cracked beneath my boots as I moved through stripped burial chambers and narrow corridors. Most of the tomb had been looted centuries ago. Broken jars and shattered coffins littered the floors.

Yet somehow the deeper chambers remained untouched.

That should’ve worried me more than it did.

Eventually the corridor opened into a massive circular chamber.

My footsteps echoed softly across the stone.

Tall pillars ringed the room, carved into the likenesses of forgotten gods whose faces had been deliberately chiseled away long ago. Ancient braziers still burned with weak green fire despite the absence of fuel.

At the center stood a massive stone sarcophagus covered in blackened gold markings.

I approached carefully.

No movement.

No sound.

Good enough.

I shoved the lid aside with a painful groan from my ribs.

Inside lay a dried corpse wrapped in ancient linen. Its skin stretched tightly against bone, mouth frozen open in a permanent scream.

For several seconds nothing happened.

I exhaled slowly.

“Sorry about this.”

I reached down to move the body aside.

The mummy grabbed my wrist.

Before I could react, it hurled me across the chamber hard enough to crack stone beneath my back.

Pain exploded through my ribs.

The creature rose from the sarcophagus with horrifying speed.

Its jaw unhinged wider than humanly possible as it released a shriek sharp enough to physically hurt. Dust rained from the ceiling. My torch nearly slipped from my hand.

“Oh, come on—”

The mummy lunged.

Far too fast.

I barely rolled aside before its claws punched deep grooves into the stone where my head had been moments earlier.

Up close I saw movement beneath the wrappings.

Thousands of tiny black insects crawling beneath the ancient linen like blood moving beneath skin.

I slashed with the scimitar.

The blade carved deep across its chest.

The creature barely reacted.

It hit me hard enough to send me skidding across the chamber again.

I instinctively raised the handgun and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Empty.

“Right,” I muttered. “Fantastic.”

The mummy shrieked again.

Then sprinted directly up the wall.

Its limbs twisted unnaturally as it crawled across the ceiling like some gigantic insect before dropping toward me.

I barely caught its arm mid-strike with the scimitar.

The impact nearly snapped my wrist.

The thing was impossibly strong.

Rotten linen wrapped around my arm as it forced me downward inch by inch. Its face hung inches from mine now while black beetles crawled in and out of its mouth and empty eye sockets.

And then it spoke.

Just one word.

In my mother’s voice.

“Aaron…”

That almost broke me more than the claws.

I slammed my forehead into its skull.

The creature staggered backward slightly.

Enough.

I kicked one of the burning braziers directly into its chest.

Flames erupted across the ancient wrappings instantly.

The mummy screamed.

Not in pain.

In fury.

It thrashed violently across the chamber, climbing pillars and walls while burning alive. Flaming insects poured from its body in thick streams, scattering across the floor around me.

The fire spread rapidly through the dry linen.

I grabbed a broken spear shaft near one of the tombs and waited.

The mummy launched itself at me one final time.

Burning.

Shrieking.

Its mouth stretched impossibly wide.

I sidestepped at the last second.

Then drove the spear clean through its torso and deep into the stone wall behind it.

The impact pinned the creature there.

The mummy writhed violently, claws scraping uselessly against stone as flames consumed more and more of its body.

Still screaming in my mother’s voice.

I stood there breathing hard for several seconds before finally turning back toward the sarcophagus.

Inside was…

Almost nothing.

No treasure.

No cursed weapon.

No ancient relic humming with forbidden power.

Just dust.

Bones.

And one tiny object resting near the bottom.

A small statue of a cat.

I stared at it.

Then slowly looked upward in exhausted disbelief.

“You cannot be serious, Menehmet…”

Behind me, the burning mummy continued shrieking against the wall.

I sighed deeply, grabbed the statue, and shoved it into my coat pocket.

Then I left the pyramid behind me.

 

A few hours later I was back inside the car, driving away from the necropolis while the storm clouds shrank slowly in the rearview mirror.

The tiny cat statue sat on the passenger seat beside me.

Another priceless royal mission accomplished.

All so the God-Queen of New Cairo could add another worthless piece of junk to her collection.

I glanced sideways at the statue.

Its tiny carved eyes stared back at me.

I immediately looked back at the road.

“…Still hate cats.”

The rules of our society make it very clear that there can only be one active vampire per territory.

I could see nothing beyond the red wall of sand.

Crimson lightning clawed through the storm in violent flashes, turning the desert into a negative image of itself for split seconds at a time. The rest was noise. Sand hammering the chassis. Metal groaning beneath the wind. Loose sheet metal rattling hard enough to tear free at any moment.

Somewhere far beyond all that came the low, dying growl of thunder.

The radioactive sandstorm had curved off its forecasted route and slammed straight into me.

That’s what happens when your weather predictions rely on astronomical scraps scribbled down five thousand years ago by priests staring at the stars through opium smoke.

I’d been driving blind through this hell long enough to lose all sense of direction. East, west, north—it was all just red now.

Eventually I eased my foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop.

Probably the dumbest thing you could do in a storm like this.

Then again, continuing to drive wasn’t exactly genius either.

The engine coughed beneath me like a dying smoker. Every vehicle left in this world sounded sick. Mine especially.

The car had once belonged to at least three different owners and two different manufacturers. Soviet frame. Military-grade filtration unit. Doors ripped from some civilian transport. Half the dashboard held together with copper wire and prayer strips dedicated to gods nobody believed in until the world ended.

Outside, the storm screamed louder.

I pulled the map from my satchel.

The parchment crackled in my hands. The drawings on it were painfully crude—crooked pyramids, uneven symbols, landmarks sketched with the confidence of a drunk child.

But the map had come directly from the palace.

Drawn by the Pharaoh herself.

And I wasn’t brave enough—or suicidal enough—to criticize the God-Queen of New Cairo.

When Pharaoh Menehmet summoned you, you didn’t refuse.

You didn’t complain.

You bowed low enough for your forehead to touch the floor and prayed she stayed in a merciful mood.

The Henty-she had arrived before sunrise. Royal guards wrapped in black linen and bronze plating, faces hidden behind jackal masks with glowing blue lenses. They dragged me from bed without explanation and marched me through the waking streets of New Cairo.

Not that explanations were common in the presence of gods.

The palace rose from the center of the city like ancient history welded onto the corpse of the future. Neon hieroglyphs burned across towering obelisks. Massive statues watched over rusted slums with cracked stone faces. The rich burned incense while the poor burned tires to stay warm.

The guards shoved me onto my knees before the throne.

The royal speaker stepped forward immediately, robes sweeping across polished stone.

“Behold Menehmet, first of her name, Daughter of Amun, God-Queen of New Cairo, Lady Of the Two Lands, The chosen of The Sun,—”

I stopped listening after that.

By the time he finished, my knees were killing me.

“And before her grace kneels her faithful servant,” he continued, “the Medjay Aaron Qaswar.”

“I’ve known her majesty since she was born,” I muttered. “Can we skip this part?”

“How dare—”

“Leave us,” Menehmet said calmly.

The speaker froze mid-breath.

Even kneeling, I could see the fury behind his painted eyes. But he obeyed. The servants withdrew first, followed by the Henty-she. Their heavy boots echoed through the chamber until the throne room fell silent.

Menehmet leaned lazily against her throne, gold jewelry glimmering in the firelight. She was barely nineteen, yet people spoke to her with the kind of fear reserved for ancient things buried beneath the earth.

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” I said.

“You tend to have that effect on people, Aaron.”

A faint smile touched her lips.

“Not everyone sees past your rough exterior the way I do.”

“That why you dragged me across the city before sunrise? To appreciate my soft interior?”

“Not today, Aaron. I called for you because there is something I want retrieved.”

“I’m a Medjay, not an errand boy.”

“You are whatever I require you to be.”

Her smile widened slightly.

“But don’t worry. There will be plenty of opportunities for violence and heroic deaths along the way.”

“Comforting.”

She handed me the map.

“What you seek lies here. A necropolis abandoned long before New Cairo existed.”

“You’re sending me into a tomb.”

“I’m sending you after something that does not belong there.”

“That narrows it down.”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

Her eyes drifted across the throne room, distant and thoughtful.

“Bring it back to me. I think it will liven this place up nicely.”

“You don’t even know what it is, do you?”

“No,” she admitted, sounding almost amused. “Which is exactly why I want it.”

Then she waved her hand dismissively.

“Now go. Time wastes itself far too easily outside these walls.”

 

The storm howled louder outside my car, dragging me back to the present.

Another flash of crimson lightning split the sky.

The vehicle shuddered violently as wind slammed against it. The filtration unit wheezed in protest. One of the cracks in the windshield spread a little farther.

The old monster wasn’t going to survive much more of this.

I tightened my grip on the wheel.

“Fuck it.”

I slammed my foot onto the gas and drove blind into the storm.

For several minutes there was nothing except red static and shrieking wind.

Then another sound crawled through the chaos.

At first I thought the engine was finally dying. A low mechanical whine buried beneath the thunder.

Then it grew louder.

Multiple engines.

Overworked. Abused. Running on fuel never meant for them.

Raiders.

A burst of flame ignited somewhere to my right.

Then another to my left.

Shapes emerged from the crimson haze like demons clawing out of hell itself. Headlights wrapped in metal cages. Exhaust pipes vomiting blue fire into the storm.

One of the vehicles slammed into my side hard.

I caught a glimpse of the driver through cracked welding goggles and a filthy gas mask. Hairless scalp. Chalk-white skin. Eyes twitching with manic energy.

Raiders alright.

And not the disciplined kind either.

Sons of the Sun maybe?

Definitely high on Blue Lotus. Nobody sane scavenged inside a radioactive sandstorm.

Their vehicles barely qualified as cars anymore. Rusted skeletons welded together from scrap metal, rebar, military plating, temple icons. One had animal bones hanging from chains across the hood. Another had strips of human skin nailed to the doors, fluttering wildly in the wind.

Hideous machines.

But in their own deranged way, almost stylish.

The vehicle on my left rammed me again.

Then the one on my right.

They pinned me between them like vultures stripping apart a carcass.

Metal screamed against metal.

Sparks vanished instantly into the storm.

Then came the thudding overhead.

Boots.

“Shit.”

One raider landed on the roof, crouched low against the wind. Another smashed onto the hood, clawing at the windshield while a third jammed a hooked blade into the passenger door.

The one at the door got in first.

I drove my knife through the gap before he could force it open fully.

Hot blood sprayed across my hand.

He stumbled backward into the storm and vanished instantly into the red.

A machete punched through the roof an inch from my face.

I swerved violently.

The lunatic on the windshield snarled behind his mask and began hammering the glass with a metal pipe.

I slammed the brakes.

His body launched off the hood.

A second later I felt the tires bounce over him.

Still one above me.

The bastard had buried his machete deep into the roof to anchor himself in place. The blade rattled overhead every time the wind hit us.

I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the handgun.

Guns were almost extinct now. This one had been a gift from Menehmet shortly after she inherited the throne.

I fired once through the roof.

The gunshot deafened me inside the cramped cabin.

Something heavy rolled off the vehicle.

Then the storm flashed bright crimson.

To my left, lightning began crawling across the sand in branching veins of red-white energy.

The kind that turned flesh into charcoal and fused metal into glass.

I smiled.

Then slammed my car sideways into the raider beside me.

The impact shoved his vehicle directly into the forming electrical trail.

For half a second the world turned white.

Lightning swallowed the car whole.

Metal twisted.

The engine exploded.

Then there was nothing left except burning wreckage tumbling through the storm.

Just me and the last one now.

I pulled alongside him, wanting this finished before the desert killed us both.

The bastard leaned halfway out his window with a spear in hand.

“Really?” I muttered.

He thrust downward.

The spear punched through my front tire.

The steering wheel ripped violently from my hands.

The car lost traction instantly.

Then the storm caught it broadside.

One moment I was driving.

The next the world flipped.

Metal screamed around me as the vehicle rolled across the dunes. My shoulder slammed against the door hard enough to numb my arm. Glass burst inward. The engine died somewhere during the chaos.

Then came silence.

Not true silence.

Just that muffled roar you hear after surviving something that should’ve killed you.

I dragged myself through the shattered window and collapsed into the sand, coughing blood and dust into my scarf.

Nearby, the raider’s vehicle skidded to a stop.

Its door creaked open.

The man stepped out slowly, spear in hand.

The storm wrapped around him like a living thing. Gas mask lenses glowing red beneath the lightning overhead.

He walked toward me without hurry.

Certain he’d already won.

I waited until he raised the spear.

Then I cut his legs out from under him.

We crashed into the sand together, grunting and slipping against the dunes as we fought for control of the weapon. He was stronger than he looked. His fingers forced the spear closer and closer toward my throat.

I drove my boot between his legs as hard as I could.

He jerked violently.

The scream was still forming in his throat when I shoved the spear upward.

The blade punched through the bottom of his jaw and out the back of his skull.

He twitched once.

Then went limp.

I lay there breathing hard, staring up into the red storm overhead.

Then another lightning strike hit nearby.

The blast hit like a hammer from god.

Heat swallowed me whole.

And the world went black.

 

I woke to the smell of incense and ointment.

Canvas walls swayed gently around me.

A tent.

My body felt heavy. Burned. Every breath scraped against my ribs.

A young woman sat beside me grinding herbs into a bowl. Dark curls partially hidden beneath a linen scarf. Steady hands. Focused eyes.

When she noticed I was awake, she froze.

For a moment we simply stared at each other.

Then she stood abruptly.

“Father,” she called outside. “He’s awake.”

A few moments later an old man entered the tent.

Thin. Weathered. Wrapped in dusty robes. His beard had gone almost entirely gray, but warmth still lived in his eyes.

“You gave us quite the scare, young man,” he said. “My Fatima wasn’t sure you’d wake at all. Seems I won that bet.”

He smiled.

A genuine smile.

Rare enough nowadays to feel almost unnatural.

“Name’s Khalid,” he said as he sat beside me. “What’s yours, Medjay?”

“Aaron,” I managed. My throat felt like broken glass. “Aaron Qaswar.”

“Easy now.”

Khalid carefully helped me sit upright before handing me a cup of water.

“Slowly. No rush.”

The tent smelled of dried herbs, old canvas, and sweet smoke drifting from a bronze burner near the entrance. Strings of charms hung from the support poles, clinking softly whenever the desert wind touched the fabric walls. A lantern overhead painted everything in warm amber light that felt impossibly gentle after the endless crimson fury outside.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“The Wandering Oasis.”

I frowned.

“Pretty sure I’ve crossed these regions before. Never seen an oasis anywhere near here.”

Khalid chuckled quietly while pouring tea into two tiny cups.

“It isn’t called the Wandering Oasis for no reason.” He handed one to me carefully. “Its geographical coordinates are… inconsistent.”

“Inconsistent.”

“Yes. Sometimes it rests near the Glass Dunes. Sometimes near the old coastlines. Once we woke beside the ruins of Luxor Station.”

He shrugged lightly.

“The Oasis goes where it wishes.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

Khalid sipped his tea calmly.

“Have you witnessed many things in the desert that do?”

Fair point.

Outside the tent I could hear distant machinery groaning beneath repair work. Somewhere nearby, strings of metal charms rattled softly in the wind.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Lived?” Khalid smiled faintly. “No one lives in the Wandering Oasis. We travel with it. We care for it. And in return… it cares for us.”

I took a careful sip of the tea.

Bitter. Heavy with mint and something medicinal underneath.

Pain immediately flared through my ribs.

Then memory came rushing back.

The storm.

The raiders.

The crash.

“My car,” I muttered. “What happened to my car?”

“Fatima is tending to it,” Khalid said. “Though much like yourself, it will require some time before it is fit for the road again.”

“That bad?”

“You rolled a vehicle through a radioactive lightning storm.”

He gave me an amused look.

“You are fortunate to still possess all your limbs.”

“Debatable.”

I reached for my satchel beside the cot. Relief washed through me when I felt the map still inside.

I unfolded it carefully and handed it to him.

“You know this place?”

Khalid’s expression changed the moment he saw the markings.

“The Bene Nefertite necropolis,” he said quietly.

So the Pharaoh’s map pointed somewhere real after all.

“You know how to get there?”

“Of course.” Khalid traced one of the crude lines with his finger. “In a healthy vehicle, perhaps half a day from here.”

“But?”

He glanced up at me.

“But it lies within an active Ghul-Zone.”

I stared at him for a few seconds.

Then a long, exhausted sigh escaped me.

“Fuck…” I rubbed both hands over my face. “Of course it does.”

Khalid remained silent.

A Ghul-Zone.

Wonderful.

The desert was littered with them now. Places where radiation, death, and whatever invisible poison had seeped into the world finally stopped pretending to obey natural law. Entire villages vanished inside them overnight. Sometimes they returned days later.

Usually screaming.

Sometimes not human anymore.

Outside, the wind had softened into a low whisper against the canvas walls.

“I don’t think the God-Queen is the patient type,” I muttered eventually. “Don’t exactly have the luxury of waiting this out.”

“Be that as it may,” Khalid replied calmly, “your vehicle is broken, your body is barely holding together, and the storm still prowls outside.”

Then he smiled warmly.

“So whether you like it or not, Medjay… tonight you will stay here. You will drink tea. You will rest. And you will endure the unbearable horror of friendly conversation.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

The old man had a presence to him. The kind that disarmed you before you realized it was happening.

I kept telling myself to stay guarded. Men survived longer that way in the wasteland. Loose tongues eventually got slit.

But the hours slipped by, and somehow I kept talking anyway.

About my mother dying from lung rot when I was a child.

About fighting for scraps in the alleys of New Cairo before the Medjay recruited me.

About the first man I killed.

I still remembered his face sometimes.

Khalid never interrupted. Never pushed. He simply listened while slowly refilling our tea like we had all the time in the world.

At some point I even admitted what most people would consider my greatest shame.

“I don’t trust cats,” I confessed.

Khalid blinked.

Then nearly spilled his tea laughing.

“You serve the Pharaoh of New Cairo,” he wheezed, “descendant of gods and ruler of the desert… yet you fear cats?”

“They stare too long.”

“That may be the funniest thing I’ve heard in years.”

“I’m serious.”

“That somehow makes it even better.”

I leaned back against the cushions with a tired groan.

“I’ve survived raiders, mutants, storms, cultists, and royal politics. Why would I willingly invite another apex predator into my home?”

Khalid laughed harder at that.

Real laughter.

Not the nervous kind people forced out nowadays to prove they still remembered how.

And for a little while, beneath the lantern glow while the desert whispered outside the tent walls, the wasteland almost felt human again.

 

I woke to the feeling of a hand pressing lightly against my chest.

Instinct took over before thought did.

My hand shot upward, grabbing the wrist hard enough to make the other person gasp. My eyes snapped open. Heart pounding. Half-awake and already reaching for the knife beneath my pillow that wasn’t there.

Fatima stared down at me.

Pain flickered briefly across her face where I held her wrist, but her expression remained impressively deadpan considering the circumstances.

“I was dressing your wounds,” she said flatly. “They tend to get infected easily out there in the desert.”

I immediately let go.

“Sorry,” I muttered, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Reflex.”

“No kidding.”

Morning light glowed softly through the tent walls now, replacing the warm lantern light from the night before.

Fatima returned to wrapping fresh bandages around my ribs with practiced precision.

“You move around a lot in your sleep,” she said.

“Occupational hazard.”

“You also talk.”

“You threatened someone named Abbas with a shovel.”

I frowned.

“Abbas knew what he did.”

That finally earned a small laugh from her.

Up close, I noticed details I’d missed before. Thin scars crossing her hands. Tiny burn marks along her forearms. Grease permanently worked into the lines of her fingers.

Mechanic’s hands.

Capable hands.

“Your car’s almost ready,” she said after tightening the final bandage. “Just finishing a few things.”

“That fast?”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No, impressed.”

A faint trace of pride appeared in her expression.

“You should be.”

„Ill make sure to repay you one day.“

“No need. Dad always says small kindness matters in cruel places.”

“Sounds like him.”

For a moment neither of us spoke.

The Oasis outside had already begun waking up. Distant voices drifted through the canvas. Machinery clanked somewhere nearby. I could smell bread baking mixed with engine oil and incense smoke.

Then a thought slowly clicked into place.

“Was Khalid with you since you were little?”

Fatima blinked.

“What?”

“Khalid,” I clarified carefully. “Was he the one who raised you?”

She looked genuinely confused.

“Well… yes. He’s my father.”

“I meant—”

I hesitated.

“When did he adopt you?”

„How do you know he adopted me? Im fairly sure he didnt tell you that.“

“Well… I’ve never heard of a jinn fathering a human.”

Her eyes widened instantly.

Not offended.

Shocked.

“How did you know?”

“I’m a Medjay.”

I leaned back carefully against the cot.

“I’ve dealt with a few jinn before. Though admittedly, most of them are far less subtle than your father.”

Fatima glanced nervously toward the tent entrance.

“Relax,” I said. “None of my business. Your secret’s safe with me.”

She studied my face for a long moment, trying to decide whether I meant that.

Eventually she relaxed slightly.

Without another word, she reached into a satchel beside her and pulled something out on a wooden skewer.

A caramelized scorpion.

Its curled tail glistened beneath a layer of dark syrup.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

I stared at it.

“…Yeah.”

I pointed at the scorpion.

“But not that hungry.”

Fatima giggled softly.

Just enough to remind me she was still young beneath all the strange mystery surrounding her.

 

The Oasis looked completely different in daylight.

The tents stretched across the dunes in uneven circles around a pool of crystal-clear water that absolutely should not have existed in the middle of the wasteland. Palm trees swayed lazily despite there being almost no wind. Traders wandered between colorful canopies selling scavenged technology beside preserved spices and ancient charms carved from bone and copper.

Incense smoke drifted through the warm air alongside the smell of cooked meat and engine oil.

The entire place felt unreal, like a pocket dimension somehow safe from the desert enveloping it.

Fatima led me toward my vehicle.

And somehow—

Somehow the old thing looked better than it had in years.

The reinforced panels had actually been fitted properly instead of hammered into place by desperation and profanity. The filtration unit no longer sounded like it was trying to inhale gravel. Even the engine housing had been cleaned.

I stared at it in disbelief.

“You’re really good,” I admitted. “Where’d you learn all this?”

Fatima crouched beside the front wheel, tightening something with a wrench.

“Before Dad found me, I lived in the scrapyards for a while.”

She shrugged.

“Not much to do there besides take machines apart.”

“Sounds miserable.”

“It was.”

She said it casually.

That somehow made it worse.

After a moment she reached into her satchel again and pulled out another map.

This one looked infinitely better than Menehmet’s version. Proper landmarks. Accurate distances. Warnings scribbled carefully along the margins in Arabic.

“Dad told me to give you this,” she said. “Should guide you better than those royal scribbles.”

I laughed quietly.

“Probably wise. If the Pharaoh ever retires, cartography definitely isn’t an option for her.”

Fatima smiled faintly.

I folded the map carefully and tucked it into my coat.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

“For the map or the car?”

“Both.”

For a brief moment neither of us spoke.

Then she stepped back from the vehicle.

“Maybe we’ll meet again, Medjay.”

I looked at her standing there beneath the desert sun, dark curls moving gently in the wind, strange amber eyes catching the light like polished gold.

“Maybe,” I said.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition.

The engine roared to life instantly.

Not coughing.

Not choking.

Alive.

I grinned despite myself.

Then I shifted gears and drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis, leaving the Wandering Oasis behind in the sands.

 

It had been about four hours since I left the Wandering Oasis behind.

The desert changed gradually the farther I drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

The dunes darkened first.

Black mineral veins spread through the sand like rot beneath skin, shimmering faintly beneath the afternoon sun. Ruined pylons from the old world jutted from the wasteland at crooked angles, half-swallowed by centuries of storms. Some still carried scraps of melted wiring that hummed softly whenever the wind blew through them.

And somehow, against all logic, the car was running beautifully.

Whatever Fatima had done to it bordered on sorcery.

The engine no longer wheezed every few minutes like a dying animal. The steering responded instantly. Even the suspension handled the uneven dunes without sounding like the entire frame was about to collapse into spare parts.

The old machine practically purred beneath me.

I almost felt guilty driving it.

Almost.

I adjusted the scarf around my face and glanced toward the map resting on the passenger seat.

Close now.

Very close.

The necropolis should’ve been visible any minute.

That was when I noticed the vibration.

At first I assumed it was the engine.

A faint trembling beneath the wheels.

Then the dashboard began rattling.

Sand slid down nearby dunes in soft streams.

My stomach tightened immediately.

“No…”

The ground lurched violently beneath the car.

The steering wheel jerked in my hands hard enough to nearly send me sideways.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

The desert exploded.

Sand erupted upward beside the vehicle in towering waves as something massive burst from beneath the dunes to my left.

Then another.

Then two more.

Four shapes circled the car as I slammed the brakes.

Shed-beners.

Wonderful.

The things had once been human.

Probably.

Now they looked like nightmares designed by someone who hated both mankind and nature equally. Their lower halves resembled enormous black scorpions armored in chitinous plates scarred by radiation, old wounds, and patches of fungal growth. But rising from those monstrous bodies were elongated human torsos twisted into impossible shapes, ribs pressing visibly beneath stretched skin.

Their faces were the worst part.

Too human.

Clouded eyes rolled wildly in different directions while their mouths hung unnaturally wide, rows of broken teeth jutting outward at crooked angles. Bronze jewelry still clung to their bodies in places. Scraps of old robes fluttered from their armored backs.

Remnants of people.

That always made monsters worse.

One of them clicked its claws together and released a wet, shrieking hiss that sounded disturbingly close to laughter.

Another slowly raised its massive stinger over the car.

I grabbed my scimitar and kicked the door open.

The first creature lunged immediately.

Its claw slammed into the side of the vehicle hard enough to dent the metal inward. I rolled beneath the strike and slashed upward with the scimitar.

The curved blade bit deep into the pale flesh where human torso fused into scorpion body.

Black blood sprayed across the sand.

The Shed-bener screamed.

Not like an animal.

Like a person.

I hated that.

The second creature charged from my right with horrifying speed. I barely avoided the stinger crashing into the ground where my head had been a second earlier.

The impact cracked the hardened sand like stone.

I fired the handgun.

The first bullet punched into its human face.

The creature staggered backward violently—

—but didn’t stop.

“Of course that’s not enough.”

It shrieked and rushed me again.

I fired a second time.

The shot tore through one of its clustered eyes. Black fluid burst down its face as the creature reeled sideways, clawing at itself blindly.

Behind me came the sound of twisting metal.

Another Shed-bener slammed directly into the car hard enough to nearly flip it.

Metal screamed.

One of the creatures crawled across the roof with horrifying speed, claws scraping against the reinforced plating Fatima had installed only hours earlier.

I swung the scimitar just as the blinded creature lunged again.

The blade buried itself deep into its throat.

The creature convulsed violently.

Its stinger lashed through the air in frantic arcs before finally going still.

One down.

Three left.

Something slammed into me from behind.

I crashed hard into the sand, pain exploding through my ribs where Fatima’s fresh bandages sat beneath my clothes. My grip loosened on the sword.

A claw punched into the ground inches from my face, spraying sand across my eyes.

I scrambled backward just as a stinger slammed down where my chest had been moments earlier.

Poison hissed against the sand.

The second creature attacked from the side immediately after.

Too fast.

I raised the handgun and fired my last round directly into its open mouth.

The back of its skull exploded outward in a spray of shattered teeth and black fluid.

The creature collapsed twitching beside me.

Two down.

And now I was out of ammunition.

The remaining Shed-beners slowed their movements.

Watching me carefully.

Smarter than the others.

One blocked my path back to the car while the second circled behind me, massive stinger swaying slowly overhead like an executioner preparing the final blow.

I grabbed the scimitar from the sand and forced myself upright.

My breathing had gone ragged.

Everything hurt.

Blood soaked through the bandages beneath my coat.

The creatures noticed.

Predators always did.

One suddenly lunged low across the sand.

I barely sidestepped in time, but the second slammed into me immediately afterward.

The impact sent me crashing backward down the side of a dune.

The scimitar flew from my hand.

Before I could recover, a massive claw pinned my arm into the sand.

Pain shot through my shoulder.

The other creature approached slowly now.

Confident.

Its human face leaned closer toward mine.

I could smell rot on its breath.

Its cloudy eyes twitched wildly as if several thoughts were fighting for control behind them.

Then the creature smiled.

Not instinctively.

Deliberately.

The stinger rose high above me.

Ready to strike.

Then the desert roared.

The sound came from beneath the earth itself.

Deep.

Thunderous.

Ancient.

The dunes exploded upward around us.

The Shed-beners shrieked and turned too late.

Something colossal burst from beneath the sand.

A sandworm.

Its mouth opened impossibly wide, ringed with rotating rows of jagged teeth large enough to crush vehicles whole. Pale flesh glistened beneath armored hide as the thing surged upward like the desert itself had come alive.

The worm swallowed one of the Shed-beners instantly.

The second barely had time to scream before the jaws closed around it too.

Crunch.

The sound echoed across the dunes.

Then the worm vanished beneath the sand again almost as quickly as it had appeared, dragging both screaming creatures into the depths below.

The desert settled slowly.

Silence returned.

I remained flat on my back for several long seconds, breathing hard, staring at the empty dunes above me.

Then I slowly sat up.

Everyone with functioning survival instincts feared sandworms.

But that was the first and only time in my life I had ever been happy to see one.

 

I had finally reached the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

Dark clouds churned above the ruins in slow, unnatural spirals. Thick and swollen like bruises spreading across the sky. Crimson lightning pulsed silently within them, illuminating shattered pyramids and broken statues in brief flashes of red-white light.

Even from a distance, I could feel the Ghul-Zone pressing against reality like a wound that refused to close.

Vehicles didn’t last long inside active zones.

Electronics fried without warning. Engines stalled. Entire caravans vanished for days before reappearing fused together into piles of melted flesh and metal.

Sometimes the people inside were still alive.

I killed the engine.

For a moment I just sat there listening to the sudden silence.

Then I grabbed my torch, tightened the scarf around my face, and stepped out into the dead air.

Immediately, something felt wrong.

Not danger.

Absence.

No wind.

No insects.

No movement.

Just a low hum vibrating through the atmosphere itself.

The sky inside the zone had turned a diseased brown color. Veins of pale energy crawled soundlessly through the air between ruined structures, flickering like cracks spreading through glass. Every breath tasted metallic even through the scarf.

I kept my face covered.

No reason to inhale more of this place than necessary.

The necropolis stretched endlessly ahead of me.

Half-buried obelisks.

Collapsed mausoleums.

Streets lined with statues eroded into faceless things by centuries of radiation and sandstorms.

Then I noticed movement.

Far ahead, between the ruins, a line of figures shuffled silently through the streets.

Dozens of them.

Human silhouettes.

Some staggered unnaturally while others moved with eerie smoothness, like puppets dragged by invisible strings. Heads tilted at impossible angles. Limbs bent wrong.

Ghuls.

Or whatever remained after the Zone hollowed a person out and left only instinct wearing their skin.

Didn’t matter which.

Nothing could be done for them anymore.

Best to avoid them entirely.

I moved deeper into the necropolis carefully, one hand resting near the scimitar at my side.

The deeper I went, the stranger the place became.

The geometry shifted when I wasn’t looking directly at it.

Streets curved where they shouldn’t.

Passages looped back into themselves.

At one point I walked past the same headless statue three separate times despite never turning around.

The Zone liked to play games with people.

Usually the games ended with someone eating their own fingers while insisting they tasted like honey.

I ignored everything except the pyramid.

Small.

Black.

Resting at the center of the necropolis like a splinter buried beneath skin.

Nothing else mattered.

The closer I got to it, the stronger the pressure inside my skull became.

Not pain exactly.

More like invisible fingers pressing against my thoughts.

Digging.

Searching.

Then I heard her voice.

“Aaron…”

I froze instantly.

The necropolis vanished around me.

For one horrible moment I was a child again.

“Sweetie… don’t go.”

Slowly, I turned.

My mother stood behind me.

Exactly as I remembered her before the sickness took her.

Warm brown skin.

Thin frame.

Soft tired eyes.

Even the same faded blue scarf she used to wear around the apartment.

For a second I forgot where I was.

Forgot the Zone.

Forgot the pyramid.

Forgot everything.

She stepped closer and gently rested a hand against my shoulder.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered.

The pressure in my chest hurt worse than any wound I’d taken in years.

“I missed you too, Mum,” I admitted quietly.

And I meant it.

God, I meant it.

“You could stay,” she whispered softly. “You don’t have to keep hurting anymore.”

Something trembled in her voice.

“You don’t have to keep fighting.”

I stared at her silently.

And that was the problem.

My mother had never spoken like that.

Not even when she was dying.

Especially not then.

She used to tell me:

If the world wants you dead, make it work for it.

This thing didn’t know that.

The smile on her face twitched slightly.

Just slightly.

But enough.

I sighed tiredly.

Then I drew the scimitar and cut her head off.

The blade sliced clean through her neck.

The body collapsed instantly into the sand, twitching violently as thick black fluid spilled from the stump instead of blood.

The severed head hit the ground still smiling.

For a few seconds it continued staring up at me while the face slowly softened and melted like wet clay left in the sun.

Then it collapsed into rotten sludge.

I stared at the remains coldly.

“Pale imitation, asshole.”

The Zone hummed louder around me.

Almost disappointed.

Then I turned and entered the pyramid.

 

The air inside felt ancient.

Dry.

Claustrophobic.

My torchlight flickered across walls covered in faded hieroglyphs and newer markings scratched desperately over them by later explorers. Warnings mostly.

Prayers.

Names.

Somebody had carved:

IT KNOWS YOUR HEART

deep into one of the walls.

Farther down, another simply read:

DON’T LISTEN

The deeper I descended, the colder it became.

Dust coated everything thick enough to swallow footprints whole.

Occasionally I caught movement just beyond the torchlight.

Something shifting behind pillars.

Something crawling along ceilings.

I ignored it.

The Zone fed on attention.

Old bones cracked beneath my boots as I moved through stripped burial chambers and narrow corridors. Most of the tomb had been looted centuries ago. Broken jars and shattered coffins littered the floors.

Yet somehow the deeper chambers remained untouched.

That should’ve worried me more than it did.

Eventually the corridor opened into a massive circular chamber.

My footsteps echoed softly across the stone.

Tall pillars ringed the room, carved into the likenesses of forgotten gods whose faces had been deliberately chiseled away long ago. Ancient braziers still burned with weak green fire despite the absence of fuel.

