Chapter 98 Zoe Against The Virus

• The pain did not lessen; it transformed. It ceased to be a uniform, constant pressure and became irregular, erratic pulses, as if someone were writing inside her skull with a red-hot needle, tracing lines that were not meant to heal or close, but to open, to mark territory. Each surge arrived with a slight delay from the previous one—just enough to disorient her, to keep her from anticipating it.
• Zoe folded in on herself with a muffled groan and pressed her hands against the cold floor of the ruined room. The marble was cracked, covered in fine dust and shards of glass, but it was still real. Solid. Indisputable. The contact was immediate, brutally cold, and she clung to that sensation with silent, almost animal desperation, as if letting go would cause her to dissolve, to fragment into something without name or shape.
• I’m here, she told herself, forcing air into lungs that burned with every breath.