-Know how far your mind and body can go.

  - Don’t overwork yourself.

  - This is real life. You don’t go to another world if you die from overexhaustion. You just die.

  ---

  I came to in the backseat of the Peachmobile, still sticky with blood—mine and someone else's. I wasn’t sure which was which anymore. Everything felt like it had been set to low-res graphics, the kind where your brain is too lagged to load emotions properly.

  Alex was driving, jaw clenched. Jules sat beside me, her hands twitching every time the road so much as hiccupped. She didn’t know if she wanted to reach out or keep her distance.

  Neither did I.

  But hey, on the bright side, I wasn’t dead. I was just sore everywhere, dizzy, nauseous, exhausted, and spiritually concerned about the whole “woke up in a pool of blood with no memory of how I became a zombie blender” situation.

  Cool.

  Real cool.

  ---

  Gail opened the door before we even knocked. Like he’d been waiting. Or watching. Or both, in that weird military way of his.

  “Put him down over there,” he said, gesturing to an old table cleared of parts and papers.

  “Hey,” I slurred as Alex and Jules helped me onto it. “You’re gonna buy me dinner first, right?”

  Gail gave a dry grunt. “You’re too high-maintenance.”

  “Rude.”

  He and Jules got to work. Jules was gentle, brushing away shards of dried blood and checking for bite marks with a tenderness that made my insides hurt more than the wounds.

  “No bites,” Gail muttered after checking twice. “You’re just... wrecked.”

  Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

  “Wow. Thanks. Exactly what a guy wants to hear.”

  Alex sat nearby, fidgeting. She wasn’t making jokes. Which was probably a bigger red flag than the zombie leader I apparently mutilated in blackout mode.

  “So,” I said, “I guess we’re talking about... what happened?”

  “We should,” Gail replied, peeling off a glove.

  I braced myself. Honestly, I’d have preferred more zombies.

  Alex explains the situation to Gail, and he, in his military gruff, rough, and buff wisdom, he nodded.

  “I’ve seen this before,” he continued, tone low, calm. “It’s rare, but it happens. Soldiers—ones under too much pressure, too much stress—sometimes they snap. Not outward. Not visibly. Inside. Something switches off.”

  I frowned. “And then?”

  “They move on muscle memory. Training. Instinct. They don’t think. They react. The brain checks out, but the body keeps going.”

  Jules paused mid-wrap. “Like sleepwalking?”

  Gail nodded. “Except with knives. Guns. Fists.”

  “Oh,” I said, very slowly, “well, that’s terrifying.”

  “It is,” Gail agreed. “To everyone else.”

  He started cleaning a gash on my shoulder. It stung like hell. I bit my lip to stop from yelping.

  “I knew a guy back when I was in active service,” Gail said. “Took an explosion head-on. Shockwave slammed him into a wall. We thought he was dead. But he got up. Blood pouring down his face. Started mowing down hostiles like it was just another drill.”

  I blinked. “Jesus.”

  “Yeah,” Gail muttered, “not in a holy way, though.”

  Alex raised an eyebrow. “So what happened to him?”

  Gail didn’t answer immediately. That silence said enough.

  “Oh.”

  “It’s a survival instinct,” he said. “The kind you don’t want triggered too often. You get into that state enough, and eventually, you don’t come back from it.”

  “And you’re saying that’s what I did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Awesome,” I muttered. “So I turned into a flesh-covered murder robot and now I’m a danger to my friends. Great. Let me go lie down in the guilt pit real quick.”

  Jules flinched. “Elliot—”

  “I don’t remember it,” I cut in, voice raw. “That’s the worst part. I remember running. Fighting. Then a chair. Then... nothing. Just pain, then blood, then you guys.”

  “Elliot,” Alex said, quietly, “you did what you had to do. We’d be dead if it weren’t for you.”

  “Or you’d be dead because of me.”

  She frowned. “You didn’t attack us.”

  “This time.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It’s not supposed to be!” I snapped, and immediately regretted it. “Sorry. I just... I didn’t ask for this. I don't want to wake up with any of you dead, and knowing I caused it.”

  Gail tossed another bloody rag into the bin. “it's not a hidden ability. It’s a warning sign.”

  “Comforting.”

  “I’m serious." Gail says. "This isn’t something to lean into. You need to rest. You need to decompress. You overload again, it could go worse. You lose control, someone gets hurt. Someone you care about.”

  "That might have been the longest sentence you said without being threatening." I say.

  But no one laughed.

  I looked at Jules. She looked away.

  I looked at Alex. She held my gaze.

  “Got it,” I said. “No going turbo psycho without permission.”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “I’m not trying to be. I’m just... terrified. That’s how I cope.”

  Jules finally spoke up. “You’re not alone in this, El.”

  I didn’t answer. Not because I didn’t want to. But because I didn’t know how to.

  Gail patched up the last of my wounds. My head throbbed like a rave was going on in my skull, and my body felt like someone had played Whac-A-Mole with my bones.

  “Rest here tonight,” Gail said. “You move, I’ll glue your ass to the table.”

  “You flirt like a drill sergeant,” I muttered, leaning back.

  ---

  That night, I didn’t sleep much.

  Alex sat near me for a bit, but left around midnight. Probably to check on Jules. Or to escape the awkwardness oozing out of me like sweat.

  At some point, I heard them whispering in the hall.

  Not arguing. Not exactly.

  Alex was angry. I could hear it in the tension of her words, even if I couldn’t make them out. Jules, trying to explain. Again. I could imagine it all, even without seeing it. Alex pacing. Jules standing still. Maybe that same look on her face from when she told me her truth.

  I wanted to get up. Join them. Say something stupid to defuse it.

  But my body stayed still. And maybe that was for the best.

  ---

  In the morning, the air between the three of us was better... not good. But better.

  Alex still cracked jokes. I still played along. Jules still lingered a little too close but never touched.

  Things were weird.

  But things were moving.

  And that’s better than nothing.