Chapter 97: A loose mouth
"We’re all going to die."
The words slipped from her lips like a casual joke, causing the four men to instantly go entirely rigid, their pupils contracting.
"Well... not all of us," April corrected loudly, her voice expanding again as she waved her hand dismissively, acting as if the end of human history were nothing more than a minor ledger adjustment. She raised a lazy finger, pointing it straight at the tycoon. "You..."
She shifted her finger to the assistant. "You..."
She pointed to the heir. "You..."
She pointed to the mafia king. "You... and me," she whispered, tapping her own chest. "We are going to live. You know why? Because we are filthy, disgustingly rich."
She let out a sharp, mocking snicker, followed by a sudden, heavy hiccup.
"We can afford every single state-of-the-art resource, every bunker, and every drop of purification water required to make sure we don’t get swept away by the blood and die like dogs. It’s beautiful."
She shook her head slowly, her expression turning distant as she stood up on her knees, her body subtly swaying as if she were dancing to an invisible, non-existent melody.
"And while the entire old world goes up in massive flames... while the streets flood with screams and unimaginable suffering... we’ll be sitting high up in our safe haven with our loved ones. Well, your loved ones cause I don’t have any. I’ll have my dog though," she tittered. "We’re all going to casually watch it all unfold. Because no one can stop it. No one knows how it began."
She aggressively turned back to face them, her voice cracking as she began to mimic voices she had heard in a past life. "They all said it! No one heard about where it started! No one knew when it started or how it started!"
Her breathing suddenly turned frantic, her chest heaving violently under the satin fabric. "On that day, a massive big bang exploded—WHOOSH!—and just like that, the streets flooded with dozens. And from dozens came hundreds. And from hundreds came thousands!" she began to scream out the words, her heart racing at a terrifying velocity as the deep, buried trauma of a ten-year wasteland came rushing back into her intoxicated brain. "Chaos! Pain! Absolute slaughter! It was survival! It was kill or be killed!"
She dropped to her knees on the table, her eyes wide, glassy, and suddenly brimming with heavy, hot tears that began to stream down her clean cheeks. "Eat or be eaten!"
"Hey," Nat’s deep voice cut through her panic.
The Golden Dragon stood up smoothly, stepping directly to the edge of the table. He reached out his massive hands, his face completely devoid of its usual playful mockery.
He looked entirely solemn, a rare, uncharacteristic flash of intense concern crossing his features. "I don’t want to hear it anymore. Just let it go. Stop talking."
He wasn’t saying it because he was terrified of her horrific prediction. Rather, it was because of what he was currently looking at. The cold, untouchable seer was completely losing her mind right in front of him, fracturing under the weight of a ghost they couldn’t see and it was broken funny.
As much as he loved to watch others suffer, this one just made him uncomfortable.
April took a panicked step backward on the wood, her trembling fingers lifting to touch her own cheek. It was wet. She could feel it.
"Ah... tears," she whispered, her voice cracking beautifully with a raw, ancient despair. "Funny... the last time I had these tears... it was..."
Her mind violently flashed to the image of a desolate, ash-covered wasteland, the sky that looked like an open wound—the taste of iron in her mouth, the sharp sting of betrayal from people she thought were comrades, and the agonizing sensation of her own body being torn apart before her consciousness was forcefully ripped back in time.
She shuddered so violently her teeth could clatter.
"Bastards," she hissed under her breath. "Bastards! All of them. They left me. They actually left me. They... Argh!" She screamed.
Nat didn’t wait any longer. "Snap out of it!" he yelled.
The other seemed to be drawn into her prediction and screamed that they lost themselves for a moment.
Before April could take another step into the void, Nat shot his hands forward, firmly gripping her waist and effortlessly lifting her entirely off the table, and flinging her over his shoulder.
"Stop walking," he rumbled, his grip iron-clad and unyielding as he held her off the floor. "And stop talking. No one’s coming to get you."
April went silent, her body still visibly trembling but she began to feel something else.
"H-hey, I wouldn’t do that to a drunk person if I were you," Alexander said and Nat snarled.
"Huh? What’s that? I don’t see you trying to calm her down with other methods, do I?" He asked, putting on an attitude even now.
"No, that... that’s not it. Right now, she’s going to..." Before Alexander’s message could get properly added on, April understood what that feeling swirling inside her was.
"Hey, speak up or I can’t hear ya." Nat said but just then, April wretched and everyone paused.
That’s right. The feeling April felt just now was the churning sensation the stomach gave when it was about to expel the uncomfortable chemicals back where it came.
She threw up and it was not very nice.
Nat Collins stood completely frozen on the plush carpet. The terrifying, all-powerful Golden Dragon of the city’s underground had finally met an enemy his fists couldn’t crush: a wave of warm, half-digested truffled tartlets and vintage bourbon.
The expensive crimson velvet of his tailored suit trousers had just been executed in the most agonizing way possible.
Alexander slowly slid down into the cushions, pulling his knees up and pressing a hand over his mouth to suppress a chaotic mix of intense horror and hysterical laughter.
"I... I tried to tell you," he squeaked out, his face turning red from the sheer effort of not bursting into a full-blown cackle. "You never flip a drunk person upside down. That’s a basic rule as far as human anatomy is concerned."
