It only hurt on the first bite, and it only hurt enough to tell her that she had been bitten. The shouting of her three companions echoed in the dark utility corridor, along with the roars and growls of the zombies that followed behind them. The one that had bit her was still attached to her shoulder. It only took her a moment to shove the barrel of her revolver against its head and squeeze the trigger.

In these tight quarters, the shot thundered and instantly dulled her hearing.

She could hear her companions shouting for her, but the only words she understood were all "Aurelia."

Tristan and Dianne defended from the horde behind them with spear and pistol, while she and Michael were supposed to be the vanguard and clear away any obstacles from the front. Only Michael had realized that Aurelia had been bitten. He only let the shock stun him for a split second.

"We're almost there!" Michael shouted.

Confirming that the outside was relatively clear, he quickly produced a special door stopper. It was a pipe with a cable tied to the middle. On the other end of the cable was a wooden block. He snuck the cable under the inward-opening utility door, so that the pipe was on the outside of the door, and the block was on the inside. As soon as the rest of his comrades made it out, he shut the door and laid the pipe across the doorframe.

Not too soon, the head of the horde smashed into the door, making loud clambering noises on the other side. Because it was an inwards-opening door, it wouldn't ever actually open—if zombies were all that dumb. However, the door started to open the correct way.

Through the cable, the wooden block on the foot of the other side of the door yanked on the pipe, which, longer than the width of the door, resisted against the doorframe.

"What—AUREY!"

Tristan rushed to Aurelia's side.

Dianne finally saw the cause of Tristan's distress. Michael was, anyway, the first to had noticed. No one said a thing.

"Dianne, radio it in," Michael finally said, "We need to regroup with James."

Tristan assisted with first aid while Michael plotted out a new route. Dianne made sure to use earphones to keep James' reaction from reaching the others' ears.

"How long has it been?"

"5 minutes, give-or-take."

"…Roger. Make your way to the safehouse in Sidal Street."

His pause was telling. It was his pause that she didn't want the others to hear.

"Wilco. Anything else?"

"Negative. Out."

The moment they arrived in the safehouse, a small apartment in a two-story building, Aurelia's eyes shot wide. James was tending to a clean bed with fresh sheets, while Karlson was off to the side unpacking a box of medical supplies.

Diliman didn't have such a luxury of medical supplies that they had them conveniently stocked in a temporary safehouse. These supplies could only have been acquired with a deal with the devil, a syndicate that extended its tendrils all across Metro Manila, one so euphemistically called the "Medical Mafia".

Aurelia's chances of survival were zero to none. That James struck a deal with the devil could only be for his self-satisfaction.

"Oi, James, you—"

"Don't say it. Aurelia."

Today, she wasn't Oreo to him, but Aurelia. The full weight of her life was weighed against his own—that sort of thinking, she understood, but she also couldn't let such a thing drag everyone else down. Too many people in Diliman depended on him. If one mall raid gone wrong could shake him, then the futures of everyone else would shake with him, as well.

There was little she could do, however. Cold, angry bitterness wafted off James' face like iced mist.

—Just shut up and let me take care of you.

Such words needn't be said.

The chances of recovery for a bitten survivor were about 1 in 10,000. Even afterwards, only 1 in 100 of the survivors could resume a healthy life. Most bite survivors were disabled in some way, and most of them, neurologically. Diliman itself had one such bite survivor—he was paralyzed from the waist down, his speech was slurred, and he had difficulty writing. The only consolation was that his memories seemed intact, and so his surviving family was happy enough to take up the slack.

Though, such were exceptions.

After an hour, Aurelia had grown physically weak, and a fever had started.

After three hours, she couldn't even sit herself up. The fever had reached a high.

After six hours, the fever had settled, but Aurelia was still left weak and defenseless.

She was in such a state when the Bio-Police appeared.

It was in the mid-afternoon when the scouts' temporary security network—a bunch of smartphones, being used as wireless IP cameras and microphones, duct-taped to the walls and ceilings—picked up two tactical teams entering the building.

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Even for the scouts, quick to rouse to their feet and arm themselves, the assault was too sudden. According to their cameras, the tactical teams seemed to be heading straight for their room. It was an impossibility among impossibilities, but they had to act in the few seconds that they had to plan and execute on it.

James' magical solution was to hold a broom.

Dianne and Michael looked at him like he was a madman. The two of them were hidden behind an overturned dinner table, propped up on two stacks of books behind which they laid prone. Karlson paid no mind to James' antics and aimed at the door with his shotgun from around the corner. Tristan guarded Aurelia's bed.

The door burst open, and a flashbang flew in and rolled to James' feet.

James swept the flashbang back out of the door, dropped the broom, and closed his eyes and covered his ears before diving behind a couch for a cover.

There was some shouting and a bang.

Regardless of the pained and complaining moans of disoriented tactical men, someone walked into the room. Karlson, Michael, and Dianne, sparing no further thought, opened fire. Whisps of smoke and fireballs of muzzle flashes filled the room for two long seconds, make it hard to determine if their opponent had been downed.

When their eyes adjusted, and the light smoke cleared, a gentleman in a ruined suit greeted them.

"Good afternoon," he said, smiling with silver teeth, a silver jaw, and a silver half-face. It was as if he had a metallic skull with some latex draped over for skin. His voice was that of a middle-aged afternoon TV show announcer.

The scouts all stared at him, mouths agape.

"My name is Detective Kernan. I'm a negotiator for the Bio-Police. Please allow me to do my work."

He said with a bow and an unceasing, creepy-wide smile. James was… impressed, in a sense.

