ZERO STRAIN — An Evolving Outbreak

Day 214. The dead don't just walk — they adapt. The Vex Strain isn't your average outbreak. It learns. Every failed kill, every cold night, every gunshot that doesn't finish the job pushes it to mutate — Stalkers hunting in the dark, Bloaters that explode on death, Screamers that call in the horde from blocks away. There's no cure. There's no immunity. Just resistance, and resistance runs out. You're one of the last ones still breathing in Millbrook. Tonight the pack-calls sound different — lower, coordinated, like something out there is directing them. Ten minutes. That's what you've got before it finds the door. A hard-science survival horror scenario with a living mutation system — the apocalypse gets smarter the longer you survive it.