text: [Themes: horror]
  
  You are trapped and now along with the shambler in the silo. You could probably escape if you really tried. there are two sections of fence down here, if you stood on one and wedged the other up against the wall you are pretty certain you could make the jump off it and up onto the small walkway. It would be fairley easy to ambush those humans when they returned too.
  
  > wait out the quarantine, a few days wont hurt and you have things to test on the shambler
  Three days down here wont hurt you and will give your arm time to start healing. You will also be just as talkative and lucid as before so they will obviously think you are fine and let you back up at the end, you just need to bind your arm so the wound is not so obviously healing too quickly. You tear a strip off the bag they threw down as a temporary solution and bind the wound up "Not visible now at least" You think as you settle in for the long haul.
  
  Since you are here with a completely trapped shambler you have the perfect test subject to work on the persistent rumors of Harbingers abilities. You take the time to think through them all carefully since you only have three days and want to use them to the fullest. "They are stronger and faster than humans, check, cos I am." You think to yourself "Two, they heal faster, also check. Three they can control hordes of infected, unknown. Four, they don't bleed, false but very useful." You pause for a moment to try and recall any other rumor but you draw a blank for now "Controlling the infected it is then" You think as you lie back down and begin staring hard at the shambler.
  
  ​You only last a few moments before your head begins to throb at you and you decide that maybe giving the head wound a few more hours to heal before concentrating too hard might be a good plan so simply lie back and let your mind wander over past encounters with infected and over the one close to you now, how you might control its mind.
  
  You drift off to sleep still thinking about the shambler and how to control it and do not wake up for a few hours.
  
  > Sudden light in the face
  You are woken by a light flashing on your face and you sit up quickly to look around. You hadn't planned to fall asleep, just to rest for a few moments. You immediately hear a voice from above "He's still moving at least" You look up and see the man has a torch in his hand, no longer pointed in your face though "You still talking? You've slept an awful lot." He calls down to you.
  
  You are about to answer back sarcastically but remember you are supposed to be nice at the moment "Yeh, the head wound was hurting so I decided to rest a bit more, it's not really like I have that many options down here." The man nods in response then heads back out. You notice the bags near the railing look a lot bigger though so they must have brought something back when they came in.
  
  You lie back down to rest but realize you can feel somthing near you, like when someone is in the room and you can kind of feel it in the hairs on the back of your neck. You turn towards the source of the feeling and it is clearly the trapped shambler. You can actually sense it already, either your head wound or the sleep helped you. You immediately decide that giving yourself another head wound is out of the question so you decide that it must have been the sleeping while thinking about the shambler that did it.
  
  You spend the rest of the day concentrating on the strange feeling and the shambler and slowly resolving it into something you can control a little better. By the end of the day you can sense the mind of the shambler as a small compressed haze which represents it's mind. Your concentration is occasional interrupted by the man and woman coming and going, dropping off what looks like fruit and veg into the large sacks "So this is their scavenging expedition then, they come to the farms to get food for where-ever their base is." The woman always takes a few moments to try and apologize for your treatment but each time you assure them that it is completely understandable and the only smart option and that finally seems to calm her about it and by even she simply trades pleasantries with you.
  
  You go to sleep once more thinking about the shambler and affecting the haze which is its mind.
  
  > The difference between the shambler and your guards
  You wake just after dawn and find a lot of dried blood on your lip "Dam nosebleeds" you think as you wipe it off, wouldn't be good for the humans to see you bleeding like this, they might jump to conclusions and last night you saw the other two men again standing outside, and they were carrying rifles.
  
  You turn to begin your concentration on the shambler like before but find you don't need to. You can sense it near you easily. you concentrate anyway and find you can sense thing from its mind, or what is left of it. It feels like the dying remains of a mind, weak and rotting away slowly. You can tell where it is injured though and with a slight push you make it lift its arm up in the air. You are about to rejoice when you feel wetness on your face and realize you have a massive nosebleed again. You quickly wipe it away again and wait for the bleeding to stop "guess the side effects are going to just keep being annoying for a while, going to have to be careful" you also feel the beginnings of a headache but as soon as you stopped concentrating it lessened slightly again.
  
  You lie back to take a break and realize another difference. You can sense a haze above you too, very different than the one from the shambler, warmer, full of energy and life "So thats the mind of a normal human then, I wonder what mine appears like?" You think as you try and concentrate on the human minds.
  
