Chapter 1
I was shoved out of the vehicle before it had fully stopped.
My shoulder hit first, then my face. I rolled over the broken pavement, and the strap of my backpack caught around my throat.
The rear lights glowed red through the dust. Zhao Yong, our vice captain, leaned out of the window. He was in his forties, with a knife scar across his nose and a smile that never reached his eyes. He had served in the base patrol for years. He had also been my most faithful guardian since my parents died.
"Miss Ye, those things are yours now!" Zhao Yong slapped the door. "Weren't your parents the heroes who founded the base? Don't embarrass them!"
Someone inside laughed.
"My gun!" I ran after them. "Zhao Yong, give it back!"
The jeep disappeared around an abandoned building.
They had taken my gun, food, and radio. All they left me was a machete with a chipped blade.
A trash can scraped across the road behind me.
An infected worker stood at the end of the street. Its uniform hung loose from its bent frame. Its cloudy eyes found the blood on my cheek, and a dry clicking sound came from its throat.
Then another shape stepped from a doorway.
Then a third.
They could smell me.
My mother had once pricked my finger inside a locked laboratory. Under a blue lamp, my blood had shone silver.
"Hanhan," she had said, covering the tube with both hands, "no one can ever know."
My father burned the test sheet that night.
Two months later, they left on a mission and never returned. Everyone said the founders had died for humanity. After that, people who once called me Little Princess learned how easy it was to steal my rations.
The first infected rushed me.
I swung the machete. The impact jarred my elbow, but it gave me enough room to run into a ruined shopping mall.
More infected waited inside. Their shoes dragged over glass. A woman in a torn wedding dress crawled down the silent escalator, her veil trailing behind her like dirty smoke.
I backed into a display counter.
The front doors burst open.
A tall man walked through the swarm.
He wore an old military coat, dark with rain and age. His skin was cold blue gray, and black veins climbed from his collar to his jaw. A scar pulled one corner of his mouth into a permanent, dangerous curve. His eyes were pale, circled by a thin ring of dark red.
Every infected dropped to its knees.
The man caught the bride before she reached me and threw her aside. One sweep of his arm cleared the path. Then he came toward me, silent and certain.
I raised my broken machete.
"Stay back," I warned him.
He stopped at once.
His gaze moved from my bleeding cheek to my mouth. Something shifted in his throat.
"Ye Han," he said, his voice rough with disuse. "Tangtang."
Only my parents had called me that.
He wrapped his coat around me and lifted me. My palms landed against a hard chest with no heartbeat. One arm locked beneath my thighs, the other spread across my back. His body was cold, yet heat rushed beneath my skin wherever he held me.
"Put me down," I ordered.
His face lowered until the scar beside his mouth brushed my hair. He breathed in, though he did not need air.
I bit his shoulder as hard as I could.
His arm tightened, pressing me flush against him. His pale eyes darkened, but he did not hurt me.
"No," he said.