Harem Apocalypse: My Seed is the Cure?!

Chapter 356: Atlantic Theatre [9]

The restroom was small and smelled like standing water and old tile grout, but it was quiet and it was closed and right now that was enough.I stood with my back against the wall, breathing steadily, letting my body work through what I’d spent. Maribel stood a few feet away, watching me with an expression she wasn’t quite managing to keep neutral.

"Does it really take that much out of you?" She asked.

"What did you think was happening?" I said. "I’m pushing gusts of compressed wind strong enough to tear through flesh and deflect bullets. That doesn’t come from nowhere."

"I know, I saw it, believe me, it’s not something you just watch and forget." She crossed her arms, leaning slightly against the opposite wall. "But you’re strong. I assumed..."

"Being strong doesn’t exempt you from consequences." I pushed my hair back from my face, feeling the sweat in it. "The more an ability bends what’s natural, the more it forces the world to do something it wouldn’t do on its own, the heavier it costs. I can fight Infected for an hour straight and barely feel it because that’s just strength, just stamina. But this is different. Against real threats, against people with guns, I have to go further and the body registers every bit of it." I let out a slow breath. "Use too much too fast and I’m useless to everyone."

The Time Freeze was the worst of it, the most unnatural thing I could do, the one that reached furthest into something that wasn’t meant to be touched. Every use carved out a real chunk. The wind blades were costly too but manageable in isolation. Back to back like that, one immediately after the other, with almost no recovery window between them, I’d felt the floor tilt slightly when Romero’s group disappeared up the stairs. That wasn’t something I wanted to repeat.

"I’m sorry," Maribel said quietly.

I looked at her. "For what exactly?"

"For pushing ahead when you said to wait. I made it worse." She said it simply, without making a performance of it.

"It’s done," I said. "And I would have gone regardless, I need Theo and the others out and I need Callighan’s people to leave this building empty-handed. Neither of those things changes."

She nodded slowly. Then, barely a beat later — "So when are we going?"

I stared at her.

"You came back around fast."

"We’re running out of time," she said, unapologetic.

"Two minutes," I said. "Just two minutes."

She accepted that with a nod and moved to the door, easing it open just a crack and positioning herself to watch the corridor. If Romero’s group came back down we’d see them, though if they had another exit route somewhere in the upper floor we might not. The building wasn’t enormous but we couldn’t be certain of every layout detail.

I focused on my breathing and watched the back of my hand.

The Time Freeze tattoo had gone dim after the last use, a faint, spent quality to the marks that I’d learned to read the way you read a gauge. Slowly, as my breathing evened out and the grey edges pulled back from my vision, the glow began returning to it. Not full yet. Close enough.

I pushed off the wall.

"Let’s go."

Maribel pulled the door open and I stepped out first, senses pushed to their ceiling immediately, sounds separating, distances sharpening, every corridor sound catalogued and assessed in the space of a breath. Nothing immediate. We moved.

No rushing this time. Fast and controlled, footsteps kept light, eyes scanning every junction. The remaining Infected on this floor I dealt with cleanly as they appeared, axe work, quiet, nothing that drew more than necessary. We left them behind us and kept climbing.

The upper floor landing told its own story before we even reached the corridor. Infected bodies scattered across the ground, put down messily, the aftermath of a group moving through in a hurry, not particularly careful about the noise they made doing it. Romero’s work. He’d punched straight through to his objective.

Hall Seven was right there at the end of the corridor.

I moved up to it quickly, pressed myself to the wall beside the door frame, reached out and drove my boot into the door, slamming it open hard, then immediately pulled back flat against the wall.

The gunshot came instantly. It punched through the space I’d have been standing in and cracked into the opposite wall, scattering plaster.

"You made it!" Romero’s voice carried out from inside, loud and almost cheerful. "Took you long enough. I was starting to think you’d run off."

I stayed against the wall, not giving him an angle.

"Show yourself or I start feeding your friends to whatever’s walking around in here. You want to stand out there and listen to that? Your call."

I risked a look. One quick angle through the open doorway.

The hall was large, another full cinema space, rows of seats stretching back, a wide stage area at the front below the screen. Romero and his remaining men had positioned themselves on the stage, elevated, backs to the screen. The Infected in the hall were moving through the rows but the seats themselves, some collapsed, some pushed forward into the aisles, were creating natural barriers, funneling the Infected into confused clusters rather than letting them reach the stage directly. Whether Romero’s men had done that or just gotten lucky with the layout, it was buying them a defensible position.

And there was Theo. And one other, Paul, I was almost certain.

Only two.

My jaw tightened. I didn’t let myself think about what that meant for the third.

Romero had Paul locked against him, one arm across his throat, using him as a full body shield. His face was completely obscured behind Paul’s head, not a gap, not an angle, nothing. He’d positioned himself perfectly.

He was really taking me serious as expected.