  You make a little progress and have reduced the haze to a small area around the sleeping humans when they begin to stir and the headache gets too strong. You take a complete break and rest while they do their short morning routine. The woman pauses to lean over and look down at you, realizing you are away and looking back she calls down "You'll be out soon, sorry again about this but as you said, we have to be safe!" You grin and reply "It really isn't a problem, I just get to rest down here all day while you guys go scavenging for food, you have the more dangerous job if there are more of those mutants out there."
  
  The man cuts in a little suspicious "How do you know we are scavenging for food here?" You just laugh as you see the woman rolling her eyes at him. He looks a little confused before she fills him in "We come in here 3 or 4 times a day and dump food into the sacs like 6 feet from his head, I would be more worried if he didn't know what we were doing." The man pauses then realizes his mistake "Right, then I'll be outside when you are ready" is all he says as he heads out the door clearly embarrassed.
  
  "The woman turns back to you "Sorry for that, he can be a little paranoid but his heart is in the right place. My name is Cara by the way" She gives you a big smile. "It's lovely to meet you Cara" you reply "And don't worry, the paranoid ones usually live longer these days."
  
  She smiles again as she heads out "Perfect, she trusts me already, I'll be out soon" You think as you settle down to your tests. You make the shambler do a few tricks and after throwing a couple of pieces of wood at it, you are confident you can sense what is happening to it. You do however get a wicked headache again and decide that you will need to pace yourself a little more. The headaches seem to accompany progress but they also might be dangerous as shown by the nosebleeds.
  
  You take the evening off just to recover more and spend more time chatting with the woman when she returns, trying to resolve the haze around her more, you finally fall asleep still concentrating on the human haze.
  
  > Morning resolutions
  The morning comes with more progress, things with the shambler seems the same, you can make it do anything you want already, but above you the haze has defined more. You can tell the difference between Cara's mind and the man's. You had spent time the night before gathering details and had given your own name and some details of your life before the infection spread but you gave away little of your recent life, just glossed over it as a hard life scavenging along. You did tell them about loosing some comrades recently to garner a little sympathy and from their looks they both knew what it was like to loose friends.
  
  Their minds also resolved to be clearer and softer. Utterly different from the shamblers beside you, almost the opposite, exuding life and clearly full of thought and emotion but you find you cannot affect them in any similar way or gather feelings from them, just sense that they have them. The energy they seem to exude does seem to make your hunger worse though, just knowing how much you would gain from eating them.
  
  You exchange a few more pleasantries as they head out and Cara throws you down a ripe apple for a snack, you thank her as you bite into it and find that it surprisingly helps with your hunger a little. Not a lot, but enough to take the slightest edge off, you are used to human food tasting terrible and barely sustaining you so it is a very welcome surprise.
  
  You relax and eat some of the other rations while thinking of the conversation the night before and what you had learned. They actually live in an old walled community a couple of days walking North of here. The large walls and steel gate kept infected out and guns held off the looters until they fell to the infected so they survived well. They are one of several scavenging teams that head out to gather food and supplies for the community. They give few other details but you guess they are small of number, maybe 30 in all but they seem to do well enough there.
  
  You finally decide that it is time to do more tests but you have exhausted what you want to try on the shambler so you put your mind to trying to sense other things around you. This takes most of the day, a nose bleed and several headaches but by evening you can sense some minds at the periphery of where your senses reach. You remember an old barn in that direction so assume that is where the infected you sense must be, that means you have several hundred feet of sensing ability.
  
  You relax as you feel the minds of the humans returning and make sure you don't have any blood left below your nose. THe evening passes like before with chatting and telling stories, it's been a while since you enjoyed yourself like this.
  
  > Decision time
  You wake in the morning and realize that once more you slept through the night instead of the normal few hours "Must be the mental training" You think as you test your senses to see what changed while you slept. Sure enough you can feel the infected in the barn more clearly now and with less effort "Two shamblers, one nearly dead and the other near it also in bad shape. Must be trapped in the basement of somthing" you think to yourself as the humans above you wake up.
  
  Once awake Cara immediately leans down over the bar "Time to wake up! Let's get you out of there!" The man groggily stands beside her, "Are you sure about this?" but she just gives him a disparaging look until he goes to fetch a rope and lowers it down to you, tying one end off on the railing.
  
