Chapter Text
The game was still on.
That was the wrongness of it.
It was the Bell Centre, a Friday night in Montreal, New York in town. Full house. Rivalry energy. The kind of game that usually burned hot and clean and left everything else outside the glass.
Shane was on the ice when the crowd began to fracture.
At first it was just noise—too loud in the wrong places, uneven surges that didn’t match the play. He tracked the puck through a rush, cut back hard at the blue line, felt a body glance off his shoulder. Muscle memory held. Geometry. Speed. Contact. He stayed where he was supposed to be.
Then he looked up.
Sections of the lower bowl were standing all at once. Not cheering. Pointing. Phones lifted. Ushers clustered at stairwells instead of aisles, radios tight to their mouths. A man near the glass went down and didn’t get back up. A medic knelt—and then recoiled, hands snapping up as if burned.
The whistle blew.
Boos followed, automatic. Habit. Montreal didn’t like interruptions.
Play restarted. It shouldn’t have. It did.
Shane’s ears began to ring. High and thin, like the start of a concussion. The sound of the arena flattened, compressed, as if someone had wrapped the world in padding. He stayed on the ice because that was what you did. He skated his lane. He made the read half a beat late and corrected.
Two days earlier had been Boston. Ilya’s home.
Bread crisping in an oven. Melted cheese. Tuna. Ginger ale sweating onto a coaster. Hot sex, napping in each other’s arms. His name, spoken carefully—Shane—like it was something chosen, not assumed. He had said Ilya back without meaning to. He had panicked afterward, because of course he had. He had left.
He felt ashamed about fleeing. But it had been the right thing to do. It had been too much all of a sudden. Too many forbidden emotions passing between Shane and Ilya.
He didn’t think about it now. He refused to.
Another scream tore through the bowl. Closer this time.
The whistle shrieked again.
The players from both teams stood, unsure what to do.
Hayden skated closer to Shane and tapped his stick on his calf. “You ok? What do you think is going on?”
“I dunno,” Shane said, eyes intently scanning the arena around them.
The Zamboni gate opened.
Routine, his brain supplied. Ice issue. Delay.
The driver ran out.
He made it three steps before he fell. He slid on his side, leaving a dark streak across the ice. Blood soaked his shirt and ran from his hands. His mouth was open wide enough that Shane could see his teeth. The sound coming out of him didn’t stop.
The arena broke.
People surged away from the glass. Someone vaulted the railing and slipped, scrambling. Security hesitated. The driver tried to stand and failed.
Two figures followed him through the gate. Then another. They moved without urgency. Without coordination.
Shane watched in horror as a little girl fell down the stairs and didn’t get up.
The horn blared. Long. Unbroken.
That was it. That was the end of the game against New York. The end of pretending this was still hockey.
“Off,” Hayden shouted, even as he was skating right next to Shane. “To the locker room, hurry!”
At the back of his mind he registered the other team skating off the ice too; their captain, Scott Hunter, was the last to leave the ice.
Shane skated in last too.
In the locker room his hands felt thick, uncooperative. He didn’t remember the moments after he came off the ice, only stopping and bending. Laces. Fingers slipping. Around him, the team splintered—French and English colliding, voices sharp with panic.
“Qu’est-ce qui se passe—”
“Lock the doors—”
“Get your skates off—”
The smell hit him. Blood. Metallic. Sweet. It turned his stomach.
The ringing in his ears spiked again. His chest tightened. Too much sound. Too many bodies. His breath went shallow and fast, a familiar edge of panic creeping in. He focused on the skates at his feet and tried not to think about names.
Hayden was there, close. He didn’t explain. He didn’t argue. He took Shane’s wrist—steady pressure—and kept him moving. Skates off. Pads stay. Stick in hand.
The locker room was chaos in a box. Lockers slammed. Helmets hit the floor. Phones lit faces too pale. Someone was crying. Someone else was laughing, high and wrong.
A crash echoed in the hall. Screaming. Close.
“Back,” Hayden said. “Maintenance.”
They pulled on what they could. Shane shoved his arms into his parka over his pads, fabric scraping. A beanie jammed down over his ears, muting the world a fraction. He welcomed it. He didn’t realize until later that his phone and his car keys were already in his coat pocket—that he’d brought them without knowing he’d need them later.
They pushed into the service corridor. Concrete. Oil. Dust. The ringing pulsed. Shane fixed on Hayden’s back and followed.
