The man on the wall never made a sound. Jaw clenched, teeth locked together. Impossible to tell whether he was already dead or simply refusing to scream.
Something ugly twisted in my gut.
How could the Bastion allow this? Even criminals had basic human rights.
"Hey! Put some effort into it—make him scream! Isn't he the one who supposedly commands the undead?"
The blood in my veins turned to ice.
In this entire world, only two people could command zombies. Me and my brother.
And my brother had voluntarily entered the Bastion as a senior researcher to help develop a vaccine for humanity. His status alone should have made him untouchable, and on top of that, his fiancée Muriel Maxwell was at his side to protect him.
How could some random man used as bait possibly know about that ability—let alone possess it?
My gaze snapped back to the figure on the wall.
I hadn't looked closely before. Now that I did, what I saw was worse than I'd thought.
His hair hung in matted clumps, stiff with dried blood, plastered across what remained of his face. The severed ends of his limbs had darkened to near-black, still weeping fresh blood. His nose and mouth had been cut clean off, the cruelty of it deliberate and methodical.
But his face. The shape of it, the bone structure beneath the ruin.
It looked like my brother.
No.
I slapped myself so hard my vision blurred.
How could I even think something that horrific?
That was not my brother. It couldn't be. Piers Henson held one of the highest positions in the Bastion. His body was unique, invaluable. There was no conceivable scenario in which he'd end up discarded and butchered as bait.
His vaccine research must have made a breakthrough. That was it. He was busy. Safe.
Yes.
I pulled out my communicator and fired off a message.
Every second I waited for a reply was agony.
I kept my eyes locked on the man hanging from the wall, searching for anything—any detail that would prove me wrong.
The communicator buzzed.
"Hey, bro! I'm doing great here at the Bastion. Come visit anytime!"
Attached was a photo of him inside a tailor's shop, trying on a perfectly fitted suit. Tall and elegant, clean and radiant, like something too pure for this ruined world.
That was my brother.
Three months ago, he'd called me, thrilled, to tell me Muriel had proposed.
He begged me to come to the Bastion for the wedding.
I turned him down, told him I was too far away to make it in time.