As the dust began to settle and everyone regrouped, a sense of uneasy calm draped over the survivors. Tara held Mark's arm around her shoulders, helping him limp back toward the others. Jack leaned against the wall, drenched in sweat, his axe stained with blood and bits of metal. Henry stood still, scanning the room, gun lowered but still tight in his grip.
They'd done it. The monster was down.
Or so they thought.
Maarg's head pounded. A strange hum rattled inside his skull, faint at first, like a whisper behind a locked door—but it grew louder with every breath. The silence didn't feel like relief. It felt like a trap.
His eyes widened. "No… no, no…"
"It's a trap!" Maarg shouted, staggering forward, voice cracking with panic. "He's still alive!"
The others turned to him in confusion—just as a sickening crack-crack-crack echoed from the body behind them.
Charity's remains twitched.
The mangled mix of steel and flesh began to shift, pulsing like it was breathing. The skull, once turned to pulp, started re-forming—bone knitting itself back together, shards pulling in from the ground, reshaping the cranium like watching a puzzle reverse its shattering.
Muscle slithered back onto bone like snakes under skin. Flesh bubbled and stretched, knitting together until it became smooth and pale.
Everyone stood frozen as strands of jet-black hair sprouted from the fresh scalp. Then, like waking from a nightmare, two human eyes opened—warm brown and strangely calm. Charity's lips curled into a charming smile, and for a moment, his appearance was so disarmingly human it made the horror even worse.
Jack's knuckles turned white around the axe handle.
The regrown arm, this time without any steel, sprouted again from the severed shoulder in a wet, bone-snapping bloom. Pale fingers flexed. Nails grew. The body adjusted its balance, rising to its feet with the eerie grace of someone simply stretching after a nap.
If it weren't for the mechanical limbs still covering half of him, and the sickly pallor of his skin, Charity could've passed as a man—a handsome, clean-cut man in his prime.
Tara gasped and stepped back instinctively, pulling Mark behind her.
Jack's face twisted with disbelief. "What… the hell… is he?"
Henry raised his gun again, but this time, his hands weren't steady. "This isn't some damn science experiment... this is sorcery."
Charity rolled his new shoulder and adjusted his neck, emitting an awful pop from his vertebrae. Then he looked directly at Maarg.
Maarg's heart stopped.
That familiar voice—the one that haunted his mind—slithered back in like a whisper through static.
"Round two?" Charity said aloud, this time with an audible voice that was low, charming… mocking.
Maarg stumbled back.
"No… that's not possible. We killed you."
Charity grinned, but it was devoid of warmth. He took a step forward, and the air seemed to shift—heavier now, charged with something unnatural.
Behind Maarg, Jack stepped into position, teeth clenched. Tara and Mark exchanged a frightened glance. Henry muttered something under his breath and flipped the safety off his Glock.
"Get ready," Jack said coldly. "This bastard doesn't stay dead."
Maarg's hands trembled around his knives. He looked into those very human brown eyes and saw something worse than malice—purpose.
Charity's smile widened just slightly, then he whispered—not to everyone, just to Maarg's mind alone.
"You, Activator."
Maarg staggered back, his eyes wide and unfocused as the voice slithered into his skull like an icy needle burrowing through his thoughts.
"What even is this Activator you speak of?" he asked in his mind, gritting his teeth. "Why are you after me?"
There was a long silence, but in the stillness, Maarg felt the pressure building—like his skull was being squeezed between iron plates. A sharp, invisible pain pierced behind his eyes and bloomed across his temples. He clutched his head, trying to push the pain away with trembling fingers.
His knees nearly buckled.
Charity didn't open his mouth to speak. He didn't have to.
"Just surrender and come with me," the voice whispered directly into Maarg's mind. "And I will spare their lives."
There was no cruelty in the voice. No rage. Just... calm. Patient. Almost persuasive.
Maarg blinked through the blinding ache, lifting his gaze slowly toward the creature. Charity looked at him like an old friend—someone gently offering a hand before dragging you into an abyss.
