Season 1 – Episode 7: “The One Who Watches”

The city was no longer a city. It was a corpse wearing a crown of smoke.

Rahul had been hiding inside the science wing of the school for three days, surrounded by blood, silence, and the stench of rot. He hadn't spoken a word since the day it all began.

No one had come back for him.

He had eaten paper, drank toilet water, and waited for death to arrive.

It never did.

What did arrive… was the truth.

He was alone.

And Ayush was alive.

He saw them.

From the shattered third-floor window, Rahul had watched Ayush's group cross the schoolyard like a unit. They moved with coordination. With trust. With purpose.

They looked like survivors.

They looked like a team.

Ayush was at the center—giving orders, leading them across debris and danger like he was born for it.

Rahul, crouched in shadow, gripped the edge of the windowsill.

His nails dug into the concrete.

"Why him?"

He kept watching. Always from a distance.

At first, it was curiosity.

Then—resentment.

And finally—hatred.

It happened during his second attempt to escape the school.

An infected student—her jaw twisted, her hands shredded—lunged at him from beneath a locker. Rahul reacted late. Her teeth sank into his forearm, and he smashed her skull against the wall in sheer panic.

He fell back, breathing hard, blood running down his wrist.

That was the moment he accepted death.

He lay there for hours, staring at the ceiling, waiting to feel the change.

Fever. Convulsions. Madness.

None came.

Instead, the bite closed.

No infection. No transformation.

Just… healing.

The next morning, Rahul walked into a corridor full of infected.

They turned.

He froze.

They sniffed the air.

And then—

They walked past him.

His breath caught.

He tried again, this time intentionally walking toward them.

Still nothing.

No growling. No biting. No blood.

Only recognition.

"They don't see me as human anymore."

In the days that followed, he tested everything:

He cut his hand. It healed within minutes.

He lifted steel bars once impossible to move.

He didn't tire. Didn't sweat. Didn't hunger the same way.

He wasn't a zombie.

He wasn't human.

He was something else entirely.

Rahul followed Ayush's group through every narrow street and ruined alley.

He saw their fights.

He saw Ayush kill an infected in a single move.

He saw Kartik bleed, Shivam panic, Suraj hold his nerve. He saw Ananya smile at Ayush in a moment of peace under rubble.

Rahul saw everything.

From rooftops. From sewers. From behind burnt-out vehicles.

He memorized their patterns, their strengths, their weaknesses.

He felt the hatred grow—not out of some petty school rivalry, but something more primal.

"They left me."

"He left me."

"And now he gets to be the leader? The hero?"

Rahul gritted his teeth until his jaw ached.

"I should've been the one they followed."

"I was always the strongest."

He was near an abandoned grocery shop when a frightened couple spotted him.

The woman screamed. The man threw a pipe at him.

Rahul didn't feel the pain. He barely reacted.

He only saw fear in their eyes.

The same fear people used to have when he walked down the hallway at school.

Something inside him smiled.

He stepped forward.

One punch—cracked the man's spine against the wall.

The woman ran. He let her go.

Rahul looked down at his shaking hands.

Not from weakness.

From memory.

"This is who I used to be."

Ayush's group was now close to the metro station.

The streets were more dangerous, but they moved efficiently, clearing corridors, avoiding ambushes, and watching each other's backs.

Rahul, crouched on a nearby roof, watched them again.

Ayush was still leading. Still standing.

Still alive.

"You're not a survivor, Ayush. You're just lucky."

"And I'm going to take everything you have."

He gripped the knife he'd stolen from a corpse. Drake's old combat blade.

The same knife Ayush never saw again.

Shivam moved ahead of the group to check an underground parking lot.

The light was thin, filtered through dust and broken glass.

He turned a corner—

And froze.

There, standing in the open, waiting...

Rahul.

Shivam's voice caught in his throat.

"...Rahul?"

Rahul tilted his head, as if studying him.

"You're all still playing games. Still thinking this is about survival."

Shivam stepped back.

"What are you talking about?"

Rahul smiled.

A human smile.

But behind his eyes—something broken.

"Tell your hero... I'm not hiding anymore."

"Rahul was no longer human... and not quite a zombie either. He had become something far worse — a psycho with nothing left to lose."