Harem Apocalypse: My Seed is the Cure?!

Chapter 355: Atlantic Theatre [8]

My hand rested on the door handle without pushing it open. I stood there for a second, running through it one more time in my head before committing to anything."The Hybrid in the corridor, you saw it before I pulled you in here, right?" I asked Maribel.

"You didn’t exactly give me time to see anything," she replied. "You had my arm halfway out of the socket before I could blink."

"There’s a Hybrid in the corridor. Large one. Right end of the hall passage," I said, skipping past that.

"So we deal with it and move through." She said it like it was straightforward. "You’ve handled one before, haven’t you?"

"That’s not the problem." I turned slightly toward her, keeping my voice low. "The Hybrid I can deal with. The issue is what comes after. Between dealing with the Hybrid and that window closing, we’ll be standing in a corridor full of regular Infected with no clean exit, and Romero’s group is somewhere also there." I let that sit for a second. "If he picks that exact moment to come back through this floor with his men and they start firing, I can’t respond the way I need to. Everything falls apart at once."

Maribel absorbed that. "So what do you want to do?"

"Draw him down," I said. "I pull his attention, lead him to the ground floor, deal with him there. Lower floor gives us more space, less risk of Romero walking into it, and the Infected situation is more manageable down there after what we already cleared." I paused. "Then we come back up and go straight for Hall Seven."

She considered it for barely a second before nodding. "That’s actually a good plan."

"You could stay here while I handle it," I added. "Lock the door behind me, wait it out."

"No." She said it immediately. "It’s still a Hybrid. Things go sideways and you need someone there."

I looked at her for a moment.

"Fine. Then stay beside me and don’t get separated," I said.

"How many times are you going to say that to me?"

"As many times as it takes, given how insistently you keep following me into dangerous buildings," I replied.

She scoffed but didn’t argue.

"Ready?" I asked.

She gave a short nod, rod in one hand, rifle in the other.

I pushed the door open and we stepped out into the corridor, pulling it shut quietly behind us. The nearest Infected registered us within seconds, heads turning, that sluggish mechanical reorientation they all did when something living entered their range.

I didn’t look at them. I looked straight down the corridor toward the far end.

The Hybrid stood with its back to us, enormous and still, head nearly brushing the ceiling. Then I let Dullahan surface, not held back, not managed, just open. The energy rolled off my arm and the Hybrid’s head snapped around like something had spoken directly into whatever passed for its brain.

Its dull white eyes found me across the length of the corridor.

Then it moved. Not the lurching stumble of regular Infected, something heavier and more purposeful, shouldering through the bodies between us without slowing, scattering them like they weighed nothing.

"Now!"

We were already running. I cut through the Infected in our path with the axe, clearing just enough space to keep our momentum without breaking stride. The stairs came up quickly and we hit them hard, taking them two at a time, the Hybrid’s footfalls shaking the floor somewhere behind us and growing louder.

We reached the ground floor and I turned the corner, pulling Maribel into the alcove beside the stairwell base and pressing us both against the wall.

I peered out.

A beat of silence. Then the Hybrid came off the bottom step in a single drop, hitting the ground floor with an impact that shuddered through the concrete underfoot and sent a crack running along the nearest wall tile. It straightened up to its full height, nearly brushing the light fixtures, and its white eyes swept the space until they locked onto me.

It started forward.

I waited. Counted the steps. Let it commit to the angle, let it get close enough that there was no margin for error in either direction.

Then I froze time.

The world stopped mid-motion, the Hybrid suspended in its own forward lunge, one massive foot lifted, the air around it still. I stepped out from the alcove into the frozen silence and moved fast. I brought the hand axe down first in a deep vertical strike at the junction of neck and shoulder, driving it in hard, then pulled back and let the wind blades surge full through my right arm, dense, sharp, everything I had in one controlled release, and swung through the same line.

The neck split cleanly despite the thickness of it. I stepped back, returned to Maribel’s side, and let time go.

The world exhaled back into motion.

For a half second nothing happened, just the Hybrid still moving forward on momentum it no longer had a head to direct.

Then the head dropped. Hit the floor with a wet thud that echoed off every hard surface in the lobby. The body followed a breath later, crashing down, the impact reverberating through the soles of our feet.

Silence settled over the ground floor.

"What just—" Maribel started beside me.

