Barely 3 years old, Caleb hopped into the room. He carried a small green plastic briefcase. He wore a white band with a green cross on his arm.

  “Oh no, mommy! You have a boo-boo!” he said, pouncing on his half-sleeping mother with the kind of reckless abandon that comes with not really knowing your own weight.

  “Paramedic! Help! Help!” she said, opening one eye and transitioning seamlessly from a half doze to full play-acting.

  “Don’t worry! I will rescue you.” Caleb pulled open the case. A half-rolled pile of bandages and a toy stethoscope sprang out like a jack-in-the-box, showering them both. Caleb covered his mother’s face in the bandages, as she twisted herself around on the couch like a fish out of water.

  “Ack! Caleb! I can’t breathe!”

  She poked her tongue out from her mummification mask, and the pair collapsed to the floor in peals of laughter.

  “You truly are a tonic,” she said as she brushed the curls out of his eyes.

  Caleb couldn’t remember that day exactly, but it left a mark.

  She saved people, and I want to be like her.

  The group stood at the foot of the first high rise building they came to and watched the bones mount on the path beneath.

  “What was this building for?” Caleb asked.

  It was unmarked.

  “What’s any random office building for?” Provo said. “Consultancies. Accountants. Marketing departments. Take your pick. Your guess is as good as mine. Better, probably.”

  “The building is unlocked.” Dave said, his gaze focused on the glass revolving doors.

  “You first, Dave.” Kayleigh said. “I don’t like the idea of getting stuck in there with a skeleton. It’s hard enough jumping in and out under normal conditions.”

  “You tell me to enter that building like I no longer process fear.” Dave said.

  “I just assumed, what with the lasers and all…”

  “You assumed incorrectly.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  Kayleigh looked to Caleb for support.

  “Well,” he said. “I guess you’ve gotta go in first now.”

  “We still don’t know if they’re dangerous, Caleb!” she hissed, her teeth bared.

  Caleb turned to the newcomer. “Hey Provo, were you dangerous when you were a skeleton?”

  “I didn’t even know I was a skeleton.” Provo said. “I was just pawing blindly in the darkness.”

  “Hmm,” Kayleigh still didn’t look too convinced.

  “We’ll all be right behind you. It’s just a matter of logistics really. After all, it’s single-file.”

  Kayleigh clambered over the bone pile, her eyes fixed to the sky in case she had to dodge falling skeleton. She pressed her nose up against the plate glass window.

  “It’s so dark in there.”

  “The power went out when the spores hit the atmosphere.” Provo said. “The police didn't know why exactly. Most places have generators, but I guess not everyone was expecting to use them. You see cut corners like this in places of a certain age. Nobody had ever needed a generator, so nobody felt the need to maintain one.”

  Dave flashed his floodlight system on and off. “I have all the light we need.”

  The rest of the crew shuffled through the bones to get to the building’s entrance. Dave pulverised the discarded skeletons to bone meal, stomping a makeshift path into the ground.

  Hopefully they’ll recover from that…

  “The Braindead Killaz stormed this building after they took my stuff” Provo said. “If I can recover it, we can set off a kind of Regen Spray bomb to hit the whole building at once.”

  “It’s a plan.” Caleb pushed the rotating doors. They moved freely.

  “I’ll save you the worry.” he said to Kayleigh with a wink.

  She blushed. “Thanks.”

  “Point those lights at the door,” Caleb commanded, and Dave flooded the abandoned lobby with blazing white light.

  The place seemed like an office on a quiet Sunday - completely empty, with not a hair out of place. Caleb pushed through. His hand shook as he gripped the bar.

  I always hated rollercoasters, he thought as the adrenaline rushed through his system and begged him to run.

  He hopped out of the rotating doorway.

  An air conditioning system hummed quietly.

  Not all the power is out, then.

  Caleb rapped his knuckles on the window, waved and then beckoned everyone inside. Kayleigh came through first, then Provo, then Dave.

  The transhuman tried to crouch into the tiny glass sarcophagus, but he just wouldn’t fit. Grabbing the door frame with both hands, he wrenched it from its housing and rushed through the doorway like a bull seeing red.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Probably should have let you go first,” Provo said, expecting laughter that never came.

  “It’s kinda weird how the skeletons are all bunched up at the windows above.”

  “Maybe the lifts are broken.”

  “Nobody found the stairs?”

  “They’re all blind, remember?” Provo thumbed through leaflets in the foyer’s lounge area. “They don’t care about anything right now. They probably just think they’re in hell.”

  Kayleigh sat down beside Provo. “Why don’t they ask for help?”

  Provo didn’t glance up from the brochure. “No voice box. No throat. It’s pretty hard to talk through a dry jaw.”

  “There’s a lot of clattering,” Caleb said. “But that’s about it.”

  “This was a life insurance company.” Provo said. “So boring.”

  Dave took a long look around the room and up to the ceiling. Through the ceiling.

  “What are you looking for, man?” Caleb tapped his cold steel arm.

  “It’s just just skeletons up there.” he said. “I’m getting heat signatures. Heart beats.”

  “Survivors?”

  “It’s impossible to tell. The rhythm of the pulses detected suggest human activity, although I cannot say for certain.”

  Provo put his brochure down.

  “How did they avoid the mist?”

  “Gas masks?” Kayleigh offered.

  “That would make sense. It’d have to be a pretty prepared office to have those at the ready, though.”

