first encounter

As the first hour of the class trickle in, Alex knows that what he felt this morning was only the premice. Up to now, nothing would indicate the impending doom to came.

-Can you felt it?- Asked CS worryingly.

'Yes.' Said Alex, as tense has his friend.' And I think I know what that feeling this morning was.' Continue him grimly.

-What?-

'Focus on the wads of the island.' Alex said, while his gaze gave the impression to follow the class dispensed by their newly appointed teacher, Kyoko Hayashi. Following Alex advice, CS briefly focused on them before being attracted to something stronger, deeper, and everything falls in place.

-The lay lines!-

'Yes, the leylines around the globe had been freed. The most logical conclusion would be that the strain they had been put under the last months had finally snapped what had congested them for all those years. The level of magic his worryingly shooting through the roof and start to saturate the planet.'

-Are they dangerous?- The news of threat they may had to face wasn't making Cs felt better.

'In themselves? No, but if they continue to release that amount of magic in the air, the outbreak wouldn't be our only worry. As soon as we can, we need to return to the house and strengthen the wards, even create something else.'

CS words he was about to spoke when his words died in his 'throat', as they heard one of their classmates groan rather loudly.

Alex's head snapped to its origin; his gaze hardens when he saw say students hold his head as if under a severe case of headache.

'It's starting; those with the least amount of resistance are starting to slip.' Said him ominously, involuntary reaching for his blades at his back, gripping his lightly. Briefly raising his other, he saw that they were only thirty-four minutes in the first lesson of the day.

~~~

In the following hour, Alex kept a hawk-eye on those displaying signs. After the first case, two followed in the next ten minute, then three fives minutes later. Those six cases turned to twelve at the end of the class and twenty-four barely eight minutes in the second hour. When the first started to show the first symptom at the two hours boundary, all the remaining fifteen classmates show sign of slipping.

At first, it was nothing other than a momently headache before everything returned to normal, but it was entirely different for Alex. Those barest hint of headache were signs that the parasite had reached the brain and started to colonise it. From this point, there was no turn back; their fate was already sealed.

As for the first, his state was much worst. After two hours, the headache returned with a vengeance to the point that he couldn't focus and constantly hold his head in his hands.

"S-Sensei! I don't felt well." The shaky voice attracted everyone attention, and the teacher at the side of the blackboard could see a faint trickle of blood escape his nose. Seeing its state, he immediatly raises and goes to it.

"Better send you to the infirmary, whose in duty today?" Nodded the teacher gravely before turning to the class.

"It's me." Said Alex while raising, smiling wrily at the twist of fate.

Nodding, the teacher drafted a short text before giving him the draft. "Show this to any faculty member you saw while bringing him to the nurse, Evans-Kun. Seeing that you won't be back before the end of the class, take your thing with you."

Alex nodded, stored the paper in his pocket before turning to the student after collecting his materials ."Think you can walk?"

He had his answers when the student stumbles as soon as he attempted to raise. Catching him, Alex slid him on his back effortlessly before passing the teacher who opens the door to him. Sniffing the air imperceptibly as he passed, Alex knows that the man, too, was infected. Thinking fast, he asked CS.

'How much time do you give them?'

-Before turning? Shortly before the end of the hour, that leaves you around a little less than half an hour before it spread to the school.-

Nodding, Alex briefly touched the door, sealing the class, and did the same to the one at the back of the class. The windows would still be accessible, but the height would be enough to crack skulls open and brake bones. Alex wasn't without knowing the undead's general attribute, so he spelt the class to reinforce all the structures.

Hearing the grunting and huffing boy on his back, Alex rapidly exits the surrounding and stop in a staircase. The boy on his back was so far gone that he didn't felt them stopping nor his body put on the floor.

Crouching to him, Alex blasted his with a stunner. Using two fingers, he opens the eyelids, revealing the bloodshot eyes and rapidly decaying pupil, as the iris lost it's glint and 'alive' shine. The dead look and greyed black that was initially the colour of the student's eye was the first sign he had of the change.

Putting a hand on his chest, Alex felt it's heartbeat slowly decreasing. Before he could make any other test, he heard the sound of a footstep.

"What are you doing?"

~~~

Turning his eyes, Alex saw two persons he never thought would see so soon, nor encounter like this. At the top of the first flight of stair he took stood Saeko Busujima and Rei Miyamoto. Both were supporting a classmate, seeming sick and sporting painful headache, but he knows better.

The one who spoke to him was Rei; her tone hadn't been accuser or anything similar, but just curious, while Saeko stood on the side looking intently at him and the student on his side. He could see her gaze sharpening and the goosebump crawling on her skin.

-The lady had sharp senses.- Whistled CS at the sight of her body reaction. Both know it wasn't just an unconscious reaction as they saw her grip on her clothed bokken tighten.