At the center stood a massive stone sarcophagus covered in blackened gold markings.

I approached carefully.

No movement.

No sound.

Good enough.

I shoved the lid aside with a painful groan from my ribs.

Inside lay a dried corpse wrapped in ancient linen. Its skin stretched tightly against bone, mouth frozen open in a permanent scream.

For several seconds nothing happened.

I exhaled slowly.

“Sorry about this.”

I reached down to move the body aside.

The mummy grabbed my wrist.

Before I could react, it hurled me across the chamber hard enough to crack stone beneath my back.

Pain exploded through my ribs.

The creature rose from the sarcophagus with horrifying speed.

Its jaw unhinged wider than humanly possible as it released a shriek sharp enough to physically hurt. Dust rained from the ceiling. My torch nearly slipped from my hand.

“Oh, come on—”

The mummy lunged.

Far too fast.

I barely rolled aside before its claws punched deep grooves into the stone where my head had been moments earlier.

Up close I saw movement beneath the wrappings.

Thousands of tiny black insects crawling beneath the ancient linen like blood moving beneath skin.

I slashed with the scimitar.

The blade carved deep across its chest.

The creature barely reacted.

It hit me hard enough to send me skidding across the chamber again.

I instinctively raised the handgun and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Empty.

“Right,” I muttered. “Fantastic.”

The mummy shrieked again.

Then sprinted directly up the wall.

Its limbs twisted unnaturally as it crawled across the ceiling like some gigantic insect before dropping toward me.

I barely caught its arm mid-strike with the scimitar.

The impact nearly snapped my wrist.

The thing was impossibly strong.

Rotten linen wrapped around my arm as it forced me downward inch by inch. Its face hung inches from mine now while black beetles crawled in and out of its mouth and empty eye sockets.

And then it spoke.

Just one word.

In my mother’s voice.

“Aaron…”

That almost broke me more than the claws.

I slammed my forehead into its skull.

The creature staggered backward slightly.

Enough.

I kicked one of the burning braziers directly into its chest.

Flames erupted across the ancient wrappings instantly.

The mummy screamed.

Not in pain.

In fury.

It thrashed violently across the chamber, climbing pillars and walls while burning alive. Flaming insects poured from its body in thick streams, scattering across the floor around me.

The fire spread rapidly through the dry linen.

I grabbed a broken spear shaft near one of the tombs and waited.

The mummy launched itself at me one final time.

Burning.

Shrieking.

Its mouth stretched impossibly wide.

I sidestepped at the last second.

Then drove the spear clean through its torso and deep into the stone wall behind it.

The impact pinned the creature there.

The mummy writhed violently, claws scraping uselessly against stone as flames consumed more and more of its body.

Still screaming in my mother’s voice.

I stood there breathing hard for several seconds before finally turning back toward the sarcophagus.

Inside was…

Almost nothing.

No treasure.

No cursed weapon.

No ancient relic humming with forbidden power.

Just dust.

Bones.

And one tiny object resting near the bottom.

A small statue of a cat.

I stared at it.

Then slowly looked upward in exhausted disbelief.

“You cannot be serious, Menehmet…”

Behind me, the burning mummy continued shrieking against the wall.

I sighed deeply, grabbed the statue, and shoved it into my coat pocket.

Then I left the pyramid behind me.

 

A few hours later I was back inside the car, driving away from the necropolis while the storm clouds shrank slowly in the rearview mirror.

The tiny cat statue sat on the passenger seat beside me.

Another priceless royal mission accomplished.

All so the God-Queen of New Cairo could add another worthless piece of junk to her collection.

I glanced sideways at the statue.

Its tiny carved eyes stared back at me.

I immediately looked back at the road.

“…Still hate cats.”

I could see nothing beyond the red wall of sand.

Crimson lightning clawed through the storm in violent flashes, turning the desert into a negative image of itself for split seconds at a time. The rest was noise. Sand hammering the chassis. Metal groaning beneath the wind. Loose sheet metal rattling hard enough to tear free at any moment.

Somewhere far beyond all that came the low, dying growl of thunder.

The radioactive sandstorm had curved off its forecasted route and slammed straight into me.

That’s what happens when your weather predictions rely on astronomical scraps scribbled down five thousand years ago by priests staring at the stars through opium smoke.

I’d been driving blind through this hell long enough to lose all sense of direction. East, west, north—it was all just red now.

Eventually I eased my foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop.

Probably the dumbest thing you could do in a storm like this.

Then again, continuing to drive wasn’t exactly genius either.

The engine coughed beneath me like a dying smoker. Every vehicle left in this world sounded sick. Mine especially.

The car had once belonged to at least three different owners and two different manufacturers. Soviet frame. Military-grade filtration unit. Doors ripped from some civilian transport. Half the dashboard held together with copper wire and prayer strips dedicated to gods nobody believed in until the world ended.

Outside, the storm screamed louder.

I pulled the map from my satchel.

The parchment crackled in my hands. The drawings on it were painfully crude—crooked pyramids, uneven symbols, landmarks sketched with the confidence of a drunk child.

But the map had come directly from the palace.

Drawn by the Pharaoh herself.

And I wasn’t brave enough—or suicidal enough—to criticize the God-Queen of New Cairo.

When Pharaoh Menehmet summoned you, you didn’t refuse.

You didn’t complain.

You bowed low enough for your forehead to touch the floor and prayed she stayed in a merciful mood.

The Henty-she had arrived before sunrise. Royal guards wrapped in black linen and bronze plating, faces hidden behind jackal masks with glowing blue lenses. They dragged me from bed without explanation and marched me through the waking streets of New Cairo.

Not that explanations were common in the presence of gods.

The palace rose from the center of the city like ancient history welded onto the corpse of the future. Neon hieroglyphs burned across towering obelisks. Massive statues watched over rusted slums with cracked stone faces. The rich burned incense while the poor burned tires to stay warm.

The guards shoved me onto my knees before the throne.

The royal speaker stepped forward immediately, robes sweeping across polished stone.

“Behold Menehmet, first of her name, Daughter of Amun, God-Queen of New Cairo, Lady Of the Two Lands, The chosen of The Sun,—”

I stopped listening after that.

By the time he finished, my knees were killing me.

“And before her grace kneels her faithful servant,” he continued, “the Medjay Aaron Qaswar.”

“I’ve known her majesty since she was born,” I muttered. “Can we skip this part?”

“How dare—”

“Leave us,” Menehmet said calmly.

The speaker froze mid-breath.

Even kneeling, I could see the fury behind his painted eyes. But he obeyed. The servants withdrew first, followed by the Henty-she. Their heavy boots echoed through the chamber until the throne room fell silent.

Menehmet leaned lazily against her throne, gold jewelry glimmering in the firelight. She was barely nineteen, yet people spoke to her with the kind of fear reserved for ancient things buried beneath the earth.

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” I said.

“You tend to have that effect on people, Aaron.”

A faint smile touched her lips.

“Not everyone sees past your rough exterior the way I do.”

“That why you dragged me across the city before sunrise? To appreciate my soft interior?”

“Not today, Aaron. I called for you because there is something I want retrieved.”

“I’m a Medjay, not an errand boy.”

“You are whatever I require you to be.”

Her smile widened slightly.

“But don’t worry. There will be plenty of opportunities for violence and heroic deaths along the way.”

“Comforting.”

She handed me the map.

“What you seek lies here. A necropolis abandoned long before New Cairo existed.”

“You’re sending me into a tomb.”

“I’m sending you after something that does not belong there.”

“That narrows it down.”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

Her eyes drifted across the throne room, distant and thoughtful.

“Bring it back to me. I think it will liven this place up nicely.”

“You don’t even know what it is, do you?”

“No,” she admitted, sounding almost amused. “Which is exactly why I want it.”

Then she waved her hand dismissively.

“Now go. Time wastes itself far too easily outside these walls.”

 

The storm howled louder outside my car, dragging me back to the present.

Another flash of crimson lightning split the sky.

The vehicle shuddered violently as wind slammed against it. The filtration unit wheezed in protest. One of the cracks in the windshield spread a little farther.

The old monster wasn’t going to survive much more of this.

I tightened my grip on the wheel.

“Fuck it.”

I slammed my foot onto the gas and drove blind into the storm.

For several minutes there was nothing except red static and shrieking wind.

Then another sound crawled through the chaos.

At first I thought the engine was finally dying. A low mechanical whine buried beneath the thunder.

Then it grew louder.

Multiple engines.

Overworked. Abused. Running on fuel never meant for them.

Raiders.

A burst of flame ignited somewhere to my right.

Then another to my left.

Shapes emerged from the crimson haze like demons clawing out of hell itself. Headlights wrapped in metal cages. Exhaust pipes vomiting blue fire into the storm.

One of the vehicles slammed into my side hard.

I caught a glimpse of the driver through cracked welding goggles and a filthy gas mask. Hairless scalp. Chalk-white skin. Eyes twitching with manic energy.

Raiders alright.

And not the disciplined kind either.

Sons of the Sun maybe?

Definitely high on Blue Lotus. Nobody sane scavenged inside a radioactive sandstorm.

Their vehicles barely qualified as cars anymore. Rusted skeletons welded together from scrap metal, rebar, military plating, temple icons. One had animal bones hanging from chains across the hood. Another had strips of human skin nailed to the doors, fluttering wildly in the wind.

Hideous machines.

But in their own deranged way, almost stylish.

The vehicle on my left rammed me again.

Then the one on my right.

They pinned me between them like vultures stripping apart a carcass.

Metal screamed against metal.

Sparks vanished instantly into the storm.

Then came the thudding overhead.

Boots.

“Shit.”

One raider landed on the roof, crouched low against the wind. Another smashed onto the hood, clawing at the windshield while a third jammed a hooked blade into the passenger door.

The one at the door got in first.

I drove my knife through the gap before he could force it open fully.

Hot blood sprayed across my hand.

He stumbled backward into the storm and vanished instantly into the red.

A machete punched through the roof an inch from my face.

I swerved violently.

The lunatic on the windshield snarled behind his mask and began hammering the glass with a metal pipe.

I slammed the brakes.

His body launched off the hood.

A second later I felt the tires bounce over him.

Still one above me.

The bastard had buried his machete deep into the roof to anchor himself in place. The blade rattled overhead every time the wind hit us.

I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the handgun.

Guns were almost extinct now. This one had been a gift from Menehmet shortly after she inherited the throne.

I fired once through the roof.

The gunshot deafened me inside the cramped cabin.

Something heavy rolled off the vehicle.

Then the storm flashed bright crimson.

To my left, lightning began crawling across the sand in branching veins of red-white energy.

The kind that turned flesh into charcoal and fused metal into glass.

I smiled.

Then slammed my car sideways into the raider beside me.

The impact shoved his vehicle directly into the forming electrical trail.

For half a second the world turned white.

Lightning swallowed the car whole.

Metal twisted.

The engine exploded.

Then there was nothing left except burning wreckage tumbling through the storm.

Just me and the last one now.

I pulled alongside him, wanting this finished before the desert killed us both.

The bastard leaned halfway out his window with a spear in hand.

“Really?” I muttered.

He thrust downward.

The spear punched through my front tire.

The steering wheel ripped violently from my hands.

The car lost traction instantly.

Then the storm caught it broadside.

One moment I was driving.

The next the world flipped.

Metal screamed around me as the vehicle rolled across the dunes. My shoulder slammed against the door hard enough to numb my arm. Glass burst inward. The engine died somewhere during the chaos.

Then came silence.

Not true silence.

Just that muffled roar you hear after surviving something that should’ve killed you.

I dragged myself through the shattered window and collapsed into the sand, coughing blood and dust into my scarf.

Nearby, the raider’s vehicle skidded to a stop.

Its door creaked open.

The man stepped out slowly, spear in hand.

The storm wrapped around him like a living thing. Gas mask lenses glowing red beneath the lightning overhead.

He walked toward me without hurry.

Certain he’d already won.

I waited until he raised the spear.

Then I cut his legs out from under him.

We crashed into the sand together, grunting and slipping against the dunes as we fought for control of the weapon. He was stronger than he looked. His fingers forced the spear closer and closer toward my throat.

I drove my boot between his legs as hard as I could.

He jerked violently.

The scream was still forming in his throat when I shoved the spear upward.

The blade punched through the bottom of his jaw and out the back of his skull.

He twitched once.

Then went limp.

I lay there breathing hard, staring up into the red storm overhead.

Then another lightning strike hit nearby.

The blast hit like a hammer from god.

Heat swallowed me whole.

And the world went black.

 

I woke to the smell of incense and ointment.

Canvas walls swayed gently around me.

A tent.

My body felt heavy. Burned. Every breath scraped against my ribs.

A young woman sat beside me grinding herbs into a bowl. Dark curls partially hidden beneath a linen scarf. Steady hands. Focused eyes.

When she noticed I was awake, she froze.

For a moment we simply stared at each other.

Then she stood abruptly.

“Father,” she called outside. “He’s awake.”

A few moments later an old man entered the tent.

Thin. Weathered. Wrapped in dusty robes. His beard had gone almost entirely gray, but warmth still lived in his eyes.

“You gave us quite the scare, young man,” he said. “My Fatima wasn’t sure you’d wake at all. Seems I won that bet.”

He smiled.

A genuine smile.

Rare enough nowadays to feel almost unnatural.

“Name’s Khalid,” he said as he sat beside me. “What’s yours, Medjay?”

“Aaron,” I managed. My throat felt like broken glass. “Aaron Qaswar.”

“Easy now.”

Khalid carefully helped me sit upright before handing me a cup of water.

“Slowly. No rush.”

The tent smelled of dried herbs, old canvas, and sweet smoke drifting from a bronze burner near the entrance. Strings of charms hung from the support poles, clinking softly whenever the desert wind touched the fabric walls. A lantern overhead painted everything in warm amber light that felt impossibly gentle after the endless crimson fury outside.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“The Wandering Oasis.”

I frowned.

“Pretty sure I’ve crossed these regions before. Never seen an oasis anywhere near here.”

Khalid chuckled quietly while pouring tea into two tiny cups.

“It isn’t called the Wandering Oasis for no reason.” He handed one to me carefully. “Its geographical coordinates are… inconsistent.”

“Inconsistent.”

“Yes. Sometimes it rests near the Glass Dunes. Sometimes near the old coastlines. Once we woke beside the ruins of Luxor Station.”

He shrugged lightly.

“The Oasis goes where it wishes.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

Khalid sipped his tea calmly.

“Have you witnessed many things in the desert that do?”

Fair point.

Outside the tent I could hear distant machinery groaning beneath repair work. Somewhere nearby, strings of metal charms rattled softly in the wind.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Lived?” Khalid smiled faintly. “No one lives in the Wandering Oasis. We travel with it. We care for it. And in return… it cares for us.”

I took a careful sip of the tea.

Bitter. Heavy with mint and something medicinal underneath.

Pain immediately flared through my ribs.

Then memory came rushing back.

The storm.

The raiders.

The crash.

“My car,” I muttered. “What happened to my car?”

“Fatima is tending to it,” Khalid said. “Though much like yourself, it will require some time before it is fit for the road again.”

“That bad?”

“You rolled a vehicle through a radioactive lightning storm.”

He gave me an amused look.

“You are fortunate to still possess all your limbs.”

“Debatable.”

I reached for my satchel beside the cot. Relief washed through me when I felt the map still inside.

I unfolded it carefully and handed it to him.

“You know this place?”

Khalid’s expression changed the moment he saw the markings.

“The Bene Nefertite necropolis,” he said quietly.

So the Pharaoh’s map pointed somewhere real after all.

“You know how to get there?”

“Of course.” Khalid traced one of the crude lines with his finger. “In a healthy vehicle, perhaps half a day from here.”

“But?”

He glanced up at me.

“But it lies within an active Ghul-Zone.”

I stared at him for a few seconds.

Then a long, exhausted sigh escaped me.

“Fuck…” I rubbed both hands over my face. “Of course it does.”

Khalid remained silent.

A Ghul-Zone.

Wonderful.

The desert was littered with them now. Places where radiation, death, and whatever invisible poison had seeped into the world finally stopped pretending to obey natural law. Entire villages vanished inside them overnight. Sometimes they returned days later.

Usually screaming.

Sometimes not human anymore.

Outside, the wind had softened into a low whisper against the canvas walls.

“I don’t think the God-Queen is the patient type,” I muttered eventually. “Don’t exactly have the luxury of waiting this out.”

“Be that as it may,” Khalid replied calmly, “your vehicle is broken, your body is barely holding together, and the storm still prowls outside.”

Then he smiled warmly.

“So whether you like it or not, Medjay… tonight you will stay here. You will drink tea. You will rest. And you will endure the unbearable horror of friendly conversation.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

The old man had a presence to him. The kind that disarmed you before you realized it was happening.

I kept telling myself to stay guarded. Men survived longer that way in the wasteland. Loose tongues eventually got slit.

But the hours slipped by, and somehow I kept talking anyway.

About my mother dying from lung rot when I was a child.

About fighting for scraps in the alleys of New Cairo before the Medjay recruited me.

About the first man I killed.

I still remembered his face sometimes.

Khalid never interrupted. Never pushed. He simply listened while slowly refilling our tea like we had all the time in the world.

At some point I even admitted what most people would consider my greatest shame.

“I don’t trust cats,” I confessed.

Khalid blinked.

Then nearly spilled his tea laughing.

“You serve the Pharaoh of New Cairo,” he wheezed, “descendant of gods and ruler of the desert… yet you fear cats?”

“They stare too long.”

“That may be the funniest thing I’ve heard in years.”

“I’m serious.”

“That somehow makes it even better.”

I leaned back against the cushions with a tired groan.

“I’ve survived raiders, mutants, storms, cultists, and royal politics. Why would I willingly invite another apex predator into my home?”

Khalid laughed harder at that.

Real laughter.

Not the nervous kind people forced out nowadays to prove they still remembered how.

And for a little while, beneath the lantern glow while the desert whispered outside the tent walls, the wasteland almost felt human again.

 

I woke to the feeling of a hand pressing lightly against my chest.

Instinct took over before thought did.

My hand shot upward, grabbing the wrist hard enough to make the other person gasp. My eyes snapped open. Heart pounding. Half-awake and already reaching for the knife beneath my pillow that wasn’t there.

Fatima stared down at me.

Pain flickered briefly across her face where I held her wrist, but her expression remained impressively deadpan considering the circumstances.

“I was dressing your wounds,” she said flatly. “They tend to get infected easily out there in the desert.”

I immediately let go.

“Sorry,” I muttered, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Reflex.”

“No kidding.”

Morning light glowed softly through the tent walls now, replacing the warm lantern light from the night before.

Fatima returned to wrapping fresh bandages around my ribs with practiced precision.

“You move around a lot in your sleep,” she said.

“Occupational hazard.”

“You also talk.”

“You threatened someone named Abbas with a shovel.”

I frowned.

“Abbas knew what he did.”

That finally earned a small laugh from her.

Up close, I noticed details I’d missed before. Thin scars crossing her hands. Tiny burn marks along her forearms. Grease permanently worked into the lines of her fingers.

Mechanic’s hands.

Capable hands.

“Your car’s almost ready,” she said after tightening the final bandage. “Just finishing a few things.”

“That fast?”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No, impressed.”

A faint trace of pride appeared in her expression.

“You should be.”

„Ill make sure to repay you one day.“

“No need. Dad always says small kindness matters in cruel places.”

“Sounds like him.”

For a moment neither of us spoke.

The Oasis outside had already begun waking up. Distant voices drifted through the canvas. Machinery clanked somewhere nearby. I could smell bread baking mixed with engine oil and incense smoke.

Then a thought slowly clicked into place.

“Was Khalid with you since you were little?”

Fatima blinked.

“What?”

“Khalid,” I clarified carefully. “Was he the one who raised you?”

She looked genuinely confused.

“Well… yes. He’s my father.”

“I meant—”

I hesitated.

“When did he adopt you?”

„How do you know he adopted me? Im fairly sure he didnt tell you that.“

“Well… I’ve never heard of a jinn fathering a human.”

Her eyes widened instantly.

Not offended.

Shocked.

“How did you know?”

“I’m a Medjay.”

I leaned back carefully against the cot.

“I’ve dealt with a few jinn before. Though admittedly, most of them are far less subtle than your father.”

Fatima glanced nervously toward the tent entrance.

“Relax,” I said. “None of my business. Your secret’s safe with me.”

She studied my face for a long moment, trying to decide whether I meant that.

Eventually she relaxed slightly.

Without another word, she reached into a satchel beside her and pulled something out on a wooden skewer.

A caramelized scorpion.

Its curled tail glistened beneath a layer of dark syrup.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

I stared at it.

“…Yeah.”

I pointed at the scorpion.

“But not that hungry.”

Fatima giggled softly.

Just enough to remind me she was still young beneath all the strange mystery surrounding her.

 

The Oasis looked completely different in daylight.

The tents stretched across the dunes in uneven circles around a pool of crystal-clear water that absolutely should not have existed in the middle of the wasteland. Palm trees swayed lazily despite there being almost no wind. Traders wandered between colorful canopies selling scavenged technology beside preserved spices and ancient charms carved from bone and copper.

Incense smoke drifted through the warm air alongside the smell of cooked meat and engine oil.

The entire place felt unreal, like a pocket dimension somehow safe from the desert enveloping it.

Fatima led me toward my vehicle.

And somehow—

Somehow the old thing looked better than it had in years.

The reinforced panels had actually been fitted properly instead of hammered into place by desperation and profanity. The filtration unit no longer sounded like it was trying to inhale gravel. Even the engine housing had been cleaned.

I stared at it in disbelief.

“You’re really good,” I admitted. “Where’d you learn all this?”

Fatima crouched beside the front wheel, tightening something with a wrench.

“Before Dad found me, I lived in the scrapyards for a while.”

She shrugged.

“Not much to do there besides take machines apart.”

“Sounds miserable.”

“It was.”

She said it casually.

That somehow made it worse.

After a moment she reached into her satchel again and pulled out another map.

This one looked infinitely better than Menehmet’s version. Proper landmarks. Accurate distances. Warnings scribbled carefully along the margins in Arabic.

“Dad told me to give you this,” she said. “Should guide you better than those royal scribbles.”

I laughed quietly.

“Probably wise. If the Pharaoh ever retires, cartography definitely isn’t an option for her.”

Fatima smiled faintly.

I folded the map carefully and tucked it into my coat.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

“For the map or the car?”

“Both.”

For a brief moment neither of us spoke.

Then she stepped back from the vehicle.

“Maybe we’ll meet again, Medjay.”

I looked at her standing there beneath the desert sun, dark curls moving gently in the wind, strange amber eyes catching the light like polished gold.

“Maybe,” I said.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition.

The engine roared to life instantly.

Not coughing.

Not choking.

Alive.

I grinned despite myself.

Then I shifted gears and drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis, leaving the Wandering Oasis behind in the sands.

 

It had been about four hours since I left the Wandering Oasis behind.

The desert changed gradually the farther I drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

The dunes darkened first.

Black mineral veins spread through the sand like rot beneath skin, shimmering faintly beneath the afternoon sun. Ruined pylons from the old world jutted from the wasteland at crooked angles, half-swallowed by centuries of storms. Some still carried scraps of melted wiring that hummed softly whenever the wind blew through them.

And somehow, against all logic, the car was running beautifully.

Whatever Fatima had done to it bordered on sorcery.

The engine no longer wheezed every few minutes like a dying animal. The steering responded instantly. Even the suspension handled the uneven dunes without sounding like the entire frame was about to collapse into spare parts.

The old machine practically purred beneath me.

I almost felt guilty driving it.

Almost.

I adjusted the scarf around my face and glanced toward the map resting on the passenger seat.

Close now.

Very close.

The necropolis should’ve been visible any minute.

That was when I noticed the vibration.

At first I assumed it was the engine.

A faint trembling beneath the wheels.

Then the dashboard began rattling.

Sand slid down nearby dunes in soft streams.

My stomach tightened immediately.

“No…”

The ground lurched violently beneath the car.

The steering wheel jerked in my hands hard enough to nearly send me sideways.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

The desert exploded.

Sand erupted upward beside the vehicle in towering waves as something massive burst from beneath the dunes to my left.

Then another.

Then two more.

Four shapes circled the car as I slammed the brakes.

Shed-beners.

Wonderful.

The things had once been human.

Probably.

Now they looked like nightmares designed by someone who hated both mankind and nature equally. Their lower halves resembled enormous black scorpions armored in chitinous plates scarred by radiation, old wounds, and patches of fungal growth. But rising from those monstrous bodies were elongated human torsos twisted into impossible shapes, ribs pressing visibly beneath stretched skin.

Their faces were the worst part.

Too human.

Clouded eyes rolled wildly in different directions while their mouths hung unnaturally wide, rows of broken teeth jutting outward at crooked angles. Bronze jewelry still clung to their bodies in places. Scraps of old robes fluttered from their armored backs.

Remnants of people.

That always made monsters worse.

One of them clicked its claws together and released a wet, shrieking hiss that sounded disturbingly close to laughter.

Another slowly raised its massive stinger over the car.

I grabbed my scimitar and kicked the door open.

The first creature lunged immediately.

Its claw slammed into the side of the vehicle hard enough to dent the metal inward. I rolled beneath the strike and slashed upward with the scimitar.

The curved blade bit deep into the pale flesh where human torso fused into scorpion body.

Black blood sprayed across the sand.

The Shed-bener screamed.

Not like an animal.

Like a person.

I hated that.

The second creature charged from my right with horrifying speed. I barely avoided the stinger crashing into the ground where my head had been a second earlier.

The impact cracked the hardened sand like stone.

I fired the handgun.

The first bullet punched into its human face.

The creature staggered backward violently—

—but didn’t stop.

“Of course that’s not enough.”

It shrieked and rushed me again.

I fired a second time.

The shot tore through one of its clustered eyes. Black fluid burst down its face as the creature reeled sideways, clawing at itself blindly.

Behind me came the sound of twisting metal.

Another Shed-bener slammed directly into the car hard enough to nearly flip it.

Metal screamed.

One of the creatures crawled across the roof with horrifying speed, claws scraping against the reinforced plating Fatima had installed only hours earlier.

I swung the scimitar just as the blinded creature lunged again.

The blade buried itself deep into its throat.

The creature convulsed violently.

Its stinger lashed through the air in frantic arcs before finally going still.

One down.

Three left.

Something slammed into me from behind.

I crashed hard into the sand, pain exploding through my ribs where Fatima’s fresh bandages sat beneath my clothes. My grip loosened on the sword.

A claw punched into the ground inches from my face, spraying sand across my eyes.

I scrambled backward just as a stinger slammed down where my chest had been moments earlier.

Poison hissed against the sand.

The second creature attacked from the side immediately after.

Too fast.

I raised the handgun and fired my last round directly into its open mouth.

The back of its skull exploded outward in a spray of shattered teeth and black fluid.

The creature collapsed twitching beside me.

Two down.

And now I was out of ammunition.

The remaining Shed-beners slowed their movements.

Watching me carefully.

Smarter than the others.

One blocked my path back to the car while the second circled behind me, massive stinger swaying slowly overhead like an executioner preparing the final blow.

I grabbed the scimitar from the sand and forced myself upright.

My breathing had gone ragged.

Everything hurt.

Blood soaked through the bandages beneath my coat.

The creatures noticed.

Predators always did.

One suddenly lunged low across the sand.

I barely sidestepped in time, but the second slammed into me immediately afterward.

The impact sent me crashing backward down the side of a dune.

The scimitar flew from my hand.

Before I could recover, a massive claw pinned my arm into the sand.

Pain shot through my shoulder.

The other creature approached slowly now.

Confident.

Its human face leaned closer toward mine.

I could smell rot on its breath.

Its cloudy eyes twitched wildly as if several thoughts were fighting for control behind them.

Then the creature smiled.

Not instinctively.

Deliberately.

The stinger rose high above me.

Ready to strike.

Then the desert roared.

The sound came from beneath the earth itself.

Deep.

Thunderous.

Ancient.

The dunes exploded upward around us.

The Shed-beners shrieked and turned too late.

Something colossal burst from beneath the sand.

A sandworm.

Its mouth opened impossibly wide, ringed with rotating rows of jagged teeth large enough to crush vehicles whole. Pale flesh glistened beneath armored hide as the thing surged upward like the desert itself had come alive.

The worm swallowed one of the Shed-beners instantly.

The second barely had time to scream before the jaws closed around it too.

Crunch.

The sound echoed across the dunes.

Then the worm vanished beneath the sand again almost as quickly as it had appeared, dragging both screaming creatures into the depths below.

The desert settled slowly.

Silence returned.

I remained flat on my back for several long seconds, breathing hard, staring at the empty dunes above me.

Then I slowly sat up.

Everyone with functioning survival instincts feared sandworms.

But that was the first and only time in my life I had ever been happy to see one.

 

I had finally reached the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

Dark clouds churned above the ruins in slow, unnatural spirals. Thick and swollen like bruises spreading across the sky. Crimson lightning pulsed silently within them, illuminating shattered pyramids and broken statues in brief flashes of red-white light.

Even from a distance, I could feel the Ghul-Zone pressing against reality like a wound that refused to close.

Vehicles didn’t last long inside active zones.

Electronics fried without warning. Engines stalled. Entire caravans vanished for days before reappearing fused together into piles of melted flesh and metal.

Sometimes the people inside were still alive.

I killed the engine.

For a moment I just sat there listening to the sudden silence.

Then I grabbed my torch, tightened the scarf around my face, and stepped out into the dead air.

Immediately, something felt wrong.

Not danger.

Absence.

No wind.

No insects.

No movement.

Just a low hum vibrating through the atmosphere itself.

The sky inside the zone had turned a diseased brown color. Veins of pale energy crawled soundlessly through the air between ruined structures, flickering like cracks spreading through glass. Every breath tasted metallic even through the scarf.

I kept my face covered.

No reason to inhale more of this place than necessary.

The necropolis stretched endlessly ahead of me.

Half-buried obelisks.

Collapsed mausoleums.

Streets lined with statues eroded into faceless things by centuries of radiation and sandstorms.

Then I noticed movement.

Far ahead, between the ruins, a line of figures shuffled silently through the streets.

Dozens of them.

Human silhouettes.

Some staggered unnaturally while others moved with eerie smoothness, like puppets dragged by invisible strings. Heads tilted at impossible angles. Limbs bent wrong.

Ghuls.

Or whatever remained after the Zone hollowed a person out and left only instinct wearing their skin.

Didn’t matter which.

Nothing could be done for them anymore.

Best to avoid them entirely.

I moved deeper into the necropolis carefully, one hand resting near the scimitar at my side.

The deeper I went, the stranger the place became.

The geometry shifted when I wasn’t looking directly at it.

Streets curved where they shouldn’t.

Passages looped back into themselves.

At one point I walked past the same headless statue three separate times despite never turning around.

The Zone liked to play games with people.

Usually the games ended with someone eating their own fingers while insisting they tasted like honey.

I ignored everything except the pyramid.

Small.

Black.

Resting at the center of the necropolis like a splinter buried beneath skin.

Nothing else mattered.

The closer I got to it, the stronger the pressure inside my skull became.

Not pain exactly.

More like invisible fingers pressing against my thoughts.

Digging.

Searching.

Then I heard her voice.

“Aaron…”

I froze instantly.

The necropolis vanished around me.

For one horrible moment I was a child again.

“Sweetie… don’t go.”

Slowly, I turned.

My mother stood behind me.

Exactly as I remembered her before the sickness took her.

Warm brown skin.

Thin frame.

Soft tired eyes.

Even the same faded blue scarf she used to wear around the apartment.

For a second I forgot where I was.

Forgot the Zone.

Forgot the pyramid.

Forgot everything.

She stepped closer and gently rested a hand against my shoulder.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered.

The pressure in my chest hurt worse than any wound I’d taken in years.

“I missed you too, Mum,” I admitted quietly.

And I meant it.

God, I meant it.

“You could stay,” she whispered softly. “You don’t have to keep hurting anymore.”

Something trembled in her voice.

“You don’t have to keep fighting.”

I stared at her silently.

And that was the problem.

My mother had never spoken like that.

Not even when she was dying.

Especially not then.

She used to tell me:

If the world wants you dead, make it work for it.

This thing didn’t know that.

The smile on her face twitched slightly.

Just slightly.

But enough.

I sighed tiredly.

Then I drew the scimitar and cut her head off.

The blade sliced clean through her neck.

The body collapsed instantly into the sand, twitching violently as thick black fluid spilled from the stump instead of blood.

The severed head hit the ground still smiling.

For a few seconds it continued staring up at me while the face slowly softened and melted like wet clay left in the sun.

Then it collapsed into rotten sludge.

I stared at the remains coldly.

“Pale imitation, asshole.”

The Zone hummed louder around me.

Almost disappointed.

Then I turned and entered the pyramid.

 

The air inside felt ancient.

Dry.

Claustrophobic.

My torchlight flickered across walls covered in faded hieroglyphs and newer markings scratched desperately over them by later explorers. Warnings mostly.

Prayers.

Names.

Somebody had carved:

IT KNOWS YOUR HEART

deep into one of the walls.

Farther down, another simply read:

DON’T LISTEN

The deeper I descended, the colder it became.

Dust coated everything thick enough to swallow footprints whole.

Occasionally I caught movement just beyond the torchlight.

Something shifting behind pillars.

Something crawling along ceilings.

I ignored it.

The Zone fed on attention.

Old bones cracked beneath my boots as I moved through stripped burial chambers and narrow corridors. Most of the tomb had been looted centuries ago. Broken jars and shattered coffins littered the floors.

Yet somehow the deeper chambers remained untouched.

That should’ve worried me more than it did.

Eventually the corridor opened into a massive circular chamber.

My footsteps echoed softly across the stone.

Tall pillars ringed the room, carved into the likenesses of forgotten gods whose faces had been deliberately chiseled away long ago. Ancient braziers still burned with weak green fire despite the absence of fuel.

At the center stood a massive stone sarcophagus covered in blackened gold markings.

I approached carefully.

No movement.

No sound.

Good enough.

I shoved the lid aside with a painful groan from my ribs.

Inside lay a dried corpse wrapped in ancient linen. Its skin stretched tightly against bone, mouth frozen open in a permanent scream.

For several seconds nothing happened.

I exhaled slowly.

“Sorry about this.”

I reached down to move the body aside.

The mummy grabbed my wrist.

