There was a blood stain on the ceiling. That was a new one. For the most part, they tended to be on the floors or walls. This oddly uniform circle of red, though, was right in the centre of the ceiling, nestled between two of the cracked square lighting fixtures. The rest of the ceiling was dull and grey, where it hadn't been broken.

Since the world had ended, Jade had become something of an unwilling connoisseur of bloodstains. They were a new, ubiquitous form of graffiti, each telling a story she didn't want to read.

There was the long, desperate smear she'd seen on a wall just outside a tube station early on, a perfect handprint that dragged downwards for three feet before ending in a messy blotch. The story there was simple enough: someone had been wounded, tried to hold themselves up, and failed. A narrative of gravity and exsanguination.

Then there were the almost-invisible ones. The fine, aerosolized mist of red-brown dots across the face of a forgotten teddy bear in a nursery. That one implied a sudden, explosive end, an impact so swift the victim likely hadn't even seen it coming. A percussive finale.

She remembered the thick, syrup trail leading from a ransacked living room, across a hall, and out a shattered patio door. Someone had been dragged, or had crawled a significant distance while bleeding out. A story of grim determination, perhaps, but one that ended the same as all the others.

The memory of these images suddenly curdled in her gut. A wave of nausea washed over her. Her stomach twister, and the clinical distance she'd manufactured collapsed in an instant.

Somewhere out there, there was now a blood stain that had nothing to do with the monsters. Unless, she supposed, she was now considered a monster too? Some would argue as such. If it had been someone else taking a human life, she certainly would have had some judgemental thoughts on the matter.

When it came to her own actions, however, she didn't know what to think. She tried to tell herself it was self-defence and defence of her comrades. But would that excuse have placated her if it was someone else making it? She didn't know.

Either way, the blood stain on the ceiling left her baffled. She allowed herself to indulge in the distraction, speculating as to how the blood could have gotten up there.

The obvious answer was that a particularly violent altercation had led to it spraying up from the ground. She had seen with her own eyes just how far blood could travel from its host body, after all. No doubt monsters could achieve similar feats.

That didn't seem to fit, though. The blood stain on the roof was too neat. Too contained. When blood sprayed from someone getting slashed open by a sharp object, it splashed out in a long arc like someone had flicked a red paintbrush. Unless the angle was just right, she supposed.

She considered the idea that someone had been crawling around on the ceiling like a spider only to get stabbed through, but found herself unsure about that theory in short order. If a person had been run through, then surely the staff would've gone straight through the roof panel too.

So, had a person being impaled and then launched up to hit the roof with their back? That seemed like something that would also cause a lot of damage. Other than the blood stain, the roof was pristine. It was a maddening mystery.

Jade's stomach was twisting and turning. She found she didn't want to think about this anymore. Rolling over to face the wall didn't quiet her mind, though. Quite the opposite, in fact.

With no anomalous blood stain to muse about, she found her thoughts straying back to the other blood stain that was occupying her mind. It had sprayed so far. She almost couldn't believe it. Scenes like that were supposed to be relegated to horror movies, but somehow she'd been subjected to it in real life.

No. Not subjected to it. She had perpetrated it, caused it, created it. The man couldn't have been more than 5 foot 10 at most, and yet somehow it felt like he had grown impossibly enormous when the two halves of his body had fallen away from each other.

There were many things she regretted in her life. She wished this didn't have to be one of them.

She hadn't been thinking. She had just wanted the screaming to stop. That was all.

Jade clenched her eyes shut, only for the scene to replay on the back of her eyelids. She snapped her eyes back open with a strangled gasp, but the image didn't go away.

They'd been on their way to the graveyard portal that Doug had picked out as a worthy target. All of them were distracted, worrying about John. Even if they hadn't been, she doubted they would have seen the ambush coming. The pair in the ninja-like outfits had seemed like they were experienced in such things. Certainly enough to believe that they could triumph against Jade's comrades, even outnumbered.

It was scary how fast things could devolve into chaos. Seeing Doug fall to the ground with a knife sticking out of his throat had inspired one of the worst emotions she had ever felt. Even now, she wasn't quite sure what to name it.

All she knew was, it had sent her into a panic state. Fight or flight had kicked in. She'd reached for her magical abilities without even thinking about it, without being able to think about it. There was no possibility of rational thought. There was just her and the enemy who had taken down one of her friends.

Days later, she couldn't decide what her instinctive animal brain had been intending. Was it a rush to defend herself? Was it a desperate attempt to protect her comrades too?

Or had she descended into a mindless rage and sought nothing more than righteous vengeance against the pieces of shit who had attacked them for no reason?