—What a lad to introduce himself even after getting shot, though. 'Ask questions first, shoot later,' is it? No, wait, he said 'Bio-Police'?

Detective Kernan took no further steps, and he remained standing by the doorway.

"What do you want, attacking us first?" James asked. He peeked out of the side of the couch, pistol in hand.

"I apologize. We did not think there were humans inside."

—Humans? Ah, well, the guy himself probably ain't, though that's concerning information in itself.

"Then, what do you want?"

Kernan pointed in one direction, a bit off to the side from James. There was a wall between Kernan and Aurelia, who was in the bedroom of this two-room, one-bathroom apartment. Nevertheless, Kernan was certainly pointing at Aurelia.

"There's a dangerous subject here. We wish to handle it."

"What? Our friend's been bitten. How's she any dangerous when she's—"

…'About to die,' he was about to say.

"Redacting some classified information, our sensors have detected the precursor of a highly-evolved dangerous lifeform and traced it to exactly this location. We request its handover to us."

—Highly-evolved dangerous lifeform? An Unkillable? Aurelia?

"And if we don't?"

"Forcible measures will be taken."

"We reject"—was what he had wanted to say. He checked his phone and saw that the tactical teams in the corridor had recovered their bearing. One flashbang certainly wasn't enough to take them out of the equation. He and his friends were outnumbered and outmatched.

All things considered, all roads lead to negotiation.

"Will you treat her?"

"No."

—So she'll be killed, regardless…

"Are you open to negotiation?"

"I am a negotiator."

"Then, do you see the boxes of medical supplies on the kitchen counter?"

Kernan's eyes shifted towards the kitchen counter, then back towards James.

"What of it?"

"We acquired those at a high price, in high-interest credit towards a certain monopolizing medical syndicate. If you're taking our friend away, then we'll just keep losing and losing. I have two conditions."

Kernan's unceasing smile stretched even further, until it was ear-to-ear. It was inhuman, but James managed to go on.

"First, I immediately need 1000 rounds of 5-5-6 ammunition to pay off the syndicate."

At that mention, two commandos appeared behind Kernan and each dropped off two canisters of ammunition. James was shocked at the immediate compliance, but his awareness quickly caught up.

"Tristan! Michael! Secure the ammo and bring it back to the Mafia! Bring the bikes! Plus 100 bullets per day interest isn't a joke!"

The two hesitated, but at James spurring "GO!" they finally moved. The Bio-Police guaranteed safe passage for them, and the two left, pedalling as fast as they could. Tristan worried whether he could still reach Aurelia in her final moments, but he had to trust in James' decision. The round trip would take them two hours, at most, having to periodically avoid dangerous roads.

"And your second condition?" Kernan asked. James paused in hesitation for a moment, appalled by the business-like tone he was about to use for these words.

"She's our friend. We'd like to see her off ourselves. I'll be the one to do it. If what you say is true, then she has to be killed before she succumbs to the infection."

—I wonder what the others think of me, saying these words. Pity? Contempt?

Kernan stood in silence for a while. It was possible to simply observe and allow them to deliver the mercy shot themselves. However, it was also most optimal to dispose of the Gamma precursor before it completely dies. The beginnings of the Gamma itself could arise even before the death of the precursor, increasing the danger of delaying disposal any further.

It's not as if the danger was great, given enough buffer time.

"How long has the precursor been afflicted?" Kernan asked.

"About six hours."

"You have two."

Two hours wasn't enough. Two hours was too soon. Tristan wouldn't be able to see her off.

Kernan gave him an electronic timer. "Not one second late," he told him. The bulk of the Bio-Police dispersed, leaving Kernan and a few commandos behind to observe that the mercy shot was delivered on-time.

"Don't look at me like that, you jerks."

Aurelia's weak voice still managed to crack up the scouts.

They chatted. Two hours passed too fast. Dianne and Michael left the room. Karlson offered his own handgun to James.

"No, it's okay," James replied. He'd use his own revolver, to make sure that he'd remember. It was precisely this emotional symbolism that Karlson had wanted to prevent James from making, which was why he kept holding out his handgun, intent on getting James to take it.

James turned away from him.

Karlson left the room.

"How cold of you," Aurelia weakly said. The timer in James' hand had a little under 10 seconds to go.

"I wish we could've talked more. See you again soon, Oreo."

"What's with that last part?" Aurelia chuckled. A bit of silence wafted between them.

The timer beeped.

"Wait—"

He fired.

Wait for you on the other side—she was about to say. A pang of regret hit him, as he didn't let her finish her last words.

Kernan approached Aurelia's body. Passing some sort of scanner over her body, he looked at its screen. "Very good. Thank you for your cooperation," he said, promptly leaving with the remaining commandos.

Tristan and Michael had just reached the corridor when they heard the gunshot. They paused for a while, before Michael kept on. Noticing that Tristan didn't move, he looked back.

"Tristan?"

Tristan didn't move. His eyes were fixed to the floor.

"I'll go back ahead of you."

"Huh? Ah, wait! Tristan!"

Michael was torn between chasing after Tristan, or linking back with the others. He chose the latter, informing them that Tristan struck off on his own.

The scouts returned to Diliman. Tristan wasn't seen for a week.

After he returned, he transferred to the Guard Group, saying little about what had transpired, and sparser still about his own thoughts.

Aurelia's body never reached Diliman. The absent scouts were told that she was forcibly possessed by the Bio-Police, while all that the rest of the community knew was that she was killed in a botched looting run. The existence of the Bio-Police was covered up in the meantime.

Not many hours after Aurelia's death, however, James hoped against hope that there remained a little bit of something of her.

Who wouldn't, when a supposed corpse refused to advance into rigor mortis?