Before I could react, it hurled me across the chamber hard enough to crack stone beneath my back.

Pain exploded through my ribs.

The creature rose from the sarcophagus with horrifying speed.

Its jaw unhinged wider than humanly possible as it released a shriek sharp enough to physically hurt. Dust rained from the ceiling. My torch nearly slipped from my hand.

“Oh, come on—”

The mummy lunged.

Far too fast.

I barely rolled aside before its claws punched deep grooves into the stone where my head had been moments earlier.

Up close I saw movement beneath the wrappings.

Thousands of tiny black insects crawling beneath the ancient linen like blood moving beneath skin.

I slashed with the scimitar.

The blade carved deep across its chest.

The creature barely reacted.

It hit me hard enough to send me skidding across the chamber again.

I instinctively raised the handgun and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Empty.

“Right,” I muttered. “Fantastic.”

The mummy shrieked again.

Then sprinted directly up the wall.

Its limbs twisted unnaturally as it crawled across the ceiling like some gigantic insect before dropping toward me.

I barely caught its arm mid-strike with the scimitar.

The impact nearly snapped my wrist.

The thing was impossibly strong.

Rotten linen wrapped around my arm as it forced me downward inch by inch. Its face hung inches from mine now while black beetles crawled in and out of its mouth and empty eye sockets.

And then it spoke.

Just one word.

In my mother’s voice.

“Aaron…”

That almost broke me more than the claws.

I slammed my forehead into its skull.

The creature staggered backward slightly.

Enough.

I kicked one of the burning braziers directly into its chest.

Flames erupted across the ancient wrappings instantly.

The mummy screamed.

Not in pain.

In fury.

It thrashed violently across the chamber, climbing pillars and walls while burning alive. Flaming insects poured from its body in thick streams, scattering across the floor around me.

The fire spread rapidly through the dry linen.

I grabbed a broken spear shaft near one of the tombs and waited.

The mummy launched itself at me one final time.

Burning.

Shrieking.

Its mouth stretched impossibly wide.

I sidestepped at the last second.

Then drove the spear clean through its torso and deep into the stone wall behind it.

The impact pinned the creature there.

The mummy writhed violently, claws scraping uselessly against stone as flames consumed more and more of its body.

Still screaming in my mother’s voice.

I stood there breathing hard for several seconds before finally turning back toward the sarcophagus.

Inside was…

Almost nothing.

No treasure.

No cursed weapon.

No ancient relic humming with forbidden power.

Just dust.

Bones.

And one tiny object resting near the bottom.

A small statue of a cat.

I stared at it.

Then slowly looked upward in exhausted disbelief.

“You cannot be serious, Menehmet…”

Behind me, the burning mummy continued shrieking against the wall.

I sighed deeply, grabbed the statue, and shoved it into my coat pocket.

Then I left the pyramid behind me.

 

A few hours later I was back inside the car, driving away from the necropolis while the storm clouds shrank slowly in the rearview mirror.

The tiny cat statue sat on the passenger seat beside me.

Another priceless royal mission accomplished.

All so the God-Queen of New Cairo could add another worthless piece of junk to her collection.

I glanced sideways at the statue.

Its tiny carved eyes stared back at me.

I immediately looked back at the road.

“…Still hate cats.”

I could see nothing beyond the red wall of sand.

Crimson lightning clawed through the storm in violent flashes, turning the desert into a negative image of itself for split seconds at a time. The rest was noise. Sand hammering the chassis. Metal groaning beneath the wind. Loose sheet metal rattling hard enough to tear free at any moment.

Somewhere far beyond all that came the low, dying growl of thunder.

The radioactive sandstorm had curved off its forecasted route and slammed straight into me.

That’s what happens when your weather predictions rely on astronomical scraps scribbled down five thousand years ago by priests staring at the stars through opium smoke.

I’d been driving blind through this hell long enough to lose all sense of direction. East, west, north—it was all just red now.

Eventually I eased my foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop.

Probably the dumbest thing you could do in a storm like this.

Then again, continuing to drive wasn’t exactly genius either.

The engine coughed beneath me like a dying smoker. Every vehicle left in this world sounded sick. Mine especially.

The car had once belonged to at least three different owners and two different manufacturers. Soviet frame. Military-grade filtration unit. Doors ripped from some civilian transport. Half the dashboard held together with copper wire and prayer strips dedicated to gods nobody believed in until the world ended.

Outside, the storm screamed louder.

I pulled the map from my satchel.

The parchment crackled in my hands. The drawings on it were painfully crude—crooked pyramids, uneven symbols, landmarks sketched with the confidence of a drunk child.

But the map had come directly from the palace.

Drawn by the Pharaoh herself.

And I wasn’t brave enough—or suicidal enough—to criticize the God-Queen of New Cairo.

When Pharaoh Menehmet summoned you, you didn’t refuse.

You didn’t complain.

You bowed low enough for your forehead to touch the floor and prayed she stayed in a merciful mood.

The Henty-she had arrived before sunrise. Royal guards wrapped in black linen and bronze plating, faces hidden behind jackal masks with glowing blue lenses. They dragged me from bed without explanation and marched me through the waking streets of New Cairo.

Not that explanations were common in the presence of gods.

The palace rose from the center of the city like ancient history welded onto the corpse of the future. Neon hieroglyphs burned across towering obelisks. Massive statues watched over rusted slums with cracked stone faces. The rich burned incense while the poor burned tires to stay warm.

The guards shoved me onto my knees before the throne.

The royal speaker stepped forward immediately, robes sweeping across polished stone.

“Behold Menehmet, first of her name, Daughter of Amun, God-Queen of New Cairo, Lady Of the Two Lands, The chosen of The Sun,—”

I stopped listening after that.

By the time he finished, my knees were killing me.

“And before her grace kneels her faithful servant,” he continued, “the Medjay Aaron Qaswar.”

“I’ve known her majesty since she was born,” I muttered. “Can we skip this part?”

“How dare—”

“Leave us,” Menehmet said calmly.

The speaker froze mid-breath.

Even kneeling, I could see the fury behind his painted eyes. But he obeyed. The servants withdrew first, followed by the Henty-she. Their heavy boots echoed through the chamber until the throne room fell silent.

Menehmet leaned lazily against her throne, gold jewelry glimmering in the firelight. She was barely nineteen, yet people spoke to her with the kind of fear reserved for ancient things buried beneath the earth.

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” I said.

“You tend to have that effect on people, Aaron.”

A faint smile touched her lips.

“Not everyone sees past your rough exterior the way I do.”

“That why you dragged me across the city before sunrise? To appreciate my soft interior?”

“Not today, Aaron. I called for you because there is something I want retrieved.”

“I’m a Medjay, not an errand boy.”

“You are whatever I require you to be.”

Her smile widened slightly.

“But don’t worry. There will be plenty of opportunities for violence and heroic deaths along the way.”

“Comforting.”

She handed me the map.

“What you seek lies here. A necropolis abandoned long before New Cairo existed.”

“You’re sending me into a tomb.”

“I’m sending you after something that does not belong there.”

“That narrows it down.”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

Her eyes drifted across the throne room, distant and thoughtful.

“Bring it back to me. I think it will liven this place up nicely.”

“You don’t even know what it is, do you?”

“No,” she admitted, sounding almost amused. “Which is exactly why I want it.”

Then she waved her hand dismissively.

“Now go. Time wastes itself far too easily outside these walls.”

 

The storm howled louder outside my car, dragging me back to the present.

Another flash of crimson lightning split the sky.

The vehicle shuddered violently as wind slammed against it. The filtration unit wheezed in protest. One of the cracks in the windshield spread a little farther.

The old monster wasn’t going to survive much more of this.

I tightened my grip on the wheel.

“Fuck it.”

I slammed my foot onto the gas and drove blind into the storm.

For several minutes there was nothing except red static and shrieking wind.

Then another sound crawled through the chaos.

At first I thought the engine was finally dying. A low mechanical whine buried beneath the thunder.

Then it grew louder.

Multiple engines.

Overworked. Abused. Running on fuel never meant for them.

Raiders.

A burst of flame ignited somewhere to my right.

Then another to my left.

Shapes emerged from the crimson haze like demons clawing out of hell itself. Headlights wrapped in metal cages. Exhaust pipes vomiting blue fire into the storm.

One of the vehicles slammed into my side hard.

I caught a glimpse of the driver through cracked welding goggles and a filthy gas mask. Hairless scalp. Chalk-white skin. Eyes twitching with manic energy.

Raiders alright.

And not the disciplined kind either.

Sons of the Sun maybe?

Definitely high on Blue Lotus. Nobody sane scavenged inside a radioactive sandstorm.

Their vehicles barely qualified as cars anymore. Rusted skeletons welded together from scrap metal, rebar, military plating, temple icons. One had animal bones hanging from chains across the hood. Another had strips of human skin nailed to the doors, fluttering wildly in the wind.

Hideous machines.

But in their own deranged way, almost stylish.

The vehicle on my left rammed me again.

Then the one on my right.

They pinned me between them like vultures stripping apart a carcass.

Metal screamed against metal.

Sparks vanished instantly into the storm.

Then came the thudding overhead.

Boots.

“Shit.”

One raider landed on the roof, crouched low against the wind. Another smashed onto the hood, clawing at the windshield while a third jammed a hooked blade into the passenger door.

The one at the door got in first.

I drove my knife through the gap before he could force it open fully.

Hot blood sprayed across my hand.

He stumbled backward into the storm and vanished instantly into the red.

A machete punched through the roof an inch from my face.

I swerved violently.

The lunatic on the windshield snarled behind his mask and began hammering the glass with a metal pipe.

I slammed the brakes.

His body launched off the hood.

A second later I felt the tires bounce over him.

Still one above me.

The bastard had buried his machete deep into the roof to anchor himself in place. The blade rattled overhead every time the wind hit us.

I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the handgun.

Guns were almost extinct now. This one had been a gift from Menehmet shortly after she inherited the throne.

I fired once through the roof.

The gunshot deafened me inside the cramped cabin.

Something heavy rolled off the vehicle.

Then the storm flashed bright crimson.

To my left, lightning began crawling across the sand in branching veins of red-white energy.

The kind that turned flesh into charcoal and fused metal into glass.

I smiled.

Then slammed my car sideways into the raider beside me.

The impact shoved his vehicle directly into the forming electrical trail.

For half a second the world turned white.

Lightning swallowed the car whole.

Metal twisted.

The engine exploded.

Then there was nothing left except burning wreckage tumbling through the storm.

Just me and the last one now.

I pulled alongside him, wanting this finished before the desert killed us both.

The bastard leaned halfway out his window with a spear in hand.

“Really?” I muttered.

He thrust downward.

The spear punched through my front tire.

The steering wheel ripped violently from my hands.

The car lost traction instantly.

Then the storm caught it broadside.

One moment I was driving.

The next the world flipped.

Metal screamed around me as the vehicle rolled across the dunes. My shoulder slammed against the door hard enough to numb my arm. Glass burst inward. The engine died somewhere during the chaos.

Then came silence.

Not true silence.

Just that muffled roar you hear after surviving something that should’ve killed you.

I dragged myself through the shattered window and collapsed into the sand, coughing blood and dust into my scarf.

Nearby, the raider’s vehicle skidded to a stop.

Its door creaked open.

The man stepped out slowly, spear in hand.

The storm wrapped around him like a living thing. Gas mask lenses glowing red beneath the lightning overhead.

He walked toward me without hurry.

Certain he’d already won.

I waited until he raised the spear.

Then I cut his legs out from under him.

We crashed into the sand together, grunting and slipping against the dunes as we fought for control of the weapon. He was stronger than he looked. His fingers forced the spear closer and closer toward my throat.

I drove my boot between his legs as hard as I could.

He jerked violently.

The scream was still forming in his throat when I shoved the spear upward.

The blade punched through the bottom of his jaw and out the back of his skull.

He twitched once.

Then went limp.

I lay there breathing hard, staring up into the red storm overhead.

Then another lightning strike hit nearby.

The blast hit like a hammer from god.

Heat swallowed me whole.

And the world went black.

 

I woke to the smell of incense and ointment.

Canvas walls swayed gently around me.

A tent.

My body felt heavy. Burned. Every breath scraped against my ribs.

A young woman sat beside me grinding herbs into a bowl. Dark curls partially hidden beneath a linen scarf. Steady hands. Focused eyes.

When she noticed I was awake, she froze.

For a moment we simply stared at each other.

Then she stood abruptly.

“Father,” she called outside. “He’s awake.”

A few moments later an old man entered the tent.

Thin. Weathered. Wrapped in dusty robes. His beard had gone almost entirely gray, but warmth still lived in his eyes.

“You gave us quite the scare, young man,” he said. “My Fatima wasn’t sure you’d wake at all. Seems I won that bet.”

He smiled.

A genuine smile.

Rare enough nowadays to feel almost unnatural.

“Name’s Khalid,” he said as he sat beside me. “What’s yours, Medjay?”

“Aaron,” I managed. My throat felt like broken glass. “Aaron Qaswar.”

“Easy now.”

Khalid carefully helped me sit upright before handing me a cup of water.

“Slowly. No rush.”

The tent smelled of dried herbs, old canvas, and sweet smoke drifting from a bronze burner near the entrance. Strings of charms hung from the support poles, clinking softly whenever the desert wind touched the fabric walls. A lantern overhead painted everything in warm amber light that felt impossibly gentle after the endless crimson fury outside.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“The Wandering Oasis.”

I frowned.

“Pretty sure I’ve crossed these regions before. Never seen an oasis anywhere near here.”

Khalid chuckled quietly while pouring tea into two tiny cups.

“It isn’t called the Wandering Oasis for no reason.” He handed one to me carefully. “Its geographical coordinates are… inconsistent.”

“Inconsistent.”

“Yes. Sometimes it rests near the Glass Dunes. Sometimes near the old coastlines. Once we woke beside the ruins of Luxor Station.”

He shrugged lightly.

“The Oasis goes where it wishes.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

Khalid sipped his tea calmly.

“Have you witnessed many things in the desert that do?”

Fair point.

Outside the tent I could hear distant machinery groaning beneath repair work. Somewhere nearby, strings of metal charms rattled softly in the wind.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Lived?” Khalid smiled faintly. “No one lives in the Wandering Oasis. We travel with it. We care for it. And in return… it cares for us.”

I took a careful sip of the tea.

Bitter. Heavy with mint and something medicinal underneath.

Pain immediately flared through my ribs.

Then memory came rushing back.

The storm.

The raiders.

The crash.

“My car,” I muttered. “What happened to my car?”

“Fatima is tending to it,” Khalid said. “Though much like yourself, it will require some time before it is fit for the road again.”

“That bad?”

“You rolled a vehicle through a radioactive lightning storm.”

He gave me an amused look.

“You are fortunate to still possess all your limbs.”

“Debatable.”

I reached for my satchel beside the cot. Relief washed through me when I felt the map still inside.

I unfolded it carefully and handed it to him.

“You know this place?”

Khalid’s expression changed the moment he saw the markings.

“The Bene Nefertite necropolis,” he said quietly.

So the Pharaoh’s map pointed somewhere real after all.

“You know how to get there?”

“Of course.” Khalid traced one of the crude lines with his finger. “In a healthy vehicle, perhaps half a day from here.”

“But?”

He glanced up at me.

“But it lies within an active Ghul-Zone.”

I stared at him for a few seconds.

Then a long, exhausted sigh escaped me.

“Fuck…” I rubbed both hands over my face. “Of course it does.”

Khalid remained silent.

A Ghul-Zone.

Wonderful.

The desert was littered with them now. Places where radiation, death, and whatever invisible poison had seeped into the world finally stopped pretending to obey natural law. Entire villages vanished inside them overnight. Sometimes they returned days later.

Usually screaming.

Sometimes not human anymore.

Outside, the wind had softened into a low whisper against the canvas walls.

“I don’t think the God-Queen is the patient type,” I muttered eventually. “Don’t exactly have the luxury of waiting this out.”

“Be that as it may,” Khalid replied calmly, “your vehicle is broken, your body is barely holding together, and the storm still prowls outside.”

Then he smiled warmly.

“So whether you like it or not, Medjay… tonight you will stay here. You will drink tea. You will rest. And you will endure the unbearable horror of friendly conversation.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

The old man had a presence to him. The kind that disarmed you before you realized it was happening.

I kept telling myself to stay guarded. Men survived longer that way in the wasteland. Loose tongues eventually got slit.

But the hours slipped by, and somehow I kept talking anyway.

About my mother dying from lung rot when I was a child.

About fighting for scraps in the alleys of New Cairo before the Medjay recruited me.

About the first man I killed.

I still remembered his face sometimes.

Khalid never interrupted. Never pushed. He simply listened while slowly refilling our tea like we had all the time in the world.

At some point I even admitted what most people would consider my greatest shame.

“I don’t trust cats,” I confessed.

Khalid blinked.

Then nearly spilled his tea laughing.

“You serve the Pharaoh of New Cairo,” he wheezed, “descendant of gods and ruler of the desert… yet you fear cats?”

“They stare too long.”

“That may be the funniest thing I’ve heard in years.”

“I’m serious.”

“That somehow makes it even better.”

I leaned back against the cushions with a tired groan.

“I’ve survived raiders, mutants, storms, cultists, and royal politics. Why would I willingly invite another apex predator into my home?”

Khalid laughed harder at that.

Real laughter.

Not the nervous kind people forced out nowadays to prove they still remembered how.

And for a little while, beneath the lantern glow while the desert whispered outside the tent walls, the wasteland almost felt human again.

 

I woke to the feeling of a hand pressing lightly against my chest.

Instinct took over before thought did.

My hand shot upward, grabbing the wrist hard enough to make the other person gasp. My eyes snapped open. Heart pounding. Half-awake and already reaching for the knife beneath my pillow that wasn’t there.

Fatima stared down at me.

Pain flickered briefly across her face where I held her wrist, but her expression remained impressively deadpan considering the circumstances.

“I was dressing your wounds,” she said flatly. “They tend to get infected easily out there in the desert.”

I immediately let go.

“Sorry,” I muttered, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Reflex.”

“No kidding.”

Morning light glowed softly through the tent walls now, replacing the warm lantern light from the night before.

Fatima returned to wrapping fresh bandages around my ribs with practiced precision.

“You move around a lot in your sleep,” she said.

“Occupational hazard.”

“You also talk.”

“You threatened someone named Abbas with a shovel.”

I frowned.

“Abbas knew what he did.”

That finally earned a small laugh from her.

Up close, I noticed details I’d missed before. Thin scars crossing her hands. Tiny burn marks along her forearms. Grease permanently worked into the lines of her fingers.

Mechanic’s hands.

Capable hands.

“Your car’s almost ready,” she said after tightening the final bandage. “Just finishing a few things.”

“That fast?”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No, impressed.”

A faint trace of pride appeared in her expression.

“You should be.”

„Ill make sure to repay you one day.“

“No need. Dad always says small kindness matters in cruel places.”

“Sounds like him.”

For a moment neither of us spoke.

The Oasis outside had already begun waking up. Distant voices drifted through the canvas. Machinery clanked somewhere nearby. I could smell bread baking mixed with engine oil and incense smoke.

Then a thought slowly clicked into place.

“Was Khalid with you since you were little?”

Fatima blinked.

“What?”

“Khalid,” I clarified carefully. “Was he the one who raised you?”

She looked genuinely confused.

“Well… yes. He’s my father.”

“I meant—”

I hesitated.

“When did he adopt you?”

„How do you know he adopted me? Im fairly sure he didnt tell you that.“

“Well… I’ve never heard of a jinn fathering a human.”

Her eyes widened instantly.

Not offended.

Shocked.

“How did you know?”

“I’m a Medjay.”

I leaned back carefully against the cot.

“I’ve dealt with a few jinn before. Though admittedly, most of them are far less subtle than your father.”

Fatima glanced nervously toward the tent entrance.

“Relax,” I said. “None of my business. Your secret’s safe with me.”

She studied my face for a long moment, trying to decide whether I meant that.

Eventually she relaxed slightly.

Without another word, she reached into a satchel beside her and pulled something out on a wooden skewer.

A caramelized scorpion.

Its curled tail glistened beneath a layer of dark syrup.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

I stared at it.

“…Yeah.”

I pointed at the scorpion.

“But not that hungry.”

Fatima giggled softly.

Just enough to remind me she was still young beneath all the strange mystery surrounding her.

 

The Oasis looked completely different in daylight.

The tents stretched across the dunes in uneven circles around a pool of crystal-clear water that absolutely should not have existed in the middle of the wasteland. Palm trees swayed lazily despite there being almost no wind. Traders wandered between colorful canopies selling scavenged technology beside preserved spices and ancient charms carved from bone and copper.

Incense smoke drifted through the warm air alongside the smell of cooked meat and engine oil.

The entire place felt unreal, like a pocket dimension somehow safe from the desert enveloping it.

Fatima led me toward my vehicle.

And somehow—

Somehow the old thing looked better than it had in years.

The reinforced panels had actually been fitted properly instead of hammered into place by desperation and profanity. The filtration unit no longer sounded like it was trying to inhale gravel. Even the engine housing had been cleaned.

I stared at it in disbelief.

“You’re really good,” I admitted. “Where’d you learn all this?”

Fatima crouched beside the front wheel, tightening something with a wrench.

“Before Dad found me, I lived in the scrapyards for a while.”

She shrugged.

“Not much to do there besides take machines apart.”

“Sounds miserable.”

“It was.”

She said it casually.

That somehow made it worse.

After a moment she reached into her satchel again and pulled out another map.

This one looked infinitely better than Menehmet’s version. Proper landmarks. Accurate distances. Warnings scribbled carefully along the margins in Arabic.

“Dad told me to give you this,” she said. “Should guide you better than those royal scribbles.”

I laughed quietly.

“Probably wise. If the Pharaoh ever retires, cartography definitely isn’t an option for her.”

Fatima smiled faintly.

I folded the map carefully and tucked it into my coat.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

“For the map or the car?”

“Both.”

For a brief moment neither of us spoke.

Then she stepped back from the vehicle.

“Maybe we’ll meet again, Medjay.”

I looked at her standing there beneath the desert sun, dark curls moving gently in the wind, strange amber eyes catching the light like polished gold.

“Maybe,” I said.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition.

The engine roared to life instantly.

Not coughing.

Not choking.

Alive.

I grinned despite myself.

Then I shifted gears and drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis, leaving the Wandering Oasis behind in the sands.

 

It had been about four hours since I left the Wandering Oasis behind.

The desert changed gradually the farther I drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

The dunes darkened first.

Black mineral veins spread through the sand like rot beneath skin, shimmering faintly beneath the afternoon sun. Ruined pylons from the old world jutted from the wasteland at crooked angles, half-swallowed by centuries of storms. Some still carried scraps of melted wiring that hummed softly whenever the wind blew through them.

And somehow, against all logic, the car was running beautifully.

Whatever Fatima had done to it bordered on sorcery.

The engine no longer wheezed every few minutes like a dying animal. The steering responded instantly. Even the suspension handled the uneven dunes without sounding like the entire frame was about to collapse into spare parts.

The old machine practically purred beneath me.

I almost felt guilty driving it.

Almost.

I adjusted the scarf around my face and glanced toward the map resting on the passenger seat.

Close now.

Very close.

The necropolis should’ve been visible any minute.

That was when I noticed the vibration.

At first I assumed it was the engine.

A faint trembling beneath the wheels.

Then the dashboard began rattling.

Sand slid down nearby dunes in soft streams.

My stomach tightened immediately.

“No…”

The ground lurched violently beneath the car.

The steering wheel jerked in my hands hard enough to nearly send me sideways.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

The desert exploded.

Sand erupted upward beside the vehicle in towering waves as something massive burst from beneath the dunes to my left.

Then another.

Then two more.

Four shapes circled the car as I slammed the brakes.

Shed-beners.

Wonderful.

The things had once been human.

Probably.

Now they looked like nightmares designed by someone who hated both mankind and nature equally. Their lower halves resembled enormous black scorpions armored in chitinous plates scarred by radiation, old wounds, and patches of fungal growth. But rising from those monstrous bodies were elongated human torsos twisted into impossible shapes, ribs pressing visibly beneath stretched skin.

Their faces were the worst part.

Too human.

Clouded eyes rolled wildly in different directions while their mouths hung unnaturally wide, rows of broken teeth jutting outward at crooked angles. Bronze jewelry still clung to their bodies in places. Scraps of old robes fluttered from their armored backs.

Remnants of people.

That always made monsters worse.

One of them clicked its claws together and released a wet, shrieking hiss that sounded disturbingly close to laughter.

Another slowly raised its massive stinger over the car.

I grabbed my scimitar and kicked the door open.

The first creature lunged immediately.

Its claw slammed into the side of the vehicle hard enough to dent the metal inward. I rolled beneath the strike and slashed upward with the scimitar.

The curved blade bit deep into the pale flesh where human torso fused into scorpion body.

Black blood sprayed across the sand.

The Shed-bener screamed.

Not like an animal.

Like a person.

I hated that.

The second creature charged from my right with horrifying speed. I barely avoided the stinger crashing into the ground where my head had been a second earlier.

The impact cracked the hardened sand like stone.

I fired the handgun.

The first bullet punched into its human face.

The creature staggered backward violently—

—but didn’t stop.

“Of course that’s not enough.”

It shrieked and rushed me again.

I fired a second time.

The shot tore through one of its clustered eyes. Black fluid burst down its face as the creature reeled sideways, clawing at itself blindly.

Behind me came the sound of twisting metal.

Another Shed-bener slammed directly into the car hard enough to nearly flip it.

Metal screamed.

One of the creatures crawled across the roof with horrifying speed, claws scraping against the reinforced plating Fatima had installed only hours earlier.

I swung the scimitar just as the blinded creature lunged again.

The blade buried itself deep into its throat.

The creature convulsed violently.

Its stinger lashed through the air in frantic arcs before finally going still.

One down.

Three left.

Something slammed into me from behind.

I crashed hard into the sand, pain exploding through my ribs where Fatima’s fresh bandages sat beneath my clothes. My grip loosened on the sword.

A claw punched into the ground inches from my face, spraying sand across my eyes.

I scrambled backward just as a stinger slammed down where my chest had been moments earlier.

Poison hissed against the sand.

The second creature attacked from the side immediately after.

Too fast.

I raised the handgun and fired my last round directly into its open mouth.

The back of its skull exploded outward in a spray of shattered teeth and black fluid.

The creature collapsed twitching beside me.

Two down.

And now I was out of ammunition.

The remaining Shed-beners slowed their movements.

Watching me carefully.

Smarter than the others.

One blocked my path back to the car while the second circled behind me, massive stinger swaying slowly overhead like an executioner preparing the final blow.

I grabbed the scimitar from the sand and forced myself upright.

My breathing had gone ragged.

Everything hurt.

Blood soaked through the bandages beneath my coat.

The creatures noticed.

Predators always did.

One suddenly lunged low across the sand.

I barely sidestepped in time, but the second slammed into me immediately afterward.

The impact sent me crashing backward down the side of a dune.

The scimitar flew from my hand.

Before I could recover, a massive claw pinned my arm into the sand.

Pain shot through my shoulder.

The other creature approached slowly now.

Confident.

Its human face leaned closer toward mine.

I could smell rot on its breath.

Its cloudy eyes twitched wildly as if several thoughts were fighting for control behind them.

Then the creature smiled.

Not instinctively.

Deliberately.

The stinger rose high above me.

Ready to strike.

Then the desert roared.

The sound came from beneath the earth itself.

Deep.

Thunderous.

Ancient.

The dunes exploded upward around us.

The Shed-beners shrieked and turned too late.

Something colossal burst from beneath the sand.

A sandworm.

Its mouth opened impossibly wide, ringed with rotating rows of jagged teeth large enough to crush vehicles whole. Pale flesh glistened beneath armored hide as the thing surged upward like the desert itself had come alive.

The worm swallowed one of the Shed-beners instantly.

The second barely had time to scream before the jaws closed around it too.

Crunch.

The sound echoed across the dunes.

Then the worm vanished beneath the sand again almost as quickly as it had appeared, dragging both screaming creatures into the depths below.

The desert settled slowly.

Silence returned.

I remained flat on my back for several long seconds, breathing hard, staring at the empty dunes above me.

Then I slowly sat up.

Everyone with functioning survival instincts feared sandworms.

But that was the first and only time in my life I had ever been happy to see one.

 

I had finally reached the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

Dark clouds churned above the ruins in slow, unnatural spirals. Thick and swollen like bruises spreading across the sky. Crimson lightning pulsed silently within them, illuminating shattered pyramids and broken statues in brief flashes of red-white light.

Even from a distance, I could feel the Ghul-Zone pressing against reality like a wound that refused to close.

Vehicles didn’t last long inside active zones.

Electronics fried without warning. Engines stalled. Entire caravans vanished for days before reappearing fused together into piles of melted flesh and metal.

Sometimes the people inside were still alive.

I killed the engine.

For a moment I just sat there listening to the sudden silence.

Then I grabbed my torch, tightened the scarf around my face, and stepped out into the dead air.

Immediately, something felt wrong.

Not danger.

Absence.

No wind.

No insects.

No movement.

Just a low hum vibrating through the atmosphere itself.

The sky inside the zone had turned a diseased brown color. Veins of pale energy crawled soundlessly through the air between ruined structures, flickering like cracks spreading through glass. Every breath tasted metallic even through the scarf.

I kept my face covered.

No reason to inhale more of this place than necessary.

The necropolis stretched endlessly ahead of me.

Half-buried obelisks.

Collapsed mausoleums.

Streets lined with statues eroded into faceless things by centuries of radiation and sandstorms.

Then I noticed movement.

Far ahead, between the ruins, a line of figures shuffled silently through the streets.

Dozens of them.

Human silhouettes.

Some staggered unnaturally while others moved with eerie smoothness, like puppets dragged by invisible strings. Heads tilted at impossible angles. Limbs bent wrong.

Ghuls.

Or whatever remained after the Zone hollowed a person out and left only instinct wearing their skin.

Didn’t matter which.

Nothing could be done for them anymore.

Best to avoid them entirely.

I moved deeper into the necropolis carefully, one hand resting near the scimitar at my side.

The deeper I went, the stranger the place became.

The geometry shifted when I wasn’t looking directly at it.

Streets curved where they shouldn’t.

Passages looped back into themselves.

At one point I walked past the same headless statue three separate times despite never turning around.

The Zone liked to play games with people.

Usually the games ended with someone eating their own fingers while insisting they tasted like honey.

I ignored everything except the pyramid.

Small.

Black.

Resting at the center of the necropolis like a splinter buried beneath skin.

Nothing else mattered.

The closer I got to it, the stronger the pressure inside my skull became.

Not pain exactly.

More like invisible fingers pressing against my thoughts.

Digging.

Searching.

Then I heard her voice.

“Aaron…”

I froze instantly.

The necropolis vanished around me.

For one horrible moment I was a child again.

“Sweetie… don’t go.”

Slowly, I turned.

My mother stood behind me.

Exactly as I remembered her before the sickness took her.

Warm brown skin.

Thin frame.

Soft tired eyes.

Even the same faded blue scarf she used to wear around the apartment.

For a second I forgot where I was.

Forgot the Zone.

Forgot the pyramid.

Forgot everything.

She stepped closer and gently rested a hand against my shoulder.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered.

The pressure in my chest hurt worse than any wound I’d taken in years.

“I missed you too, Mum,” I admitted quietly.

And I meant it.

God, I meant it.

“You could stay,” she whispered softly. “You don’t have to keep hurting anymore.”

Something trembled in her voice.

“You don’t have to keep fighting.”

I stared at her silently.

And that was the problem.

My mother had never spoken like that.

Not even when she was dying.

Especially not then.

She used to tell me:

If the world wants you dead, make it work for it.

This thing didn’t know that.

The smile on her face twitched slightly.

Just slightly.

But enough.

I sighed tiredly.

Then I drew the scimitar and cut her head off.

The blade sliced clean through her neck.

The body collapsed instantly into the sand, twitching violently as thick black fluid spilled from the stump instead of blood.

The severed head hit the ground still smiling.

For a few seconds it continued staring up at me while the face slowly softened and melted like wet clay left in the sun.

Then it collapsed into rotten sludge.

I stared at the remains coldly.

“Pale imitation, asshole.”

The Zone hummed louder around me.

Almost disappointed.

Then I turned and entered the pyramid.

 

The air inside felt ancient.

Dry.

Claustrophobic.

My torchlight flickered across walls covered in faded hieroglyphs and newer markings scratched desperately over them by later explorers. Warnings mostly.

Prayers.

Names.

Somebody had carved:

IT KNOWS YOUR HEART

deep into one of the walls.

Farther down, another simply read:

DON’T LISTEN

The deeper I descended, the colder it became.

Dust coated everything thick enough to swallow footprints whole.

Occasionally I caught movement just beyond the torchlight.

Something shifting behind pillars.

Something crawling along ceilings.

I ignored it.

The Zone fed on attention.

Old bones cracked beneath my boots as I moved through stripped burial chambers and narrow corridors. Most of the tomb had been looted centuries ago. Broken jars and shattered coffins littered the floors.

Yet somehow the deeper chambers remained untouched.

That should’ve worried me more than it did.

Eventually the corridor opened into a massive circular chamber.

My footsteps echoed softly across the stone.

Tall pillars ringed the room, carved into the likenesses of forgotten gods whose faces had been deliberately chiseled away long ago. Ancient braziers still burned with weak green fire despite the absence of fuel.

At the center stood a massive stone sarcophagus covered in blackened gold markings.

I approached carefully.

No movement.

No sound.

Good enough.

I shoved the lid aside with a painful groan from my ribs.

Inside lay a dried corpse wrapped in ancient linen. Its skin stretched tightly against bone, mouth frozen open in a permanent scream.

For several seconds nothing happened.

I exhaled slowly.

“Sorry about this.”

I reached down to move the body aside.

The mummy grabbed my wrist.

Before I could react, it hurled me across the chamber hard enough to crack stone beneath my back.

Pain exploded through my ribs.

The creature rose from the sarcophagus with horrifying speed.

Its jaw unhinged wider than humanly possible as it released a shriek sharp enough to physically hurt. Dust rained from the ceiling. My torch nearly slipped from my hand.

“Oh, come on—”

The mummy lunged.

Far too fast.

I barely rolled aside before its claws punched deep grooves into the stone where my head had been moments earlier.

Up close I saw movement beneath the wrappings.