"Come on, I’m not a patient man," Romero called out.

Theo’s voice cut across the hall before he could say anything else. "Ryan, leave! Just go! Don’t worry about us, get out of here!"

"Yeah! Get out of here!" Paul added, strained under Romero’s grip but loud enough. "Go!"

I pulled back from the doorway and pressed against the wall, running through it fast.

The Time Freeze was back. I could feel it, fully restored, the tattoo warm and steady on the back of my hand.

But using it here was a problem. Even with time stopped, getting across that hall to Romero meant crossing open space, passing through Infected, and reaching him before he could put Paul between me and any action I tried to take. The geometry of it was wrong. I’d have to move Paul to get a clean line and moving Paul meant handling Paul and Romero simultaneously in the same frozen window.

If I miscalculated by a step, if time resumed a half second early, Paul was the one who paid for it.

I stayed flat against the wall and thought hard.

The clean solution was right there in my head and completely out of reach.

Freeze time, cross the hall, put Romero down before he could use Paul as anything other than dead weight. Simple in concept. Impossible in execution. I wasn’t a trained marksman and even if I were, Romero had made sure there wasn’t a clean angle on him from any position, Paul’s body covering him completely, head tucked behind Paul’s shoulder, nothing exposed. He’d lost most of an ear to me already and he’d learned from it. He wasn’t giving me a second shot.

And even if I somehow threaded it, even if it worked out and I got to him, there were seven of them total, Romero included. The remaining six had Theo. The moment anything went wrong, Theo was leverage or he was dead, and I couldn’t guarantee which one faster than they could pull a trigger.

Seven against two, hostages in the middle, and my best ability on a timer.

We were losing this standoff just by standing in it.

"Should I start counting, Ryan?" Romero’s voice drifted out from the stage, warm with amusement. "I find it helps people make decisions faster."

I said nothing and kept thinking.

"Actually—" His tone shifted, suddenly reasonable. "I’ll make this easy for you. You and your friend walk in, you don’t try anything clever, and we walk out. You get your two people back in one piece and everyone goes home. Not a bad deal honestly."

"I don’t trust you," I said.

"Yeah, I figured you’d say that." He sighed like I was being tiresome. "Here’s the thing though, you don’t have to trust me, you just have to do the math. Because the alternative is listening to Paul here scream while I introduce him to whatever’s wandering around in those rows. And I don’t think you want that on your conscience."

I turned to Maribel. She met my eyes, already reading the situation, jaw set.

"Stay behind me," I said quietly.

She nodded once. Tense but holding.

"Lower your weapons first," I called into the hall.

"Get in, Ryan," he replied.

A moment passed. Then I watched through the doorway as Romero lowered his rifle, and his men followed. Not fully, nothing about their posture suggested they were done but enough to read as compliance.

I stepped through the door with Maribel a half step behind me.

Romero’s smirk widened the moment he saw us. He shifted his weight, adjusting his position with Paul still locked in front of him, maintaining the coverage. He was good at this part.

"Middle rows, left side," he said, gesturing with a tilt of his head. "Move."

We walked. I kept my eyes moving, Romero, his men, Theo, the Infected still walked through the seat rows around us. Three of them had broken through the chairs stopping them and were drifting our direction, drawn by the Symbiote inside me.

"Don’t do anything yet, Ryan." Romero’s voice carried a smile. The muzzle came back up, resting lightly against Paul’s temple. "We’re not finished here."

I stopped in the middle rows and kept my fists loose at my sides, watching.

Romero began moving his group backward in a slow, organized retreat, up the slim side stairs toward the upper double doors at the front of the hall, men flanking him, Paul still between him and the world.

"Romero! Infected incoming from the corridor!"

One of his men at the door, voice tight.

"Let them through and throw them down," Romero said without hesitating.

"You serious?!"

"Do it."

They moved into position without further argument, stepping to either side of the doorway, letting the Infected funnel through one at a time, then catching each one between two men and pitching them forward down the stepped aisle. The Infected tumbled and rolled through the rows, disoriented, before righting themselves and locking onto the nearest source of warmth.

Us.

I caught Maribel’s eye and tilted my head slightly, she understood, stepping down through the rows with me, putting more distance between us and the growing number of Infected being deposited into the hall. We were buying space. Not enough, but some.

"That’s the last of them."

One of Romero’s men called it.

The corridor behind them seemed clear for now.

"Perfect." Romero laughed. He pulled the muzzle away from Paul’s temple. "Good luck, Ryan."

I saw it coming a half second before it happened and couldn’t do anything about it.

He planted his hand against Paul’s back and shoved.

Above, the man besides him, holding Theo did the same.

Both of them went down the stairs in a tumble, hitting the rows hard, rolling through the seats. Theo grabbed a seat back and caught himself. Paul went further before he stopped, winded, tangled in an armrest.

The double doors swung shut with Romero’s fading laughter in the background.