Here and now, those answers remained elusive. All she knew was how her body had answered back then.

The thing with Caustic Hand was, she had never before used it on something that was capable of an emotional response to pain, as far as she could tell. If it was inflicting unimaginable amounts of agony on the monsters she'd fought against so far, none of them had shown it.

For some reason, she hadn't expected the screaming that came when she managed to wrap it around one of the ninjas. Why hadn't she expected it? It was so obvious. It was in the name. Caustic Hand. Caustic meant chemical burns. Of course it was going to hurt anyone it touched.

She had heard people scream before. Inverness was far from the most dangerous place on Earth, but it had its rough areas and its share of shitty people, and more than one wail of pain and terror had rang out in her vicinity over the years.

But never like that.

It had given her more points in a span of seconds than she typically gained in a full day.

Already in the grip of panic, her terror had only deepened. Fear makes people stupid, and she was no exception.

She had just wanted the screaming to stop. She had lashed out with her machete, and a golden projection extended from the blade like it always did. Only one, in this case, rather than the three she could make it do if she so desired. But one was more than enough.

Blood had sprayed out a truly ridiculous distance, and the two halves of the ninja's body had fallen in different directions.

Quite ironically, the screaming hadn't stopped. It had merely changed voices, going from the shriek of a man in unimaginable agony, to the deep baritone of a different man whose world had just come crashing down around his ears.

The surviving ninja had ran for it. Jade hadn't given chase. None of them had. How could they? Paralysis had wrapped them all up in its electric, numbing embrace. Jade wasn't sure what the others had been doing, but she had had eyes only for the blood stain.

The wall was suddenly blurry. Her heart had taken off at a dead sprint from the moment that horrible scene had started replaying in her mind, and it hadn't stopped. She felt like she'd just run a marathon, even though all she'd been doing for the last eight hours was turning over and over in bed, while turning that nightmare over and over in her mind.

And the moment only got worse when she heard a rustling of fabric behind her, followed by a harsh intake of breath. She let her eyes fall closed and whispered a soft curse under her breath.

"Jade?" came the soft voice shortly after. It had the tone of a man talking to a wounded animal or a frightened child.

She rolled over and looked at him. Chester was an absolute Hulk of a young man, his muscles visibly bulging in his white shirt. He was so massive, he seemed at risk of falling out of the little camper bed he was perched on, assuming it didn't collapse under his weight. If she didn't know him, he'd cut an extremely intimidating sight.

It was interesting, she thought, that Doug had gently suggested someone pair up with her in the little ruined office room she was using as a bedroom. She didn't need to wonder what was going through his head. It was obvious.

"Yes?" she was quite happy with how level she kept her tone.

The relief in Chester's eyes was stark, like he was surprised to find she was still there.

Part of her was surprised, too.

"Did you sleep well?" Chester asked.

I didn't sleep at all, she thought.

"Not too terribly," she said.

Chester wince. "You're a really terrible liar, Jade. And that says something coming from me, because I'm a really terrible liar myself, and I'm even worse at spotting when someone is lying."

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Jade shrugged with one shoulder. Burdening him with the truth felt like too much, given how much she was evidently worrying everyone already.

They fell silent, staring at each other. A low hum of conversation drifted in from one of the other rooms. Listening closely, she was sure she could pick up three voices. Two male, one female. Doug, John, and Lily, presumably. She wondered what they were talking about. She wondered if they were talking about her. She wondered if John already knew that she was a murderer, that one of the people he had worked so hard to protect had immediately bisected someone at the waist the moment the situation got hairy without him.

The blood stain had been so big. Had any of the monsters caused a blood stain that big in their genocidal rampage? Probably. But she wasn't sure she'd seen any like it.

"Do you want me to get you anything?" Chester asked.

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure? Pretty sure there are snacks and stuff that the monsters didn't destroy."

"It's okay. I'm not hungry."

Chester eyed her for a moment, eyebrows dipping. "I can't remember the last time I saw you eat."

"Haven't been hungry."

"Not sure I've seen you drink, either. And I know you haven't slept much." Chester paused, hesitation written all across his features. He drew in a slow, fortifying breath. "Are you really–"

Jade's patient had been fraying, and it finally snapped. "Enough! I don't fucking want anything except for you all to leave me alone."

Her camper bed shrieked with distress, and she practically threw herself onto her other side, desperate not to have to look at the hurt in Chester's eyes. The guilt only made her nausea worse.

It was strange, she thought, how wrong this felt. Being here, in normal clothes. Just jeans and a long-sleeved top. A week ago, it would have been the most natural thing in the world. Now, it felt like she was missing a layer of skin. She felt naked, vulnerable, exposed in a way that had nothing to do with modesty. Her armour had become a second skin, a hard shell she could retreat into. Without its weight on her shoulders, without the cool metal against her arms and legs, the world felt too close, too sharp.