A door ahead of them burst open.
Scott Hunter came through it at a run.
He was still in full hockey gear. No skates. No shoes. Just socks slapping concrete as he caught himself against the wall. There was blood on his sleeve that wasn’t his. His eyes were sharp, almost feral, stripped down to survival.
“Do you know how to get out?” Scott said. No greeting. No hesitation. “Not the main exits. It’s too dangerous. My team—” He cut himself off, jaw tightening. “It’s gone.”
Something slammed into the door behind him. Once. Twice. Metal screamed.
Scott didn’t look back. “Fuck.”
Hayden turned and went. Scott fell in without question.
They ran.
Out into the Montreal night. Cold air cut through sweat and panic. Sirens braided the streets. The crowd outside the Bell Centre had lost shape—people running, falling, not getting back up. Someone tried to climb a barricade and was pulled down.
“My car, there,” Shane said, grabbing Scott’s sleeve and hauling him sideways. “Now.”
“Let me drive,” Hayden said, pushing Shane to the side. “You drive like a grandma.”
They piled in. Hayden floored it. Something hit the trunk hard enough to rock the car. He didn’t slow.
They didn’t speak until the arena was blocks behind them.
Scott bent forward, hands on his knees. “I didn’t bring my phone,” he said, like he was inventorying damage. “Didn’t have time.”
Shane nodded. His own phone pressed warm against his thigh through the parka. He hadn’t known it was there.
“I need to tell you guys something,” Scott said.
“Go,” Hayden said.
“Before the game,” Scott said. “I got a text. New York. From a friend. Said they were attacked. Said they were going to the hospital.” He swallowed. “Said someone bit his wrist.”
The word bit stayed in the air.
Scott looked between them. “Could it be related?”
Shane and Hayden met his eyes through the front mirror.
“Probably,” Hayden said. “It was in the news this morning that riots took place in every big city in North America.”
“Fuck. Kip…” Scott hung his head and wiped tears from his eyes.
No one asked who Kip was.
Silence filled the car. Headlights cut a narrow tunnel through the dark.
Shane unlocked his phone.
Messages stacked on messages. Alerts. Missed calls. Noise.
He scrolled past it until a name stopped him.
Lily.
WhatsApp.
Shane. Stay safe. I’m coming to the Cottage.
Two days after tuna melts and ginger ale. Something fundamental had shifted. Shane had fled.
Warmth cut through the panic so suddenly it hurt. He didn’t let himself think about what it meant that Ilya knew where he would go. Or that he had used his name again.
He knew Ilya was flying to Ottawa tonight. He had a game scheduled against the Centaurs tomorrow. Guess that’s not happening.
Shane didn’t reply immediately.
The signal dropped a second later.
Hayden took a turn too fast and swore. Scott stared at the floor, shoulders finally starting to shake.
Shane reached back, dragged his extra sports bag onto the seat, unzipped it. He shoved a pair of indoor trainers at Scott.
“Here,” he said. “They’ll do.”
Scott nodded once and pulled them on.
Hayden put the radio on. A message kept replaying.
⸻
This is an emergency broadcast from Public Safety Canada.
This message is being transmitted on all available radio frequencies.
Authorities are responding to multiple, simultaneous incidents across major metropolitan areas. These incidents involve extreme violence and are believed to be linked to a rapidly spreading medical emergency.
If you are currently indoors, remain inside. Lock all doors and windows. Barricade entrances if possible.
If you are outdoors, avoid crowds and seek shelter immediately. Do not approach injured individuals unless you can do so safely.
Individuals who have been bitten or exposed to bodily fluids may become aggressive and unpredictable. Do not attempt to restrain them.
Emergency services are overwhelmed. Assistance may be delayed or unavailable.
Travel between cities is not advised. Airspace over several regions has been restricted.
Further instructions will follow when available.
Repeat: This is an emergency broadcast from Public Safety Canada.
_____
Hayden turned the volume down, but the words kept echoing in the car, thin and metallic.
Shane didn’t really hear the rest.
He kept replaying a different message in his mind. The world outside the windshield blurred at the edges, like a bad signal dropping in and out. He might have been dissociating from the apocalypse.
Get to the Cottage.
Get Mum and Dad.
Wait for Ilya.
The road narrowed. The headlights cut a clean line through the dark.
The radio continued to murmur warnings Shane couldn’t hold onto.
He held onto that instead.
Outside, Montreal fell away into darkness.