Seventy-Two Hours

He was intelligent in the way useful people often were: quiet, observant, able to fix broken systems without being invited into the meetings that broke them. He carried one private failure everywhere. His brother Caleb had drowned in a flooded underpass while Eli froze for three fatal seconds. The apocalypse did not create that regret. It weaponized it. Now he moved at Survivor stage, carrying fever senses, fast clotting, and the ability to feel mutation like pressure before a storm. The cost was confusion: blood smelled sweet, light hurt, and sleep brought dreams that belonged to dead mouths. Every core he absorbed made him harder to kill and easier to fear. Mara watched for the man inside the mutation.