The realisation sent another tremor of distress through her. This was what the world was doing to her. It was turning her into someone who felt safer in battle gear than in her own skin. A killer. A person she didn't recognize, and didn't much like.

With a morbid curiosity, she mentally called up her System menu, her gaze turning inward to the list of abilities now available to her. New ones had appeared since the ambush, unlocked by the trauma and the kill. She scanned their names, and a fresh wave of sickness washed over her. The list of abilities she could purchase kept growing.

Flesh Tear. Nerve Inferno. Agony Cascade.

The System didn't provide descriptions, but it didn't need to. The names were enough. They were a litany of suffering, a toolkit for a torturer. There was nothing defensive here, nothing protective. It was all designed for one purpose: to inflict the maximum possible amount of pain.

As she looked at that horrible list, a chilling thought took root in her mind. These abilities weren't just designed to hurt others. They were designed to hurt her.

Every time she used one, she would have to watch, to listen, to be a party to unimaginable agony. She couldn't help thinking the System was deliberately, methodically, forging her into a monster, one horrific act at a time. So far, she'd mostly resisted. But now the door had been opened. How long would it be before she found herself in another situation where she needed her power?

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Chester's whispered reply took a long time to come, "It's okay."

It wasn't. Of course it wasn't. Nothing was.

Silence lingered in the room for a long time. Somewhere deeper in the community centre, a mumble of conversation was still ongoing. She clung to those sounds like a lifeline, desperately trying to distract herself with the futile effort of discovering what they were talking about from here.

Naturally, it was useless. On both levels. She could neither make sense of a single word they were saying, nor distract herself from the thoughts bouncing around in her skull.

With a sound that was half frustrated growl and half humiliating sob, Jade lurched off the bed and to her feet. Humiliations seem to determined to stack up on top of one another, as she found herself swaying on the spot, lightheaded and dizzy, to the point she almost collapsed right back down onto her bed.

Distantly, she noted Chester hovering nearby with his hands raised as if ready to catch her. That was all the motivation she needed to make sure she didn't fall. Through an effort of will, she forced herself to move towards the door, and was gratified to find that she only stumbled a little. By the time she was halfway down the corridor, she was moving like a halfway normal person and not a drunk. Chester's footsteps followed her soon after. She couldn't bring herself to look back at him.

She found the others in one of the larger rooms of the building, a dance studio or something. They were sitting in a loose circle around a board game of some kind she didn't recognise, the playfield sprawling out behind them. Under the endless light of the burning sky, it was uncomfortably hot as it always was. And yet somehow a shiver zapped down her back as she approached the three of them.

Why did she feel like a criminal approaching her execution?

Why wouldn't those screams stop echoing in her head?

The three of them fell quiet when they noticed her approach. Dog had been the one talking, and he was the first to acknowledge her, shooting her an arched eyebrow. Lily came next. Her smile was sickeningly fake. Jade tried not to blame the American woman for it. That's just how some people were in her experience. Smiling even when the situation didn't call for it. Especially when it didn't call for it.

John had his back to her, and took an oddly long time to face her. She tried not to read anything from the stiffness of his shoulders, the statuesque immobility of his posture, or the way his fists were clearly clenched in his pockets. Trying to hide his frustration that way was futile; she had been using that trick since she was a preteen.

But who was she kidding? Of course he had already found out what she had done. And it only made sense that a man who had easily defeated three people without killing them was casting judgement upon her. He probably thought she was scum of the Earth. Her throat was closing up.

It was only when she was a meter away from him, staring miserably at his back, that he finally turned around. All he did was glance at her, but that was all it took. One look into his eyes, and she knew.

Something inside her loosened, while another part tightened. She didn't know if this new state of being was better or worse than what she had been five seconds ago, but any change was welcome, at this point. As long as it was a different kind of agony, she found that it was easier to bear.

"You too, huh?" she said. Her lips did something strange. Perhaps it was some kind of wry smile, but she wasn't exactly sure. It could've been a grimace.

"Yeah," John said with a sigh that conveyed a depth of feeling that the her of a week ago never would've been able to understand.

Silence reigned over the room for a long while as the two of them engaged in a staring contest only they could comprehend. It wasn't psychic, not really, but it was a conversation nonetheless. A silent, mutual acknowledgement of a shared, terrible burden. In his eyes, she didn't see judgement or disgust. She saw a reflection of her own exhaustion, her own horror. A kinship of the damned.