Thousands of tiny black insects crawling beneath the ancient linen like blood moving beneath skin.

I slashed with the scimitar.

The blade carved deep across its chest.

The creature barely reacted.

It hit me hard enough to send me skidding across the chamber again.

I instinctively raised the handgun and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Empty.

“Right,” I muttered. “Fantastic.”

The mummy shrieked again.

Then sprinted directly up the wall.

Its limbs twisted unnaturally as it crawled across the ceiling like some gigantic insect before dropping toward me.

I barely caught its arm mid-strike with the scimitar.

The impact nearly snapped my wrist.

The thing was impossibly strong.

Rotten linen wrapped around my arm as it forced me downward inch by inch. Its face hung inches from mine now while black beetles crawled in and out of its mouth and empty eye sockets.

And then it spoke.

Just one word.

In my mother’s voice.

“Aaron…”

That almost broke me more than the claws.

I slammed my forehead into its skull.

The creature staggered backward slightly.

Enough.

I kicked one of the burning braziers directly into its chest.

Flames erupted across the ancient wrappings instantly.

The mummy screamed.

Not in pain.

In fury.

It thrashed violently across the chamber, climbing pillars and walls while burning alive. Flaming insects poured from its body in thick streams, scattering across the floor around me.

The fire spread rapidly through the dry linen.

I grabbed a broken spear shaft near one of the tombs and waited.

The mummy launched itself at me one final time.

Burning.

Shrieking.

Its mouth stretched impossibly wide.

I sidestepped at the last second.

Then drove the spear clean through its torso and deep into the stone wall behind it.

The impact pinned the creature there.

The mummy writhed violently, claws scraping uselessly against stone as flames consumed more and more of its body.

Still screaming in my mother’s voice.

I stood there breathing hard for several seconds before finally turning back toward the sarcophagus.

Inside was…

Almost nothing.

No treasure.

No cursed weapon.

No ancient relic humming with forbidden power.

Just dust.

Bones.

And one tiny object resting near the bottom.

A small statue of a cat.

I stared at it.

Then slowly looked upward in exhausted disbelief.

“You cannot be serious, Menehmet…”

Behind me, the burning mummy continued shrieking against the wall.

I sighed deeply, grabbed the statue, and shoved it into my coat pocket.

Then I left the pyramid behind me.

 

A few hours later I was back inside the car, driving away from the necropolis while the storm clouds shrank slowly in the rearview mirror.

The tiny cat statue sat on the passenger seat beside me.

Another priceless royal mission accomplished.

All so the God-Queen of New Cairo could add another worthless piece of junk to her collection.

I glanced sideways at the statue.

Its tiny carved eyes stared back at me.

I immediately looked back at the road.

“…Still hate cats.”

I could see nothing beyond the red wall of sand.

Crimson lightning clawed through the storm in violent flashes, turning the desert into a negative image of itself for split seconds at a time. The rest was noise. Sand hammering the chassis. Metal groaning beneath the wind. Loose sheet metal rattling hard enough to tear free at any moment.

Somewhere far beyond all that came the low, dying growl of thunder.

The radioactive sandstorm had curved off its forecasted route and slammed straight into me.

That’s what happens when your weather predictions rely on astronomical scraps scribbled down five thousand years ago by priests staring at the stars through opium smoke.

I’d been driving blind through this hell long enough to lose all sense of direction. East, west, north—it was all just red now.

Eventually I eased my foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop.

Probably the dumbest thing you could do in a storm like this.

Then again, continuing to drive wasn’t exactly genius either.

The engine coughed beneath me like a dying smoker. Every vehicle left in this world sounded sick. Mine especially.

The car had once belonged to at least three different owners and two different manufacturers. Soviet frame. Military-grade filtration unit. Doors ripped from some civilian transport. Half the dashboard held together with copper wire and prayer strips dedicated to gods nobody believed in until the world ended.

Outside, the storm screamed louder.

I pulled the map from my satchel.

The parchment crackled in my hands. The drawings on it were painfully crude—crooked pyramids, uneven symbols, landmarks sketched with the confidence of a drunk child.

But the map had come directly from the palace.

Drawn by the Pharaoh herself.

And I wasn’t brave enough—or suicidal enough—to criticize the God-Queen of New Cairo.

When Pharaoh Menehmet summoned you, you didn’t refuse.

You didn’t complain.

You bowed low enough for your forehead to touch the floor and prayed she stayed in a merciful mood.

The Henty-she had arrived before sunrise. Royal guards wrapped in black linen and bronze plating, faces hidden behind jackal masks with glowing blue lenses. They dragged me from bed without explanation and marched me through the waking streets of New Cairo.

Not that explanations were common in the presence of gods.

The palace rose from the center of the city like ancient history welded onto the corpse of the future. Neon hieroglyphs burned across towering obelisks. Massive statues watched over rusted slums with cracked stone faces. The rich burned incense while the poor burned tires to stay warm.

The guards shoved me onto my knees before the throne.

The royal speaker stepped forward immediately, robes sweeping across polished stone.

“Behold Menehmet, first of her name, Daughter of Amun, God-Queen of New Cairo, Lady Of the Two Lands, The chosen of The Sun,—”

I stopped listening after that.

By the time he finished, my knees were killing me.

“And before her grace kneels her faithful servant,” he continued, “the Medjay Aaron Qaswar.”

“I’ve known her majesty since she was born,” I muttered. “Can we skip this part?”

“How dare—”

“Leave us,” Menehmet said calmly.

The speaker froze mid-breath.

Even kneeling, I could see the fury behind his painted eyes. But he obeyed. The servants withdrew first, followed by the Henty-she. Their heavy boots echoed through the chamber until the throne room fell silent.

Menehmet leaned lazily against her throne, gold jewelry glimmering in the firelight. She was barely nineteen, yet people spoke to her with the kind of fear reserved for ancient things buried beneath the earth.

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” I said.

“You tend to have that effect on people, Aaron.”

A faint smile touched her lips.

“Not everyone sees past your rough exterior the way I do.”

“That why you dragged me across the city before sunrise? To appreciate my soft interior?”

“Not today, Aaron. I called for you because there is something I want retrieved.”

“I’m a Medjay, not an errand boy.”

“You are whatever I require you to be.”

Her smile widened slightly.

“But don’t worry. There will be plenty of opportunities for violence and heroic deaths along the way.”

“Comforting.”

She handed me the map.

“What you seek lies here. A necropolis abandoned long before New Cairo existed.”

“You’re sending me into a tomb.”

“I’m sending you after something that does not belong there.”

“That narrows it down.”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

Her eyes drifted across the throne room, distant and thoughtful.

“Bring it back to me. I think it will liven this place up nicely.”

“You don’t even know what it is, do you?”

“No,” she admitted, sounding almost amused. “Which is exactly why I want it.”

Then she waved her hand dismissively.

“Now go. Time wastes itself far too easily outside these walls.”

 

The storm howled louder outside my car, dragging me back to the present.

Another flash of crimson lightning split the sky.

The vehicle shuddered violently as wind slammed against it. The filtration unit wheezed in protest. One of the cracks in the windshield spread a little farther.

The old monster wasn’t going to survive much more of this.

I tightened my grip on the wheel.

“Fuck it.”

I slammed my foot onto the gas and drove blind into the storm.

For several minutes there was nothing except red static and shrieking wind.

Then another sound crawled through the chaos.

At first I thought the engine was finally dying. A low mechanical whine buried beneath the thunder.

Then it grew louder.

Multiple engines.

Overworked. Abused. Running on fuel never meant for them.

Raiders.

A burst of flame ignited somewhere to my right.

Then another to my left.

Shapes emerged from the crimson haze like demons clawing out of hell itself. Headlights wrapped in metal cages. Exhaust pipes vomiting blue fire into the storm.

One of the vehicles slammed into my side hard.

I caught a glimpse of the driver through cracked welding goggles and a filthy gas mask. Hairless scalp. Chalk-white skin. Eyes twitching with manic energy.

Raiders alright.

And not the disciplined kind either.

Sons of the Sun maybe?

Definitely high on Blue Lotus. Nobody sane scavenged inside a radioactive sandstorm.

Their vehicles barely qualified as cars anymore. Rusted skeletons welded together from scrap metal, rebar, military plating, temple icons. One had animal bones hanging from chains across the hood. Another had strips of human skin nailed to the doors, fluttering wildly in the wind.

Hideous machines.

But in their own deranged way, almost stylish.

The vehicle on my left rammed me again.

Then the one on my right.

They pinned me between them like vultures stripping apart a carcass.

Metal screamed against metal.

Sparks vanished instantly into the storm.

Then came the thudding overhead.

Boots.

“Shit.”

One raider landed on the roof, crouched low against the wind. Another smashed onto the hood, clawing at the windshield while a third jammed a hooked blade into the passenger door.

The one at the door got in first.

I drove my knife through the gap before he could force it open fully.

Hot blood sprayed across my hand.

He stumbled backward into the storm and vanished instantly into the red.

A machete punched through the roof an inch from my face.

I swerved violently.

The lunatic on the windshield snarled behind his mask and began hammering the glass with a metal pipe.

I slammed the brakes.

His body launched off the hood.

A second later I felt the tires bounce over him.

Still one above me.

The bastard had buried his machete deep into the roof to anchor himself in place. The blade rattled overhead every time the wind hit us.

I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the handgun.

Guns were almost extinct now. This one had been a gift from Menehmet shortly after she inherited the throne.

I fired once through the roof.

The gunshot deafened me inside the cramped cabin.

Something heavy rolled off the vehicle.

Then the storm flashed bright crimson.

To my left, lightning began crawling across the sand in branching veins of red-white energy.

The kind that turned flesh into charcoal and fused metal into glass.

I smiled.

Then slammed my car sideways into the raider beside me.

The impact shoved his vehicle directly into the forming electrical trail.

For half a second the world turned white.

Lightning swallowed the car whole.

Metal twisted.

The engine exploded.

Then there was nothing left except burning wreckage tumbling through the storm.

Just me and the last one now.

I pulled alongside him, wanting this finished before the desert killed us both.

The bastard leaned halfway out his window with a spear in hand.

“Really?” I muttered.

He thrust downward.

The spear punched through my front tire.

The steering wheel ripped violently from my hands.

The car lost traction instantly.

Then the storm caught it broadside.

One moment I was driving.

The next the world flipped.

Metal screamed around me as the vehicle rolled across the dunes. My shoulder slammed against the door hard enough to numb my arm. Glass burst inward. The engine died somewhere during the chaos.

Then came silence.

Not true silence.

Just that muffled roar you hear after surviving something that should’ve killed you.

I dragged myself through the shattered window and collapsed into the sand, coughing blood and dust into my scarf.

Nearby, the raider’s vehicle skidded to a stop.

Its door creaked open.

The man stepped out slowly, spear in hand.

The storm wrapped around him like a living thing. Gas mask lenses glowing red beneath the lightning overhead.

He walked toward me without hurry.

Certain he’d already won.

I waited until he raised the spear.

Then I cut his legs out from under him.

We crashed into the sand together, grunting and slipping against the dunes as we fought for control of the weapon. He was stronger than he looked. His fingers forced the spear closer and closer toward my throat.

I drove my boot between his legs as hard as I could.

He jerked violently.

The scream was still forming in his throat when I shoved the spear upward.

The blade punched through the bottom of his jaw and out the back of his skull.

He twitched once.

Then went limp.

I lay there breathing hard, staring up into the red storm overhead.

Then another lightning strike hit nearby.

The blast hit like a hammer from god.

Heat swallowed me whole.

And the world went black.

 

I woke to the smell of incense and ointment.

Canvas walls swayed gently around me.

A tent.

My body felt heavy. Burned. Every breath scraped against my ribs.

A young woman sat beside me grinding herbs into a bowl. Dark curls partially hidden beneath a linen scarf. Steady hands. Focused eyes.

When she noticed I was awake, she froze.

For a moment we simply stared at each other.

Then she stood abruptly.

“Father,” she called outside. “He’s awake.”

A few moments later an old man entered the tent.

Thin. Weathered. Wrapped in dusty robes. His beard had gone almost entirely gray, but warmth still lived in his eyes.

“You gave us quite the scare, young man,” he said. “My Fatima wasn’t sure you’d wake at all. Seems I won that bet.”

He smiled.

A genuine smile.

Rare enough nowadays to feel almost unnatural.

“Name’s Khalid,” he said as he sat beside me. “What’s yours, Medjay?”

“Aaron,” I managed. My throat felt like broken glass. “Aaron Qaswar.”

“Easy now.”

Khalid carefully helped me sit upright before handing me a cup of water.

“Slowly. No rush.”

The tent smelled of dried herbs, old canvas, and sweet smoke drifting from a bronze burner near the entrance. Strings of charms hung from the support poles, clinking softly whenever the desert wind touched the fabric walls. A lantern overhead painted everything in warm amber light that felt impossibly gentle after the endless crimson fury outside.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“The Wandering Oasis.”

I frowned.

“Pretty sure I’ve crossed these regions before. Never seen an oasis anywhere near here.”

Khalid chuckled quietly while pouring tea into two tiny cups.

“It isn’t called the Wandering Oasis for no reason.” He handed one to me carefully. “Its geographical coordinates are… inconsistent.”

“Inconsistent.”

“Yes. Sometimes it rests near the Glass Dunes. Sometimes near the old coastlines. Once we woke beside the ruins of Luxor Station.”

He shrugged lightly.

“The Oasis goes where it wishes.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

Khalid sipped his tea calmly.

“Have you witnessed many things in the desert that do?”

Fair point.

Outside the tent I could hear distant machinery groaning beneath repair work. Somewhere nearby, strings of metal charms rattled softly in the wind.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Lived?” Khalid smiled faintly. “No one lives in the Wandering Oasis. We travel with it. We care for it. And in return… it cares for us.”

I took a careful sip of the tea.

Bitter. Heavy with mint and something medicinal underneath.

Pain immediately flared through my ribs.

Then memory came rushing back.

The storm.

The raiders.

The crash.

“My car,” I muttered. “What happened to my car?”

“Fatima is tending to it,” Khalid said. “Though much like yourself, it will require some time before it is fit for the road again.”

“That bad?”

“You rolled a vehicle through a radioactive lightning storm.”

He gave me an amused look.

“You are fortunate to still possess all your limbs.”

“Debatable.”

I reached for my satchel beside the cot. Relief washed through me when I felt the map still inside.

I unfolded it carefully and handed it to him.

“You know this place?”

Khalid’s expression changed the moment he saw the markings.

“The Bene Nefertite necropolis,” he said quietly.

So the Pharaoh’s map pointed somewhere real after all.

“You know how to get there?”

“Of course.” Khalid traced one of the crude lines with his finger. “In a healthy vehicle, perhaps half a day from here.”

“But?”

He glanced up at me.

“But it lies within an active Ghul-Zone.”

I stared at him for a few seconds.

Then a long, exhausted sigh escaped me.

“Fuck…” I rubbed both hands over my face. “Of course it does.”

Khalid remained silent.

A Ghul-Zone.

Wonderful.

The desert was littered with them now. Places where radiation, death, and whatever invisible poison had seeped into the world finally stopped pretending to obey natural law. Entire villages vanished inside them overnight. Sometimes they returned days later.

Usually screaming.

Sometimes not human anymore.

Outside, the wind had softened into a low whisper against the canvas walls.

“I don’t think the God-Queen is the patient type,” I muttered eventually. “Don’t exactly have the luxury of waiting this out.”

“Be that as it may,” Khalid replied calmly, “your vehicle is broken, your body is barely holding together, and the storm still prowls outside.”

Then he smiled warmly.

“So whether you like it or not, Medjay… tonight you will stay here. You will drink tea. You will rest. And you will endure the unbearable horror of friendly conversation.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

The old man had a presence to him. The kind that disarmed you before you realized it was happening.

I kept telling myself to stay guarded. Men survived longer that way in the wasteland. Loose tongues eventually got slit.

But the hours slipped by, and somehow I kept talking anyway.

About my mother dying from lung rot when I was a child.

About fighting for scraps in the alleys of New Cairo before the Medjay recruited me.

About the first man I killed.

I still remembered his face sometimes.

Khalid never interrupted. Never pushed. He simply listened while slowly refilling our tea like we had all the time in the world.

At some point I even admitted what most people would consider my greatest shame.

“I don’t trust cats,” I confessed.

Khalid blinked.

Then nearly spilled his tea laughing.

“You serve the Pharaoh of New Cairo,” he wheezed, “descendant of gods and ruler of the desert… yet you fear cats?”

“They stare too long.”

“That may be the funniest thing I’ve heard in years.”

“I’m serious.”

“That somehow makes it even better.”

I leaned back against the cushions with a tired groan.

“I’ve survived raiders, mutants, storms, cultists, and royal politics. Why would I willingly invite another apex predator into my home?”

Khalid laughed harder at that.

Real laughter.

Not the nervous kind people forced out nowadays to prove they still remembered how.

And for a little while, beneath the lantern glow while the desert whispered outside the tent walls, the wasteland almost felt human again.

 

I woke to the feeling of a hand pressing lightly against my chest.

Instinct took over before thought did.

My hand shot upward, grabbing the wrist hard enough to make the other person gasp. My eyes snapped open. Heart pounding. Half-awake and already reaching for the knife beneath my pillow that wasn’t there.

Fatima stared down at me.

Pain flickered briefly across her face where I held her wrist, but her expression remained impressively deadpan considering the circumstances.

“I was dressing your wounds,” she said flatly. “They tend to get infected easily out there in the desert.”

I immediately let go.

“Sorry,” I muttered, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Reflex.”

“No kidding.”

Morning light glowed softly through the tent walls now, replacing the warm lantern light from the night before.

Fatima returned to wrapping fresh bandages around my ribs with practiced precision.

“You move around a lot in your sleep,” she said.

“Occupational hazard.”

“You also talk.”

“You threatened someone named Abbas with a shovel.”

I frowned.

“Abbas knew what he did.”

That finally earned a small laugh from her.

Up close, I noticed details I’d missed before. Thin scars crossing her hands. Tiny burn marks along her forearms. Grease permanently worked into the lines of her fingers.

Mechanic’s hands.

Capable hands.

“Your car’s almost ready,” she said after tightening the final bandage. “Just finishing a few things.”

“That fast?”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No, impressed.”

A faint trace of pride appeared in her expression.

“You should be.”

„Ill make sure to repay you one day.“

“No need. Dad always says small kindness matters in cruel places.”

“Sounds like him.”

For a moment neither of us spoke.

The Oasis outside had already begun waking up. Distant voices drifted through the canvas. Machinery clanked somewhere nearby. I could smell bread baking mixed with engine oil and incense smoke.

Then a thought slowly clicked into place.

“Was Khalid with you since you were little?”

Fatima blinked.

“What?”

“Khalid,” I clarified carefully. “Was he the one who raised you?”

She looked genuinely confused.

“Well… yes. He’s my father.”

“I meant—”

I hesitated.

“When did he adopt you?”

„How do you know he adopted me? Im fairly sure he didnt tell you that.“

“Well… I’ve never heard of a jinn fathering a human.”

Her eyes widened instantly.

Not offended.

Shocked.

“How did you know?”

“I’m a Medjay.”

I leaned back carefully against the cot.

“I’ve dealt with a few jinn before. Though admittedly, most of them are far less subtle than your father.”

Fatima glanced nervously toward the tent entrance.

“Relax,” I said. “None of my business. Your secret’s safe with me.”

She studied my face for a long moment, trying to decide whether I meant that.

Eventually she relaxed slightly.

Without another word, she reached into a satchel beside her and pulled something out on a wooden skewer.

A caramelized scorpion.

Its curled tail glistened beneath a layer of dark syrup.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

I stared at it.

“…Yeah.”

I pointed at the scorpion.

“But not that hungry.”

Fatima giggled softly.

Just enough to remind me she was still young beneath all the strange mystery surrounding her.

 

The Oasis looked completely different in daylight.

The tents stretched across the dunes in uneven circles around a pool of crystal-clear water that absolutely should not have existed in the middle of the wasteland. Palm trees swayed lazily despite there being almost no wind. Traders wandered between colorful canopies selling scavenged technology beside preserved spices and ancient charms carved from bone and copper.

Incense smoke drifted through the warm air alongside the smell of cooked meat and engine oil.

The entire place felt unreal, like a pocket dimension somehow safe from the desert enveloping it.

Fatima led me toward my vehicle.

And somehow—

Somehow the old thing looked better than it had in years.

The reinforced panels had actually been fitted properly instead of hammered into place by desperation and profanity. The filtration unit no longer sounded like it was trying to inhale gravel. Even the engine housing had been cleaned.

I stared at it in disbelief.

“You’re really good,” I admitted. “Where’d you learn all this?”

Fatima crouched beside the front wheel, tightening something with a wrench.

“Before Dad found me, I lived in the scrapyards for a while.”

She shrugged.

“Not much to do there besides take machines apart.”

“Sounds miserable.”

“It was.”

She said it casually.

That somehow made it worse.

After a moment she reached into her satchel again and pulled out another map.

This one looked infinitely better than Menehmet’s version. Proper landmarks. Accurate distances. Warnings scribbled carefully along the margins in Arabic.

“Dad told me to give you this,” she said. “Should guide you better than those royal scribbles.”

I laughed quietly.

“Probably wise. If the Pharaoh ever retires, cartography definitely isn’t an option for her.”

Fatima smiled faintly.

I folded the map carefully and tucked it into my coat.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

“For the map or the car?”

“Both.”

For a brief moment neither of us spoke.

Then she stepped back from the vehicle.

“Maybe we’ll meet again, Medjay.”

I looked at her standing there beneath the desert sun, dark curls moving gently in the wind, strange amber eyes catching the light like polished gold.

“Maybe,” I said.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition.

The engine roared to life instantly.

Not coughing.

Not choking.

Alive.

I grinned despite myself.

Then I shifted gears and drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis, leaving the Wandering Oasis behind in the sands.

 

It had been about four hours since I left the Wandering Oasis behind.

The desert changed gradually the farther I drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

The dunes darkened first.

Black mineral veins spread through the sand like rot beneath skin, shimmering faintly beneath the afternoon sun. Ruined pylons from the old world jutted from the wasteland at crooked angles, half-swallowed by centuries of storms. Some still carried scraps of melted wiring that hummed softly whenever the wind blew through them.

And somehow, against all logic, the car was running beautifully.

Whatever Fatima had done to it bordered on sorcery.

The engine no longer wheezed every few minutes like a dying animal. The steering responded instantly. Even the suspension handled the uneven dunes without sounding like the entire frame was about to collapse into spare parts.

The old machine practically purred beneath me.

I almost felt guilty driving it.

Almost.

I adjusted the scarf around my face and glanced toward the map resting on the passenger seat.

Close now.

Very close.

The necropolis should’ve been visible any minute.

That was when I noticed the vibration.

At first I assumed it was the engine.

A faint trembling beneath the wheels.

Then the dashboard began rattling.

Sand slid down nearby dunes in soft streams.

My stomach tightened immediately.

“No…”

The ground lurched violently beneath the car.

The steering wheel jerked in my hands hard enough to nearly send me sideways.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

The desert exploded.

Sand erupted upward beside the vehicle in towering waves as something massive burst from beneath the dunes to my left.

Then another.

Then two more.

Four shapes circled the car as I slammed the brakes.

Shed-beners.

Wonderful.

The things had once been human.

Probably.

Now they looked like nightmares designed by someone who hated both mankind and nature equally. Their lower halves resembled enormous black scorpions armored in chitinous plates scarred by radiation, old wounds, and patches of fungal growth. But rising from those monstrous bodies were elongated human torsos twisted into impossible shapes, ribs pressing visibly beneath stretched skin.

Their faces were the worst part.

Too human.

Clouded eyes rolled wildly in different directions while their mouths hung unnaturally wide, rows of broken teeth jutting outward at crooked angles. Bronze jewelry still clung to their bodies in places. Scraps of old robes fluttered from their armored backs.

Remnants of people.

That always made monsters worse.

One of them clicked its claws together and released a wet, shrieking hiss that sounded disturbingly close to laughter.

Another slowly raised its massive stinger over the car.

I grabbed my scimitar and kicked the door open.

The first creature lunged immediately.

Its claw slammed into the side of the vehicle hard enough to dent the metal inward. I rolled beneath the strike and slashed upward with the scimitar.

The curved blade bit deep into the pale flesh where human torso fused into scorpion body.

Black blood sprayed across the sand.

The Shed-bener screamed.

Not like an animal.

Like a person.

I hated that.

The second creature charged from my right with horrifying speed. I barely avoided the stinger crashing into the ground where my head had been a second earlier.

The impact cracked the hardened sand like stone.

I fired the handgun.

The first bullet punched into its human face.

The creature staggered backward violently—

—but didn’t stop.

“Of course that’s not enough.”

It shrieked and rushed me again.

I fired a second time.

The shot tore through one of its clustered eyes. Black fluid burst down its face as the creature reeled sideways, clawing at itself blindly.

Behind me came the sound of twisting metal.

Another Shed-bener slammed directly into the car hard enough to nearly flip it.

Metal screamed.

One of the creatures crawled across the roof with horrifying speed, claws scraping against the reinforced plating Fatima had installed only hours earlier.

I swung the scimitar just as the blinded creature lunged again.

The blade buried itself deep into its throat.

The creature convulsed violently.

Its stinger lashed through the air in frantic arcs before finally going still.

One down.

Three left.

Something slammed into me from behind.

I crashed hard into the sand, pain exploding through my ribs where Fatima’s fresh bandages sat beneath my clothes. My grip loosened on the sword.

A claw punched into the ground inches from my face, spraying sand across my eyes.

I scrambled backward just as a stinger slammed down where my chest had been moments earlier.

Poison hissed against the sand.

The second creature attacked from the side immediately after.

Too fast.

I raised the handgun and fired my last round directly into its open mouth.

The back of its skull exploded outward in a spray of shattered teeth and black fluid.

The creature collapsed twitching beside me.

Two down.

And now I was out of ammunition.

The remaining Shed-beners slowed their movements.

Watching me carefully.

Smarter than the others.

One blocked my path back to the car while the second circled behind me, massive stinger swaying slowly overhead like an executioner preparing the final blow.

I grabbed the scimitar from the sand and forced myself upright.

My breathing had gone ragged.

Everything hurt.

Blood soaked through the bandages beneath my coat.

The creatures noticed.

Predators always did.

One suddenly lunged low across the sand.

I barely sidestepped in time, but the second slammed into me immediately afterward.

The impact sent me crashing backward down the side of a dune.

The scimitar flew from my hand.

Before I could recover, a massive claw pinned my arm into the sand.

Pain shot through my shoulder.

The other creature approached slowly now.

Confident.

Its human face leaned closer toward mine.

I could smell rot on its breath.

Its cloudy eyes twitched wildly as if several thoughts were fighting for control behind them.

Then the creature smiled.

Not instinctively.

Deliberately.

The stinger rose high above me.

Ready to strike.

Then the desert roared.

The sound came from beneath the earth itself.

Deep.

Thunderous.

Ancient.

The dunes exploded upward around us.

The Shed-beners shrieked and turned too late.

Something colossal burst from beneath the sand.

A sandworm.

Its mouth opened impossibly wide, ringed with rotating rows of jagged teeth large enough to crush vehicles whole. Pale flesh glistened beneath armored hide as the thing surged upward like the desert itself had come alive.

The worm swallowed one of the Shed-beners instantly.

The second barely had time to scream before the jaws closed around it too.

Crunch.

The sound echoed across the dunes.

Then the worm vanished beneath the sand again almost as quickly as it had appeared, dragging both screaming creatures into the depths below.

The desert settled slowly.

Silence returned.

I remained flat on my back for several long seconds, breathing hard, staring at the empty dunes above me.

Then I slowly sat up.

Everyone with functioning survival instincts feared sandworms.

But that was the first and only time in my life I had ever been happy to see one.

 

I had finally reached the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

Dark clouds churned above the ruins in slow, unnatural spirals. Thick and swollen like bruises spreading across the sky. Crimson lightning pulsed silently within them, illuminating shattered pyramids and broken statues in brief flashes of red-white light.

Even from a distance, I could feel the Ghul-Zone pressing against reality like a wound that refused to close.

Vehicles didn’t last long inside active zones.

Electronics fried without warning. Engines stalled. Entire caravans vanished for days before reappearing fused together into piles of melted flesh and metal.

Sometimes the people inside were still alive.

I killed the engine.

For a moment I just sat there listening to the sudden silence.

Then I grabbed my torch, tightened the scarf around my face, and stepped out into the dead air.

Immediately, something felt wrong.

Not danger.

Absence.

No wind.

No insects.

No movement.

Just a low hum vibrating through the atmosphere itself.

The sky inside the zone had turned a diseased brown color. Veins of pale energy crawled soundlessly through the air between ruined structures, flickering like cracks spreading through glass. Every breath tasted metallic even through the scarf.

I kept my face covered.

No reason to inhale more of this place than necessary.

The necropolis stretched endlessly ahead of me.

Half-buried obelisks.

Collapsed mausoleums.

Streets lined with statues eroded into faceless things by centuries of radiation and sandstorms.

Then I noticed movement.

Far ahead, between the ruins, a line of figures shuffled silently through the streets.

Dozens of them.

Human silhouettes.

Some staggered unnaturally while others moved with eerie smoothness, like puppets dragged by invisible strings. Heads tilted at impossible angles. Limbs bent wrong.

Ghuls.

Or whatever remained after the Zone hollowed a person out and left only instinct wearing their skin.

Didn’t matter which.

Nothing could be done for them anymore.

Best to avoid them entirely.

I moved deeper into the necropolis carefully, one hand resting near the scimitar at my side.

The deeper I went, the stranger the place became.

The geometry shifted when I wasn’t looking directly at it.

Streets curved where they shouldn’t.

Passages looped back into themselves.

At one point I walked past the same headless statue three separate times despite never turning around.

The Zone liked to play games with people.

Usually the games ended with someone eating their own fingers while insisting they tasted like honey.

I ignored everything except the pyramid.

Small.

Black.

Resting at the center of the necropolis like a splinter buried beneath skin.

Nothing else mattered.

The closer I got to it, the stronger the pressure inside my skull became.

Not pain exactly.

More like invisible fingers pressing against my thoughts.

Digging.

Searching.

Then I heard her voice.

“Aaron…”

I froze instantly.

The necropolis vanished around me.

For one horrible moment I was a child again.

“Sweetie… don’t go.”

Slowly, I turned.

My mother stood behind me.

Exactly as I remembered her before the sickness took her.

Warm brown skin.

Thin frame.

Soft tired eyes.

Even the same faded blue scarf she used to wear around the apartment.

For a second I forgot where I was.

Forgot the Zone.

Forgot the pyramid.

Forgot everything.

She stepped closer and gently rested a hand against my shoulder.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered.

The pressure in my chest hurt worse than any wound I’d taken in years.

“I missed you too, Mum,” I admitted quietly.

And I meant it.

God, I meant it.

“You could stay,” she whispered softly. “You don’t have to keep hurting anymore.”

Something trembled in her voice.

“You don’t have to keep fighting.”

I stared at her silently.

And that was the problem.

My mother had never spoken like that.

Not even when she was dying.

Especially not then.

She used to tell me:

If the world wants you dead, make it work for it.

This thing didn’t know that.

The smile on her face twitched slightly.

Just slightly.

But enough.

I sighed tiredly.

Then I drew the scimitar and cut her head off.

The blade sliced clean through her neck.

The body collapsed instantly into the sand, twitching violently as thick black fluid spilled from the stump instead of blood.

The severed head hit the ground still smiling.

For a few seconds it continued staring up at me while the face slowly softened and melted like wet clay left in the sun.

Then it collapsed into rotten sludge.

I stared at the remains coldly.

“Pale imitation, asshole.”

The Zone hummed louder around me.

Almost disappointed.

Then I turned and entered the pyramid.

 

The air inside felt ancient.

Dry.

Claustrophobic.

My torchlight flickered across walls covered in faded hieroglyphs and newer markings scratched desperately over them by later explorers. Warnings mostly.

Prayers.

Names.

Somebody had carved:

IT KNOWS YOUR HEART

deep into one of the walls.

Farther down, another simply read:

DON’T LISTEN

The deeper I descended, the colder it became.

Dust coated everything thick enough to swallow footprints whole.

Occasionally I caught movement just beyond the torchlight.

Something shifting behind pillars.

Something crawling along ceilings.

I ignored it.

The Zone fed on attention.

Old bones cracked beneath my boots as I moved through stripped burial chambers and narrow corridors. Most of the tomb had been looted centuries ago. Broken jars and shattered coffins littered the floors.

Yet somehow the deeper chambers remained untouched.

That should’ve worried me more than it did.

Eventually the corridor opened into a massive circular chamber.

My footsteps echoed softly across the stone.

Tall pillars ringed the room, carved into the likenesses of forgotten gods whose faces had been deliberately chiseled away long ago. Ancient braziers still burned with weak green fire despite the absence of fuel.

At the center stood a massive stone sarcophagus covered in blackened gold markings.

I approached carefully.

No movement.

No sound.

Good enough.

I shoved the lid aside with a painful groan from my ribs.

Inside lay a dried corpse wrapped in ancient linen. Its skin stretched tightly against bone, mouth frozen open in a permanent scream.

For several seconds nothing happened.

I exhaled slowly.

“Sorry about this.”

I reached down to move the body aside.

The mummy grabbed my wrist.

Before I could react, it hurled me across the chamber hard enough to crack stone beneath my back.

Pain exploded through my ribs.

The creature rose from the sarcophagus with horrifying speed.

Its jaw unhinged wider than humanly possible as it released a shriek sharp enough to physically hurt. Dust rained from the ceiling. My torch nearly slipped from my hand.

“Oh, come on—”

The mummy lunged.

Far too fast.

I barely rolled aside before its claws punched deep grooves into the stone where my head had been moments earlier.

Up close I saw movement beneath the wrappings.

Thousands of tiny black insects crawling beneath the ancient linen like blood moving beneath skin.

I slashed with the scimitar.

The blade carved deep across its chest.

The creature barely reacted.

It hit me hard enough to send me skidding across the chamber again.

I instinctively raised the handgun and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Empty.

“Right,” I muttered. “Fantastic.”

The mummy shrieked again.

Then sprinted directly up the wall.

Its limbs twisted unnaturally as it crawled across the ceiling like some gigantic insect before dropping toward me.

I barely caught its arm mid-strike with the scimitar.

The impact nearly snapped my wrist.

