The super zombie closed the distance between itself and Ali with terrifying speed, faster than any athlete could sprint. Within seconds, it was upon him, its grotesque, muscular frame closing in as Ali stood unflinching, unmoving.
"GRAAAAAAAA!"
The zombie unleashed a feral scream, jaws wide as it lunged forward, its decayed face mere inches from Ali's own. In that instant, Ali's fist shot up, meeting the creature's chin in a brutal uppercut.
BANG!
Ali's fist struck with such force that it drove the zombie's head upward, leveraging its own momentum to launch its skull directly into the ceiling. With a sickening crunch, the zombie's head penetrated through the metal and plaster, embedding itself deep into the rock surrounding the underground lab.
Ali lowered his fist, glancing up at the creature's limp body dangling from the ceiling, its head lodged securely, giving it the morbid appearance of a corpse executed by hanging. The zombie remained motionless, its neck stretched from the impact, head trapped above as its body swayed eerily below.
To be thorough, Ali unsheathed his machete and aligned the blade vertically with the exposed part of the zombie's neck. With a steady, powerful thrust, he drove the machete upwards, feeling it slice through the rotting tissue until it punctured the shattered skull and pierced the brain. 'Just to be sure', he thought, pulling the blade free as he stepped back.
Opening the interface, he noted with satisfaction the updated status.
"Personal Mission: Clear the three skyscrapers of undead (2/3)"
'Good', he thought, feeling a sense of satisfaction settle over him.
"Only one left, and I've got time to handle it." With practiced precision, he severed the zombie's pinky finger, tucking the grisly token into his pocket before heading back to the elevator shaft.
Ali gripped the inner walls of the shaft, his immense strength allowing him to scale them swiftly and efficiently. He emerged back on the ground floor, where his makeshift barricade still held firm, though muffled sounds of scratching and banging beyond it reverberated in the hollow quiet of the night.
Returning to the skyscraper's top floor, Ali found himself back in the meeting room, where he'd originally uncovered the plans for the lab below.
He walked to the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that framed the ruined city beyond, taking in the view. The city sprawled before him, a haunting tableau of abandoned structures, jagged skyline, and creeping vines reclaiming the concrete.
With a quick, powerful swing, Ali struck the glass wall with the hilt of his machete, the impact splintering the glass into shards that cascaded to the streets below, a deadly rain that crushed any zombies unlucky enough to be in its path.
With a determined leap, Ali launched himself out of the shattered window, grabbing onto the edge of the building's roof. Muscles flexed as he pulled himself up to the peak, where he settled onto the ledge, his eyes scanning the cityscape.
The wind picked up, tousling his dark hair, streaked with dirt and blood. Wiping his face clean with a less stained part of his shirt, he reached into his ration bag and devoured ten dense, tasteless bars, washing them down with water from the bottle Natalya had filled for him.
"There's a certain beauty in all of it, a twisted, messed up type of beauty," he muttered to himself, gazing over the desolate expanse.
"At least it's quiet," he added with a low sigh, noting how the city seemed to settle as night wore on. Even the horde's relentless banging on the barricade below had faded to a dull, sporadic tapping.
AAAAAAAAAAAAH! BANG! BANG! BANG!
The night's silence was suddenly shattered by a distant scream followed by rapid gunfire, the sound echoing across the cityscape and snapping Ali from his thoughts.
"Ahhh, fuck it," Ali grumbled aloud. He set down his ration bag, resting his back against the steel peak of the skyscraper. For the first time since his arrival in this bleak world, he allowed himself a moment of calm.
Though sleep eluded him, he embraced the stillness, letting his body finally rest as he leaned back, closing his eyes.
Hours slipped by, and with the first rays of sunlight creeping over the horizon, a gentle morning wind ruffled his hair, cool against his skin.
BOOOOOOOM!
Ali's eyes flew open at the sound of a massive crash reverberating through the city. He scanned the skyline, spotting a seven-story building several blocks away where the entire top floor had collapsed in on itself. Yet it wasn't the wreckage that caught his attention-it was the figure of a woman with two vibrant purple wings emerging from the rubble, soaring through the air above.
'That's a kagune', Ali thought, watching in disbelief as the wings unfurled behind her. He recognised the grotesque yet beautiful mutation from his memories of Tokyo Ghoul, though he'd only ever seen ghouls with a single wing before, never two.
As if to confirm his suspicions, the wings fired a spray of sharpened Ukaku shards at the rubble below before the woman darted off into the distance, her wings catching the sunlight as she vanished into the hazy horizon.
'Can't tell who that was, but those purple wings...' Ali mused, his eyes narrowed in contemplation.
'For a player to have earned a mutation with flight and projectile capabilities, they'd need a high-grade rating...' Ali's enhanced, midnight-coloured eyes tracked the faint glint of her wings until she disappeared beyond the skyline.
Realising it was time to move, Ali descended to the sixth floor, breaking a section of the wall to create a wide enough gap for him to leap through.
He jumped, landing deftly on the roof of an adjacent building. From there, he began his journey back to where he had left Natalya and the others. The route took him a gruelling two hours, his progress slowed by the evidence of a chaotic battle fought overnight in one of the buildings along his path.
A swarm of zombies filled a building along the way to the skyscraper, drawn to the scent of blood, forcing Ali to cut down over a hundred of them before he could move on.
When he finally arrived at the skyscraper that held his final objective, he noticed immediately that the situation had worsened.
The undead horde surrounding the building had grown significantly in size, thickening until it spread across multiple streets. As Ali climbed up to the roof of an adjacent building to the skyscraper, he looked over to see the makeshift metal bridge that connected the skyscraper to the outside world was now missing.
"What the hell happened?" Ali muttered, his brows knitting in confusion. He edged closer, peering down over the ledge. The bridge lay crumpled on the street below, now little more than scrap metal trampled under the ceaseless march of zombies crossing over it.
Ali's eyes traced the side of the building where the bridge had been anchored, quickly noting the bullet scars peppering the area around the original supports.
"Who the hell was dumb enough to do this, huh?" he said out loud, examining the telltale signs of gunshots that had shattered the bridge's support beams.
With a grimace, he turned his attention to the broken section of the skyscraper. A curtain had been hastily drawn across the opening, and Ali could just make out the forms of four guards stationed inside, their figures silhouetted against the dim light filtering through.
He stared at them with a hard, calculating gaze, piecing together what had likely occurred.
'Some idiot decided to shoot out the bridge's supports', he thought, irritation seeping into his expression as he looked at the emptiness now replacing the bridge.
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