"The Hybrid’s dead. Let’s move back up," I said, already turning toward the stairs.

"W...Wait, what?" She followed and then stopped.

I glanced back. She was standing at the edge of the alcove staring at the headless mass on the ground with her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open.

"H...How—" She didn’t finish the sentence.

"Come on," I said.

She pulled her gaze away and followed, though I noticed she gave the body a wide berth as she passed it.

"I didn’t even see you kill it," Maribel said, still looking back over her shoulder as we moved away. "One second it was there and then—" She gestured vaguely at the space where the body had dropped.

Because time had stopped existing for a few seconds, but that wasn’t a conversation I needed to have right now.

"Stay focused," I said. "We’re moving."

She turned back around and fell into step beside me as we hit the stairs. "Straight to Hall Seven, right? That’s the plan?"

I didn’t answer immediately.

"Ryan."

"I don’t know yet," I said.

She stopped on the step and looked at me like I’d said something in a different language. "What do you mean you don’t know? Those men could already be pulling that battery out of the wall right now while we’re standing here!"

"I know that."

"Then what are we waiting for—"

"I need a few minutes before I go back in heavy," I cut her off. "After what I just used downstairs, I need the window to close before I push into whatever’s waiting up there. If we walk straight into Romero’s group right now I don’t have what I need to handle it properly."

She opened her mouth and closed it. I could see her working through it, the urgency pulling against the logic.

She didn’t finish the argument.

She just turned and walked ahead up the stairs.

"Maribel—"

She was already gone.

Moving at pace, rod in hand and rifle in the other, not looking back.

"Damn it." I followed immediately, pushing my right arm to readiness out of reflex, letting whatever I had left coil and sit ready even if it wasn’t at full capacity. It would have to be enough.

We took the right path on the upper floor. Infected in the corridor, fewer than before, but present. I cleared them quickly, moving through without breaking stride, keeping the noise to a minimum.

Then the gunshots came.

Not ahead of us. From the other corridor, the right branch, the one we’d avoided. A burst of fire, voices overlapping, the sounds of Romero’s group in contact with something.

"Maribel, get back!" I stepped in front of her and she obeyed without argument, pressing herself behind my shoulder.

I planted my feet and readied my fist, watching the stairwell junction ahead, expecting Romero’s men to come through it toward us.

Instead there were Infected. Pouring up the stairs first, driven ahead like a wave, pushed forward by the commotion behind them.

And then Romero’s group came up through them, shoving through the Infected, weapons up. Romero himself turned the corner and his eyes found me across the corridor in less than a second. The smirk came back, the one that didn’t reach his eyes and his rifle swung up.

I didn’t wait for him to pull the trigger.

I drove my fist forward and released everything I had.

The shockwave cracked through the corridor powerfully in a dense concussive burst that hit the air and everything in it simultaneously. The wind blades tore forward in a wide arc, shredding through the Infected clustered between us and catching Romero’s incoming fire mid-air, the bullets deflected and lost in the chaos. Bodies went back. Men stumbled. Romero’s group broke apart under the force of it, scrambling, and before they could regroup they turned and ran up the next flight of stairs.

The corridor went still.

I stood there and felt exhaustion gripping at me. My vision held steady but my breath was coming harder than it should, and there was a greyness at the edges of my awareness that told me I’d drawn down further than I liked. The Time Freeze had already taken its share. That punch had taken most of what was left.

Maybe I overdid as well to make sure the blades could blast away the bullets.

"They’re going up! We have to follow them!" Maribel moved forward immediately.

"No!" I caught her arm and pulled her sideways, pushing through the nearest door which was a restroom and closed it behind us.

"What are you doing?! We have to stop them before they reach Hall Seven!" She turned on me, voice rising.

"I need to rest!" I snapped.

She stopped. Looked at my face properly for the first time in the last few minutes.

Whatever she saw there was enough. The color had drained out of me more than I’d realized, I could feel it in the coolness of my own skin, the slight unsteadiness behind my eyes. The fatigue wasn’t hiding anymore.

She closed her mouth, gave a small, quiet nod.

I leaned back against the wall and focused on breathing slowly, letting the body do what it needed to do. The Time Freeze window was still open. I wasn’t going anywhere near Hall Seven until it closed and I had it back.

Romero could have his head start.

I wasn’t going up there without everything available to me. I wasn’t taking that risk.