I’m awoken to voices in the darkness. A twig snaps in the distance. I struggle to get up, but there’s something on me. Yin mumbles in her sleep as I try to get out from under her. Then something smashes into my head.

*Crack*

I’m just a Lvl. 1 Hunter. A rock to the skull is still very much lethal. My world explodes. Yin awakens and shrieks as she sees my blood in the moonlight.

“What are you doing!” She screams as Donovan raises the rock again. The other girl with the pink hair…what was her name again…Rui. She kicks my hand, knocking away the butcher’s knife. The dark-skinned boy and the other one whose name I don’t know, drags Yin off of me. The warmth of her body leaves me and I’m empty.

Cold.

The only heat I can feel comes from my head and the rapidly cooling liquid flowing from my skull. I let my guard down.

Damn.

“He saved us! Why are you…MMMF?!” The dark-skinned boy stuffs a piece of cloth into Yin’s mouth and she can do nothing but stare me with terrified regret in her eyes. Her fingers dig into the dirt as Rui leers down at me.

“Donovan, wait.” She leans down, my butcher’s knife in hand. The pink haired girl crouches by my head, placing my own weapon on my neck. The blade feels ice cold. She grins, a sick, lecherous smile. “I heard you back there. These Hunters, I’ve always wondered how to become strong like them. Like you…”

“Is that so?” I say angrily. However, with the boys stepping on my hands and legs, I can’t move. Red is covering the edges of my vision and my blood pounds painfully, growing worse with every second. My brain is filling with blood. “You’re going to regret this. Just walk away. You still have time.” The little pink haired pixie girl only grins wider. She leans in, her breath sickly sweat over my face. Her hair forms a curtain over me and I feel my own knife pressing deeper into my throat.

“Hahaha, as if I would be that stupid! I know you lied!” Rui laughs as she begins to draw the blade across my jugular. “You told Yin you were a Lvl 1 Hunter. But that’s impossible, you know so much. You must be a higher level, and when I kill you, I’ll take it all!” Over by the side, I can hear the Yin’s panicked struggles, her attempts to shout through her gag. Somehow, she must have gotten it off.

“Please don’t hurt him!” She cries. However, when her pleas don’t change anyone’s mind, she apologizes to me over and over, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know! You have to believe me, I didn’t…!”

*Splurt*

The knife goes across my throat. Searing pain, like a bolt of lightning runs through me, and my body jerks involuntarily. Suddenly I can’t breathe. Choking on my own blood. Rui’s expression is funny, she laughs in ecstasy as she watches me flop around helplessly.

“I’m going to become a Hunter!” She yells victoriously, closing her eyes. My vision turns completely crimson as my blood pressure drops. Everything is heavy, breathing is impossible. There’s so much pressure in my head, this endless ringing fills my ears. My fingers push against the bottoms of the boy’s boots. They escape only to get stomped on. The pain barely registers as I recoil in agony. Yin is sobbing somewhere, but I cannot go to her. I should, but I can’t focus on anything. The red layer over my sight turns to gray and my head goes limp. Everything is gray. All gray. I thought it would be black when I die. Any moment I expect the world to disappear. My breathing stops. The blood leaking from my neck dries. I’m so cold.

Dead.

I can’t move my eyes. They just stare up into the night sky, at the fading stars. I’ve had this feeling once before. Everything’s gone staticky, gray. Like I’m watching the world through an old black and white television set. I’m terrified, so incredibly terrified because I am no longer in control. Through the gray, I can see Rui’s face turn from happiness to confusion.

“I…I should have become a Hunter! There’s no way he was actually Lvl 1!” She yells in anger. I can see her staring down at me, though now she does not treat me like a living thing. Stomping on my face, she turns away to the others. “He was actually telling the truth? Impossible!”

“You dumb whore!” Yin screams in frustration. However, the boys have moved over to her. Rui’s face lights up into a devilish smile as she sees her “friend”.

“Yin dear, you’re a Hunter now. I killed him, but since he was actually only Lvl 1, I gained half a level’s worth of experience. That’s not enough to make me a Hunter.” She steps out of my field of view. “Now if I were to kill another Hunter…that would be enough wouldn’t it?”

“Y-you’re evil! I can’t believe I trusted you!” Yin screams as the boys hold her down. “Donovan? Jumoke? Why are you doing this? Are you really going to listen to this crazy bi-OW!”

I can’t see what they’re doing to her. All I know is that she screams in pain. I can’t move. Everything’s so gray, I’m just lost in this haze. My body is not under my control. I want to move so bad. To help save her, though I know it’s hopeless.

Please…please move!

Suddenly, my body turns its head. My vision tilts, the gray sky spilling over so I can see gray unnatural faces, the boys standing cruelly on Yin’s slender hands, the disgusting pink-haired girl raising my knife over her face. Right now her dyed hair makes her look like a witch. Though I do not will it to happen, my lips curl into a smile.

My hands go onto the ground.

I get to my knees.

Raise my arms forward.

And charge!

“What the hell! You’re supposed to be dead-!” Donovan’s eager face turns into true fear as my cold body lunges towards Rui. I barrel into the girl, my nails gouging into her shoulders. She screams as I tear out chunks of her skin and latch my jaws onto the back of her neck. She shudders in my grasp. The other boys hammer at me, but though I feel the pain, the virus does not care. My teeth crush down harder.

“AHHHHHH! How can you be!” Rui screams and screams. Her cries turn to pleading. “Stop! Stop! Oh my god it hurts! PLEASE DON’T KILL-!” Then she cuts off, and her body dangles limply. When I let go of her savaged neck, she drops to the ground. A cold smile twists my lips apart. The horrible taste of fresh blood is the only warmth in my world.

No no no…this isn’t happening again!

I rush the boy whose name I don’t know. The other boys don’t understand that they need to kill me again or it will be them I turn to next. By the time they understand the evil they have unleashed, it is too late.

Another of their number lies dead.

Yin screams at me, trying to call out my name.

But I am no longer in control.

The air is cold, ever so cold on my dead skin. I stumble, falling into the dark-skinned boy. He gasps and flops about sweetly in my mouth as I tear him apart too. Donovan tries to use the time to run. But the Gray is too fast. It finishes with Jumoke and then my body runs down the blonde boy as well. He tries to throw a rock at me. It smashes my jaw, dislocating it. The pain is so bad, if I was in control I would be puking, rolling on the ground. But the Gray feels nothing, cares for no such thing as pain. It runs him down like an animal. And devours him.

Then all that is left is…

“W-Why. How did it turn into this?” Yin has run over to Rui’s body while I chased down each and every member of her party. The traitors are all dead now. The world is just gray. I am the Gray.

No…I don’t want this. Not her. Not Yin.

I try to say something, anything. Though I cannot move, perhaps some small part of me is still living. I manage to whisper through my broken jaw. A horrible garbled hiss.

“Yiiin…kill me. Dooo it.” I say with the last bit of me left. Shuddering, I try to hold my body still, to give her a chance. She has my cleaver. Must have picked it up while I killed her friends. Even still, she hesitates, and I know that in a moment my body will break free and pounce on her!

“DOOO IT!”

*Puchi*

I hear a sobbing voice as the world tilts.

“I’m so…so sorry!”

Then the gray becomes black and I am gone.

#

We were fighting so well in that moment. The first ones in the world to get to Lvl 99 together. The famous party composed of the strongest! But more importantly, we were friends, lovers. All of us had fought in a hundred battles, killed thousands of zombies. We were the top party and we were family. Then one of us went too far. And everything came crumbling down. Blood everywhere…that’s all remained of us…