The thing was impossibly strong.

Rotten linen wrapped around my arm as it forced me downward inch by inch. Its face hung inches from mine now while black beetles crawled in and out of its mouth and empty eye sockets.

And then it spoke.

Just one word.

In my mother’s voice.

“Aaron…”

That almost broke me more than the claws.

I slammed my forehead into its skull.

The creature staggered backward slightly.

Enough.

I kicked one of the burning braziers directly into its chest.

Flames erupted across the ancient wrappings instantly.

The mummy screamed.

Not in pain.

In fury.

It thrashed violently across the chamber, climbing pillars and walls while burning alive. Flaming insects poured from its body in thick streams, scattering across the floor around me.

The fire spread rapidly through the dry linen.

I grabbed a broken spear shaft near one of the tombs and waited.

The mummy launched itself at me one final time.

Burning.

Shrieking.

Its mouth stretched impossibly wide.

I sidestepped at the last second.

Then drove the spear clean through its torso and deep into the stone wall behind it.

The impact pinned the creature there.

The mummy writhed violently, claws scraping uselessly against stone as flames consumed more and more of its body.

Still screaming in my mother’s voice.

I stood there breathing hard for several seconds before finally turning back toward the sarcophagus.

Inside was…

Almost nothing.

No treasure.

No cursed weapon.

No ancient relic humming with forbidden power.

Just dust.

Bones.

And one tiny object resting near the bottom.

A small statue of a cat.

I stared at it.

Then slowly looked upward in exhausted disbelief.

“You cannot be serious, Menehmet…”

Behind me, the burning mummy continued shrieking against the wall.

I sighed deeply, grabbed the statue, and shoved it into my coat pocket.

Then I left the pyramid behind me.

 

A few hours later I was back inside the car, driving away from the necropolis while the storm clouds shrank slowly in the rearview mirror.

The tiny cat statue sat on the passenger seat beside me.

Another priceless royal mission accomplished.

All so the God-Queen of New Cairo could add another worthless piece of junk to her collection.

I glanced sideways at the statue.

Its tiny carved eyes stared back at me.

I immediately looked back at the road.

“…Still hate cats.”

I could see nothing beyond the red wall of sand.

Crimson lightning clawed through the storm in violent flashes, turning the desert into a negative image of itself for split seconds at a time. The rest was noise. Sand hammering the chassis. Metal groaning beneath the wind. Loose sheet metal rattling hard enough to tear free at any moment.

Somewhere far beyond all that came the low, dying growl of thunder.

The radioactive sandstorm had curved off its forecasted route and slammed straight into me.

That’s what happens when your weather predictions rely on astronomical scraps scribbled down five thousand years ago by priests staring at the stars through opium smoke.

I’d been driving blind through this hell long enough to lose all sense of direction. East, west, north—it was all just red now.

Eventually I eased my foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop.

Probably the dumbest thing you could do in a storm like this.

Then again, continuing to drive wasn’t exactly genius either.

The engine coughed beneath me like a dying smoker. Every vehicle left in this world sounded sick. Mine especially.

The car had once belonged to at least three different owners and two different manufacturers. Soviet frame. Military-grade filtration unit. Doors ripped from some civilian transport. Half the dashboard held together with copper wire and prayer strips dedicated to gods nobody believed in until the world ended.

Outside, the storm screamed louder.

I pulled the map from my satchel.

The parchment crackled in my hands. The drawings on it were painfully crude—crooked pyramids, uneven symbols, landmarks sketched with the confidence of a drunk child.

But the map had come directly from the palace.

Drawn by the Pharaoh herself.

And I wasn’t brave enough—or suicidal enough—to criticize the God-Queen of New Cairo.

When Pharaoh Menehmet summoned you, you didn’t refuse.

You didn’t complain.

You bowed low enough for your forehead to touch the floor and prayed she stayed in a merciful mood.

The Henty-she had arrived before sunrise. Royal guards wrapped in black linen and bronze plating, faces hidden behind jackal masks with glowing blue lenses. They dragged me from bed without explanation and marched me through the waking streets of New Cairo.

Not that explanations were common in the presence of gods.

The palace rose from the center of the city like ancient history welded onto the corpse of the future. Neon hieroglyphs burned across towering obelisks. Massive statues watched over rusted slums with cracked stone faces. The rich burned incense while the poor burned tires to stay warm.

The guards shoved me onto my knees before the throne.

The royal speaker stepped forward immediately, robes sweeping across polished stone.

“Behold Menehmet, first of her name, Daughter of Amun, God-Queen of New Cairo, Lady Of the Two Lands, The chosen of The Sun,—”

I stopped listening after that.

By the time he finished, my knees were killing me.

“And before her grace kneels her faithful servant,” he continued, “the Medjay Aaron Qaswar.”

“I’ve known her majesty since she was born,” I muttered. “Can we skip this part?”

“How dare—”

“Leave us,” Menehmet said calmly.

The speaker froze mid-breath.

Even kneeling, I could see the fury behind his painted eyes. But he obeyed. The servants withdrew first, followed by the Henty-she. Their heavy boots echoed through the chamber until the throne room fell silent.

Menehmet leaned lazily against her throne, gold jewelry glimmering in the firelight. She was barely nineteen, yet people spoke to her with the kind of fear reserved for ancient things buried beneath the earth.

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” I said.

“You tend to have that effect on people, Aaron.”

A faint smile touched her lips.

“Not everyone sees past your rough exterior the way I do.”

“That why you dragged me across the city before sunrise? To appreciate my soft interior?”

“Not today, Aaron. I called for you because there is something I want retrieved.”

“I’m a Medjay, not an errand boy.”

“You are whatever I require you to be.”

Her smile widened slightly.

“But don’t worry. There will be plenty of opportunities for violence and heroic deaths along the way.”

“Comforting.”

She handed me the map.

“What you seek lies here. A necropolis abandoned long before New Cairo existed.”

“You’re sending me into a tomb.”

“I’m sending you after something that does not belong there.”

“That narrows it down.”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

Her eyes drifted across the throne room, distant and thoughtful.

“Bring it back to me. I think it will liven this place up nicely.”

“You don’t even know what it is, do you?”

“No,” she admitted, sounding almost amused. “Which is exactly why I want it.”

Then she waved her hand dismissively.

“Now go. Time wastes itself far too easily outside these walls.”

 

The storm howled louder outside my car, dragging me back to the present.

Another flash of crimson lightning split the sky.

The vehicle shuddered violently as wind slammed against it. The filtration unit wheezed in protest. One of the cracks in the windshield spread a little farther.

The old monster wasn’t going to survive much more of this.

I tightened my grip on the wheel.

“Fuck it.”

I slammed my foot onto the gas and drove blind into the storm.

For several minutes there was nothing except red static and shrieking wind.

Then another sound crawled through the chaos.

At first I thought the engine was finally dying. A low mechanical whine buried beneath the thunder.

Then it grew louder.

Multiple engines.

Overworked. Abused. Running on fuel never meant for them.

Raiders.

A burst of flame ignited somewhere to my right.

Then another to my left.

Shapes emerged from the crimson haze like demons clawing out of hell itself. Headlights wrapped in metal cages. Exhaust pipes vomiting blue fire into the storm.

One of the vehicles slammed into my side hard.

I caught a glimpse of the driver through cracked welding goggles and a filthy gas mask. Hairless scalp. Chalk-white skin. Eyes twitching with manic energy.

Raiders alright.

And not the disciplined kind either.

Sons of the Sun maybe?

Definitely high on Blue Lotus. Nobody sane scavenged inside a radioactive sandstorm.

Their vehicles barely qualified as cars anymore. Rusted skeletons welded together from scrap metal, rebar, military plating, temple icons. One had animal bones hanging from chains across the hood. Another had strips of human skin nailed to the doors, fluttering wildly in the wind.

Hideous machines.

But in their own deranged way, almost stylish.

The vehicle on my left rammed me again.

Then the one on my right.

They pinned me between them like vultures stripping apart a carcass.

Metal screamed against metal.

Sparks vanished instantly into the storm.

Then came the thudding overhead.

Boots.

“Shit.”

One raider landed on the roof, crouched low against the wind. Another smashed onto the hood, clawing at the windshield while a third jammed a hooked blade into the passenger door.

The one at the door got in first.

I drove my knife through the gap before he could force it open fully.

Hot blood sprayed across my hand.

He stumbled backward into the storm and vanished instantly into the red.

A machete punched through the roof an inch from my face.

I swerved violently.

The lunatic on the windshield snarled behind his mask and began hammering the glass with a metal pipe.

I slammed the brakes.

His body launched off the hood.

A second later I felt the tires bounce over him.

Still one above me.

The bastard had buried his machete deep into the roof to anchor himself in place. The blade rattled overhead every time the wind hit us.

I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the handgun.

Guns were almost extinct now. This one had been a gift from Menehmet shortly after she inherited the throne.

I fired once through the roof.

The gunshot deafened me inside the cramped cabin.

Something heavy rolled off the vehicle.

Then the storm flashed bright crimson.

To my left, lightning began crawling across the sand in branching veins of red-white energy.

The kind that turned flesh into charcoal and fused metal into glass.

I smiled.

Then slammed my car sideways into the raider beside me.

The impact shoved his vehicle directly into the forming electrical trail.

For half a second the world turned white.

Lightning swallowed the car whole.

Metal twisted.

The engine exploded.

Then there was nothing left except burning wreckage tumbling through the storm.

Just me and the last one now.

I pulled alongside him, wanting this finished before the desert killed us both.

The bastard leaned halfway out his window with a spear in hand.

“Really?” I muttered.

He thrust downward.

The spear punched through my front tire.

The steering wheel ripped violently from my hands.

The car lost traction instantly.

Then the storm caught it broadside.

One moment I was driving.

The next the world flipped.

Metal screamed around me as the vehicle rolled across the dunes. My shoulder slammed against the door hard enough to numb my arm. Glass burst inward. The engine died somewhere during the chaos.

Then came silence.

Not true silence.

Just that muffled roar you hear after surviving something that should’ve killed you.

I dragged myself through the shattered window and collapsed into the sand, coughing blood and dust into my scarf.

Nearby, the raider’s vehicle skidded to a stop.

Its door creaked open.

The man stepped out slowly, spear in hand.

The storm wrapped around him like a living thing. Gas mask lenses glowing red beneath the lightning overhead.

He walked toward me without hurry.

Certain he’d already won.

I waited until he raised the spear.

Then I cut his legs out from under him.

We crashed into the sand together, grunting and slipping against the dunes as we fought for control of the weapon. He was stronger than he looked. His fingers forced the spear closer and closer toward my throat.

I drove my boot between his legs as hard as I could.

He jerked violently.

The scream was still forming in his throat when I shoved the spear upward.

The blade punched through the bottom of his jaw and out the back of his skull.

He twitched once.

Then went limp.

I lay there breathing hard, staring up into the red storm overhead.

Then another lightning strike hit nearby.

The blast hit like a hammer from god.

Heat swallowed me whole.

And the world went black.

 

I woke to the smell of incense and ointment.

Canvas walls swayed gently around me.

A tent.

My body felt heavy. Burned. Every breath scraped against my ribs.

A young woman sat beside me grinding herbs into a bowl. Dark curls partially hidden beneath a linen scarf. Steady hands. Focused eyes.

When she noticed I was awake, she froze.

For a moment we simply stared at each other.

Then she stood abruptly.

“Father,” she called outside. “He’s awake.”

A few moments later an old man entered the tent.

Thin. Weathered. Wrapped in dusty robes. His beard had gone almost entirely gray, but warmth still lived in his eyes.

“You gave us quite the scare, young man,” he said. “My Fatima wasn’t sure you’d wake at all. Seems I won that bet.”

He smiled.

A genuine smile.

Rare enough nowadays to feel almost unnatural.

“Name’s Khalid,” he said as he sat beside me. “What’s yours, Medjay?”

“Aaron,” I managed. My throat felt like broken glass. “Aaron Qaswar.”

“Easy now.”

Khalid carefully helped me sit upright before handing me a cup of water.

“Slowly. No rush.”

The tent smelled of dried herbs, old canvas, and sweet smoke drifting from a bronze burner near the entrance. Strings of charms hung from the support poles, clinking softly whenever the desert wind touched the fabric walls. A lantern overhead painted everything in warm amber light that felt impossibly gentle after the endless crimson fury outside.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“The Wandering Oasis.”

I frowned.

“Pretty sure I’ve crossed these regions before. Never seen an oasis anywhere near here.”

Khalid chuckled quietly while pouring tea into two tiny cups.

“It isn’t called the Wandering Oasis for no reason.” He handed one to me carefully. “Its geographical coordinates are… inconsistent.”

“Inconsistent.”

“Yes. Sometimes it rests near the Glass Dunes. Sometimes near the old coastlines. Once we woke beside the ruins of Luxor Station.”

He shrugged lightly.

“The Oasis goes where it wishes.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

Khalid sipped his tea calmly.

“Have you witnessed many things in the desert that do?”

Fair point.

Outside the tent I could hear distant machinery groaning beneath repair work. Somewhere nearby, strings of metal charms rattled softly in the wind.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Lived?” Khalid smiled faintly. “No one lives in the Wandering Oasis. We travel with it. We care for it. And in return… it cares for us.”

I took a careful sip of the tea.

Bitter. Heavy with mint and something medicinal underneath.

Pain immediately flared through my ribs.

Then memory came rushing back.

The storm.

The raiders.

The crash.

“My car,” I muttered. “What happened to my car?”

“Fatima is tending to it,” Khalid said. “Though much like yourself, it will require some time before it is fit for the road again.”

“That bad?”

“You rolled a vehicle through a radioactive lightning storm.”

He gave me an amused look.

“You are fortunate to still possess all your limbs.”

“Debatable.”

I reached for my satchel beside the cot. Relief washed through me when I felt the map still inside.

I unfolded it carefully and handed it to him.

“You know this place?”

Khalid’s expression changed the moment he saw the markings.

“The Bene Nefertite necropolis,” he said quietly.

So the Pharaoh’s map pointed somewhere real after all.

“You know how to get there?”

“Of course.” Khalid traced one of the crude lines with his finger. “In a healthy vehicle, perhaps half a day from here.”

“But?”

He glanced up at me.

“But it lies within an active Ghul-Zone.”

I stared at him for a few seconds.

Then a long, exhausted sigh escaped me.

“Fuck…” I rubbed both hands over my face. “Of course it does.”

Khalid remained silent.

A Ghul-Zone.

Wonderful.

The desert was littered with them now. Places where radiation, death, and whatever invisible poison had seeped into the world finally stopped pretending to obey natural law. Entire villages vanished inside them overnight. Sometimes they returned days later.

Usually screaming.

Sometimes not human anymore.

Outside, the wind had softened into a low whisper against the canvas walls.

“I don’t think the God-Queen is the patient type,” I muttered eventually. “Don’t exactly have the luxury of waiting this out.”

“Be that as it may,” Khalid replied calmly, “your vehicle is broken, your body is barely holding together, and the storm still prowls outside.”

Then he smiled warmly.

“So whether you like it or not, Medjay… tonight you will stay here. You will drink tea. You will rest. And you will endure the unbearable horror of friendly conversation.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

The old man had a presence to him. The kind that disarmed you before you realized it was happening.

I kept telling myself to stay guarded. Men survived longer that way in the wasteland. Loose tongues eventually got slit.

But the hours slipped by, and somehow I kept talking anyway.

About my mother dying from lung rot when I was a child.

About fighting for scraps in the alleys of New Cairo before the Medjay recruited me.

About the first man I killed.

I still remembered his face sometimes.

Khalid never interrupted. Never pushed. He simply listened while slowly refilling our tea like we had all the time in the world.

At some point I even admitted what most people would consider my greatest shame.

“I don’t trust cats,” I confessed.

Khalid blinked.

Then nearly spilled his tea laughing.

“You serve the Pharaoh of New Cairo,” he wheezed, “descendant of gods and ruler of the desert… yet you fear cats?”

“They stare too long.”

“That may be the funniest thing I’ve heard in years.”

“I’m serious.”

“That somehow makes it even better.”

I leaned back against the cushions with a tired groan.

“I’ve survived raiders, mutants, storms, cultists, and royal politics. Why would I willingly invite another apex predator into my home?”

Khalid laughed harder at that.

Real laughter.

Not the nervous kind people forced out nowadays to prove they still remembered how.

And for a little while, beneath the lantern glow while the desert whispered outside the tent walls, the wasteland almost felt human again.

 

I woke to the feeling of a hand pressing lightly against my chest.

Instinct took over before thought did.

My hand shot upward, grabbing the wrist hard enough to make the other person gasp. My eyes snapped open. Heart pounding. Half-awake and already reaching for the knife beneath my pillow that wasn’t there.

Fatima stared down at me.

Pain flickered briefly across her face where I held her wrist, but her expression remained impressively deadpan considering the circumstances.

“I was dressing your wounds,” she said flatly. “They tend to get infected easily out there in the desert.”

I immediately let go.

“Sorry,” I muttered, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Reflex.”

“No kidding.”

Morning light glowed softly through the tent walls now, replacing the warm lantern light from the night before.

Fatima returned to wrapping fresh bandages around my ribs with practiced precision.

“You move around a lot in your sleep,” she said.

“Occupational hazard.”

“You also talk.”

“You threatened someone named Abbas with a shovel.”

I frowned.

“Abbas knew what he did.”

That finally earned a small laugh from her.

Up close, I noticed details I’d missed before. Thin scars crossing her hands. Tiny burn marks along her forearms. Grease permanently worked into the lines of her fingers.

Mechanic’s hands.

Capable hands.

“Your car’s almost ready,” she said after tightening the final bandage. “Just finishing a few things.”

“That fast?”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No, impressed.”

A faint trace of pride appeared in her expression.

“You should be.”

„Ill make sure to repay you one day.“

“No need. Dad always says small kindness matters in cruel places.”

“Sounds like him.”

For a moment neither of us spoke.

The Oasis outside had already begun waking up. Distant voices drifted through the canvas. Machinery clanked somewhere nearby. I could smell bread baking mixed with engine oil and incense smoke.

Then a thought slowly clicked into place.

“Was Khalid with you since you were little?”

Fatima blinked.

“What?”

“Khalid,” I clarified carefully. “Was he the one who raised you?”

She looked genuinely confused.

“Well… yes. He’s my father.”

“I meant—”

I hesitated.

“When did he adopt you?”

„How do you know he adopted me? Im fairly sure he didnt tell you that.“

“Well… I’ve never heard of a jinn fathering a human.”

Her eyes widened instantly.

Not offended.

Shocked.

“How did you know?”

“I’m a Medjay.”

I leaned back carefully against the cot.

“I’ve dealt with a few jinn before. Though admittedly, most of them are far less subtle than your father.”

Fatima glanced nervously toward the tent entrance.

“Relax,” I said. “None of my business. Your secret’s safe with me.”

She studied my face for a long moment, trying to decide whether I meant that.

Eventually she relaxed slightly.

Without another word, she reached into a satchel beside her and pulled something out on a wooden skewer.

A caramelized scorpion.

Its curled tail glistened beneath a layer of dark syrup.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

I stared at it.

“…Yeah.”

I pointed at the scorpion.

“But not that hungry.”

Fatima giggled softly.

Just enough to remind me she was still young beneath all the strange mystery surrounding her.

 

The Oasis looked completely different in daylight.

The tents stretched across the dunes in uneven circles around a pool of crystal-clear water that absolutely should not have existed in the middle of the wasteland. Palm trees swayed lazily despite there being almost no wind. Traders wandered between colorful canopies selling scavenged technology beside preserved spices and ancient charms carved from bone and copper.

Incense smoke drifted through the warm air alongside the smell of cooked meat and engine oil.

The entire place felt unreal, like a pocket dimension somehow safe from the desert enveloping it.

Fatima led me toward my vehicle.

And somehow—

Somehow the old thing looked better than it had in years.

The reinforced panels had actually been fitted properly instead of hammered into place by desperation and profanity. The filtration unit no longer sounded like it was trying to inhale gravel. Even the engine housing had been cleaned.

I stared at it in disbelief.

“You’re really good,” I admitted. “Where’d you learn all this?”

Fatima crouched beside the front wheel, tightening something with a wrench.

“Before Dad found me, I lived in the scrapyards for a while.”

She shrugged.

“Not much to do there besides take machines apart.”

“Sounds miserable.”

“It was.”

She said it casually.

That somehow made it worse.

After a moment she reached into her satchel again and pulled out another map.

This one looked infinitely better than Menehmet’s version. Proper landmarks. Accurate distances. Warnings scribbled carefully along the margins in Arabic.

“Dad told me to give you this,” she said. “Should guide you better than those royal scribbles.”

I laughed quietly.

“Probably wise. If the Pharaoh ever retires, cartography definitely isn’t an option for her.”

Fatima smiled faintly.

I folded the map carefully and tucked it into my coat.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

“For the map or the car?”

“Both.”

For a brief moment neither of us spoke.

Then she stepped back from the vehicle.

“Maybe we’ll meet again, Medjay.”

I looked at her standing there beneath the desert sun, dark curls moving gently in the wind, strange amber eyes catching the light like polished gold.

“Maybe,” I said.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition.

The engine roared to life instantly.

Not coughing.

Not choking.

Alive.

I grinned despite myself.

Then I shifted gears and drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis, leaving the Wandering Oasis behind in the sands.

 

It had been about four hours since I left the Wandering Oasis behind.

The desert changed gradually the farther I drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

The dunes darkened first.

Black mineral veins spread through the sand like rot beneath skin, shimmering faintly beneath the afternoon sun. Ruined pylons from the old world jutted from the wasteland at crooked angles, half-swallowed by centuries of storms. Some still carried scraps of melted wiring that hummed softly whenever the wind blew through them.

And somehow, against all logic, the car was running beautifully.

Whatever Fatima had done to it bordered on sorcery.

The engine no longer wheezed every few minutes like a dying animal. The steering responded instantly. Even the suspension handled the uneven dunes without sounding like the entire frame was about to collapse into spare parts.

The old machine practically purred beneath me.

I almost felt guilty driving it.

Almost.

I adjusted the scarf around my face and glanced toward the map resting on the passenger seat.

Close now.

Very close.

The necropolis should’ve been visible any minute.

That was when I noticed the vibration.

At first I assumed it was the engine.

A faint trembling beneath the wheels.

Then the dashboard began rattling.

Sand slid down nearby dunes in soft streams.

My stomach tightened immediately.

“No…”

The ground lurched violently beneath the car.

The steering wheel jerked in my hands hard enough to nearly send me sideways.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

The desert exploded.

Sand erupted upward beside the vehicle in towering waves as something massive burst from beneath the dunes to my left.

Then another.

Then two more.

Four shapes circled the car as I slammed the brakes.

Shed-beners.

Wonderful.

The things had once been human.

Probably.

Now they looked like nightmares designed by someone who hated both mankind and nature equally. Their lower halves resembled enormous black scorpions armored in chitinous plates scarred by radiation, old wounds, and patches of fungal growth. But rising from those monstrous bodies were elongated human torsos twisted into impossible shapes, ribs pressing visibly beneath stretched skin.

Their faces were the worst part.

Too human.

Clouded eyes rolled wildly in different directions while their mouths hung unnaturally wide, rows of broken teeth jutting outward at crooked angles. Bronze jewelry still clung to their bodies in places. Scraps of old robes fluttered from their armored backs.

Remnants of people.

That always made monsters worse.

One of them clicked its claws together and released a wet, shrieking hiss that sounded disturbingly close to laughter.

Another slowly raised its massive stinger over the car.

I grabbed my scimitar and kicked the door open.

The first creature lunged immediately.

Its claw slammed into the side of the vehicle hard enough to dent the metal inward. I rolled beneath the strike and slashed upward with the scimitar.

The curved blade bit deep into the pale flesh where human torso fused into scorpion body.

Black blood sprayed across the sand.

The Shed-bener screamed.

Not like an animal.

Like a person.

I hated that.

The second creature charged from my right with horrifying speed. I barely avoided the stinger crashing into the ground where my head had been a second earlier.

The impact cracked the hardened sand like stone.

I fired the handgun.

The first bullet punched into its human face.

The creature staggered backward violently—

—but didn’t stop.

“Of course that’s not enough.”

It shrieked and rushed me again.

I fired a second time.

The shot tore through one of its clustered eyes. Black fluid burst down its face as the creature reeled sideways, clawing at itself blindly.

Behind me came the sound of twisting metal.

Another Shed-bener slammed directly into the car hard enough to nearly flip it.

Metal screamed.

One of the creatures crawled across the roof with horrifying speed, claws scraping against the reinforced plating Fatima had installed only hours earlier.

I swung the scimitar just as the blinded creature lunged again.

The blade buried itself deep into its throat.

The creature convulsed violently.

Its stinger lashed through the air in frantic arcs before finally going still.

One down.

Three left.

Something slammed into me from behind.

I crashed hard into the sand, pain exploding through my ribs where Fatima’s fresh bandages sat beneath my clothes. My grip loosened on the sword.

A claw punched into the ground inches from my face, spraying sand across my eyes.

I scrambled backward just as a stinger slammed down where my chest had been moments earlier.

Poison hissed against the sand.

The second creature attacked from the side immediately after.

Too fast.

I raised the handgun and fired my last round directly into its open mouth.

The back of its skull exploded outward in a spray of shattered teeth and black fluid.

The creature collapsed twitching beside me.

Two down.

And now I was out of ammunition.

The remaining Shed-beners slowed their movements.

Watching me carefully.

Smarter than the others.

One blocked my path back to the car while the second circled behind me, massive stinger swaying slowly overhead like an executioner preparing the final blow.

I grabbed the scimitar from the sand and forced myself upright.

My breathing had gone ragged.

Everything hurt.

Blood soaked through the bandages beneath my coat.

The creatures noticed.

Predators always did.

One suddenly lunged low across the sand.

I barely sidestepped in time, but the second slammed into me immediately afterward.

The impact sent me crashing backward down the side of a dune.

The scimitar flew from my hand.

Before I could recover, a massive claw pinned my arm into the sand.

Pain shot through my shoulder.

The other creature approached slowly now.

Confident.

Its human face leaned closer toward mine.

I could smell rot on its breath.

Its cloudy eyes twitched wildly as if several thoughts were fighting for control behind them.

Then the creature smiled.

Not instinctively.

Deliberately.

The stinger rose high above me.

Ready to strike.

Then the desert roared.

The sound came from beneath the earth itself.

Deep.

Thunderous.

Ancient.

The dunes exploded upward around us.

The Shed-beners shrieked and turned too late.

Something colossal burst from beneath the sand.

A sandworm.

Its mouth opened impossibly wide, ringed with rotating rows of jagged teeth large enough to crush vehicles whole. Pale flesh glistened beneath armored hide as the thing surged upward like the desert itself had come alive.

The worm swallowed one of the Shed-beners instantly.

The second barely had time to scream before the jaws closed around it too.

Crunch.

The sound echoed across the dunes.

Then the worm vanished beneath the sand again almost as quickly as it had appeared, dragging both screaming creatures into the depths below.

The desert settled slowly.

Silence returned.

I remained flat on my back for several long seconds, breathing hard, staring at the empty dunes above me.

Then I slowly sat up.

Everyone with functioning survival instincts feared sandworms.

But that was the first and only time in my life I had ever been happy to see one.

 

I had finally reached the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

Dark clouds churned above the ruins in slow, unnatural spirals. Thick and swollen like bruises spreading across the sky. Crimson lightning pulsed silently within them, illuminating shattered pyramids and broken statues in brief flashes of red-white light.

Even from a distance, I could feel the Ghul-Zone pressing against reality like a wound that refused to close.

Vehicles didn’t last long inside active zones.

Electronics fried without warning. Engines stalled. Entire caravans vanished for days before reappearing fused together into piles of melted flesh and metal.

Sometimes the people inside were still alive.

I killed the engine.

For a moment I just sat there listening to the sudden silence.

Then I grabbed my torch, tightened the scarf around my face, and stepped out into the dead air.

Immediately, something felt wrong.

Not danger.

Absence.

No wind.

No insects.

No movement.

Just a low hum vibrating through the atmosphere itself.

The sky inside the zone had turned a diseased brown color. Veins of pale energy crawled soundlessly through the air between ruined structures, flickering like cracks spreading through glass. Every breath tasted metallic even through the scarf.

I kept my face covered.

No reason to inhale more of this place than necessary.

The necropolis stretched endlessly ahead of me.

Half-buried obelisks.

Collapsed mausoleums.

Streets lined with statues eroded into faceless things by centuries of radiation and sandstorms.

Then I noticed movement.

Far ahead, between the ruins, a line of figures shuffled silently through the streets.

Dozens of them.

Human silhouettes.

Some staggered unnaturally while others moved with eerie smoothness, like puppets dragged by invisible strings. Heads tilted at impossible angles. Limbs bent wrong.

Ghuls.

Or whatever remained after the Zone hollowed a person out and left only instinct wearing their skin.

Didn’t matter which.

Nothing could be done for them anymore.

Best to avoid them entirely.

I moved deeper into the necropolis carefully, one hand resting near the scimitar at my side.

The deeper I went, the stranger the place became.

The geometry shifted when I wasn’t looking directly at it.

Streets curved where they shouldn’t.

Passages looped back into themselves.

At one point I walked past the same headless statue three separate times despite never turning around.

The Zone liked to play games with people.

Usually the games ended with someone eating their own fingers while insisting they tasted like honey.

I ignored everything except the pyramid.

Small.

Black.

Resting at the center of the necropolis like a splinter buried beneath skin.

Nothing else mattered.

The closer I got to it, the stronger the pressure inside my skull became.

Not pain exactly.

More like invisible fingers pressing against my thoughts.

Digging.

Searching.

Then I heard her voice.

“Aaron…”

I froze instantly.

The necropolis vanished around me.

For one horrible moment I was a child again.

“Sweetie… don’t go.”

Slowly, I turned.

My mother stood behind me.

Exactly as I remembered her before the sickness took her.

Warm brown skin.

Thin frame.

Soft tired eyes.

Even the same faded blue scarf she used to wear around the apartment.

For a second I forgot where I was.

Forgot the Zone.

Forgot the pyramid.

Forgot everything.

She stepped closer and gently rested a hand against my shoulder.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered.

The pressure in my chest hurt worse than any wound I’d taken in years.

“I missed you too, Mum,” I admitted quietly.

And I meant it.

God, I meant it.

“You could stay,” she whispered softly. “You don’t have to keep hurting anymore.”

Something trembled in her voice.

“You don’t have to keep fighting.”

I stared at her silently.

And that was the problem.

My mother had never spoken like that.

Not even when she was dying.

Especially not then.

She used to tell me:

If the world wants you dead, make it work for it.

This thing didn’t know that.

The smile on her face twitched slightly.

Just slightly.

But enough.

I sighed tiredly.

Then I drew the scimitar and cut her head off.

The blade sliced clean through her neck.

The body collapsed instantly into the sand, twitching violently as thick black fluid spilled from the stump instead of blood.

The severed head hit the ground still smiling.

For a few seconds it continued staring up at me while the face slowly softened and melted like wet clay left in the sun.

Then it collapsed into rotten sludge.

I stared at the remains coldly.

“Pale imitation, asshole.”

The Zone hummed louder around me.

Almost disappointed.

Then I turned and entered the pyramid.

 

The air inside felt ancient.

Dry.

Claustrophobic.

My torchlight flickered across walls covered in faded hieroglyphs and newer markings scratched desperately over them by later explorers. Warnings mostly.

Prayers.

Names.

Somebody had carved:

IT KNOWS YOUR HEART

deep into one of the walls.

Farther down, another simply read:

DON’T LISTEN

The deeper I descended, the colder it became.

Dust coated everything thick enough to swallow footprints whole.

Occasionally I caught movement just beyond the torchlight.

Something shifting behind pillars.

Something crawling along ceilings.

I ignored it.

The Zone fed on attention.

Old bones cracked beneath my boots as I moved through stripped burial chambers and narrow corridors. Most of the tomb had been looted centuries ago. Broken jars and shattered coffins littered the floors.

Yet somehow the deeper chambers remained untouched.

That should’ve worried me more than it did.

Eventually the corridor opened into a massive circular chamber.

My footsteps echoed softly across the stone.

Tall pillars ringed the room, carved into the likenesses of forgotten gods whose faces had been deliberately chiseled away long ago. Ancient braziers still burned with weak green fire despite the absence of fuel.

At the center stood a massive stone sarcophagus covered in blackened gold markings.

I approached carefully.

No movement.

No sound.

Good enough.

I shoved the lid aside with a painful groan from my ribs.

Inside lay a dried corpse wrapped in ancient linen. Its skin stretched tightly against bone, mouth frozen open in a permanent scream.

For several seconds nothing happened.

I exhaled slowly.

“Sorry about this.”

I reached down to move the body aside.

The mummy grabbed my wrist.

Before I could react, it hurled me across the chamber hard enough to crack stone beneath my back.

Pain exploded through my ribs.

The creature rose from the sarcophagus with horrifying speed.

Its jaw unhinged wider than humanly possible as it released a shriek sharp enough to physically hurt. Dust rained from the ceiling. My torch nearly slipped from my hand.

“Oh, come on—”

The mummy lunged.

Far too fast.

I barely rolled aside before its claws punched deep grooves into the stone where my head had been moments earlier.

Up close I saw movement beneath the wrappings.

Thousands of tiny black insects crawling beneath the ancient linen like blood moving beneath skin.

I slashed with the scimitar.

The blade carved deep across its chest.

The creature barely reacted.

It hit me hard enough to send me skidding across the chamber again.

I instinctively raised the handgun and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Empty.

“Right,” I muttered. “Fantastic.”

The mummy shrieked again.

Then sprinted directly up the wall.

Its limbs twisted unnaturally as it crawled across the ceiling like some gigantic insect before dropping toward me.

I barely caught its arm mid-strike with the scimitar.

The impact nearly snapped my wrist.

The thing was impossibly strong.

Rotten linen wrapped around my arm as it forced me downward inch by inch. Its face hung inches from mine now while black beetles crawled in and out of its mouth and empty eye sockets.

And then it spoke.

Just one word.

In my mother’s voice.

“Aaron…”

That almost broke me more than the claws.

I slammed my forehead into its skull.

The creature staggered backward slightly.

Enough.

I kicked one of the burning braziers directly into its chest.

Flames erupted across the ancient wrappings instantly.

The mummy screamed.

Not in pain.

In fury.

