Chapter 262: Chaos and Hard Decisions

"Once the siren is activated, don’t come back for me. Get those people to the eastern side or any side. Evacuate as many people as possible."

Kilian did not wait for either man to answer. He could see the hesitation in their faces, but whatever they wanted to say could wait.

The siren was more important, and if those white thin strands were indeed the hive mind, it had already reached the western platforms, then every second they wasted arguing was another opportunity for it to reach the people still trying to escape.

"Go and bring two pathfinders when you have already touched the ground."

The two of his men finally moved, disappearing down the stairs while Kilian turned back toward the remaining civilians.

His eyes then move to his fallen man. He knew this wasn’t just a single attack. Most of them were probably dead or in impossible conditions for them to answer his call at all.

Kilian wanted to search for his remaining men. But he knew it wasn’t the time. The only choice he had now was to pray for their soul and safety, if they were still alive.

He then took a deep breath before shouting. "Move everyone! Don’t push each other, be careful of your step! Just forget your belongings! Your life and family are more important."

He raised his rifle and shot the air, forcing himself to ignore the growing noise around him.

People were still confused, some refusing to leave their homes without their belongings, while others were already running blindly through the snow and nearly falling from the platforms.

Then someone screamed.

Kilian turned sharply and saw a man pushing through the crowd toward them. His clothes were torn, his face covered in blood, and one of Kilian’s soldiers was following behind him with his rifle raised.

"Don’t let him through!" the soldier shouted. "He’s infected!"

The man stumbled toward the civilians anyway, desperately waving his hands.

Several people immediately backed away.

Kilian’s stomach tightened. The man looked terrified as if he was attacked wrongly, and for a moment there was nothing obviously wrong with him except the blood covering his clothes.

"Please!" the man cried again, reaching toward the civilians. "This way! You need to get down there before they come!"

Kilian’s eyes narrowed. "Down where?"

The man pointed toward one of the lower platforms.

"There’s a safer route. I know a way out."

Kilian looked past him and noticed the route he was pointing toward. It led downward, away from the marked evacuation path and toward the deeper levels of the settlement.

"That’s not the evacuation route."

The man hesitated. Only for a second, but Kilian noticed it.

One of the civilians had already started following him, and Kilian immediately stepped between them.

"Nobody goes that way."

The man’s frightened expression remained on his face, but something about his eyes had changed.

Kilian raised his rifle.

"Stay where you are."

The shot tore through the man’s chest and sent him crashing against the railing.

Several civilians screamed, and someone began crying as the body slid onto the snow-covered platform.

"Keep moving!" Kilian shouted immediately. "Don’t look at him! Keep moving toward the eastern side!"

He hated the way they looked at him. Some were afraid of the infected man. Others were afraid of him now.

It didn’t matter. If they stopped here, they would die here.

Kilian pushed himself forward with his remaining men, checking every route before allowing civilians to pass.

Twice they encountered people who appeared completely normal until they suddenly tried to redirect the crowd toward abandoned houses or lower platforms.

They had almost reached the next platform when Kilian heard a child’s voice crying somewhere behind them.

"Help... somebody please help me..."

Kilian stopped despite himself.

A little boy was standing near the entrance of one of the houses, his face wet with tears and his hands trembling as he pointed toward the doorway behind him.

"My brother is still inside," he said between sobs. "He won’t wake up. Please, sir, you have to help him."

One of Kilian’s men immediately stepped forward, but Kilian caught his arm.

"Wait."

The boy looked at him desperately. "Please..."

Kilian stared at the open doorway. Nothing moved inside, but then he noticed something pale beneath the threshold.

At first he thought it was snow, until one of the strands slowly curled around the edge of the wooden floor and disappeared into the darkness.

His stomach turned.

"Stay where you are," Kilian said quietly.

The boy’s crying stopped. For several seconds, he simply stared at Kilian, his wet cheeks trembling as he struggled to catch his breath.

