Chapter 344: Unacceptable Failure
"Do you think they’re still alive?" Maribel asked beside me as we moved deeper into territory neither of us had covered before.
The streets out here had a different feel to them. Less managed. Less touched. The relative cleanliness of the area around the Boardwalk and the Whitesun had a way of making you forget, temporarily, what the rest of the city actually looked like, and this was the reminder. Infected wandering in loose clusters, drawn south through Atlantic City by whatever pull the lack of barriers created on this side. The barricades to the east funneled them away from us and toward here, which meant here was exactly where they ended up accumulating.
I had my hand axe out, turning it once in my grip out of habit. I’d been relying on it less lately, the cleaner zones around the Boardwalk didn’t demand it as often, but the weight of it felt immediately right again, familiar in the way tools do when you’ve used them long enough.
We’d already put down a handful since leaving the perimeter. Nothing complicated, nothing that slowed us down much, but enough to remind me we weren’t on a casual walk.
"Don’t be negative about it," I said, answering her question.
"I asked a straightforward question," she replied, dry as ever.
"Two hours late doesn’t automatically mean the worst," I said. "Could be they got held up. Found something worth taking their time over."
I kept my voice even while I said it, but I was running the same math she was. Two hours past expected return in a city like this wasn’t nothing. The best case was exactly what I’d said, they got distracted, took longer than planned, lost track of time. The worst case was something I wasn’t ready to commit to yet, mostly because committing to it wouldn’t help anyone and we were already moving.
"Is that thing going to do anything useful?" I asked, glancing at what Maribel had brought. She was carrying a steel rod, a soli reassuring object that would do real damage to a person but almost nothing useful to an Infected. No sharp point worth mentioning. Against the ordinary ones you needed to get into the skull, and that wasn’t happening with what she was holding.
"It’s fine," she said. "You’re here to handle the killing."
"You want to hand me the entire job?"
"Is that a problem for someone with your abilities?" She asked, perfectly unbothered.
"Not usually," I said. "But if something bigger shows up, a Hybrid, I can’t be splitting my attention between fighting and making sure you’re not getting flanked with a pipe."
"Now who’s being negative?" She said.
"I’ve run into enough Hybrids in this city specifically to justify the concern," I replied. "This place has more of them than anywhere else I’ve been. You notice that?"
Maribel was quiet for a moment, stepping around something in the road without breaking pace. "You think Zakthar brought them here?"
"As weapons against us?" I considered it. "I don’t think so, no. The larger Hybrids especially, whatever they went through to become what they are, it wasn’t natural. Something created them, or at least pushed them in that direction. But from everything Kunta told me, Zakthar’s stated purpose coming here was to capture Symbiote Hosts and assist humans. Not weaponize the infected population. That would be against his wish to help humanity."
"Assist us," Maribel repeated, and the skepticism in her voice was thick enough to cut. "A Starakian coming to Earth specifically to help humanity. You actually believe that?"
"I know how it sounds," I said. "I was exactly where you are with Kunta not that long ago."
That seemed to land, even if she didn’t say anything to it.
"What I do know," I continued, "is that before Gaspar got hold of him, Zakthar handed Marlon weapons. Real ones, not human-made. That’s not nothing. Now, whether that was genuine goodwill or a calculated move to get Marlon strong enough to take Gaspar out and free him from the situation he was stuck in—"
"It was definitely the second one," Maribel said.
"I can’t argue with that," I nodded. "And it worked, partly, Marlon did manage to hurt Gaspar, right?"
"I wasn’t there for it," she said. "But yes."
"With some kind of rifle, from what I heard?" I asked, keeping my tone casual.
"Some kind of long-range weapon, yes. Clearly not manufactured anywhere on this planet," she said, nodding.
"And that collar he used on me," I said, more to myself than to her. "Designed to restrain Symbiote Hosts." I glanced over. "What else does Marlon have? Other weapons, other tools that could work against a Host?"
The look she gave me shifted almost immediately, a suspicious sideways stare.
"Why exactly do you want to know what weapons we have?"