It thrashed violently across the chamber, climbing pillars and walls while burning alive. Flaming insects poured from its body in thick streams, scattering across the floor around me.

The fire spread rapidly through the dry linen.

I grabbed a broken spear shaft near one of the tombs and waited.

The mummy launched itself at me one final time.

Burning.

Shrieking.

Its mouth stretched impossibly wide.

I sidestepped at the last second.

Then drove the spear clean through its torso and deep into the stone wall behind it.

The impact pinned the creature there.

The mummy writhed violently, claws scraping uselessly against stone as flames consumed more and more of its body.

Still screaming in my mother’s voice.

I stood there breathing hard for several seconds before finally turning back toward the sarcophagus.

Inside was…

Almost nothing.

No treasure.

No cursed weapon.

No ancient relic humming with forbidden power.

Just dust.

Bones.

And one tiny object resting near the bottom.

A small statue of a cat.

I stared at it.

Then slowly looked upward in exhausted disbelief.

“You cannot be serious, Menehmet…”

Behind me, the burning mummy continued shrieking against the wall.

I sighed deeply, grabbed the statue, and shoved it into my coat pocket.

Then I left the pyramid behind me.

 

A few hours later I was back inside the car, driving away from the necropolis while the storm clouds shrank slowly in the rearview mirror.

The tiny cat statue sat on the passenger seat beside me.

Another priceless royal mission accomplished.

All so the God-Queen of New Cairo could add another worthless piece of junk to her collection.

I glanced sideways at the statue.

Its tiny carved eyes stared back at me.

I immediately looked back at the road.

“…Still hate cats.”

I could see nothing beyond the red wall of sand.

Crimson lightning clawed through the storm in violent flashes, turning the desert into a negative image of itself for split seconds at a time. The rest was noise. Sand hammering the chassis. Metal groaning beneath the wind. Loose sheet metal rattling hard enough to tear free at any moment.

Somewhere far beyond all that came the low, dying growl of thunder.

The radioactive sandstorm had curved off its forecasted route and slammed straight into me.

That’s what happens when your weather predictions rely on astronomical scraps scribbled down five thousand years ago by priests staring at the stars through opium smoke.

I’d been driving blind through this hell long enough to lose all sense of direction. East, west, north—it was all just red now.

Eventually I eased my foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop.

Probably the dumbest thing you could do in a storm like this.

Then again, continuing to drive wasn’t exactly genius either.

The engine coughed beneath me like a dying smoker. Every vehicle left in this world sounded sick. Mine especially.

The car had once belonged to at least three different owners and two different manufacturers. Soviet frame. Military-grade filtration unit. Doors ripped from some civilian transport. Half the dashboard held together with copper wire and prayer strips dedicated to gods nobody believed in until the world ended.

Outside, the storm screamed louder.

I pulled the map from my satchel.

The parchment crackled in my hands. The drawings on it were painfully crude—crooked pyramids, uneven symbols, landmarks sketched with the confidence of a drunk child.

But the map had come directly from the palace.

Drawn by the Pharaoh herself.

And I wasn’t brave enough—or suicidal enough—to criticize the God-Queen of New Cairo.

When Pharaoh Menehmet summoned you, you didn’t refuse.

You didn’t complain.

You bowed low enough for your forehead to touch the floor and prayed she stayed in a merciful mood.

The Henty-she had arrived before sunrise. Royal guards wrapped in black linen and bronze plating, faces hidden behind jackal masks with glowing blue lenses. They dragged me from bed without explanation and marched me through the waking streets of New Cairo.

Not that explanations were common in the presence of gods.

The palace rose from the center of the city like ancient history welded onto the corpse of the future. Neon hieroglyphs burned across towering obelisks. Massive statues watched over rusted slums with cracked stone faces. The rich burned incense while the poor burned tires to stay warm.

The guards shoved me onto my knees before the throne.

The royal speaker stepped forward immediately, robes sweeping across polished stone.

“Behold Menehmet, first of her name, Daughter of Amun, God-Queen of New Cairo, Lady Of the Two Lands, The chosen of The Sun,—”

I stopped listening after that.

By the time he finished, my knees were killing me.

“And before her grace kneels her faithful servant,” he continued, “the Medjay Aaron Qaswar.”

“I’ve known her majesty since she was born,” I muttered. “Can we skip this part?”

“How dare—”

“Leave us,” Menehmet said calmly.

The speaker froze mid-breath.

Even kneeling, I could see the fury behind his painted eyes. But he obeyed. The servants withdrew first, followed by the Henty-she. Their heavy boots echoed through the chamber until the throne room fell silent.

Menehmet leaned lazily against her throne, gold jewelry glimmering in the firelight. She was barely nineteen, yet people spoke to her with the kind of fear reserved for ancient things buried beneath the earth.

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” I said.

“You tend to have that effect on people, Aaron.”

A faint smile touched her lips.

“Not everyone sees past your rough exterior the way I do.”

“That why you dragged me across the city before sunrise? To appreciate my soft interior?”

“Not today, Aaron. I called for you because there is something I want retrieved.”

“I’m a Medjay, not an errand boy.”

“You are whatever I require you to be.”

Her smile widened slightly.

“But don’t worry. There will be plenty of opportunities for violence and heroic deaths along the way.”

“Comforting.”

She handed me the map.

“What you seek lies here. A necropolis abandoned long before New Cairo existed.”

“You’re sending me into a tomb.”

“I’m sending you after something that does not belong there.”

“That narrows it down.”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

Her eyes drifted across the throne room, distant and thoughtful.

“Bring it back to me. I think it will liven this place up nicely.”

“You don’t even know what it is, do you?”

“No,” she admitted, sounding almost amused. “Which is exactly why I want it.”

Then she waved her hand dismissively.

“Now go. Time wastes itself far too easily outside these walls.”

 

The storm howled louder outside my car, dragging me back to the present.

Another flash of crimson lightning split the sky.

The vehicle shuddered violently as wind slammed against it. The filtration unit wheezed in protest. One of the cracks in the windshield spread a little farther.

The old monster wasn’t going to survive much more of this.

I tightened my grip on the wheel.

“Fuck it.”

I slammed my foot onto the gas and drove blind into the storm.

For several minutes there was nothing except red static and shrieking wind.

Then another sound crawled through the chaos.

At first I thought the engine was finally dying. A low mechanical whine buried beneath the thunder.

Then it grew louder.

Multiple engines.

Overworked. Abused. Running on fuel never meant for them.

Raiders.

A burst of flame ignited somewhere to my right.

Then another to my left.

Shapes emerged from the crimson haze like demons clawing out of hell itself. Headlights wrapped in metal cages. Exhaust pipes vomiting blue fire into the storm.

One of the vehicles slammed into my side hard.

I caught a glimpse of the driver through cracked welding goggles and a filthy gas mask. Hairless scalp. Chalk-white skin. Eyes twitching with manic energy.

Raiders alright.

And not the disciplined kind either.

Sons of the Sun maybe?

Definitely high on Blue Lotus. Nobody sane scavenged inside a radioactive sandstorm.

Their vehicles barely qualified as cars anymore. Rusted skeletons welded together from scrap metal, rebar, military plating, temple icons. One had animal bones hanging from chains across the hood. Another had strips of human skin nailed to the doors, fluttering wildly in the wind.

Hideous machines.

But in their own deranged way, almost stylish.

The vehicle on my left rammed me again.

Then the one on my right.

They pinned me between them like vultures stripping apart a carcass.

Metal screamed against metal.

Sparks vanished instantly into the storm.

Then came the thudding overhead.

Boots.

“Shit.”

One raider landed on the roof, crouched low against the wind. Another smashed onto the hood, clawing at the windshield while a third jammed a hooked blade into the passenger door.

The one at the door got in first.

I drove my knife through the gap before he could force it open fully.

Hot blood sprayed across my hand.

He stumbled backward into the storm and vanished instantly into the red.

A machete punched through the roof an inch from my face.

I swerved violently.

The lunatic on the windshield snarled behind his mask and began hammering the glass with a metal pipe.

I slammed the brakes.

His body launched off the hood.

A second later I felt the tires bounce over him.

Still one above me.

The bastard had buried his machete deep into the roof to anchor himself in place. The blade rattled overhead every time the wind hit us.

I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the handgun.

Guns were almost extinct now. This one had been a gift from Menehmet shortly after she inherited the throne.

I fired once through the roof.

The gunshot deafened me inside the cramped cabin.

Something heavy rolled off the vehicle.

Then the storm flashed bright crimson.

To my left, lightning began crawling across the sand in branching veins of red-white energy.

The kind that turned flesh into charcoal and fused metal into glass.

I smiled.

Then slammed my car sideways into the raider beside me.

The impact shoved his vehicle directly into the forming electrical trail.

For half a second the world turned white.

Lightning swallowed the car whole.

Metal twisted.

The engine exploded.

Then there was nothing left except burning wreckage tumbling through the storm.

Just me and the last one now.

I pulled alongside him, wanting this finished before the desert killed us both.

The bastard leaned halfway out his window with a spear in hand.

“Really?” I muttered.

He thrust downward.

The spear punched through my front tire.

The steering wheel ripped violently from my hands.

The car lost traction instantly.

Then the storm caught it broadside.

One moment I was driving.

The next the world flipped.

Metal screamed around me as the vehicle rolled across the dunes. My shoulder slammed against the door hard enough to numb my arm. Glass burst inward. The engine died somewhere during the chaos.

Then came silence.

Not true silence.

Just that muffled roar you hear after surviving something that should’ve killed you.

I dragged myself through the shattered window and collapsed into the sand, coughing blood and dust into my scarf.

Nearby, the raider’s vehicle skidded to a stop.

Its door creaked open.

The man stepped out slowly, spear in hand.

The storm wrapped around him like a living thing. Gas mask lenses glowing red beneath the lightning overhead.

He walked toward me without hurry.

Certain he’d already won.

I waited until he raised the spear.

Then I cut his legs out from under him.

We crashed into the sand together, grunting and slipping against the dunes as we fought for control of the weapon. He was stronger than he looked. His fingers forced the spear closer and closer toward my throat.

I drove my boot between his legs as hard as I could.

He jerked violently.

The scream was still forming in his throat when I shoved the spear upward.

The blade punched through the bottom of his jaw and out the back of his skull.

He twitched once.

Then went limp.

I lay there breathing hard, staring up into the red storm overhead.

Then another lightning strike hit nearby.

The blast hit like a hammer from god.

Heat swallowed me whole.

And the world went black.

 

I woke to the smell of incense and ointment.

Canvas walls swayed gently around me.

A tent.

My body felt heavy. Burned. Every breath scraped against my ribs.

A young woman sat beside me grinding herbs into a bowl. Dark curls partially hidden beneath a linen scarf. Steady hands. Focused eyes.

When she noticed I was awake, she froze.

For a moment we simply stared at each other.

Then she stood abruptly.

“Father,” she called outside. “He’s awake.”

A few moments later an old man entered the tent.

Thin. Weathered. Wrapped in dusty robes. His beard had gone almost entirely gray, but warmth still lived in his eyes.

“You gave us quite the scare, young man,” he said. “My Fatima wasn’t sure you’d wake at all. Seems I won that bet.”

He smiled.

A genuine smile.

Rare enough nowadays to feel almost unnatural.

“Name’s Khalid,” he said as he sat beside me. “What’s yours, Medjay?”

“Aaron,” I managed. My throat felt like broken glass. “Aaron Qaswar.”

“Easy now.”

Khalid carefully helped me sit upright before handing me a cup of water.

“Slowly. No rush.”

The tent smelled of dried herbs, old canvas, and sweet smoke drifting from a bronze burner near the entrance. Strings of charms hung from the support poles, clinking softly whenever the desert wind touched the fabric walls. A lantern overhead painted everything in warm amber light that felt impossibly gentle after the endless crimson fury outside.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“The Wandering Oasis.”

I frowned.

“Pretty sure I’ve crossed these regions before. Never seen an oasis anywhere near here.”

Khalid chuckled quietly while pouring tea into two tiny cups.

“It isn’t called the Wandering Oasis for no reason.” He handed one to me carefully. “Its geographical coordinates are… inconsistent.”

“Inconsistent.”

“Yes. Sometimes it rests near the Glass Dunes. Sometimes near the old coastlines. Once we woke beside the ruins of Luxor Station.”

He shrugged lightly.

“The Oasis goes where it wishes.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

Khalid sipped his tea calmly.

“Have you witnessed many things in the desert that do?”

Fair point.

Outside the tent I could hear distant machinery groaning beneath repair work. Somewhere nearby, strings of metal charms rattled softly in the wind.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Lived?” Khalid smiled faintly. “No one lives in the Wandering Oasis. We travel with it. We care for it. And in return… it cares for us.”

I took a careful sip of the tea.

Bitter. Heavy with mint and something medicinal underneath.

Pain immediately flared through my ribs.

Then memory came rushing back.

The storm.

The raiders.

The crash.

“My car,” I muttered. “What happened to my car?”

“Fatima is tending to it,” Khalid said. “Though much like yourself, it will require some time before it is fit for the road again.”

“That bad?”

“You rolled a vehicle through a radioactive lightning storm.”

He gave me an amused look.

“You are fortunate to still possess all your limbs.”

“Debatable.”

I reached for my satchel beside the cot. Relief washed through me when I felt the map still inside.

I unfolded it carefully and handed it to him.

“You know this place?”

Khalid’s expression changed the moment he saw the markings.

“The Bene Nefertite necropolis,” he said quietly.

So the Pharaoh’s map pointed somewhere real after all.

“You know how to get there?”

“Of course.” Khalid traced one of the crude lines with his finger. “In a healthy vehicle, perhaps half a day from here.”

“But?”

He glanced up at me.

“But it lies within an active Ghul-Zone.”

I stared at him for a few seconds.

Then a long, exhausted sigh escaped me.

“Fuck…” I rubbed both hands over my face. “Of course it does.”

Khalid remained silent.

A Ghul-Zone.

Wonderful.

The desert was littered with them now. Places where radiation, death, and whatever invisible poison had seeped into the world finally stopped pretending to obey natural law. Entire villages vanished inside them overnight. Sometimes they returned days later.

Usually screaming.

Sometimes not human anymore.

Outside, the wind had softened into a low whisper against the canvas walls.

“I don’t think the God-Queen is the patient type,” I muttered eventually. “Don’t exactly have the luxury of waiting this out.”

“Be that as it may,” Khalid replied calmly, “your vehicle is broken, your body is barely holding together, and the storm still prowls outside.”

Then he smiled warmly.

“So whether you like it or not, Medjay… tonight you will stay here. You will drink tea. You will rest. And you will endure the unbearable horror of friendly conversation.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

The old man had a presence to him. The kind that disarmed you before you realized it was happening.

I kept telling myself to stay guarded. Men survived longer that way in the wasteland. Loose tongues eventually got slit.

But the hours slipped by, and somehow I kept talking anyway.

About my mother dying from lung rot when I was a child.

About fighting for scraps in the alleys of New Cairo before the Medjay recruited me.

About the first man I killed.

I still remembered his face sometimes.

Khalid never interrupted. Never pushed. He simply listened while slowly refilling our tea like we had all the time in the world.

At some point I even admitted what most people would consider my greatest shame.

“I don’t trust cats,” I confessed.

Khalid blinked.

Then nearly spilled his tea laughing.

“You serve the Pharaoh of New Cairo,” he wheezed, “descendant of gods and ruler of the desert… yet you fear cats?”

“They stare too long.”

“That may be the funniest thing I’ve heard in years.”

“I’m serious.”

“That somehow makes it even better.”

I leaned back against the cushions with a tired groan.

“I’ve survived raiders, mutants, storms, cultists, and royal politics. Why would I willingly invite another apex predator into my home?”

Khalid laughed harder at that.

Real laughter.

Not the nervous kind people forced out nowadays to prove they still remembered how.

And for a little while, beneath the lantern glow while the desert whispered outside the tent walls, the wasteland almost felt human again.

 

I woke to the feeling of a hand pressing lightly against my chest.

Instinct took over before thought did.

My hand shot upward, grabbing the wrist hard enough to make the other person gasp. My eyes snapped open. Heart pounding. Half-awake and already reaching for the knife beneath my pillow that wasn’t there.

Fatima stared down at me.

Pain flickered briefly across her face where I held her wrist, but her expression remained impressively deadpan considering the circumstances.

“I was dressing your wounds,” she said flatly. “They tend to get infected easily out there in the desert.”

I immediately let go.

“Sorry,” I muttered, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Reflex.”

“No kidding.”

Morning light glowed softly through the tent walls now, replacing the warm lantern light from the night before.

Fatima returned to wrapping fresh bandages around my ribs with practiced precision.

“You move around a lot in your sleep,” she said.

“Occupational hazard.”

“You also talk.”

“You threatened someone named Abbas with a shovel.”

I frowned.

“Abbas knew what he did.”

That finally earned a small laugh from her.

Up close, I noticed details I’d missed before. Thin scars crossing her hands. Tiny burn marks along her forearms. Grease permanently worked into the lines of her fingers.

Mechanic’s hands.

Capable hands.

“Your car’s almost ready,” she said after tightening the final bandage. “Just finishing a few things.”

“That fast?”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No, impressed.”

A faint trace of pride appeared in her expression.

“You should be.”

„Ill make sure to repay you one day.“

“No need. Dad always says small kindness matters in cruel places.”

“Sounds like him.”

For a moment neither of us spoke.

The Oasis outside had already begun waking up. Distant voices drifted through the canvas. Machinery clanked somewhere nearby. I could smell bread baking mixed with engine oil and incense smoke.

Then a thought slowly clicked into place.

“Was Khalid with you since you were little?”

Fatima blinked.

“What?”

“Khalid,” I clarified carefully. “Was he the one who raised you?”

She looked genuinely confused.

“Well… yes. He’s my father.”

“I meant—”

I hesitated.

“When did he adopt you?”

„How do you know he adopted me? Im fairly sure he didnt tell you that.“

“Well… I’ve never heard of a jinn fathering a human.”

Her eyes widened instantly.

Not offended.

Shocked.

“How did you know?”

“I’m a Medjay.”

I leaned back carefully against the cot.

“I’ve dealt with a few jinn before. Though admittedly, most of them are far less subtle than your father.”

Fatima glanced nervously toward the tent entrance.

“Relax,” I said. “None of my business. Your secret’s safe with me.”

She studied my face for a long moment, trying to decide whether I meant that.

Eventually she relaxed slightly.

Without another word, she reached into a satchel beside her and pulled something out on a wooden skewer.

A caramelized scorpion.

Its curled tail glistened beneath a layer of dark syrup.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

I stared at it.

“…Yeah.”

I pointed at the scorpion.

“But not that hungry.”

Fatima giggled softly.

Just enough to remind me she was still young beneath all the strange mystery surrounding her.

 

The Oasis looked completely different in daylight.

The tents stretched across the dunes in uneven circles around a pool of crystal-clear water that absolutely should not have existed in the middle of the wasteland. Palm trees swayed lazily despite there being almost no wind. Traders wandered between colorful canopies selling scavenged technology beside preserved spices and ancient charms carved from bone and copper.

Incense smoke drifted through the warm air alongside the smell of cooked meat and engine oil.

The entire place felt unreal, like a pocket dimension somehow safe from the desert enveloping it.

Fatima led me toward my vehicle.

And somehow—

Somehow the old thing looked better than it had in years.

The reinforced panels had actually been fitted properly instead of hammered into place by desperation and profanity. The filtration unit no longer sounded like it was trying to inhale gravel. Even the engine housing had been cleaned.

I stared at it in disbelief.

“You’re really good,” I admitted. “Where’d you learn all this?”

Fatima crouched beside the front wheel, tightening something with a wrench.

“Before Dad found me, I lived in the scrapyards for a while.”

She shrugged.

“Not much to do there besides take machines apart.”

“Sounds miserable.”

“It was.”

She said it casually.

That somehow made it worse.

After a moment she reached into her satchel again and pulled out another map.

This one looked infinitely better than Menehmet’s version. Proper landmarks. Accurate distances. Warnings scribbled carefully along the margins in Arabic.

“Dad told me to give you this,” she said. “Should guide you better than those royal scribbles.”

I laughed quietly.

“Probably wise. If the Pharaoh ever retires, cartography definitely isn’t an option for her.”

Fatima smiled faintly.

I folded the map carefully and tucked it into my coat.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

“For the map or the car?”

“Both.”

For a brief moment neither of us spoke.

Then she stepped back from the vehicle.

“Maybe we’ll meet again, Medjay.”

I looked at her standing there beneath the desert sun, dark curls moving gently in the wind, strange amber eyes catching the light like polished gold.

“Maybe,” I said.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition.

The engine roared to life instantly.

Not coughing.

Not choking.

Alive.

I grinned despite myself.

Then I shifted gears and drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis, leaving the Wandering Oasis behind in the sands.

 

It had been about four hours since I left the Wandering Oasis behind.

The desert changed gradually the farther I drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

The dunes darkened first.

Black mineral veins spread through the sand like rot beneath skin, shimmering faintly beneath the afternoon sun. Ruined pylons from the old world jutted from the wasteland at crooked angles, half-swallowed by centuries of storms. Some still carried scraps of melted wiring that hummed softly whenever the wind blew through them.

And somehow, against all logic, the car was running beautifully.

Whatever Fatima had done to it bordered on sorcery.

The engine no longer wheezed every few minutes like a dying animal. The steering responded instantly. Even the suspension handled the uneven dunes without sounding like the entire frame was about to collapse into spare parts.

The old machine practically purred beneath me.

I almost felt guilty driving it.

Almost.

I adjusted the scarf around my face and glanced toward the map resting on the passenger seat.

Close now.

Very close.

The necropolis should’ve been visible any minute.

That was when I noticed the vibration.

At first I assumed it was the engine.

A faint trembling beneath the wheels.

Then the dashboard began rattling.

Sand slid down nearby dunes in soft streams.

My stomach tightened immediately.

“No…”

The ground lurched violently beneath the car.

The steering wheel jerked in my hands hard enough to nearly send me sideways.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

The desert exploded.

Sand erupted upward beside the vehicle in towering waves as something massive burst from beneath the dunes to my left.

Then another.

Then two more.

Four shapes circled the car as I slammed the brakes.

Shed-beners.

Wonderful.

The things had once been human.

Probably.

Now they looked like nightmares designed by someone who hated both mankind and nature equally. Their lower halves resembled enormous black scorpions armored in chitinous plates scarred by radiation, old wounds, and patches of fungal growth. But rising from those monstrous bodies were elongated human torsos twisted into impossible shapes, ribs pressing visibly beneath stretched skin.

Their faces were the worst part.

Too human.

Clouded eyes rolled wildly in different directions while their mouths hung unnaturally wide, rows of broken teeth jutting outward at crooked angles. Bronze jewelry still clung to their bodies in places. Scraps of old robes fluttered from their armored backs.

Remnants of people.

That always made monsters worse.

One of them clicked its claws together and released a wet, shrieking hiss that sounded disturbingly close to laughter.

Another slowly raised its massive stinger over the car.

I grabbed my scimitar and kicked the door open.

The first creature lunged immediately.

Its claw slammed into the side of the vehicle hard enough to dent the metal inward. I rolled beneath the strike and slashed upward with the scimitar.

The curved blade bit deep into the pale flesh where human torso fused into scorpion body.

Black blood sprayed across the sand.

The Shed-bener screamed.

Not like an animal.

Like a person.

I hated that.

The second creature charged from my right with horrifying speed. I barely avoided the stinger crashing into the ground where my head had been a second earlier.

The impact cracked the hardened sand like stone.

I fired the handgun.

The first bullet punched into its human face.

The creature staggered backward violently—

—but didn’t stop.

“Of course that’s not enough.”

It shrieked and rushed me again.

I fired a second time.

The shot tore through one of its clustered eyes. Black fluid burst down its face as the creature reeled sideways, clawing at itself blindly.

Behind me came the sound of twisting metal.

Another Shed-bener slammed directly into the car hard enough to nearly flip it.

Metal screamed.

One of the creatures crawled across the roof with horrifying speed, claws scraping against the reinforced plating Fatima had installed only hours earlier.

I swung the scimitar just as the blinded creature lunged again.

The blade buried itself deep into its throat.

The creature convulsed violently.

Its stinger lashed through the air in frantic arcs before finally going still.

One down.

Three left.

Something slammed into me from behind.

I crashed hard into the sand, pain exploding through my ribs where Fatima’s fresh bandages sat beneath my clothes. My grip loosened on the sword.

A claw punched into the ground inches from my face, spraying sand across my eyes.

I scrambled backward just as a stinger slammed down where my chest had been moments earlier.

Poison hissed against the sand.

The second creature attacked from the side immediately after.

Too fast.

I raised the handgun and fired my last round directly into its open mouth.

The back of its skull exploded outward in a spray of shattered teeth and black fluid.

The creature collapsed twitching beside me.

Two down.

And now I was out of ammunition.

The remaining Shed-beners slowed their movements.

Watching me carefully.

Smarter than the others.

One blocked my path back to the car while the second circled behind me, massive stinger swaying slowly overhead like an executioner preparing the final blow.

I grabbed the scimitar from the sand and forced myself upright.

My breathing had gone ragged.

Everything hurt.

Blood soaked through the bandages beneath my coat.

The creatures noticed.

Predators always did.

One suddenly lunged low across the sand.

I barely sidestepped in time, but the second slammed into me immediately afterward.

The impact sent me crashing backward down the side of a dune.

The scimitar flew from my hand.

Before I could recover, a massive claw pinned my arm into the sand.

Pain shot through my shoulder.

The other creature approached slowly now.

Confident.

Its human face leaned closer toward mine.

I could smell rot on its breath.

Its cloudy eyes twitched wildly as if several thoughts were fighting for control behind them.

Then the creature smiled.

Not instinctively.

Deliberately.

The stinger rose high above me.

Ready to strike.

Then the desert roared.

The sound came from beneath the earth itself.

Deep.

Thunderous.

Ancient.

The dunes exploded upward around us.

The Shed-beners shrieked and turned too late.

Something colossal burst from beneath the sand.

A sandworm.

Its mouth opened impossibly wide, ringed with rotating rows of jagged teeth large enough to crush vehicles whole. Pale flesh glistened beneath armored hide as the thing surged upward like the desert itself had come alive.

The worm swallowed one of the Shed-beners instantly.

The second barely had time to scream before the jaws closed around it too.

Crunch.

The sound echoed across the dunes.

Then the worm vanished beneath the sand again almost as quickly as it had appeared, dragging both screaming creatures into the depths below.

The desert settled slowly.

Silence returned.

I remained flat on my back for several long seconds, breathing hard, staring at the empty dunes above me.

Then I slowly sat up.

Everyone with functioning survival instincts feared sandworms.

But that was the first and only time in my life I had ever been happy to see one.

 

I had finally reached the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

Dark clouds churned above the ruins in slow, unnatural spirals. Thick and swollen like bruises spreading across the sky. Crimson lightning pulsed silently within them, illuminating shattered pyramids and broken statues in brief flashes of red-white light.

Even from a distance, I could feel the Ghul-Zone pressing against reality like a wound that refused to close.

Vehicles didn’t last long inside active zones.

Electronics fried without warning. Engines stalled. Entire caravans vanished for days before reappearing fused together into piles of melted flesh and metal.

Sometimes the people inside were still alive.

I killed the engine.

For a moment I just sat there listening to the sudden silence.

Then I grabbed my torch, tightened the scarf around my face, and stepped out into the dead air.

Immediately, something felt wrong.

Not danger.

Absence.

No wind.

No insects.

No movement.

Just a low hum vibrating through the atmosphere itself.

The sky inside the zone had turned a diseased brown color. Veins of pale energy crawled soundlessly through the air between ruined structures, flickering like cracks spreading through glass. Every breath tasted metallic even through the scarf.

I kept my face covered.

No reason to inhale more of this place than necessary.

The necropolis stretched endlessly ahead of me.

Half-buried obelisks.

Collapsed mausoleums.

Streets lined with statues eroded into faceless things by centuries of radiation and sandstorms.

Then I noticed movement.

Far ahead, between the ruins, a line of figures shuffled silently through the streets.

Dozens of them.

Human silhouettes.

Some staggered unnaturally while others moved with eerie smoothness, like puppets dragged by invisible strings. Heads tilted at impossible angles. Limbs bent wrong.

Ghuls.

Or whatever remained after the Zone hollowed a person out and left only instinct wearing their skin.

Didn’t matter which.

Nothing could be done for them anymore.

Best to avoid them entirely.

I moved deeper into the necropolis carefully, one hand resting near the scimitar at my side.

The deeper I went, the stranger the place became.

The geometry shifted when I wasn’t looking directly at it.

Streets curved where they shouldn’t.

Passages looped back into themselves.

At one point I walked past the same headless statue three separate times despite never turning around.

The Zone liked to play games with people.

Usually the games ended with someone eating their own fingers while insisting they tasted like honey.

I ignored everything except the pyramid.

Small.

Black.

Resting at the center of the necropolis like a splinter buried beneath skin.

Nothing else mattered.

The closer I got to it, the stronger the pressure inside my skull became.

Not pain exactly.

More like invisible fingers pressing against my thoughts.

Digging.

Searching.

Then I heard her voice.

“Aaron…”

I froze instantly.

The necropolis vanished around me.

For one horrible moment I was a child again.

“Sweetie… don’t go.”

Slowly, I turned.

My mother stood behind me.

Exactly as I remembered her before the sickness took her.

Warm brown skin.

Thin frame.

Soft tired eyes.

Even the same faded blue scarf she used to wear around the apartment.

For a second I forgot where I was.

Forgot the Zone.

Forgot the pyramid.

Forgot everything.

She stepped closer and gently rested a hand against my shoulder.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered.

The pressure in my chest hurt worse than any wound I’d taken in years.

“I missed you too, Mum,” I admitted quietly.

And I meant it.

God, I meant it.

“You could stay,” she whispered softly. “You don’t have to keep hurting anymore.”

Something trembled in her voice.

“You don’t have to keep fighting.”

I stared at her silently.

And that was the problem.

My mother had never spoken like that.

Not even when she was dying.

Especially not then.

She used to tell me:

If the world wants you dead, make it work for it.

This thing didn’t know that.

The smile on her face twitched slightly.

Just slightly.

But enough.

I sighed tiredly.

Then I drew the scimitar and cut her head off.

The blade sliced clean through her neck.

The body collapsed instantly into the sand, twitching violently as thick black fluid spilled from the stump instead of blood.

The severed head hit the ground still smiling.

For a few seconds it continued staring up at me while the face slowly softened and melted like wet clay left in the sun.

Then it collapsed into rotten sludge.

I stared at the remains coldly.

“Pale imitation, asshole.”

The Zone hummed louder around me.

Almost disappointed.

Then I turned and entered the pyramid.

 

The air inside felt ancient.

Dry.

Claustrophobic.

My torchlight flickered across walls covered in faded hieroglyphs and newer markings scratched desperately over them by later explorers. Warnings mostly.

Prayers.

Names.

Somebody had carved:

IT KNOWS YOUR HEART

deep into one of the walls.

Farther down, another simply read:

DON’T LISTEN

The deeper I descended, the colder it became.

Dust coated everything thick enough to swallow footprints whole.

Occasionally I caught movement just beyond the torchlight.

Something shifting behind pillars.

Something crawling along ceilings.

I ignored it.

The Zone fed on attention.

Old bones cracked beneath my boots as I moved through stripped burial chambers and narrow corridors. Most of the tomb had been looted centuries ago. Broken jars and shattered coffins littered the floors.

Yet somehow the deeper chambers remained untouched.

That should’ve worried me more than it did.

Eventually the corridor opened into a massive circular chamber.

My footsteps echoed softly across the stone.

Tall pillars ringed the room, carved into the likenesses of forgotten gods whose faces had been deliberately chiseled away long ago. Ancient braziers still burned with weak green fire despite the absence of fuel.

At the center stood a massive stone sarcophagus covered in blackened gold markings.

I approached carefully.

No movement.

No sound.

Good enough.

I shoved the lid aside with a painful groan from my ribs.

Inside lay a dried corpse wrapped in ancient linen. Its skin stretched tightly against bone, mouth frozen open in a permanent scream.

For several seconds nothing happened.

I exhaled slowly.

“Sorry about this.”

I reached down to move the body aside.

The mummy grabbed my wrist.

Before I could react, it hurled me across the chamber hard enough to crack stone beneath my back.

Pain exploded through my ribs.

The creature rose from the sarcophagus with horrifying speed.

Its jaw unhinged wider than humanly possible as it released a shriek sharp enough to physically hurt. Dust rained from the ceiling. My torch nearly slipped from my hand.

“Oh, come on—”

The mummy lunged.

Far too fast.

I barely rolled aside before its claws punched deep grooves into the stone where my head had been moments earlier.

Up close I saw movement beneath the wrappings.

Thousands of tiny black insects crawling beneath the ancient linen like blood moving beneath skin.

I slashed with the scimitar.

The blade carved deep across its chest.

The creature barely reacted.

It hit me hard enough to send me skidding across the chamber again.

I instinctively raised the handgun and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Empty.

“Right,” I muttered. “Fantastic.”

The mummy shrieked again.

Then sprinted directly up the wall.

Its limbs twisted unnaturally as it crawled across the ceiling like some gigantic insect before dropping toward me.

I barely caught its arm mid-strike with the scimitar.

The impact nearly snapped my wrist.

The thing was impossibly strong.

Rotten linen wrapped around my arm as it forced me downward inch by inch. Its face hung inches from mine now while black beetles crawled in and out of its mouth and empty eye sockets.

And then it spoke.

Just one word.

In my mother’s voice.

“Aaron…”

That almost broke me more than the claws.

I slammed my forehead into its skull.

The creature staggered backward slightly.

Enough.

I kicked one of the burning braziers directly into its chest.

Flames erupted across the ancient wrappings instantly.

The mummy screamed.

Not in pain.

In fury.

It thrashed violently across the chamber, climbing pillars and walls while burning alive. Flaming insects poured from its body in thick streams, scattering across the floor around me.

The fire spread rapidly through the dry linen.

I grabbed a broken spear shaft near one of the tombs and waited.

The mummy launched itself at me one final time.

Burning.

Shrieking.

Its mouth stretched impossibly wide.

I sidestepped at the last second.

Then drove the spear clean through its torso and deep into the stone wall behind it.

The impact pinned the creature there.

The mummy writhed violently, claws scraping uselessly against stone as flames consumed more and more of its body.

