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No one was. Zombies had lain in fiction and fiction only, after all. Reality suddenly abiding by the products of creativity was... unexpected. Every country, despite all the governments' attempts to calm and control the masses, was devastated. Consumed by fear, societies quickly collapsed, destruction following close behind. It was the survival of the fittest, everyone for themselves—base and simplistic, lives returning to revolve around the three basic needs: food, water, and shelter. Not much else mattered.

But there was hope. Before September, a semblance of tranquility could be found in the form of three safe havens spread across America. They were the government's last-ditch effort to preserve life—erected a year before it all went to shit, military bases were established in select areas and encased in dense, concrete walls. In them were gardens overflowing with fruits and vegetables; animal pens brimming with livestock; pools where fish swam freely; hospitals and laboratories operating as any other would before zombies ruled the world; churches giving out sermons and words of care and joy; men, women, children, everyone allowed to be themselves, to be happy. Albeit... quite... controlling—with your every move watched closely by soldiers carrying lethal weapons, freedom barely existent, and... population control lurking in the shadows—they were still heaven in an anarchical wasteland. Everyone had their place—they were given jobs, their own rooms, their own opportunities. Stepping through the massive gates that protected them from the outside world was like going back in time.

And then... something... happened.

The first safe haven, "Minos", located in Houston, Texas, collapsed, succumbing to a hoard of infected they were unprepared for. Everyone close to the overseer of the second safe haven, "Daedalus", located in San Franciso, California, said that it was a very, very bad idea to let the survivors of Minos through the gates, but the Overseer had grown cocky over the past eleven years of no harm being done to her people. She put too much trust into her scientists and soldiers, into the devices that were supposed to accurately tell whether an individual had the protozoa or was safe, into the walls that were supposed to keep the good in and the bad out. An infected person got through.

It was chaos.

In eerie resemblance to the happenings at the beginning of the world's collapse, Daedalus' people were overcome with fear, the higher-ups failing to keep them under control, and the panic that spread like wildfire provided wider and wider openings for the infected to indulge in their endless hunger. Nearly everyone was gone, had become mere hunks of flesh in corpses' stomachs, within a mere day of Minos' survivors seeking asylum.

But not all would be lost.

In the chaos, the Overseer rushed to a lone person she'd come upon. Quickly, as she had been bitten and would soon become one with those she despised so greatly, she brought them to a room in a building that was forbidden to those who weren't high up the hierarchy—a room that housed a very special teenage girl.

Her name is Sadie, but Daedalus' doctors and scientists who experimented on her never allowed her the privilege of being called such. Instead, they referred to her as "Girl." Girl is unique: once upon a time, she was bitten, and did not turn; she was locked in a never-before-seen state of half-human half-zombie—and her blood, said the Overseer, will save the world. They had found Girl wandering the wastelands, starving and mindless, but capable of speech, and so they captured her, tortured studied her, and had already begun drafting a cure.

Alas.

Before losing herself, the Overseer tasked the person with a mission: bring Girl to Icarus, the third and final safe haven, where the scientists will turn her into a miracle. The Overseer hastily scribbled down a list of traits about Girl to watch out for, how to... manage her, and then gave the person a remote to keep Girl... under control, a rather shitty map, a muzzle, and, of course, Girl. Then, the Overseer promptly shooed them both out of the room. Girl giggled when a gunshot rang out in the hallway.

And thus we are brought to now: a girl who isn't entirely human in a hallway with someone who never asked to be in this situation. She's looking at them, staring in that unnerving way only she will ever be capable of, wondering how they'll make it out of the building, out of Daedalus, out of this hellhole of a city to all the way across the country.


S U M M A R Y

They'll have to survive against all odds—cities all but boiling with infected, running low on supplies every step of the way, and a literal cannibalistic psycho child constantly on the verge of succumbing to hunger—to accomplish their mission.

As mentioned, she has white hair. Not just any kind of white hair: it's not alabaster, porcelain, or chiffon, but whiter than snow and even the petals of daisies, so white that bright light touching its surface would result in a blinding shine. However, dirt, grime, and dried blood have dulled the hue of purity, causing the mop upon her head to look not only like a bird's nest and overall disaster but also like salted, muddied snow. This isn't the only thing that separates her from the idea of normal: since her blood is some strange cocktail of red, black, and white colors, her blood vessels' colorations correspond to such to certain degrees, standing stark against her unhealthily pale, almost white, skin. Most of the vessels in her body appear as they would on a healthy individual's person, albeit a bit more pronounced (though this is likely just a cause of malnourishment), but some of the ones surrounding her heart, left shoulder, upper left arm, and both sides of her neck are colored black and white. The colors of the ones on her neck are much, much more pronounced, almost causing her neck to look like some strange black-and-white hunk of charcoal; a few vessels, mostly black in color, taper off into healthy colors right about her jawline, ending in pointed lines just below her cheeks. Her fingernails, too, because of the abnormal blood colorations, are a mix of black, white, and healthy pink.

It doesn't end there: her eyes will tell you that she just isn't normal. Her left eye looks like any other—with its beautifully pistachio-green shade and minty hues spattered about, one could get lost in them forever. But her right eye? The iris is the exact same color, but the sclera is completely black and the pupil is pure white. Perhaps that's why she's allowed the bangs to grow rather tilted; more strands cover the right side of her face than the other, ever-so-slightly covering the eye she doesn't like to acknowledge.

Oddly, her eyelashes are black in color, as are her eyebrows, though the latter are... so thin they are virtually nonexistent, so their color can't be easily discerned. But, the black shade obviously doesn't correspond to the white strands of hair... Could it be Marie Antoinette Syndrome?

Irrelevant.

What matters is that she doesn't look normal. Perhaps that's why she doesn't bother acting normal.

She is among the most violent and disturbed fifteen-year-olds ever given the privilege of existing.

The scientists who tortured studied her described her as extremely problematic: she was prone to misbehaving and always primed to attack; she could be easily compared to a rabid snake forever locked in a cycle of aimless striking. She has no concept of a moral code and will do as she pleases if not often enough thoroughly reminded of her place. The idea of limits, filters, social etiquette, and humanity as a whole is beyond her comprehension, and she doesn't ever want them to be. Akin to a madman, she has been known to have moments of hysteria: laughing maniacally for no apparent reason, her heart-melting smiles surfacing in the face of blood, she is very clearly fucked in the head—and she knows it. How could she not? The shock collar proves it. Her physiology itself proves it. She knows she isn't normal. She knows she'll always be this way, forever, because she doesn't know how to be otherwise, how to stop.

It's funny how the world's savior is a monster. And it's funny how that statement isn't even pessimistic. No, it's optimistic instead—because she's no one's hero. She's just a tool to be used for the sake of a world that never gave a single shit about anyone.

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Credit for Image in Appearance Tab: Kureihii