GTS Syndrome Vol 2 Ch 1: The Remembered Things!

(Braden)

Sometimes, when I sleep, I dream about that first night.

The night everything changed.

I don't want to. God, I try not to. But my mind always drifts back there. Back to the night of flames. The night the sky cracked open like glass and spilled something wrong into our world.

It started with a light—this eerie greenish glow that rolled over the clouds like slow lightning. No thunder. No warning. Just light. And then snow. But it wasn't normal snow. It fell slow, thick, like ash—green as poison and soft like it was alive. I remember standing in the street, staring up, confused. Everyone was confused.

And then came the screaming.

I remember the glowing bodies. Not just of strangers, but people I knew—my mom, my sister, my friends. Their skin lit up like it was catching fire from the inside, veins glowing, eyes burning with colors I didn't have names for. And then the cracking started. Not from outside. From inside the houses.

Creaking walls. Groaning wood. Then boom—a house exploded, like something huge had just punched through it. And that was exactly what happened. Hands. Legs. Bodies that didn't fit inside human homes anymore.

The women were changing.

They were the first.

I remember their screams—how they went from confused to agonized. Their bodies stretching, swelling, breaking, and rebuilding all in seconds. The worst part was how many of them didn't make it. Their hearts couldn't take it, or their minds just snapped mid-change. They died in piles, blood and green snow mixing into something foul.

But the ones who did survive... they didn't stay the same.

They weren't people anymore.

I remember their eyes. Those goddamn eyes. Glowing crimson, wild and blank. Like nothing was left inside except rage and hunger.

That's when the real nightmare began.

They hunted us.

Not like animals. Animals kill clean. These... these were worse. They chased the men through the streets, massive and fast, slamming their bare feet into the pavement, tearing apart buildings like paper. I saw a guy try to hide in a gas station. One of them—naked, feral, her hair matted in blood and snow—just ran at it, shoulder-first, like a wrecking ball. The whole place came down in seconds.

She found him crawling out of the rubble. And then...

She ate him.

Not quick. Not clean. Her teeth tore into him like butter, pulling pieces off, chewing through screams. There was nothing human left in their faces. Just red eyes and blood.

I watched my neighbor's wife crush him under her heel like he was an insect. Another woman grabbed her brother and ripped him in half with her bare hands. No hesitation. No mercy.

That's the thing I remember most. Not the fire. Not the light. Not even the snow.

The madness.

The women changed. Into something massive, strong, and completely insane. And we? We were just prey.

That was the first night. The night the world stopped being ours.

And the dreams keep pulling me back.

I still see her face.

Even now.

Through all the blood, the fire, the screaming—I see her.

Smiling down through the flames like it was a dream she'd waited her whole life to have. That smile didn't look real. It didn't even look human. But it was her. Georgia.

Her face...

Those eyes of hers glowed like the others—crimson and burning—but there was something different behind them. Like she was there, still there, just barely. She looked at me and I swear—for one second—it wasn't madness. It was something worse.

It was understanding.

She knew what she was doing.

And she smiled anyway.

I hate saying this—I hate admitting it—but I'm alive because of Georgia.

That night, when everything went to hell and the world flipped inside out... she found me.

She could've crushed me. Hell, she almost did.

I still remember how small I felt—how helpless—laying there in the snow while her shadow blotted out the firelight. Her body, massive and wild, towered over me like a living nightmare. Her footfalls made the earth tremble, and when she knelt down, the ground cracked beneath her knees.

Her fingers wrapped around me like iron bands, her nails digging in, and she squeezed.

Bones popped. My ribs bent. I couldn't breathe.

And she laughed.

God, she laughed.

Not like the girl I used to know. Not like the girl who used to hum when she brushed her hair or whispered stupid secrets at sleepovers.

This laugh was loud, broken, too big for her mouth. Like the sound of a person tearing themselves apart from the inside.

"I LOVE YOU, BRADEN."

That voice...

It echoed through everything. Through the burning street. Through my skull. Through my goddamn soul.

She said it like a promise. Like a curse.

And I don't remember what happened after that.

Just the heat of her skin. The pain in my chest. The fire curling up around us.

And her face—her awful, smiling face—burned into my mind forever.

I jolted awake with a gasp, heart pounding, lungs dragging in air like I'd been drowning. For a second, I didn't know where I was. The sky above was dark, painted with early morning clouds and streaks of fading starlight. Cool wind brushed across my face, carrying the scent of ash and pine.

I sat up slow, bones creaking, and realized I'd been lying on a flat boulder. Around me, piles of jagged rocks rose like broken teeth, towering high on either side. We'd camped in a gorge—again.

My back ached like hell.

"Are you okay?"

I blinked, turned toward the voice.

Penelope.

She was sitting a few feet away, legs crossed, arms resting on her knees. Her long black hair was tied up, and her face was half-lit by the weak gray light of dawn.

"Yeah," I mumbled, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. "Just another nightmare."

She nodded like she understood, eyes soft but tired. Neither of us had really slept easy since we left.

I stretched, cracked my neck, then dropped my hands into my lap. "Hey, Pen... where are we even going?"

She looked at me, quiet for a moment. I could see the hesitation in her eyes, like she wasn't sure if she should even tell me.

"It's been almost half a month since we left my home," I said, my voice a little more tired than I meant it to be. "We just keep moving, and I don't know where this ends."

Penelope exhaled slowly, looking off toward the rising sun.

"We're going to mine," she said finally. "My home."

Her home.

I didn't say anything for a second, just sat there feeling the breeze cut across the rocks, carrying the weight of that one simple sentence.

Her home.