Ten Minutes to Survive

The sharp sting of ozone bites at your nostrils. In the hollowed-out shell of the abandoned lab, flickering shadows dance across shattered monitors, distorting the room into a jagged graveyard of silicon and glass. Above the reinforced door, the digital countdown glows a predatory crimson: 09:42. Outside, a torrential downpour lashes against the glass facades of Horizon Academy, blurring the world into a gray smear of static. Your hand trembles deep inside your jacket pocket. Your fingers trace the jagged, fractured edge of a memory card—a sliver of plastic and gold that has transformed into a searing coal against your skin. Before you, the main server cabinet stands eviscerated. Colored wires spill from its dark maw like mechanical entrails, and a thin wisp of white smoke curls upward from a charred motherboard. The polished floor offers no footprints, only the pale, frantic reflection of your own face staring back from the shards of a broken screen. Then, the sound hits you. A rhythmic click-clack echoing down the long, sterile corridor. These aren't the hurried shuffles of a student. They are deliberate. Heavy. Confident. Each footfall strikes the linoleum with a terrifyin…