Maarg stood among the group like a ticking bomb no one else could hear. The others were preparing for a fight—Jack whispering tactics under his breath, Henry lining up a careful shot, Tara moving Mark toward a safer position. None of them knew the war had already begun inside Maarg's head.
Charity tilted his head ever so slightly.
"Come willingly," he repeated, "and they will all live to see another sunrise."
Maarg clenched his fists. The blood drained from his face as the pressure built higher. His heartbeat pounded in his ears like war drums. Every fiber of his body wanted to scream, to cry, to break.
But instead, he growled under his breath, barely audible to the others.
"I don't bargain with monsters."
The pain stopped.
Just like that.
Gone.
Maarg gasped for breath, falling to one knee, eyes locked onto Charity's. The creature's smile faded. He straightened his back and slowly, deliberately, cracked the knuckles of his newly regrown hand.
The smile returned, colder this time.
"So be it."
And just as Henry finally fired, and Jack lunged with his axe again—the room erupted into chaos once more.
***
Maarg exhaled, something shifting inside him. A cold, mechanical clarity overtook his body as if his limbs no longer belonged to him, yet moved with a deadly intent. His expression didn't change much, but behind those eyes, something else had awoken.
Without needing a signal, Maarg lunged forward—swift and precise. He weaved between Jack's vicious swings, slipping through the chaos like a phantom. Every opening in the monster's defenses, Maarg exploited with surgical cuts. His pristine knives tore through artificial tendons and muscle with each coordinated strike.
Jack caught glimpses of Maarg's movement as they fought side-by-side—no longer the hesitant teen, but a force of precision. The way Maarg dodged, attacked, and repositioned... it wasn't normal. It wasn't human.
Steel clanged against steel, sparks flew, and Jack let out a primal yell as he twisted his axe into Charity's remaining arm. With a bone-crunching sound, the limb separated, landing with a thud on the floor. Blood and oil pooled beneath the fallen creature.
Henry fired the last rounds of his magazine straight into Charity's now-exposed face. The metal scraps of his shattered visor fell away completely, revealing the gaping wound left by the earlier barrage—and beneath that, a pair of pale human eyes stared blankly up at the ceiling. His blood-soaked chest rose and fell in labored gasps. His legs were mangled and unresponsive, his entire frame twitching like a puppet with cut strings.
Charity lay broken.
Everyone gathered closer, cautiously. Jack kept his axe raised. Henry reloaded without taking his eyes off the body. Tara leaned Maarg gently against the wall, her hands trembling.
Maarg stepped forward slowly. His hands were still clenched around his knives, blood dripping from the tips. He met the gaze of the fallen creature—those unsettling, brown eyes peering back.
And then… the voice returned.
"That… is The Activator."
Maarg's vision blurred for a second. The words weren't spoken—they were implanted in his mind. He grimaced, shaking his head to clear it.
Before he could say a word, Tara's voice echoed from the hallway.
"Guys—A HORDE! There's a horde coming, fast!"
Henry's eyes snapped toward the broken window. The unmistakable groans of the dead were rising in the distance like an incoming wave.
"We need to move—NOW!" Henry barked. "He'll need time to regenerate. We don't have the luxury to finish this fight. Let's go!"
Nobody argued. Jack rushed to Maarg's side to pull him away. Tara helped Mark, who was still limping from his earlier fall. Together, they sprinted toward the stairwell, away from the monster.
But Maarg looked back.
Charity lay in his own blood, eyes open. The gash on his chest still leaked fluids, but he didn't look defeated.
He looked amused.
And then, Maarg heard it one last time—just for him.
"Looks like my time here is done. If it willed… we'll meet again, Activator."
Maarg's stomach twisted as he ran. Jack noticed his expression, but didn't say anything—just gripped his arm tighter.
The sound of the horde grew louder. The building behind them trembled with distant footsteps.
But Maarg wasn't thinking about the horde.
He was thinking about those eyes.
And that damn word.
Activator.