Still screaming in my mother’s voice.

I stood there breathing hard for several seconds before finally turning back toward the sarcophagus.

Inside was…

Almost nothing.

No treasure.

No cursed weapon.

No ancient relic humming with forbidden power.

Just dust.

Bones.

And one tiny object resting near the bottom.

A small statue of a cat.

I stared at it.

Then slowly looked upward in exhausted disbelief.

“You cannot be serious, Menehmet…”

Behind me, the burning mummy continued shrieking against the wall.

I sighed deeply, grabbed the statue, and shoved it into my coat pocket.

Then I left the pyramid behind me.

 

A few hours later I was back inside the car, driving away from the necropolis while the storm clouds shrank slowly in the rearview mirror.

The tiny cat statue sat on the passenger seat beside me.

Another priceless royal mission accomplished.

All so the God-Queen of New Cairo could add another worthless piece of junk to her collection.

I glanced sideways at the statue.

Its tiny carved eyes stared back at me.

I immediately looked back at the road.

“…Still hate cats.”

I could see nothing beyond the red wall of sand.

Crimson lightning clawed through the storm in violent flashes, turning the desert into a negative image of itself for split seconds at a time. The rest was noise. Sand hammering the chassis. Metal groaning beneath the wind. Loose sheet metal rattling hard enough to tear free at any moment.

Somewhere far beyond all that came the low, dying growl of thunder.

The radioactive sandstorm had curved off its forecasted route and slammed straight into me.

That’s what happens when your weather predictions rely on astronomical scraps scribbled down five thousand years ago by priests staring at the stars through opium smoke.

I’d been driving blind through this hell long enough to lose all sense of direction. East, west, north—it was all just red now.

Eventually I eased my foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop.

Probably the dumbest thing you could do in a storm like this.

Then again, continuing to drive wasn’t exactly genius either.

The engine coughed beneath me like a dying smoker. Every vehicle left in this world sounded sick. Mine especially.

The car had once belonged to at least three different owners and two different manufacturers. Soviet frame. Military-grade filtration unit. Doors ripped from some civilian transport. Half the dashboard held together with copper wire and prayer strips dedicated to gods nobody believed in until the world ended.

Outside, the storm screamed louder.

I pulled the map from my satchel.

The parchment crackled in my hands. The drawings on it were painfully crude—crooked pyramids, uneven symbols, landmarks sketched with the confidence of a drunk child.

But the map had come directly from the palace.

Drawn by the Pharaoh herself.

And I wasn’t brave enough—or suicidal enough—to criticize the God-Queen of New Cairo.

When Pharaoh Menehmet summoned you, you didn’t refuse.

You didn’t complain.

You bowed low enough for your forehead to touch the floor and prayed she stayed in a merciful mood.

The Henty-she had arrived before sunrise. Royal guards wrapped in black linen and bronze plating, faces hidden behind jackal masks with glowing blue lenses. They dragged me from bed without explanation and marched me through the waking streets of New Cairo.

Not that explanations were common in the presence of gods.

The palace rose from the center of the city like ancient history welded onto the corpse of the future. Neon hieroglyphs burned across towering obelisks. Massive statues watched over rusted slums with cracked stone faces. The rich burned incense while the poor burned tires to stay warm.

The guards shoved me onto my knees before the throne.

The royal speaker stepped forward immediately, robes sweeping across polished stone.

“Behold Menehmet, first of her name, Daughter of Amun, God-Queen of New Cairo, Lady Of the Two Lands, The chosen of The Sun,—”

I stopped listening after that.

By the time he finished, my knees were killing me.

“And before her grace kneels her faithful servant,” he continued, “the Medjay Aaron Qaswar.”

“I’ve known her majesty since she was born,” I muttered. “Can we skip this part?”

“How dare—”

“Leave us,” Menehmet said calmly.

The speaker froze mid-breath.

Even kneeling, I could see the fury behind his painted eyes. But he obeyed. The servants withdrew first, followed by the Henty-she. Their heavy boots echoed through the chamber until the throne room fell silent.

Menehmet leaned lazily against her throne, gold jewelry glimmering in the firelight. She was barely nineteen, yet people spoke to her with the kind of fear reserved for ancient things buried beneath the earth.

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” I said.

“You tend to have that effect on people, Aaron.”

A faint smile touched her lips.

“Not everyone sees past your rough exterior the way I do.”

“That why you dragged me across the city before sunrise? To appreciate my soft interior?”

“Not today, Aaron. I called for you because there is something I want retrieved.”

“I’m a Medjay, not an errand boy.”

“You are whatever I require you to be.”

Her smile widened slightly.

“But don’t worry. There will be plenty of opportunities for violence and heroic deaths along the way.”

“Comforting.”

She handed me the map.

“What you seek lies here. A necropolis abandoned long before New Cairo existed.”

“You’re sending me into a tomb.”

“I’m sending you after something that does not belong there.”

“That narrows it down.”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

Her eyes drifted across the throne room, distant and thoughtful.

“Bring it back to me. I think it will liven this place up nicely.”

“You don’t even know what it is, do you?”

“No,” she admitted, sounding almost amused. “Which is exactly why I want it.”

Then she waved her hand dismissively.

“Now go. Time wastes itself far too easily outside these walls.”

 

The storm howled louder outside my car, dragging me back to the present.

Another flash of crimson lightning split the sky.

The vehicle shuddered violently as wind slammed against it. The filtration unit wheezed in protest. One of the cracks in the windshield spread a little farther.

The old monster wasn’t going to survive much more of this.

I tightened my grip on the wheel.

“Fuck it.”

I slammed my foot onto the gas and drove blind into the storm.

For several minutes there was nothing except red static and shrieking wind.

Then another sound crawled through the chaos.

At first I thought the engine was finally dying. A low mechanical whine buried beneath the thunder.

Then it grew louder.

Multiple engines.

Overworked. Abused. Running on fuel never meant for them.

Raiders.

A burst of flame ignited somewhere to my right.

Then another to my left.

Shapes emerged from the crimson haze like demons clawing out of hell itself. Headlights wrapped in metal cages. Exhaust pipes vomiting blue fire into the storm.

One of the vehicles slammed into my side hard.

I caught a glimpse of the driver through cracked welding goggles and a filthy gas mask. Hairless scalp. Chalk-white skin. Eyes twitching with manic energy.

Raiders alright.

And not the disciplined kind either.

Sons of the Sun maybe?

Definitely high on Blue Lotus. Nobody sane scavenged inside a radioactive sandstorm.

Their vehicles barely qualified as cars anymore. Rusted skeletons welded together from scrap metal, rebar, military plating, temple icons. One had animal bones hanging from chains across the hood. Another had strips of human skin nailed to the doors, fluttering wildly in the wind.

Hideous machines.

But in their own deranged way, almost stylish.

The vehicle on my left rammed me again.

Then the one on my right.

They pinned me between them like vultures stripping apart a carcass.

Metal screamed against metal.

Sparks vanished instantly into the storm.

Then came the thudding overhead.

Boots.

“Shit.”

One raider landed on the roof, crouched low against the wind. Another smashed onto the hood, clawing at the windshield while a third jammed a hooked blade into the passenger door.

The one at the door got in first.

I drove my knife through the gap before he could force it open fully.

Hot blood sprayed across my hand.

He stumbled backward into the storm and vanished instantly into the red.

A machete punched through the roof an inch from my face.

I swerved violently.

The lunatic on the windshield snarled behind his mask and began hammering the glass with a metal pipe.

I slammed the brakes.

His body launched off the hood.

A second later I felt the tires bounce over him.

Still one above me.

The bastard had buried his machete deep into the roof to anchor himself in place. The blade rattled overhead every time the wind hit us.

I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the handgun.

Guns were almost extinct now. This one had been a gift from Menehmet shortly after she inherited the throne.

I fired once through the roof.

The gunshot deafened me inside the cramped cabin.

Something heavy rolled off the vehicle.

Then the storm flashed bright crimson.

To my left, lightning began crawling across the sand in branching veins of red-white energy.

The kind that turned flesh into charcoal and fused metal into glass.

I smiled.

Then slammed my car sideways into the raider beside me.

The impact shoved his vehicle directly into the forming electrical trail.

For half a second the world turned white.

Lightning swallowed the car whole.

Metal twisted.

The engine exploded.

Then there was nothing left except burning wreckage tumbling through the storm.

Just me and the last one now.

I pulled alongside him, wanting this finished before the desert killed us both.

The bastard leaned halfway out his window with a spear in hand.

“Really?” I muttered.

He thrust downward.

The spear punched through my front tire.

The steering wheel ripped violently from my hands.

The car lost traction instantly.

Then the storm caught it broadside.

One moment I was driving.

The next the world flipped.

Metal screamed around me as the vehicle rolled across the dunes. My shoulder slammed against the door hard enough to numb my arm. Glass burst inward. The engine died somewhere during the chaos.

Then came silence.

Not true silence.

Just that muffled roar you hear after surviving something that should’ve killed you.

I dragged myself through the shattered window and collapsed into the sand, coughing blood and dust into my scarf.

Nearby, the raider’s vehicle skidded to a stop.

Its door creaked open.

The man stepped out slowly, spear in hand.

The storm wrapped around him like a living thing. Gas mask lenses glowing red beneath the lightning overhead.

He walked toward me without hurry.

Certain he’d already won.

I waited until he raised the spear.

Then I cut his legs out from under him.

We crashed into the sand together, grunting and slipping against the dunes as we fought for control of the weapon. He was stronger than he looked. His fingers forced the spear closer and closer toward my throat.

I drove my boot between his legs as hard as I could.

He jerked violently.

The scream was still forming in his throat when I shoved the spear upward.

The blade punched through the bottom of his jaw and out the back of his skull.

He twitched once.

Then went limp.

I lay there breathing hard, staring up into the red storm overhead.

Then another lightning strike hit nearby.

The blast hit like a hammer from god.

Heat swallowed me whole.

And the world went black.

 

I woke to the smell of incense and ointment.

Canvas walls swayed gently around me.

A tent.

My body felt heavy. Burned. Every breath scraped against my ribs.

A young woman sat beside me grinding herbs into a bowl. Dark curls partially hidden beneath a linen scarf. Steady hands. Focused eyes.

When she noticed I was awake, she froze.

For a moment we simply stared at each other.

Then she stood abruptly.

“Father,” she called outside. “He’s awake.”

A few moments later an old man entered the tent.

Thin. Weathered. Wrapped in dusty robes. His beard had gone almost entirely gray, but warmth still lived in his eyes.

“You gave us quite the scare, young man,” he said. “My Fatima wasn’t sure you’d wake at all. Seems I won that bet.”

He smiled.

A genuine smile.

Rare enough nowadays to feel almost unnatural.

“Name’s Khalid,” he said as he sat beside me. “What’s yours, Medjay?”

“Aaron,” I managed. My throat felt like broken glass. “Aaron Qaswar.”

“Easy now.”

Khalid carefully helped me sit upright before handing me a cup of water.

“Slowly. No rush.”

The tent smelled of dried herbs, old canvas, and sweet smoke drifting from a bronze burner near the entrance. Strings of charms hung from the support poles, clinking softly whenever the desert wind touched the fabric walls. A lantern overhead painted everything in warm amber light that felt impossibly gentle after the endless crimson fury outside.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“The Wandering Oasis.”

I frowned.

“Pretty sure I’ve crossed these regions before. Never seen an oasis anywhere near here.”

Khalid chuckled quietly while pouring tea into two tiny cups.

“It isn’t called the Wandering Oasis for no reason.” He handed one to me carefully. “Its geographical coordinates are… inconsistent.”

“Inconsistent.”

“Yes. Sometimes it rests near the Glass Dunes. Sometimes near the old coastlines. Once we woke beside the ruins of Luxor Station.”

He shrugged lightly.

“The Oasis goes where it wishes.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

Khalid sipped his tea calmly.

“Have you witnessed many things in the desert that do?”

Fair point.

Outside the tent I could hear distant machinery groaning beneath repair work. Somewhere nearby, strings of metal charms rattled softly in the wind.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Lived?” Khalid smiled faintly. “No one lives in the Wandering Oasis. We travel with it. We care for it. And in return… it cares for us.”

I took a careful sip of the tea.

Bitter. Heavy with mint and something medicinal underneath.

Pain immediately flared through my ribs.

Then memory came rushing back.

The storm.

The raiders.

The crash.

“My car,” I muttered. “What happened to my car?”

“Fatima is tending to it,” Khalid said. “Though much like yourself, it will require some time before it is fit for the road again.”

“That bad?”

“You rolled a vehicle through a radioactive lightning storm.”

He gave me an amused look.

“You are fortunate to still possess all your limbs.”

“Debatable.”

I reached for my satchel beside the cot. Relief washed through me when I felt the map still inside.

I unfolded it carefully and handed it to him.

“You know this place?”

Khalid’s expression changed the moment he saw the markings.

“The Bene Nefertite necropolis,” he said quietly.

So the Pharaoh’s map pointed somewhere real after all.

“You know how to get there?”

“Of course.” Khalid traced one of the crude lines with his finger. “In a healthy vehicle, perhaps half a day from here.”

“But?”

He glanced up at me.

“But it lies within an active Ghul-Zone.”

I stared at him for a few seconds.

Then a long, exhausted sigh escaped me.

“Fuck…” I rubbed both hands over my face. “Of course it does.”

Khalid remained silent.

A Ghul-Zone.

Wonderful.

The desert was littered with them now. Places where radiation, death, and whatever invisible poison had seeped into the world finally stopped pretending to obey natural law. Entire villages vanished inside them overnight. Sometimes they returned days later.

Usually screaming.

Sometimes not human anymore.

Outside, the wind had softened into a low whisper against the canvas walls.

“I don’t think the God-Queen is the patient type,” I muttered eventually. “Don’t exactly have the luxury of waiting this out.”

“Be that as it may,” Khalid replied calmly, “your vehicle is broken, your body is barely holding together, and the storm still prowls outside.”

Then he smiled warmly.

“So whether you like it or not, Medjay… tonight you will stay here. You will drink tea. You will rest. And you will endure the unbearable horror of friendly conversation.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

The old man had a presence to him. The kind that disarmed you before you realized it was happening.

I kept telling myself to stay guarded. Men survived longer that way in the wasteland. Loose tongues eventually got slit.

But the hours slipped by, and somehow I kept talking anyway.

About my mother dying from lung rot when I was a child.

About fighting for scraps in the alleys of New Cairo before the Medjay recruited me.

About the first man I killed.

I still remembered his face sometimes.

Khalid never interrupted. Never pushed. He simply listened while slowly refilling our tea like we had all the time in the world.

At some point I even admitted what most people would consider my greatest shame.

“I don’t trust cats,” I confessed.

Khalid blinked.

Then nearly spilled his tea laughing.

“You serve the Pharaoh of New Cairo,” he wheezed, “descendant of gods and ruler of the desert… yet you fear cats?”

“They stare too long.”

“That may be the funniest thing I’ve heard in years.”

“I’m serious.”

“That somehow makes it even better.”

I leaned back against the cushions with a tired groan.

“I’ve survived raiders, mutants, storms, cultists, and royal politics. Why would I willingly invite another apex predator into my home?”

Khalid laughed harder at that.

Real laughter.

Not the nervous kind people forced out nowadays to prove they still remembered how.

And for a little while, beneath the lantern glow while the desert whispered outside the tent walls, the wasteland almost felt human again.

 

I woke to the feeling of a hand pressing lightly against my chest.

Instinct took over before thought did.

My hand shot upward, grabbing the wrist hard enough to make the other person gasp. My eyes snapped open. Heart pounding. Half-awake and already reaching for the knife beneath my pillow that wasn’t there.

Fatima stared down at me.

Pain flickered briefly across her face where I held her wrist, but her expression remained impressively deadpan considering the circumstances.

“I was dressing your wounds,” she said flatly. “They tend to get infected easily out there in the desert.”

I immediately let go.

“Sorry,” I muttered, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Reflex.”

“No kidding.”

Morning light glowed softly through the tent walls now, replacing the warm lantern light from the night before.

Fatima returned to wrapping fresh bandages around my ribs with practiced precision.

“You move around a lot in your sleep,” she said.

“Occupational hazard.”

“You also talk.”

“You threatened someone named Abbas with a shovel.”

I frowned.

“Abbas knew what he did.”

That finally earned a small laugh from her.

Up close, I noticed details I’d missed before. Thin scars crossing her hands. Tiny burn marks along her forearms. Grease permanently worked into the lines of her fingers.

Mechanic’s hands.

Capable hands.

“Your car’s almost ready,” she said after tightening the final bandage. “Just finishing a few things.”

“That fast?”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No, impressed.”

A faint trace of pride appeared in her expression.

“You should be.”

„Ill make sure to repay you one day.“

“No need. Dad always says small kindness matters in cruel places.”

“Sounds like him.”

For a moment neither of us spoke.

The Oasis outside had already begun waking up. Distant voices drifted through the canvas. Machinery clanked somewhere nearby. I could smell bread baking mixed with engine oil and incense smoke.

Then a thought slowly clicked into place.

“Was Khalid with you since you were little?”

Fatima blinked.

“What?”

“Khalid,” I clarified carefully. “Was he the one who raised you?”

She looked genuinely confused.

“Well… yes. He’s my father.”

“I meant—”

I hesitated.

“When did he adopt you?”

„How do you know he adopted me? Im fairly sure he didnt tell you that.“

“Well… I’ve never heard of a jinn fathering a human.”

Her eyes widened instantly.

Not offended.

Shocked.

“How did you know?”

“I’m a Medjay.”

I leaned back carefully against the cot.

“I’ve dealt with a few jinn before. Though admittedly, most of them are far less subtle than your father.”

Fatima glanced nervously toward the tent entrance.

“Relax,” I said. “None of my business. Your secret’s safe with me.”

She studied my face for a long moment, trying to decide whether I meant that.

Eventually she relaxed slightly.

Without another word, she reached into a satchel beside her and pulled something out on a wooden skewer.

A caramelized scorpion.

Its curled tail glistened beneath a layer of dark syrup.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

I stared at it.

“…Yeah.”

I pointed at the scorpion.

“But not that hungry.”

Fatima giggled softly.

Just enough to remind me she was still young beneath all the strange mystery surrounding her.

 

The Oasis looked completely different in daylight.

The tents stretched across the dunes in uneven circles around a pool of crystal-clear water that absolutely should not have existed in the middle of the wasteland. Palm trees swayed lazily despite there being almost no wind. Traders wandered between colorful canopies selling scavenged technology beside preserved spices and ancient charms carved from bone and copper.

Incense smoke drifted through the warm air alongside the smell of cooked meat and engine oil.

The entire place felt unreal, like a pocket dimension somehow safe from the desert enveloping it.

Fatima led me toward my vehicle.

And somehow—

Somehow the old thing looked better than it had in years.

The reinforced panels had actually been fitted properly instead of hammered into place by desperation and profanity. The filtration unit no longer sounded like it was trying to inhale gravel. Even the engine housing had been cleaned.

I stared at it in disbelief.

“You’re really good,” I admitted. “Where’d you learn all this?”

Fatima crouched beside the front wheel, tightening something with a wrench.

“Before Dad found me, I lived in the scrapyards for a while.”

She shrugged.

“Not much to do there besides take machines apart.”

“Sounds miserable.”

“It was.”

She said it casually.

That somehow made it worse.

After a moment she reached into her satchel again and pulled out another map.

This one looked infinitely better than Menehmet’s version. Proper landmarks. Accurate distances. Warnings scribbled carefully along the margins in Arabic.

“Dad told me to give you this,” she said. “Should guide you better than those royal scribbles.”

I laughed quietly.

“Probably wise. If the Pharaoh ever retires, cartography definitely isn’t an option for her.”

Fatima smiled faintly.

I folded the map carefully and tucked it into my coat.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

“For the map or the car?”

“Both.”

For a brief moment neither of us spoke.

Then she stepped back from the vehicle.

“Maybe we’ll meet again, Medjay.”

I looked at her standing there beneath the desert sun, dark curls moving gently in the wind, strange amber eyes catching the light like polished gold.

“Maybe,” I said.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition.

The engine roared to life instantly.

Not coughing.

Not choking.

Alive.

I grinned despite myself.

Then I shifted gears and drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis, leaving the Wandering Oasis behind in the sands.

 

It had been about four hours since I left the Wandering Oasis behind.

The desert changed gradually the farther I drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

The dunes darkened first.

Black mineral veins spread through the sand like rot beneath skin, shimmering faintly beneath the afternoon sun. Ruined pylons from the old world jutted from the wasteland at crooked angles, half-swallowed by centuries of storms. Some still carried scraps of melted wiring that hummed softly whenever the wind blew through them.

And somehow, against all logic, the car was running beautifully.

Whatever Fatima had done to it bordered on sorcery.

The engine no longer wheezed every few minutes like a dying animal. The steering responded instantly. Even the suspension handled the uneven dunes without sounding like the entire frame was about to collapse into spare parts.

The old machine practically purred beneath me.

I almost felt guilty driving it.

Almost.

I adjusted the scarf around my face and glanced toward the map resting on the passenger seat.

Close now.

Very close.

The necropolis should’ve been visible any minute.

That was when I noticed the vibration.

At first I assumed it was the engine.

A faint trembling beneath the wheels.

Then the dashboard began rattling.

Sand slid down nearby dunes in soft streams.

My stomach tightened immediately.

“No…”

The ground lurched violently beneath the car.

The steering wheel jerked in my hands hard enough to nearly send me sideways.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

The desert exploded.

Sand erupted upward beside the vehicle in towering waves as something massive burst from beneath the dunes to my left.

Then another.

Then two more.

Four shapes circled the car as I slammed the brakes.

Shed-beners.

Wonderful.

The things had once been human.

Probably.

Now they looked like nightmares designed by someone who hated both mankind and nature equally. Their lower halves resembled enormous black scorpions armored in chitinous plates scarred by radiation, old wounds, and patches of fungal growth. But rising from those monstrous bodies were elongated human torsos twisted into impossible shapes, ribs pressing visibly beneath stretched skin.

Their faces were the worst part.

Too human.

Clouded eyes rolled wildly in different directions while their mouths hung unnaturally wide, rows of broken teeth jutting outward at crooked angles. Bronze jewelry still clung to their bodies in places. Scraps of old robes fluttered from their armored backs.

Remnants of people.

That always made monsters worse.

One of them clicked its claws together and released a wet, shrieking hiss that sounded disturbingly close to laughter.

Another slowly raised its massive stinger over the car.

I grabbed my scimitar and kicked the door open.

The first creature lunged immediately.

Its claw slammed into the side of the vehicle hard enough to dent the metal inward. I rolled beneath the strike and slashed upward with the scimitar.

The curved blade bit deep into the pale flesh where human torso fused into scorpion body.

Black blood sprayed across the sand.

The Shed-bener screamed.

Not like an animal.

Like a person.

I hated that.

The second creature charged from my right with horrifying speed. I barely avoided the stinger crashing into the ground where my head had been a second earlier.

The impact cracked the hardened sand like stone.

I fired the handgun.

The first bullet punched into its human face.

The creature staggered backward violently—

—but didn’t stop.

“Of course that’s not enough.”

It shrieked and rushed me again.

I fired a second time.

The shot tore through one of its clustered eyes. Black fluid burst down its face as the creature reeled sideways, clawing at itself blindly.

Behind me came the sound of twisting metal.

Another Shed-bener slammed directly into the car hard enough to nearly flip it.

Metal screamed.

One of the creatures crawled across the roof with horrifying speed, claws scraping against the reinforced plating Fatima had installed only hours earlier.

I swung the scimitar just as the blinded creature lunged again.

The blade buried itself deep into its throat.

The creature convulsed violently.

Its stinger lashed through the air in frantic arcs before finally going still.

One down.

Three left.

Something slammed into me from behind.

I crashed hard into the sand, pain exploding through my ribs where Fatima’s fresh bandages sat beneath my clothes. My grip loosened on the sword.

A claw punched into the ground inches from my face, spraying sand across my eyes.

I scrambled backward just as a stinger slammed down where my chest had been moments earlier.

Poison hissed against the sand.

The second creature attacked from the side immediately after.

Too fast.

I raised the handgun and fired my last round directly into its open mouth.

The back of its skull exploded outward in a spray of shattered teeth and black fluid.

The creature collapsed twitching beside me.

Two down.

And now I was out of ammunition.

The remaining Shed-beners slowed their movements.

Watching me carefully.

Smarter than the others.

One blocked my path back to the car while the second circled behind me, massive stinger swaying slowly overhead like an executioner preparing the final blow.

I grabbed the scimitar from the sand and forced myself upright.

My breathing had gone ragged.

Everything hurt.

Blood soaked through the bandages beneath my coat.

The creatures noticed.

Predators always did.

One suddenly lunged low across the sand.

I barely sidestepped in time, but the second slammed into me immediately afterward.

The impact sent me crashing backward down the side of a dune.

The scimitar flew from my hand.

Before I could recover, a massive claw pinned my arm into the sand.

Pain shot through my shoulder.

The other creature approached slowly now.

Confident.

Its human face leaned closer toward mine.

I could smell rot on its breath.

Its cloudy eyes twitched wildly as if several thoughts were fighting for control behind them.

Then the creature smiled.

Not instinctively.

Deliberately.

The stinger rose high above me.

Ready to strike.

Then the desert roared.

The sound came from beneath the earth itself.

Deep.

Thunderous.

Ancient.

The dunes exploded upward around us.

The Shed-beners shrieked and turned too late.

Something colossal burst from beneath the sand.

A sandworm.

Its mouth opened impossibly wide, ringed with rotating rows of jagged teeth large enough to crush vehicles whole. Pale flesh glistened beneath armored hide as the thing surged upward like the desert itself had come alive.

The worm swallowed one of the Shed-beners instantly.

The second barely had time to scream before the jaws closed around it too.

Crunch.

The sound echoed across the dunes.

Then the worm vanished beneath the sand again almost as quickly as it had appeared, dragging both screaming creatures into the depths below.

The desert settled slowly.

Silence returned.

I remained flat on my back for several long seconds, breathing hard, staring at the empty dunes above me.

Then I slowly sat up.

Everyone with functioning survival instincts feared sandworms.

But that was the first and only time in my life I had ever been happy to see one.

 

I had finally reached the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

Dark clouds churned above the ruins in slow, unnatural spirals. Thick and swollen like bruises spreading across the sky. Crimson lightning pulsed silently within them, illuminating shattered pyramids and broken statues in brief flashes of red-white light.

Even from a distance, I could feel the Ghul-Zone pressing against reality like a wound that refused to close.

Vehicles didn’t last long inside active zones.

Electronics fried without warning. Engines stalled. Entire caravans vanished for days before reappearing fused together into piles of melted flesh and metal.

Sometimes the people inside were still alive.

I killed the engine.

For a moment I just sat there listening to the sudden silence.

Then I grabbed my torch, tightened the scarf around my face, and stepped out into the dead air.

Immediately, something felt wrong.

Not danger.

Absence.

No wind.

No insects.

No movement.

Just a low hum vibrating through the atmosphere itself.

The sky inside the zone had turned a diseased brown color. Veins of pale energy crawled soundlessly through the air between ruined structures, flickering like cracks spreading through glass. Every breath tasted metallic even through the scarf.

I kept my face covered.

No reason to inhale more of this place than necessary.

The necropolis stretched endlessly ahead of me.

Half-buried obelisks.

Collapsed mausoleums.

Streets lined with statues eroded into faceless things by centuries of radiation and sandstorms.

Then I noticed movement.

Far ahead, between the ruins, a line of figures shuffled silently through the streets.

Dozens of them.

Human silhouettes.

Some staggered unnaturally while others moved with eerie smoothness, like puppets dragged by invisible strings. Heads tilted at impossible angles. Limbs bent wrong.

Ghuls.

Or whatever remained after the Zone hollowed a person out and left only instinct wearing their skin.

Didn’t matter which.

Nothing could be done for them anymore.

Best to avoid them entirely.

I moved deeper into the necropolis carefully, one hand resting near the scimitar at my side.

The deeper I went, the stranger the place became.

The geometry shifted when I wasn’t looking directly at it.

Streets curved where they shouldn’t.

Passages looped back into themselves.

At one point I walked past the same headless statue three separate times despite never turning around.

The Zone liked to play games with people.

Usually the games ended with someone eating their own fingers while insisting they tasted like honey.

I ignored everything except the pyramid.

Small.

Black.

Resting at the center of the necropolis like a splinter buried beneath skin.

Nothing else mattered.

The closer I got to it, the stronger the pressure inside my skull became.

Not pain exactly.

More like invisible fingers pressing against my thoughts.

Digging.

Searching.

Then I heard her voice.

“Aaron…”

I froze instantly.

The necropolis vanished around me.

For one horrible moment I was a child again.

“Sweetie… don’t go.”

Slowly, I turned.

My mother stood behind me.

Exactly as I remembered her before the sickness took her.

Warm brown skin.

Thin frame.

Soft tired eyes.

Even the same faded blue scarf she used to wear around the apartment.

For a second I forgot where I was.

Forgot the Zone.

Forgot the pyramid.

Forgot everything.

She stepped closer and gently rested a hand against my shoulder.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered.

The pressure in my chest hurt worse than any wound I’d taken in years.

“I missed you too, Mum,” I admitted quietly.

And I meant it.

God, I meant it.

“You could stay,” she whispered softly. “You don’t have to keep hurting anymore.”

Something trembled in her voice.

“You don’t have to keep fighting.”

I stared at her silently.

And that was the problem.

My mother had never spoken like that.

Not even when she was dying.

Especially not then.

She used to tell me:

If the world wants you dead, make it work for it.

This thing didn’t know that.

The smile on her face twitched slightly.

Just slightly.

But enough.

I sighed tiredly.

Then I drew the scimitar and cut her head off.

The blade sliced clean through her neck.

The body collapsed instantly into the sand, twitching violently as thick black fluid spilled from the stump instead of blood.

The severed head hit the ground still smiling.

For a few seconds it continued staring up at me while the face slowly softened and melted like wet clay left in the sun.

Then it collapsed into rotten sludge.

I stared at the remains coldly.

“Pale imitation, asshole.”

The Zone hummed louder around me.

Almost disappointed.

Then I turned and entered the pyramid.

 

The air inside felt ancient.

Dry.

Claustrophobic.

My torchlight flickered across walls covered in faded hieroglyphs and newer markings scratched desperately over them by later explorers. Warnings mostly.

Prayers.

Names.

Somebody had carved:

IT KNOWS YOUR HEART

deep into one of the walls.

Farther down, another simply read:

DON’T LISTEN

The deeper I descended, the colder it became.

Dust coated everything thick enough to swallow footprints whole.

Occasionally I caught movement just beyond the torchlight.

Something shifting behind pillars.

Something crawling along ceilings.

I ignored it.

The Zone fed on attention.

Old bones cracked beneath my boots as I moved through stripped burial chambers and narrow corridors. Most of the tomb had been looted centuries ago. Broken jars and shattered coffins littered the floors.

Yet somehow the deeper chambers remained untouched.

That should’ve worried me more than it did.

Eventually the corridor opened into a massive circular chamber.

My footsteps echoed softly across the stone.

Tall pillars ringed the room, carved into the likenesses of forgotten gods whose faces had been deliberately chiseled away long ago. Ancient braziers still burned with weak green fire despite the absence of fuel.

At the center stood a massive stone sarcophagus covered in blackened gold markings.

I approached carefully.

No movement.

No sound.

Good enough.

I shoved the lid aside with a painful groan from my ribs.

Inside lay a dried corpse wrapped in ancient linen. Its skin stretched tightly against bone, mouth frozen open in a permanent scream.

For several seconds nothing happened.

I exhaled slowly.

“Sorry about this.”

I reached down to move the body aside.

The mummy grabbed my wrist.

Before I could react, it hurled me across the chamber hard enough to crack stone beneath my back.

Pain exploded through my ribs.

The creature rose from the sarcophagus with horrifying speed.

Its jaw unhinged wider than humanly possible as it released a shriek sharp enough to physically hurt. Dust rained from the ceiling. My torch nearly slipped from my hand.

“Oh, come on—”

The mummy lunged.

Far too fast.

I barely rolled aside before its claws punched deep grooves into the stone where my head had been moments earlier.

Up close I saw movement beneath the wrappings.

Thousands of tiny black insects crawling beneath the ancient linen like blood moving beneath skin.

I slashed with the scimitar.

The blade carved deep across its chest.

The creature barely reacted.

It hit me hard enough to send me skidding across the chamber again.

I instinctively raised the handgun and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Empty.

“Right,” I muttered. “Fantastic.”

The mummy shrieked again.

Then sprinted directly up the wall.

Its limbs twisted unnaturally as it crawled across the ceiling like some gigantic insect before dropping toward me.

I barely caught its arm mid-strike with the scimitar.

The impact nearly snapped my wrist.

The thing was impossibly strong.

Rotten linen wrapped around my arm as it forced me downward inch by inch. Its face hung inches from mine now while black beetles crawled in and out of its mouth and empty eye sockets.

And then it spoke.

Just one word.

In my mother’s voice.

“Aaron…”

That almost broke me more than the claws.

I slammed my forehead into its skull.

The creature staggered backward slightly.

Enough.

I kicked one of the burning braziers directly into its chest.

Flames erupted across the ancient wrappings instantly.

The mummy screamed.

Not in pain.

In fury.

It thrashed violently across the chamber, climbing pillars and walls while burning alive. Flaming insects poured from its body in thick streams, scattering across the floor around me.

The fire spread rapidly through the dry linen.

I grabbed a broken spear shaft near one of the tombs and waited.

The mummy launched itself at me one final time.

Burning.

Shrieking.

Its mouth stretched impossibly wide.

I sidestepped at the last second.

Then drove the spear clean through its torso and deep into the stone wall behind it.

The impact pinned the creature there.

The mummy writhed violently, claws scraping uselessly against stone as flames consumed more and more of its body.

Still screaming in my mother’s voice.

I stood there breathing hard for several seconds before finally turning back toward the sarcophagus.

Inside was…

Almost nothing.

No treasure.

No cursed weapon.

No ancient relic humming with forbidden power.

Just dust.

Bones.

And one tiny object resting near the bottom.

A small statue of a cat.

I stared at it.

Then slowly looked upward in exhausted disbelief.

“You cannot be serious, Menehmet…”

Behind me, the burning mummy continued shrieking against the wall.