"Came." Said him to them. Both looked at each other but followed his words, leading their sick classmates to him. Alex put them against the wall, like his own classmate, and showed them the difference.

"You see their eyes? They are rapidly degenerating and would soon look like him." Said Alex, As he opens the eyelids of one.

Both females were about to interrogate him before seeing it happen to both of their classmates. Rei gasp, while Saeko expression keeps cool and un-perceptibly to her classmate, started to take out her bokken. Knowing it wasn't enough, Alex took one of their hand and put them on the two boys' chest, knowing it would be awkward for them to touch the chest of another female.

Rei snapped her state when she felt the heartbeat of Alex classmate becoming fainter by the second, without fully understanding. On her side, Saeko eyes widen and snap her hear to him.

"What happening to them?" Her gaze was piercing is, searching for any trace of deceit in the response he would give. It would have worked on any other human, but Alex mind had been protected by Occlumency defence for long.

"They are dying, killed by the disease that spread through the world a few months ago, and are about to unleash a world-ending calamity on the world." Alex responded, no seeing the need to lie when they were literal minutes away, for example, calamity.

"But that can't be! I know Minori-san wasn't sick!" Rei shooked her head negatively, her mind unwilling to accept his words.

"That precisely that, only those who had a display sign of infection are the one partially immune." Said Alex, making Saeko react.

"Are you telling us that the ones who were sick were because their body fought against the sickness?" Unlike Rei, she had no difficulty accepting them and let the cloth around her wooden weapon fall on the ground.

"And those that don't are the actual infected, yes." Confirms Alex, mentally nodding at Saeko response. He had feared a little how she would react but liked that she was a warrior at heart a not shy away from a threat.

"Kami! H-his heart, it stopped!" Shoot Rei, making both looks at her, just in time to see the dead student eyes snap open and pounce at Rei.

-Those fuckers can shrug off magic?!- CS surprised shout was shared with Alex, frozen for a second by the revelation.

'Worst, their passively resistant, like magical creatures!'

~~~

Taken by surprise, Rei found herself harshly tackled against the separation of the stair, whelping in pain at the brutal action and inhuman grip the undead had on her. Her brain liberates a large amount of signal in her state of panic, making her body hormonal' production skyrocket and flood her body with adrenalin. She could felt a rush of information invading her brain, making her realise that, first of all, she was attacked by a corpse, having felt its heart stop. Alex words immediatly return, and her subconscious accepted them immediatly, as presented with logical answers to the phenomenon.

In her state, she felt the hand clamping hard on her arms, nearly digging in her flesh, setting her pain receptor ablaze with pain signals, like her back, bruised by the inhuman violence in which she was assaulted.

But more than anything else, it was her sight that gives her the most information. As her eyes bore in one of her aggressors, she could see the blood-red sclera, the dead dark-grey iris, and the absence of a pupil. All sign of intelligence and sentience she had seen countless time in the eyes of her parents, friends and strangers was utterly absent, leaving nothing behind.

'It's not alive! That impossible, it can't move and be dead at the same time.' Her thoughts conflict as the sight, perturbing her notion of reality she had to know until then, before her super activated cognitive function took over her fears momently, making her realise that the situation was actual.

She could only look powerlessly at the jaw rapidly closing on her throat, one of the weakest point in the human body.

Against her logic, her sight was attracted not by the ever-closing wide-open jaw coming but the foot travelling the air at an inhuman speed on the side of the undead head. As the two contacts, she heard the sickening *crunch* of the cracked skull and the vibrations running through the body of her aggressor. The first cracking sound was shortly followed by a second, as its neck bend to an unnatural angle, making the head and jaw miss her neck and sink in the concrete layer of the stairs' separation.

She couldn't help but kept her gaze on those blazing green emerald as the thought of what happens struck her like a freight train. 'He saved my life!' Her relief was immediatly replaced by pure horror, as she saw and heard the head move back, letting her glimpse as the cracked teeth and bits of concrete struck between them.

The snapped neck returned to his natural position in a series of erratic movement, while the caved part of its head slowly retook place as if nothing had happened.

'It's all over! I wasn't even able to thank him for dad and me!' Lamented her. Knowing her hand near, she locked her gaze with his, unwilling to die without engraving the sight of those mesmerising eyes in her memories.

At this moment, she realised that she lost his sight, and the hands that kept her against the separation lost their grip. Her eyes widen when she saw the dead body flung backwards and caught a glimmer of grey before its head was separated from its body.

It's wasn't the muffled *thud* of the head falling on the ground, nor the splattering viscous dark-red blood on the opposite wall who draw her gaze. No, it was the sight of the man that just safe her life twice in the brief second her brain made her felt like several minutes.