  You catch it as it comes down and are about to start climbing up when you realize that your arm will be healed a lot further than a normal humans and your makeshift bandage is almost certainly going to be replaced soon, you're going to have to bluff.
  
  You climb up, pretending to be careful of the wounded arm but you secretly put extra strain on it and can feel the wounds tearing open again slightly "Perfect" You think as you climb ove the railing and immediately find yourself receiving a huge hug from Cara. You are taken aback for a moment by the very unusual occurrence and have no time to act before she hops away again "That was for saving my life, I've owed you it!" The she quickly hops out of the hatch, you can see the two men holding rifles greet her as she passes. The man turns to you "Wait here for a bit, we have to finish a quick scavenge then we will all return to discuss what to do with you."
  
  You judge it best not to decide anything while the two men with guns have a clear shot at you and you have you climb through a hatch to get to them so you simply nod and take a seat to await their return.
  
  This gives you plenty of time to think things through. It has not been long but you are already progressing amazingly with your abilities. You are certain you can control infected easily and can sense them coming a long way off and you can sense the presence of humans or 'normals' at an equal distance even if you can't affect them.
  
  Cara trust you and you actually enjoy her company, the man doesn't fully trust you but isn't aggressive either. The two outside seem to be the guards for the scavengers, you have yet to speak to them but you can sense them always nearby the scavengers.
  
  You could of course strike now, Cara trusting you and getting close to you can be used to your advantage, you just need to ge them off guard once when they return and you can take the guards out leaving Cara and Chris defenseless. It would be a little risky but you are certain you could pull it off. On the other hand you really are enjoying chatting with Cara in the evenings and the food they gave you is actually sitting well and taking the edge off your hunger, why not stay with them a bit, at least until you are back to their little colony, you can decide what to do when you are there after all.
  
  > ambush them, you may like her company but you gain more from eating them
  You need to be prepared if you are going to kill them all. Cara you can use since she seems to trust you, Chris is a fool and wont be trouble. It is just the guards outside that you need to care about, you need a good opportunity to get to them before they can react.
  
  You spend the next couple of hours resting and preparing. You try some fruit from one of the bags but it tastes bad and sits horribly in your stomach as your hunger grows worse, you'll have to eat them soon. Finally you sense their approach and put on your best happy and innocent face to greet them. You think about putting out some food for them but you aren't sure how they would react to you going through their stores so you just wait instead.
  
  Cara enters first and gives you a big smile which you return with an equally big smile and nod, and you even greet Chris which somewhat surprises him but he seems happy about it. "lets get started then" You think to yourself as they sit down and Cara says that it is time for you to discuss your future with them.
  
  "Shouldn't we all be present for this?" You ask, indicating the two men standing outside with your head, "I haven't even met them yet."
  
  there is a pause and Chris replies "It's our rules, the guards stay on duty all the time and do shifts through the night time, it's the only way we have kept safe so far."
  
  > suggest you all go outside then and discuss it there. You can get close to them that way and attack now!
  "Well why don't we all go out for our chat them!" You suggest "We could sit up on the silo behind them so they could be a part of the discussion while staying on duty."
  
  The two look at each other but you see Cara wavering in your favor and push it a little "It's not as if it will be any more dangerous and I haven't exactly seen the sun in a few days" You say and immediately see the guilt working. Cara agrees and you all head outside. The guards are not so easily won over though. As you exit they spread apart. They are still close enough either side to hear what is happening and take part but they are no longer close enough to attack at the same time. You have to time your attack perfectly. You make a show of offering Cara your hand to help her out and onto the silo roof then with a flourish do the same for Chris who gives you a wry laugh, one of the guards even smirks about it, but only for a moment as you suddenly lunge at him and tackle him down.
  
  You are faster and stronger than any human so it is only a couple of seconds before his neck is snapped and you are back to your feet, spinning to charge the other guard. Sadly it seems they did not survive this long without skills and the second guard is already pointing his gun at you.
  
  You just have time to take in the horror and tears in Cara's eyes and the immediate revulsion in Chris and the guards before you hear the boom and feel the impact on your chest. You stumble back but hear the click click of a bolt action, you look up in time to take the second shot to the chest and tumble off the silo railing. You are almost grateful that you die before you hit the ground.