I sighed deeply, grabbed the statue, and shoved it into my coat pocket.

Then I left the pyramid behind me.

 

A few hours later I was back inside the car, driving away from the necropolis while the storm clouds shrank slowly in the rearview mirror.

The tiny cat statue sat on the passenger seat beside me.

Another priceless royal mission accomplished.

All so the God-Queen of New Cairo could add another worthless piece of junk to her collection.

I glanced sideways at the statue.

Its tiny carved eyes stared back at me.

I immediately looked back at the road.

“…Still hate cats.”

I could see nothing beyond the red wall of sand.

Crimson lightning clawed through the storm in violent flashes, turning the desert into a negative image of itself for split seconds at a time. The rest was noise. Sand hammering the chassis. Metal groaning beneath the wind. Loose sheet metal rattling hard enough to tear free at any moment.

Somewhere far beyond all that came the low, dying growl of thunder.

The radioactive sandstorm had curved off its forecasted route and slammed straight into me.

That’s what happens when your weather predictions rely on astronomical scraps scribbled down five thousand years ago by priests staring at the stars through opium smoke.

I’d been driving blind through this hell long enough to lose all sense of direction. East, west, north—it was all just red now.

Eventually I eased my foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop.

Probably the dumbest thing you could do in a storm like this.

Then again, continuing to drive wasn’t exactly genius either.

The engine coughed beneath me like a dying smoker. Every vehicle left in this world sounded sick. Mine especially.

The car had once belonged to at least three different owners and two different manufacturers. Soviet frame. Military-grade filtration unit. Doors ripped from some civilian transport. Half the dashboard held together with copper wire and prayer strips dedicated to gods nobody believed in until the world ended.

Outside, the storm screamed louder.

I pulled the map from my satchel.

The parchment crackled in my hands. The drawings on it were painfully crude—crooked pyramids, uneven symbols, landmarks sketched with the confidence of a drunk child.

But the map had come directly from the palace.

Drawn by the Pharaoh herself.

And I wasn’t brave enough—or suicidal enough—to criticize the God-Queen of New Cairo.

When Pharaoh Menehmet summoned you, you didn’t refuse.

You didn’t complain.

You bowed low enough for your forehead to touch the floor and prayed she stayed in a merciful mood.

The Henty-she had arrived before sunrise. Royal guards wrapped in black linen and bronze plating, faces hidden behind jackal masks with glowing blue lenses. They dragged me from bed without explanation and marched me through the waking streets of New Cairo.

Not that explanations were common in the presence of gods.

The palace rose from the center of the city like ancient history welded onto the corpse of the future. Neon hieroglyphs burned across towering obelisks. Massive statues watched over rusted slums with cracked stone faces. The rich burned incense while the poor burned tires to stay warm.

The guards shoved me onto my knees before the throne.

The royal speaker stepped forward immediately, robes sweeping across polished stone.

“Behold Menehmet, first of her name, Daughter of Amun, God-Queen of New Cairo, Lady Of the Two Lands, The chosen of The Sun,—”

I stopped listening after that.

By the time he finished, my knees were killing me.

“And before her grace kneels her faithful servant,” he continued, “the Medjay Aaron Qaswar.”

“I’ve known her majesty since she was born,” I muttered. “Can we skip this part?”

“How dare—”

“Leave us,” Menehmet said calmly.

The speaker froze mid-breath.

Even kneeling, I could see the fury behind his painted eyes. But he obeyed. The servants withdrew first, followed by the Henty-she. Their heavy boots echoed through the chamber until the throne room fell silent.

Menehmet leaned lazily against her throne, gold jewelry glimmering in the firelight. She was barely nineteen, yet people spoke to her with the kind of fear reserved for ancient things buried beneath the earth.

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” I said.

“You tend to have that effect on people, Aaron.”

A faint smile touched her lips.

“Not everyone sees past your rough exterior the way I do.”

“That why you dragged me across the city before sunrise? To appreciate my soft interior?”

“Not today, Aaron. I called for you because there is something I want retrieved.”

“I’m a Medjay, not an errand boy.”

“You are whatever I require you to be.”

Her smile widened slightly.

“But don’t worry. There will be plenty of opportunities for violence and heroic deaths along the way.”

“Comforting.”

She handed me the map.

“What you seek lies here. A necropolis abandoned long before New Cairo existed.”

“You’re sending me into a tomb.”

“I’m sending you after something that does not belong there.”

“That narrows it down.”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

Her eyes drifted across the throne room, distant and thoughtful.

“Bring it back to me. I think it will liven this place up nicely.”

“You don’t even know what it is, do you?”

“No,” she admitted, sounding almost amused. “Which is exactly why I want it.”

Then she waved her hand dismissively.

“Now go. Time wastes itself far too easily outside these walls.”

 

The storm howled louder outside my car, dragging me back to the present.

Another flash of crimson lightning split the sky.

The vehicle shuddered violently as wind slammed against it. The filtration unit wheezed in protest. One of the cracks in the windshield spread a little farther.

The old monster wasn’t going to survive much more of this.

I tightened my grip on the wheel.

“Fuck it.”

I slammed my foot onto the gas and drove blind into the storm.

For several minutes there was nothing except red static and shrieking wind.

Then another sound crawled through the chaos.

At first I thought the engine was finally dying. A low mechanical whine buried beneath the thunder.

Then it grew louder.

Multiple engines.

Overworked. Abused. Running on fuel never meant for them.

Raiders.

A burst of flame ignited somewhere to my right.

Then another to my left.

Shapes emerged from the crimson haze like demons clawing out of hell itself. Headlights wrapped in metal cages. Exhaust pipes vomiting blue fire into the storm.

One of the vehicles slammed into my side hard.

I caught a glimpse of the driver through cracked welding goggles and a filthy gas mask. Hairless scalp. Chalk-white skin. Eyes twitching with manic energy.

Raiders alright.

And not the disciplined kind either.

Sons of the Sun maybe?

Definitely high on Blue Lotus. Nobody sane scavenged inside a radioactive sandstorm.

Their vehicles barely qualified as cars anymore. Rusted skeletons welded together from scrap metal, rebar, military plating, temple icons. One had animal bones hanging from chains across the hood. Another had strips of human skin nailed to the doors, fluttering wildly in the wind.

Hideous machines.

But in their own deranged way, almost stylish.

The vehicle on my left rammed me again.

Then the one on my right.

They pinned me between them like vultures stripping apart a carcass.

Metal screamed against metal.

Sparks vanished instantly into the storm.

Then came the thudding overhead.

Boots.

“Shit.”

One raider landed on the roof, crouched low against the wind. Another smashed onto the hood, clawing at the windshield while a third jammed a hooked blade into the passenger door.

The one at the door got in first.

I drove my knife through the gap before he could force it open fully.

Hot blood sprayed across my hand.

He stumbled backward into the storm and vanished instantly into the red.

A machete punched through the roof an inch from my face.

I swerved violently.

The lunatic on the windshield snarled behind his mask and began hammering the glass with a metal pipe.

I slammed the brakes.

His body launched off the hood.

A second later I felt the tires bounce over him.

Still one above me.

The bastard had buried his machete deep into the roof to anchor himself in place. The blade rattled overhead every time the wind hit us.

I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the handgun.

Guns were almost extinct now. This one had been a gift from Menehmet shortly after she inherited the throne.

I fired once through the roof.

The gunshot deafened me inside the cramped cabin.

Something heavy rolled off the vehicle.

Then the storm flashed bright crimson.

To my left, lightning began crawling across the sand in branching veins of red-white energy.

The kind that turned flesh into charcoal and fused metal into glass.

I smiled.

Then slammed my car sideways into the raider beside me.

The impact shoved his vehicle directly into the forming electrical trail.

For half a second the world turned white.

Lightning swallowed the car whole.

Metal twisted.

The engine exploded.

Then there was nothing left except burning wreckage tumbling through the storm.

Just me and the last one now.

I pulled alongside him, wanting this finished before the desert killed us both.

The bastard leaned halfway out his window with a spear in hand.

“Really?” I muttered.

He thrust downward.

The spear punched through my front tire.

The steering wheel ripped violently from my hands.

The car lost traction instantly.

Then the storm caught it broadside.

One moment I was driving.

The next the world flipped.

Metal screamed around me as the vehicle rolled across the dunes. My shoulder slammed against the door hard enough to numb my arm. Glass burst inward. The engine died somewhere during the chaos.

Then came silence.

Not true silence.

Just that muffled roar you hear after surviving something that should’ve killed you.

I dragged myself through the shattered window and collapsed into the sand, coughing blood and dust into my scarf.

Nearby, the raider’s vehicle skidded to a stop.

Its door creaked open.

The man stepped out slowly, spear in hand.

The storm wrapped around him like a living thing. Gas mask lenses glowing red beneath the lightning overhead.

He walked toward me without hurry.

Certain he’d already won.

I waited until he raised the spear.

Then I cut his legs out from under him.

We crashed into the sand together, grunting and slipping against the dunes as we fought for control of the weapon. He was stronger than he looked. His fingers forced the spear closer and closer toward my throat.

I drove my boot between his legs as hard as I could.

He jerked violently.

The scream was still forming in his throat when I shoved the spear upward.

The blade punched through the bottom of his jaw and out the back of his skull.

He twitched once.

Then went limp.

I lay there breathing hard, staring up into the red storm overhead.

Then another lightning strike hit nearby.

The blast hit like a hammer from god.

Heat swallowed me whole.

And the world went black.

 

I woke to the smell of incense and ointment.

Canvas walls swayed gently around me.

A tent.

My body felt heavy. Burned. Every breath scraped against my ribs.

A young woman sat beside me grinding herbs into a bowl. Dark curls partially hidden beneath a linen scarf. Steady hands. Focused eyes.

When she noticed I was awake, she froze.

For a moment we simply stared at each other.

Then she stood abruptly.

“Father,” she called outside. “He’s awake.”

A few moments later an old man entered the tent.

Thin. Weathered. Wrapped in dusty robes. His beard had gone almost entirely gray, but warmth still lived in his eyes.

“You gave us quite the scare, young man,” he said. “My Fatima wasn’t sure you’d wake at all. Seems I won that bet.”

He smiled.

A genuine smile.

Rare enough nowadays to feel almost unnatural.

“Name’s Khalid,” he said as he sat beside me. “What’s yours, Medjay?”

“Aaron,” I managed. My throat felt like broken glass. “Aaron Qaswar.”

“Easy now.”

Khalid carefully helped me sit upright before handing me a cup of water.

“Slowly. No rush.”

The tent smelled of dried herbs, old canvas, and sweet smoke drifting from a bronze burner near the entrance. Strings of charms hung from the support poles, clinking softly whenever the desert wind touched the fabric walls. A lantern overhead painted everything in warm amber light that felt impossibly gentle after the endless crimson fury outside.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“The Wandering Oasis.”

I frowned.

“Pretty sure I’ve crossed these regions before. Never seen an oasis anywhere near here.”

Khalid chuckled quietly while pouring tea into two tiny cups.

“It isn’t called the Wandering Oasis for no reason.” He handed one to me carefully. “Its geographical coordinates are… inconsistent.”

“Inconsistent.”

“Yes. Sometimes it rests near the Glass Dunes. Sometimes near the old coastlines. Once we woke beside the ruins of Luxor Station.”

He shrugged lightly.

“The Oasis goes where it wishes.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

Khalid sipped his tea calmly.

“Have you witnessed many things in the desert that do?”

Fair point.

Outside the tent I could hear distant machinery groaning beneath repair work. Somewhere nearby, strings of metal charms rattled softly in the wind.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Lived?” Khalid smiled faintly. “No one lives in the Wandering Oasis. We travel with it. We care for it. And in return… it cares for us.”

I took a careful sip of the tea.

Bitter. Heavy with mint and something medicinal underneath.

Pain immediately flared through my ribs.

Then memory came rushing back.

The storm.

The raiders.

The crash.

“My car,” I muttered. “What happened to my car?”

“Fatima is tending to it,” Khalid said. “Though much like yourself, it will require some time before it is fit for the road again.”

“That bad?”

“You rolled a vehicle through a radioactive lightning storm.”

He gave me an amused look.

“You are fortunate to still possess all your limbs.”

“Debatable.”

I reached for my satchel beside the cot. Relief washed through me when I felt the map still inside.

I unfolded it carefully and handed it to him.

“You know this place?”

Khalid’s expression changed the moment he saw the markings.

“The Bene Nefertite necropolis,” he said quietly.

So the Pharaoh’s map pointed somewhere real after all.

“You know how to get there?”

“Of course.” Khalid traced one of the crude lines with his finger. “In a healthy vehicle, perhaps half a day from here.”

“But?”

He glanced up at me.

“But it lies within an active Ghul-Zone.”

I stared at him for a few seconds.

Then a long, exhausted sigh escaped me.

“Fuck…” I rubbed both hands over my face. “Of course it does.”

Khalid remained silent.

A Ghul-Zone.

Wonderful.

The desert was littered with them now. Places where radiation, death, and whatever invisible poison had seeped into the world finally stopped pretending to obey natural law. Entire villages vanished inside them overnight. Sometimes they returned days later.

Usually screaming.

Sometimes not human anymore.

Outside, the wind had softened into a low whisper against the canvas walls.

“I don’t think the God-Queen is the patient type,” I muttered eventually. “Don’t exactly have the luxury of waiting this out.”

“Be that as it may,” Khalid replied calmly, “your vehicle is broken, your body is barely holding together, and the storm still prowls outside.”

Then he smiled warmly.

“So whether you like it or not, Medjay… tonight you will stay here. You will drink tea. You will rest. And you will endure the unbearable horror of friendly conversation.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

The old man had a presence to him. The kind that disarmed you before you realized it was happening.

I kept telling myself to stay guarded. Men survived longer that way in the wasteland. Loose tongues eventually got slit.

But the hours slipped by, and somehow I kept talking anyway.

About my mother dying from lung rot when I was a child.

About fighting for scraps in the alleys of New Cairo before the Medjay recruited me.

About the first man I killed.

I still remembered his face sometimes.

Khalid never interrupted. Never pushed. He simply listened while slowly refilling our tea like we had all the time in the world.

At some point I even admitted what most people would consider my greatest shame.

“I don’t trust cats,” I confessed.

Khalid blinked.

Then nearly spilled his tea laughing.

“You serve the Pharaoh of New Cairo,” he wheezed, “descendant of gods and ruler of the desert… yet you fear cats?”

“They stare too long.”

“That may be the funniest thing I’ve heard in years.”

“I’m serious.”

“That somehow makes it even better.”

I leaned back against the cushions with a tired groan.

“I’ve survived raiders, mutants, storms, cultists, and royal politics. Why would I willingly invite another apex predator into my home?”

Khalid laughed harder at that.

Real laughter.

Not the nervous kind people forced out nowadays to prove they still remembered how.

And for a little while, beneath the lantern glow while the desert whispered outside the tent walls, the wasteland almost felt human again.

 

I woke to the feeling of a hand pressing lightly against my chest.

Instinct took over before thought did.

My hand shot upward, grabbing the wrist hard enough to make the other person gasp. My eyes snapped open. Heart pounding. Half-awake and already reaching for the knife beneath my pillow that wasn’t there.

Fatima stared down at me.

Pain flickered briefly across her face where I held her wrist, but her expression remained impressively deadpan considering the circumstances.

“I was dressing your wounds,” she said flatly. “They tend to get infected easily out there in the desert.”

I immediately let go.

“Sorry,” I muttered, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Reflex.”

“No kidding.”

Morning light glowed softly through the tent walls now, replacing the warm lantern light from the night before.

Fatima returned to wrapping fresh bandages around my ribs with practiced precision.

“You move around a lot in your sleep,” she said.

“Occupational hazard.”

“You also talk.”

“You threatened someone named Abbas with a shovel.”

I frowned.

“Abbas knew what he did.”

That finally earned a small laugh from her.

Up close, I noticed details I’d missed before. Thin scars crossing her hands. Tiny burn marks along her forearms. Grease permanently worked into the lines of her fingers.

Mechanic’s hands.

Capable hands.

“Your car’s almost ready,” she said after tightening the final bandage. “Just finishing a few things.”

“That fast?”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No, impressed.”

A faint trace of pride appeared in her expression.

“You should be.”

„Ill make sure to repay you one day.“

“No need. Dad always says small kindness matters in cruel places.”

“Sounds like him.”

For a moment neither of us spoke.

The Oasis outside had already begun waking up. Distant voices drifted through the canvas. Machinery clanked somewhere nearby. I could smell bread baking mixed with engine oil and incense smoke.

Then a thought slowly clicked into place.

“Was Khalid with you since you were little?”

Fatima blinked.

“What?”

“Khalid,” I clarified carefully. “Was he the one who raised you?”

She looked genuinely confused.

“Well… yes. He’s my father.”

“I meant—”

I hesitated.

“When did he adopt you?”

„How do you know he adopted me? Im fairly sure he didnt tell you that.“

“Well… I’ve never heard of a jinn fathering a human.”

Her eyes widened instantly.

Not offended.

Shocked.

“How did you know?”

“I’m a Medjay.”

I leaned back carefully against the cot.

“I’ve dealt with a few jinn before. Though admittedly, most of them are far less subtle than your father.”

Fatima glanced nervously toward the tent entrance.

“Relax,” I said. “None of my business. Your secret’s safe with me.”

She studied my face for a long moment, trying to decide whether I meant that.

Eventually she relaxed slightly.

Without another word, she reached into a satchel beside her and pulled something out on a wooden skewer.

A caramelized scorpion.

Its curled tail glistened beneath a layer of dark syrup.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

I stared at it.

“…Yeah.”

I pointed at the scorpion.

“But not that hungry.”

Fatima giggled softly.

Just enough to remind me she was still young beneath all the strange mystery surrounding her.

 

The Oasis looked completely different in daylight.

The tents stretched across the dunes in uneven circles around a pool of crystal-clear water that absolutely should not have existed in the middle of the wasteland. Palm trees swayed lazily despite there being almost no wind. Traders wandered between colorful canopies selling scavenged technology beside preserved spices and ancient charms carved from bone and copper.

Incense smoke drifted through the warm air alongside the smell of cooked meat and engine oil.

The entire place felt unreal, like a pocket dimension somehow safe from the desert enveloping it.

Fatima led me toward my vehicle.

And somehow—

Somehow the old thing looked better than it had in years.

The reinforced panels had actually been fitted properly instead of hammered into place by desperation and profanity. The filtration unit no longer sounded like it was trying to inhale gravel. Even the engine housing had been cleaned.

I stared at it in disbelief.

“You’re really good,” I admitted. “Where’d you learn all this?”

Fatima crouched beside the front wheel, tightening something with a wrench.

“Before Dad found me, I lived in the scrapyards for a while.”

She shrugged.

“Not much to do there besides take machines apart.”

“Sounds miserable.”

“It was.”

She said it casually.

That somehow made it worse.

After a moment she reached into her satchel again and pulled out another map.

This one looked infinitely better than Menehmet’s version. Proper landmarks. Accurate distances. Warnings scribbled carefully along the margins in Arabic.

“Dad told me to give you this,” she said. “Should guide you better than those royal scribbles.”

I laughed quietly.

“Probably wise. If the Pharaoh ever retires, cartography definitely isn’t an option for her.”

Fatima smiled faintly.

I folded the map carefully and tucked it into my coat.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

“For the map or the car?”

“Both.”

For a brief moment neither of us spoke.

Then she stepped back from the vehicle.

“Maybe we’ll meet again, Medjay.”

I looked at her standing there beneath the desert sun, dark curls moving gently in the wind, strange amber eyes catching the light like polished gold.

“Maybe,” I said.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition.

The engine roared to life instantly.

Not coughing.

Not choking.

Alive.

I grinned despite myself.

Then I shifted gears and drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis, leaving the Wandering Oasis behind in the sands.

 

It had been about four hours since I left the Wandering Oasis behind.

The desert changed gradually the farther I drove toward the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

The dunes darkened first.

Black mineral veins spread through the sand like rot beneath skin, shimmering faintly beneath the afternoon sun. Ruined pylons from the old world jutted from the wasteland at crooked angles, half-swallowed by centuries of storms. Some still carried scraps of melted wiring that hummed softly whenever the wind blew through them.

And somehow, against all logic, the car was running beautifully.

Whatever Fatima had done to it bordered on sorcery.

The engine no longer wheezed every few minutes like a dying animal. The steering responded instantly. Even the suspension handled the uneven dunes without sounding like the entire frame was about to collapse into spare parts.

The old machine practically purred beneath me.

I almost felt guilty driving it.

Almost.

I adjusted the scarf around my face and glanced toward the map resting on the passenger seat.

Close now.

Very close.

The necropolis should’ve been visible any minute.

That was when I noticed the vibration.

At first I assumed it was the engine.

A faint trembling beneath the wheels.

Then the dashboard began rattling.

Sand slid down nearby dunes in soft streams.

My stomach tightened immediately.

“No…”

The ground lurched violently beneath the car.

The steering wheel jerked in my hands hard enough to nearly send me sideways.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

The desert exploded.

Sand erupted upward beside the vehicle in towering waves as something massive burst from beneath the dunes to my left.

Then another.

Then two more.

Four shapes circled the car as I slammed the brakes.

Shed-beners.

Wonderful.

The things had once been human.

Probably.

Now they looked like nightmares designed by someone who hated both mankind and nature equally. Their lower halves resembled enormous black scorpions armored in chitinous plates scarred by radiation, old wounds, and patches of fungal growth. But rising from those monstrous bodies were elongated human torsos twisted into impossible shapes, ribs pressing visibly beneath stretched skin.

Their faces were the worst part.

Too human.

Clouded eyes rolled wildly in different directions while their mouths hung unnaturally wide, rows of broken teeth jutting outward at crooked angles. Bronze jewelry still clung to their bodies in places. Scraps of old robes fluttered from their armored backs.

Remnants of people.

That always made monsters worse.

One of them clicked its claws together and released a wet, shrieking hiss that sounded disturbingly close to laughter.

Another slowly raised its massive stinger over the car.

I grabbed my scimitar and kicked the door open.

The first creature lunged immediately.

Its claw slammed into the side of the vehicle hard enough to dent the metal inward. I rolled beneath the strike and slashed upward with the scimitar.

The curved blade bit deep into the pale flesh where human torso fused into scorpion body.

Black blood sprayed across the sand.

The Shed-bener screamed.

Not like an animal.

Like a person.

I hated that.

The second creature charged from my right with horrifying speed. I barely avoided the stinger crashing into the ground where my head had been a second earlier.

The impact cracked the hardened sand like stone.

I fired the handgun.

The first bullet punched into its human face.

The creature staggered backward violently—

—but didn’t stop.

“Of course that’s not enough.”

It shrieked and rushed me again.

I fired a second time.

The shot tore through one of its clustered eyes. Black fluid burst down its face as the creature reeled sideways, clawing at itself blindly.

Behind me came the sound of twisting metal.

Another Shed-bener slammed directly into the car hard enough to nearly flip it.

Metal screamed.

One of the creatures crawled across the roof with horrifying speed, claws scraping against the reinforced plating Fatima had installed only hours earlier.

I swung the scimitar just as the blinded creature lunged again.

The blade buried itself deep into its throat.

The creature convulsed violently.

Its stinger lashed through the air in frantic arcs before finally going still.

One down.

Three left.

Something slammed into me from behind.

I crashed hard into the sand, pain exploding through my ribs where Fatima’s fresh bandages sat beneath my clothes. My grip loosened on the sword.

A claw punched into the ground inches from my face, spraying sand across my eyes.

I scrambled backward just as a stinger slammed down where my chest had been moments earlier.

Poison hissed against the sand.

The second creature attacked from the side immediately after.

Too fast.

I raised the handgun and fired my last round directly into its open mouth.

The back of its skull exploded outward in a spray of shattered teeth and black fluid.

The creature collapsed twitching beside me.

Two down.

And now I was out of ammunition.

The remaining Shed-beners slowed their movements.

Watching me carefully.

Smarter than the others.

One blocked my path back to the car while the second circled behind me, massive stinger swaying slowly overhead like an executioner preparing the final blow.

I grabbed the scimitar from the sand and forced myself upright.

My breathing had gone ragged.

Everything hurt.

Blood soaked through the bandages beneath my coat.

The creatures noticed.

Predators always did.

One suddenly lunged low across the sand.

I barely sidestepped in time, but the second slammed into me immediately afterward.

The impact sent me crashing backward down the side of a dune.

The scimitar flew from my hand.

Before I could recover, a massive claw pinned my arm into the sand.

Pain shot through my shoulder.

The other creature approached slowly now.

Confident.

Its human face leaned closer toward mine.

I could smell rot on its breath.

Its cloudy eyes twitched wildly as if several thoughts were fighting for control behind them.

Then the creature smiled.

Not instinctively.

Deliberately.

The stinger rose high above me.

Ready to strike.

Then the desert roared.

The sound came from beneath the earth itself.

Deep.

Thunderous.

Ancient.

The dunes exploded upward around us.

The Shed-beners shrieked and turned too late.

Something colossal burst from beneath the sand.

A sandworm.

Its mouth opened impossibly wide, ringed with rotating rows of jagged teeth large enough to crush vehicles whole. Pale flesh glistened beneath armored hide as the thing surged upward like the desert itself had come alive.

The worm swallowed one of the Shed-beners instantly.

The second barely had time to scream before the jaws closed around it too.

Crunch.

The sound echoed across the dunes.

Then the worm vanished beneath the sand again almost as quickly as it had appeared, dragging both screaming creatures into the depths below.

The desert settled slowly.

Silence returned.

I remained flat on my back for several long seconds, breathing hard, staring at the empty dunes above me.

Then I slowly sat up.

Everyone with functioning survival instincts feared sandworms.

But that was the first and only time in my life I had ever been happy to see one.

 

I had finally reached the Bene Nefertite necropolis.

Dark clouds churned above the ruins in slow, unnatural spirals. Thick and swollen like bruises spreading across the sky. Crimson lightning pulsed silently within them, illuminating shattered pyramids and broken statues in brief flashes of red-white light.

Even from a distance, I could feel the Ghul-Zone pressing against reality like a wound that refused to close.

Vehicles didn’t last long inside active zones.

Electronics fried without warning. Engines stalled. Entire caravans vanished for days before reappearing fused together into piles of melted flesh and metal.

Sometimes the people inside were still alive.

I killed the engine.

For a moment I just sat there listening to the sudden silence.

Then I grabbed my torch, tightened the scarf around my face, and stepped out into the dead air.

Immediately, something felt wrong.

Not danger.

Absence.

No wind.

No insects.

No movement.

Just a low hum vibrating through the atmosphere itself.

The sky inside the zone had turned a diseased brown color. Veins of pale energy crawled soundlessly through the air between ruined structures, flickering like cracks spreading through glass. Every breath tasted metallic even through the scarf.

I kept my face covered.

No reason to inhale more of this place than necessary.

The necropolis stretched endlessly ahead of me.

Half-buried obelisks.

Collapsed mausoleums.

Streets lined with statues eroded into faceless things by centuries of radiation and sandstorms.

Then I noticed movement.

Far ahead, between the ruins, a line of figures shuffled silently through the streets.

Dozens of them.

Human silhouettes.

Some staggered unnaturally while others moved with eerie smoothness, like puppets dragged by invisible strings. Heads tilted at impossible angles. Limbs bent wrong.

Ghuls.

Or whatever remained after the Zone hollowed a person out and left only instinct wearing their skin.

Didn’t matter which.

Nothing could be done for them anymore.

Best to avoid them entirely.

I moved deeper into the necropolis carefully, one hand resting near the scimitar at my side.

The deeper I went, the stranger the place became.

The geometry shifted when I wasn’t looking directly at it.

Streets curved where they shouldn’t.

Passages looped back into themselves.

At one point I walked past the same headless statue three separate times despite never turning around.

The Zone liked to play games with people.

Usually the games ended with someone eating their own fingers while insisting they tasted like honey.

I ignored everything except the pyramid.

Small.

Black.

Resting at the center of the necropolis like a splinter buried beneath skin.

Nothing else mattered.

The closer I got to it, the stronger the pressure inside my skull became.

Not pain exactly.

More like invisible fingers pressing against my thoughts.

Digging.

Searching.

Then I heard her voice.

“Aaron…”

I froze instantly.

The necropolis vanished around me.

For one horrible moment I was a child again.

“Sweetie… don’t go.”

Slowly, I turned.

My mother stood behind me.

Exactly as I remembered her before the sickness took her.

Warm brown skin.

Thin frame.

Soft tired eyes.

Even the same faded blue scarf she used to wear around the apartment.

For a second I forgot where I was.

Forgot the Zone.

Forgot the pyramid.

Forgot everything.

She stepped closer and gently rested a hand against my shoulder.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered.

The pressure in my chest hurt worse than any wound I’d taken in years.

“I missed you too, Mum,” I admitted quietly.

And I meant it.

God, I meant it.

“You could stay,” she whispered softly. “You don’t have to keep hurting anymore.”

Something trembled in her voice.

“You don’t have to keep fighting.”

I stared at her silently.

And that was the problem.

My mother had never spoken like that.

Not even when she was dying.

Especially not then.

She used to tell me:

If the world wants you dead, make it work for it.

This thing didn’t know that.

The smile on her face twitched slightly.

Just slightly.

But enough.

I sighed tiredly.

Then I drew the scimitar and cut her head off.

The blade sliced clean through her neck.

The body collapsed instantly into the sand, twitching violently as thick black fluid spilled from the stump instead of blood.

The severed head hit the ground still smiling.

For a few seconds it continued staring up at me while the face slowly softened and melted like wet clay left in the sun.

Then it collapsed into rotten sludge.

I stared at the remains coldly.

“Pale imitation, asshole.”

The Zone hummed louder around me.

Almost disappointed.

Then I turned and entered the pyramid.

 

The air inside felt ancient.

Dry.

Claustrophobic.

My torchlight flickered across walls covered in faded hieroglyphs and newer markings scratched desperately over them by later explorers. Warnings mostly.

Prayers.

Names.

Somebody had carved:

IT KNOWS YOUR HEART

deep into one of the walls.

Farther down, another simply read:

DON’T LISTEN

The deeper I descended, the colder it became.

Dust coated everything thick enough to swallow footprints whole.

Occasionally I caught movement just beyond the torchlight.

Something shifting behind pillars.

Something crawling along ceilings.

I ignored it.

The Zone fed on attention.

Old bones cracked beneath my boots as I moved through stripped burial chambers and narrow corridors. Most of the tomb had been looted centuries ago. Broken jars and shattered coffins littered the floors.

Yet somehow the deeper chambers remained untouched.

That should’ve worried me more than it did.

Eventually the corridor opened into a massive circular chamber.

My footsteps echoed softly across the stone.

Tall pillars ringed the room, carved into the likenesses of forgotten gods whose faces had been deliberately chiseled away long ago. Ancient braziers still burned with weak green fire despite the absence of fuel.

At the center stood a massive stone sarcophagus covered in blackened gold markings.

I approached carefully.

No movement.

No sound.

Good enough.

I shoved the lid aside with a painful groan from my ribs.

Inside lay a dried corpse wrapped in ancient linen. Its skin stretched tightly against bone, mouth frozen open in a permanent scream.

For several seconds nothing happened.

I exhaled slowly.

“Sorry about this.”

I reached down to move the body aside.

The mummy grabbed my wrist.

Before I could react, it hurled me across the chamber hard enough to crack stone beneath my back.

Pain exploded through my ribs.

The creature rose from the sarcophagus with horrifying speed.

Its jaw unhinged wider than humanly possible as it released a shriek sharp enough to physically hurt. Dust rained from the ceiling. My torch nearly slipped from my hand.

“Oh, come on—”

The mummy lunged.

Far too fast.

I barely rolled aside before its claws punched deep grooves into the stone where my head had been moments earlier.

Up close I saw movement beneath the wrappings.

Thousands of tiny black insects crawling beneath the ancient linen like blood moving beneath skin.

I slashed with the scimitar.

The blade carved deep across its chest.

The creature barely reacted.

It hit me hard enough to send me skidding across the chamber again.

I instinctively raised the handgun and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Empty.

“Right,” I muttered. “Fantastic.”

The mummy shrieked again.

Then sprinted directly up the wall.

Its limbs twisted unnaturally as it crawled across the ceiling like some gigantic insect before dropping toward me.

I barely caught its arm mid-strike with the scimitar.

The impact nearly snapped my wrist.

The thing was impossibly strong.

Rotten linen wrapped around my arm as it forced me downward inch by inch. Its face hung inches from mine now while black beetles crawled in and out of its mouth and empty eye sockets.

And then it spoke.

Just one word.

In my mother’s voice.

“Aaron…”

That almost broke me more than the claws.

I slammed my forehead into its skull.

The creature staggered backward slightly.

Enough.

I kicked one of the burning braziers directly into its chest.

Flames erupted across the ancient wrappings instantly.

The mummy screamed.

Not in pain.

In fury.

It thrashed violently across the chamber, climbing pillars and walls while burning alive. Flaming insects poured from its body in thick streams, scattering across the floor around me.

The fire spread rapidly through the dry linen.

I grabbed a broken spear shaft near one of the tombs and waited.

The mummy launched itself at me one final time.

Burning.

Shrieking.

Its mouth stretched impossibly wide.

I sidestepped at the last second.

Then drove the spear clean through its torso and deep into the stone wall behind it.

The impact pinned the creature there.

The mummy writhed violently, claws scraping uselessly against stone as flames consumed more and more of its body.

Still screaming in my mother’s voice.

I stood there breathing hard for several seconds before finally turning back toward the sarcophagus.

Inside was…

Almost nothing.

No treasure.

No cursed weapon.

No ancient relic humming with forbidden power.

Just dust.

Bones.

And one tiny object resting near the bottom.

A small statue of a cat.

I stared at it.

Then slowly looked upward in exhausted disbelief.

“You cannot be serious, Menehmet…”

Behind me, the burning mummy continued shrieking against the wall.

I sighed deeply, grabbed the statue, and shoved it into my coat pocket.

Then I left the pyramid behind me.

 

A few hours later I was back inside the car, driving away from the necropolis while the storm clouds shrank slowly in the rearview mirror.

The tiny cat statue sat on the passenger seat beside me.

Another priceless royal mission accomplished.

All so the God-Queen of New Cairo could add another worthless piece of junk to her collection.

I glanced sideways at the statue.

Its tiny carved eyes stared back at me.

I immediately looked back at the road.

“…Still hate cats.”