  Provo held up the brochure. A MAXILIFE logo was emblazoned on it, below a happy family riding jet skis. “Life insurance. If anybody was going to be prepared for the worst, I guess it would be them.”

  Caleb scouted for ways off the ground floor. As expected, the digital displays over the lift doors were off. A green sign above the small corridor at the far end of the room read STAIRS.

  “Let’s go meet the insurers, then.”

  The staircase was well-lit and sheer white from step to wall. It was pristine, a quiet area that never saw any use and was there simply to tick off a regulatory requirement. Dave crouched low to get through the door.

  This world isn’t built for him anymore. Caleb thought. Where the hell is he going to live when we get back?

  Caleb remembered the angel’s decree:

  Save everyone. That means getting Dave his human body back.

  Caleb examined the unholy union of man and machine, where muscle fibres entwined with metal wires, where blood gave way to oil, where skin gave way to steel.

  It’s an impossible task.

  Their footsteps of the group echoed through the empty hallway. Dave had to shuffle awkwardly sideways up the narrow stairwell.

  Caleb hit the first floor. He peered through the double doors and into the open-plan office. The place was empty save for empty laptop stands, the occasional printer and a legion of shambling skeletons jostling for position at the shattered windows that led to oblivion.

  He checked his inventory -

  REGEN SPRAY 10+

  How many is 10+? If I stood back, I might be able to spray more than one, but who knows if each can was enough. No, we have to hit them all at once like Provo said.

  “Stick to the plan.” Kayleigh said, pulling Caleb away from the skeleton horde. “The regen bomb, remember?”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s just they’re right there, you know.”

  Dave poked his head through to the office, splintering the wood with the force of his reinforced skull. “The heat signature is higher up the building.”

  “Sure thing, Dave.” Caleb pulled the wrecked door from its frame and headed back into the stairwell. “Up we go.”

  They passed floor after floor of empty room, contaminated with skeletons.

  “How much farther?” Kayleigh whined. “My feet would hurt if they weren’t so bored.”

  “It doesn’t help that you all move so slow.” Dave said. “Caleb’s a little less sluggish, but you’re all still clearly running on tank controls.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Kayleigh said, dragging one foot in front of the other like they were both weighed down with concrete boots.

  “I have no idea what you’re all talking about.” Provo said with a smile on his face. “Not sure I want to, either.”

  After what seemed like hours, they reached the top of the stairwell.

  “Oh god,” Caleb said, peering through another identical door with a single square window cut into it. “More empty office. More skeletons.”

  “We must travel higher.” Dave said.

  “Uh, can’t you see?” Kayleigh pointed to the blank white wall where, on previous floors, there had been another stairwell. “This is it. No more stairs.”

  “Hmm…” Dave scanned his surroundings. A tiny fan inside his head whirred with activity. Processors clicked as they boosted his thought processes. “There is an access shaft on the other side of this office.”

  “You first this time, Dave.” Caleb bowed to let Dave demolish the doorway, then put his hand up in a private aside to Provo. “I’ve learnt my lesson from the last few times.”

  Caleb stepped over the splintered wood to enter the top floor of the office.

  “God, it really is like the tenth circle of boring hell, isn’t it? I can’t imagine working here.”

  The pale monotony of the office was the opposite extreme to the chaos of Squish Burger.

  I hated that job, but at least it wasn’t this. Just standing here makes me want to fall asleep.

  Proco watched the skeletons at the windows with fascination. “I can’t believe that was me…”

  Kayleigh shuddered. “What did it feel like?”

  “It didn’t feel like anything. Total and complete numbness. I just assumed I was dead.”

  “You definitely were dead. Look at them. There’s nothing left.”

  There was a crash, and another skeleton plummeted like a petrified tree finally succumbing to the rot.

  “And even less by the second.” Caleb said, his voice laced with worry. “We’ve got to rig this Regen Spray bomb and fast.”

  “This way.” Dave commanded, keeping away from the windows and running along the back wall to a hatch in the ceiling.

  “The human heat signature is up there.” he said. “There’s a collapsible ladder behind the hatch.”

  Caleb turned to Dave. “I think this is as far as you’re going to be able to go, buddy.”

  “That is correct.” Dave nodded. “My mass will not fit through the hatch, nor will the ladder take my weight.”

  Is it just me or is he getting more and more robotic?

  Caleb saw from Kayleigh’s expression that they shared the same thought. He smiled at her meekly, as one would when greeting a widow at a funeral.

  “Would you give me a boost, Dave?” Caleb lifted his arms like a child demanding upsies, and Dave obliged. Caleb grabbed the hatch with both hands and pulled downwards.

  The hatch relented on the second pull, bringing with it a light aluminium ladder that glided to the floor.

  “Can you tell us anything more about who’s up there?”

  “One beating heart that is similar to a human in rhythm and speed. Steel and plastic light weaponry, similar to those carried by Sgt. Johnson. Armored plating, also similar to those carried by Sgt. Johnson.”

  “The Braindead Killaz.” Caleb reminded them all. “Better the devil you know, I guess.”

  “Based on the subject’s heart beat, he or she does not currently pose a threat.”

  “Maybe they’re injured?”

  “I do not believe so. They appear to be perfectly calm.”

  Caleb tapped Dave on the shoulder as he disappeared up into the ceiling. “Thanks for the briefing, Dave. Stay frosty.”

  Caleb clambered up into the vent, then poked his head out with a grin like a Pop-Up toy. “Are you guys coming or not?”