Then his expression softened into a small smile that felt completely wrong on his frightened face.

"You’re not coming?"

Kilian’s rifle rose slightly.

Before he could answer, something shifted inside the house behind the boy.

The sound was faint, almost buried beneath the wind and the shouting of the civilians, but it was enough to make Kilian’s instincts scream at him.

"Get back!"

One of his men immediately pulled the boy away, shielding him with his own body as Kilian fired toward the doorway.

Something white recoiled into the darkness before it lay on the ground.

Kilian looked at the boy again. He was crying now, tears running down his face as he stared at the soldiers with genuine-looking terror.

There was no strange smile anymore, no obvious sign that he was infected. He looked like nothing more than a frightened child who had just watched something horrible attack his home.

Kilian swallowed hard. He knew what he had to do. He just didn’t know if he could do it.

"Lead!" The soldier holding the boy tightened his grip around the child’s arm. "He’s just a kid!"

"I know."

"Then we can’t leave him here!"

Kilian closed his eyes for a moment and forced himself to breathe. When he opened them again, his expression had hardened.

He walked toward them and gently took the boy from his teammate’s hands.

The child immediately clung to his uniform.

"Please, sir," he whispered. "Don’t leave me. My family is still out there."

Kilian’s fingers tightened around the boy’s shoulder.

"I’m sorry."

He carried him into the nearest empty house, ignoring the child’s frightened struggle as he set him down inside.

"Wait here."

"Sir, please!"

Kilian shut the door before he could hear anything else. He dragged a chair beneath the handle and pushed it firmly into place, then stood there for several seconds with his hand resting against the wood.

The boy began pounding on the other side.

"Sir! Please! Don’t leave me here! Help me! My family is still outside!"

Kilian’s jaw clenched. He turned away.

When he returned to his men, he looked at each of them in turn.

"I’m not being cruel. I’m being necessary. Our priority now is getting as many civilians out of this settlement as possible, but only the ones who aren’t infected."

"If we stop every time something begs for our help, the hive mind will use that against us until there is nobody left to evacuate. Do you understand?"

His men nodded, though several of them clearly struggled with the decision.

Kilian didn’t blame them.

Hesitation was better than blind obedience in a situation like this. At least hesitation meant they were still thinking before they pulled the trigger.

"Then move," he ordered. "We don’t have time to stand here."

After that, nobody questioned his orders anymore.

They simply ran.

Kilian kept looking toward the lower platforms whenever he had the chance. He could no longer hear his missing men through the radio, but that did not necessarily mean they were dead.

The thought gave him enough hope to keep moving, although another part of him already understood what silence usually meant.

At least the Pathfinder teams below were still doing their job.

He heard distant gunfire from somewhere beneath the settlement, followed by several bursts of shouting before the sound gradually moved farther away.

They had encountered something too, but their training showed.

Rather than trying to come upward and become trapped between the infected and the civilians, they were holding the lower routes and forcing anything that came through back toward the mine, he hoped.

He kept praying inside that the reason more chaos hadn’t appeared on his side yet was because they were able to hold.

"Keep going!" he shouted as another group crossed the final bridge. "Don’t stop here! Follow the Freebound markers and get outside the settlement!"

The snow was still falling heavily, swallowing the buildings and turning the distant platforms into pale shadows.

Kilian stood there for a moment, watching the last civilians safely out of the western side while his rifle remained tightly gripped in his hands.

For the first time since the evacuation began, the western side was almost empty.

Almost.

Kilian looked back toward the settlement.

His men were missing.

The hive mind was moving upward.

And somewhere beneath all of this, Jade was still unaware of how bad the situation had become.

He raised the walkie-talkie one more time.

"West Three, West Four, this is Kilian. Respond."

Static. His expression slowly hardened.

"Where the hell are you people..."

Then as if answering his question, the sirene blaring all over the Climber Rift.

The chaos wasn’t over. It had only just begun