The Night I Chose the Monster

The man everyone thought was dead was alive, in the dead center of the quarantine zone.

The man who'd once been my commander. The man who'd once been everything to me.

And now he was turning into the thing the whole world was afraid of.

The night the operation began, they sent me into a city the bombs had torn apart.

One objective.

Confirm Lucas Grey, the special forces captain who'd gone missing on a monster-hunting mission six months ago.

But the order that came over the radio was cold.

"Confirm infection. Kill the target on sight."

The second I dropped from the chopper, gunfire came down like rain.

Broken concrete. Red warning lights. Air thick with blood and gunpowder.

Off in the distance I could hear the cries of things that weren't human.

I kicked in the door of the underground bunker.

Lucas was inside.

Torn combat gear. A throat slick with blood. Hard arms bare and covered in wounds.

He looked like a man who'd clawed through days of death, a wreck, and still he stood there like a beast that wouldn't go down.

Under his cropped black hair, deep-set eyes turned to me.

Rough stubble. A split lip. Blood drying on his jaw.

Even like that, he was dangerously, unmistakably male.

But something was different now.

Below the back of his neck, something like black scales had spread.

The veins in his forearms shifted like an animal's muscle, and his fingertips were too sharp to be a human's.

Lucas Grey. The empire's finest special forces captain. And a man infected by a monster.

"I came to get you out," I said.

My voice shook.

Lucas closed his hand around my wrist.

His hand was hot and rough.

"Take me with you, and it gets you killed."

That was when the radio crackled.

"Infection confirmed. Kill on sight."

I froze.

Lucas pressed the muzzle of my gun to his own heart.

"Shoot."

It was a low, broken voice.

"Like they told you."

His hot breath touched the back of my hand.

"Or you run with me."

He smiled with bloodied lips.

Outside, the footsteps of the monsters were drawing closer.

The bunker ceiling shook, and the red warning light flickered over his face.

I lifted my finger off the trigger.

"Get up, Lucas."

That night, I chose the man instead of the order.