"To kill Gaspar," I said, grumbling. "That’s it. Stop looking at me like I’m casing the place." I let a beat pass. "Think about it practically, I have the highest realistic chance of going up against him directly. Any edge I can get going into that fight is worth knowing about."
Maribel was quiet for a moment, then shook her head. "The rifle stays with us. It’s the only meaningful deterrent we have against Gaspar right now, or against any other Symbiote Host that might come through in the future. We’re not handing it over."
"Fair," I said. She wasn’t wrong and I wasn’t going to push it. "But is there anything else? Something specifically designed to work against a Host?"
She looked at me for a second.
"Are you that scared of him?" She asked.
"Saying I wasn’t scared would just be a lie," I said. "You heard what happened with Penny, right?"
Maribel nodded, and her expression lost its usual edge. "Taking control over a person like that, inserting part of a Symbiote into someone and just... puppeting them. It’s really sick."
"That’s exactly what I’m dealing with," I said. "And that’s just one thing he can do. He’s more experienced than me, by how much, I don’t even know. I’ve been at this for a few months. He’s had God knows how long to refine what he is." I shook my head slightly. "I can’t walk into that fight assuming I’ll come out on top just because I’ve won some fight before it."
"Talk to Marlon about it," Maribel said. "Seriously. From what I’ve seen, he trusts you more than he lets on. He wouldn’t be spending his own time training you otherwise, Marlon doesn’t waste effort on people he doesn’t think are worth it."
"You think he’d actually lend me something?" I asked.
"I think it’s worth asking," she said simply.
I filed it away. She wasn’t wrong about Marlon, the man didn’t do anything without a reason, and the fact that he’d been putting me through those sessions meant something, even if he’d never say it in those terms.
"The thing is," I said my expression turning complicated. "If Gaspar gets his hands on me, really gets me, not just a glancing encounter, I don’t think I walk away from that. Not the way things stand right now." I meant it completely.
"The fact that he hasn’t come out directly again has to mean something though," Maribel said. "He tried once, it didn’t go the way he planned, maybe he’s more cautious about you than you’re giving yourself credit for."
"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe he’s just waiting for the right moment and taking his time because he knows he can afford to." I paused. "Either way, if it’s just him and me, one on one with nothing else in play? I think he wins. I really think he wins that."
"You haven’t even met him face to face yet," Maribel said, rolling her eyes slightly.
"That’s kind of the point," I replied. "The fact that I already feel this outmatched before we’ve ever properly stood across from each other, that’s not nothing. That’s telling me something."
Whether it was Dullahan’s instincts bleeding into mine, or just the honest assessment of everything I’d seen and heard about Gaspar so far, the feeling was consistent and it didn’t waver when I looked at it straight. I wasn’t strong enough yet. Not for him. Not alone.
And then my mind went where it always went, Sydney, Rachel, Christopher, all of them. With the others beside me I might have better odds, but Gaspar would know that too. He’d adapt. If he could move through me, the others wouldn’t slow him down, they’d just become the next problem he solved. Taking them into that fight wasn’t a strategy, it was just spreading the damage wider.
I knew I was overprotective. I’d been told as much, more than once, in more than one way. But it wasn’t irrational, it was just math. The math said that if I failed, everyone I cared about would be left in whatever came after that. At his mercy, with nothing between them and him.
That thought was the one I couldn’t sit with. The one that made failure feel unacceptable in a way that went beyond pride or stubbornness.
"I won’t get a second chance when it actually comes down to it," I said quietly. "So I have to be ready before it does. Completely ready. And I can’t afford to fail... not because of what it means for me, but because of what it means for everyone else if I do. Everyone I care about..."
Yeah, I couldn’t fail.
The street stretched ahead of us, empty and sun-bleached and still.
Getting only silence from Maribel, I glanced sideways and found Maribel looking at me with an expression I couldn’t immediately understand.
The moment I turned toward her she looked away, fast, redirecting her gaze forward. Her cheeks seemed slightly flushed I couldn’t tell exactly.
The sun was blazing overhead, hot enough to put color in anyone’s face.
That was probably all it was.
I turned back to the road and kept walking.
