The Wrong Way Out

BANG. BANG. BANG.

The door shook, but I noticed something.

They weren’t breaking it down. Not really. The ones at the hole were just… pressing against it. Staring. Their movements were jerky. Slow.

They weren’t powerful. Not yet.

A boy from my class was at the front of the crowd. His face was covered in those black veins, but he just stood there, swaying. He raised his hand and hit the door, but it was weak. Like he didn’t know how to use his own arm.

It hit me then.

They weren’t doing any harm right now. Not real harm.

But the parasite inside them — it was getting stronger. I could see it. The black lines under their skin were moving, pulsing, crawling up toward their heads.

And I remembered what Dad said. “They multiply.”

When it gets to their brain… when it takes over completely…

They’ll become stronger. Way stronger. They won’t be kids anymore. They’ll be something else. Something big.

Their whole body won’t be theirs. It’ll be the parasite’s. Every move, every bite — all controlled by that thing inside them.

I looked at Lia through the hole. She was still just standing there, tilting her head.

But the black was almost to her eyes now.

We didn’t have long before “not powerful” turned into something we couldn’t run from.

We had to escape from that room.

Right now.

I stared at the boy by the hole. At Lia behind him.

They were swaying. Hitting the door, but weak. Confused.

Like they didn’t know what they were doing.

Their brains weren’t fully taken. Not yet. The black veins were still crawling up their necks, still moving toward their eyes.

Half their brain was still theirs. Maybe.

Which meant… maybe we could change it. Maybe we could get them back.

But I had no idea how. Dad would know. Dad always knew.

And Dad wasn’t here.

My hands were shaking. I looked at the parasites wriggling on the floor, at the hole getting bigger, at my classmates backed against the wall.

_First we have to escape from this room,_ I thought. My own voice in my head sounded far away. _First we live. Then we figure out how to fix them._

_If we don’t get out now, there won’t be anyone left to save them._

The door cracked again. Louder this time.

I didn’t know how to save Lia.

But I knew we had to run.

The door gave one last _crack_. It was coming down.

“Window!” I yelled. Didn’t even think. “We can jump!”

If we got outside, maybe we could find a big building. Hide. Wait for this to… stop. Anything was better than this classroom.

The teacher didn’t argue. He just shoved the window open. “Go!”

We went. One after another. Rohan. Nisha. Me. The drop scraped my palms. I landed hard on concrete and bit my tongue to stop from screaming.

We were out. Breathing. No door between us and them anymore.

Then I saw them.

Three.

Just three of them, standing near the main gate. Heads tilted. Watching us like we were the ones who didn’t belong.

My chest went cold.

There was no one else outside. No crowd. No teachers. No army. Just empty ground, and those three things.

And we’d jumped right into it.

Rohan whispered what I was thinking. “We should’ve stayed in there.”

He was right. In the classroom, at least we had walls. Out here, we had nothing. Nowhere to run.

We came out by mistake.

“Here.” Maya’s voice was shaking, but her hands weren’t.

She was pointing at the pile by the gardener’s shed. Rods. Metal ones. The kind they used to prop up plants.

“Grab one,” she said. “Each of us. We can… we can fight them.”

Nobody moved at first. Then the teacher picked one up. The sound it made scraping the concrete made my teeth hurt.

The three things near the gate started walking toward us. Slow. Like they knew we had nowhere to go.

Then it wasn’t slow anymore.

I don’t remember who swung first. Maybe Rohan. Maybe the teacher. But the rod came down on the first one’s head with a sound I’ll hear for the rest of my life.

Wet. Crack.

It went down. The others didn’t stop.

More swinging. More of that sound. Over and over.

The ground turned red. It spread. Like the concrete was bleeding. It reached my shoes.

That’s when I saw Mira.

She was on the ground, knees pulled to her chest. Shaking. Like she’d been dropped in ice water.

I crouched next to her. “Mira? Hey. What happened?”

She wouldn’t look at me. Just stared at the red spreading toward us. Her whole body was trembling.

“Mira, talk to me.”

She finally choked it out. Barely a whisper.

“I’m… I’m scared of blood.”

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