It was Doug who finally broke the spell, his voice deliberately light. "Well, don't just stand there gawking, you two. Plenty of room at the table. Chester, you too, lad. Pull up a bit of floor." He gestured with a thumb towards the board game spread out between them. "My idea. Figured we could all do with a bit of a break from the end of the world. A little downtime to stop us all from going completely spare. Blow off some steam."

Jade looked at the game. It was a sprawling thing of hex-tiles, intricate plastic miniatures, and dozens of tiny cardboard tokens. She didn't recognise it. "What is it?"

"'Scythe', this one's called," Doug said, tapping the box lid. "Found a whole cupboard of these things in one of the back rooms. Seems this place had a proper board game club. Got everything from Monopoly to stuff I've never heard of. If this one doesn't tickle your fancy, we can pick another."

She hesitated. The idea of sitting down, of pretending everything was normal enough to play a game, felt absurd. A grotesque pantomime. She wanted to refuse, to retreat back to the relative safety of her cot and the privacy of her own misery. She glanced at John. He met her gaze, his expression unreadable, but then he gave a slight, almost perceptible nod. It wasn't a command, but an invitation. Just for a bit.

With a sigh that felt like it came from the soles of her feet, she nodded. "Alright."

She sat down, finding herself naturally gravitating towards the space beside John, tucking her legs beneath her. Chester eagerly joined them, looking relieved to have something to do other than watch her fall apart.

They played. Or rather, they went through the motions of playing. Jade listened, nodded, moved her pieces when her turn came, but her mind was a million miles away. The brightly coloured board was a meaningless blur, the rules a language she couldn't parse. Her thoughts were a thick, grey fog, and at the centre of it, an image replayed on a loop: the bisected body, the impossible spray of red, the scream that had changed from one man's agony to another's grief.

The game was a distraction, but not in the way Doug had intended. It didn't take her mind off the horror; it just provided a thin veil of normalcy to hide behind. The rhythmic clatter of dice on the floor, the murmur of conversation, the simple focus of waiting for her turn—it all created a shield. No one was looking at her, not really. They were looking at the board. Their attention was occupied. And for that, she was grateful. It gave her the space to drown in peace.

Her gaze drifted past the game, towards the cracked windows of the dance studio. Beyond the glass, the overgrown playing field stretched out under the burning sky, slightly shadowed by the thin veil that awful black hole thing pulled over the world every night. Her eyes scanned the unkempt grass until they found it.

A patch of green that was just a shade darker than the rest, a subtle discoloration a few metres from the community centre's wall. There was always one, wherever you looked. Didn't take much effort to find. Another stain.

Does it ever go away? she wondered, her stomach twisting again. The rain would fall, the sun would beat down, the grass would grow over it. But would the stain ever truly vanish? Or would it just sink deeper, poisoning the earth beneath? A permanent record of a moment of violence, hidden but never gone. Just like the stain on her soul.

They finished 'Scythe'—John won, his victory as quiet and understated as everything else about him—and moved on to a simpler card game, then a dice-rolling one. The night bled away in a haze of feigned leisure. For hours, they were not soldiers or survivors. They were just people in a room, playing games. But it was a fragile illusion, and eventually, it shattered.

The last die was rolled, the last card played. The pieces were put back in their boxes. An awkward silence fell, the reality of their situation rushing back in to fill the vacuum left by the games.

"So," Doug said, breaking the quiet. He cleared his throat. "Next moves. Perhaps we should start thinking about heading out of Watford. Getting back to Alissa, regrouping."

The unspoken question hung in the air. Are we done here? Had the ambush, the deaths, broken their momentum? Was this a retreat?

Jade felt a familiar tension coil in her gut. The thought of leaving, of running, felt like an admission of guilt, of failure.

It was John who answered, his voice low but firm, cutting through the uncertainty. "You said there's a green portal over at Sainsbury's." He looked from Doug to Lily, then finally, to her. His eyes were dark, intense. "I think we could all do with blowing off some steam."

He was echoing Doug's earlier words, but twisting their meaning. This wasn't about relaxation. This was about exorcism. About washing away the filth of the last few days with more violence, more blood. It was a rejection of retreat, a declaration that they would not be broken. He was offering her a way to fight back against the memory that was consuming her.

She knew she should say no. The thought of another fight, of wielding her machete, of potentially facing another human enemy, made her feel physically ill. But the alternative of sitting with her guilt, letting it fester, admitting that she was too weak to continue was worse. She had to prove to them, and more importantly, to herself, that she wasn't broken. That the killer inside her hadn't won.

She met John's gaze, straightened her shoulders, and put on the bravest face she could muster.

"Sounds good to me," she said. Even though it didn't. Not at all.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.