Chapter 352: Atlantic Theatre [5]
I got the door shut behind us without making enough noise to matter, or at least I hoped so. I stood there for a second with my hand still pressed against it, listening for any shift in the corridor outside. The heavy dragging footsteps of the Hybrid, the wet shuffle of the Infected around it. Nothing changed in the rhythm out there. We hadn’t been seen.
I let out a quiet breath.
"A little warning next time would be nice!" Maribel pulled her arm back, rubbing her wrist, voice pitched low but carrying every ounce of her irritation.
"There was a Hybrid at the end of the corridor," I said. "I didn’t have time to write you a note."
"I understand that, but you nearly yanked my arm out of the socket and I almost went face-first into the door frame," she snapped. "A single word would have done it."
"You don’t react to threats fast enough for a single word to help," I said. "Which is exactly why I wanted you to stay out of this building."
She made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a growl. "Here we go again! Yeah we get it, you’re strong, yeah, you have powers, yeah, we are all very impressed but stop treating me like some fragile thing that needs to be carried out of every room."
"It has nothing to do with that." I replied. "Surrounded by Infected, without powers, you are at a disadvantage, and you are weak. That is not an opinion, it’s just the reality of where we are standing right now."
She glared at me but she didn’t argue back, which meant somewhere underneath the irritation she knew I wasn’t wrong.
"Oh, well, what do we have here."
The voice came from inside the hall.
We both spun.
A torchlight snapped on, the beam hitting us directly, and I threw my arm up to block the glare and looked past it. Three figures. Standing between the rows of seats, already positioned, already watching us, like they’d heard the door and waited.
My eyes adjusted fast.
Tommy. And beside him, two others. One I didn’t place immediately. The other I placed immediately and didn’t like, Liam, standing with his weight easy and a gun leveled at my chest, wearing a smirk like he’d just found something he wasn’t expecting but was very happy about.
"Jackpot," he said, drawing the word out slightly. "You are definitely the freak everyone in our group wants, Gaspar most of all." His eyes moved over me with something between assessment and amusement. "Though looking at you right now I have to say, you don’t look like much. Kind of disappointing honestly."
I shifted my weight slightly, just to test the angle.
His finger moved against the trigger immediately.
"One more step and I put one in you. Or maybe I put it in her instead." His gaze cut sideways to Maribel, then back to me, smile widening. "Your call, Ryan."
"Just do it, Liam!" The third one, young, twitchy, rifle already up, stepped forward half a pace. "We kill him, we get the reward, we get out of here. What are you waiting for?!"
"Liam, wait — this is Ryan. You remember him," Tommy spoke up then.
"Remember who?"
"Ryan Gray. He was at our school. He came with Emily the day everything fell apart, then left." Tommy said.
There was silence. Then Liam’s smirk flickered into something else, genuine surprise, eyes narrowing as they moved over my face properly for the first time.
"Wait." He blinked. "You’re that guy? The quiet one?" He let out a short disbelieving breath. "Damn. You got taller. Filled out too." He studied me for another second, working through it. "So the Ryan we’ve been sent to deal with and the Ryan from our school are the same person. That’s..." He trailed off, something shifting behind his eyes. "I really didn’t want to have to shoot a junior."
"Who cares?!" The twitchy one jabbed his rifle in my direction. "He’s dangerous, Liam! Just pull the trigger!"
"Shut up, Crab."
"Liam, seriously—"
"I said shut up." Liam’s voice dropped a register and Crab went quiet. Then Liam’s eyes moved to Tommy. "And you, whose side are you actually on right now?"
Tommy said nothing. Just tightened his jaw and looked at the floor.
I kept myself still. Arms loose, weight balanced, not giving Liam anything to read. Beside me I felt Maribel holding herself carefully, she’d picked up on the silent instruction without me having to say it. Don’t move. Don’t give them a reason.
"Gaspar wants him alive though, doesn’t he," Liam said, more to himself than anyone. He was still thinking it through, visibly weighing it.
"Romero said to kill him!" Crab said again, quieter this time but no less insistent.
"Romero says a lot of things." Liam dismissed it with a slight tilt of his head. He glanced at Maribel again, and the smirk came back in a different shape. "We keep both of them alive for now. Figure the rest out later."
Maribel glared at him.
Liam took a step forward, gun still trained, and opened his mouth to give instructions.
He didn’t finish the sentence.
I stopped time.
The world locked, the air, the light, the dust caught mid-drift between the torch beam and the dark. Everything suspended in perfect, breathless stillness. Liam frozen mid-step, mouth still slightly open around a word that would never land.
I moved.
Liam first. I slipped the gun out of his hand clean, no resistance, then crossed to Crab and took his weapon as well before putting him down onto the floor in the same motion.
Then I stepped back and let time go.
The world exhaled back into motion.
Liam’s hand closed around empty air. He looked down at it. Blinked. His brain tried to catch up with something that had no logical framework to land in.
"W... what—" He started to turn. "Ngh—!"
I swept his leg from behind and he hit the floor hard.
Crab was already down, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling in shock.
"Stay down," I said to him, stepping over so I was standing between both of them. "Don’t move."
"What the fuck??!!" Liam twisted on the floor, trying to get his bearings, anger and confusion fighting each other across his face. "How did you—"
I put my foot against his leg, just enough pressure to make the point.
"You stay on the ground," I said. "Or I shoot you with your own gun, Liam. I’d rather not. But I will."
"Damn it!" Liam slammed his fist against the floor but stayed down.
"Ryan—"
Tommy started to speak and found a gun pointed at him before he could finish the first word. He stopped. Raised both hands slowly, rifle still hanging from his other hand, eyes moving between me and the weapon trained at his chest.
I held it steady.
"Maribel." I didn’t look away from Tommy when I said it.
I could feel her standing behind me, still processing the last few seconds, her brain trying to file away what she’d just watched happen in the space of a blink.
"Maribel."
"I...yeah." She shook herself loose from it and stepped forward.
"Check both of them for weapons."
She moved without further hesitation, crouching down beside Liam first, then Crab, running her hands along pockets and belts.
"Ammunition mostly," she said, standing. "No extra sidearms."
"Take it all."
She gathered everything and stepped back, tucking the ammo away.
I turned back to Liam. He was looking up at me from the floor with a smile that was doing its best to seem relaxed and falling noticeably short of it. His eyes kept moving, to my face, to the gun, back to my face.
"You really did grow up, didn’t you," he said. Almost conversational. Like he was buying time with small talk, which he was.
"Ryan, listen to me for a second—" Tommy tried again.
I flipped the gun around in my hand and brought the butt down against the side of Liam’s head. His eyes went glassy and he dropped.
"Hey — wait, what—!"
I was already turning. Crab had gotten himself up onto one elbow, mouth open, half a protest forming. I stepped over and put him down the same way, the back of his skull meeting the floor with a dull thud that ended whatever he was about to say.
I straightened up, checked both of them, breathing, unconscious, then picked up one of the recovered guns and tossed it across to Maribel. She caught it cleanly.
I kept the other and brought it back around to Tommy.
He hadn’t moved. Hands still up, rifle still loose in his grip, watching me with an expression caught somewhere between resignation and something harder to read.
"Come on," he muttered quietly.
"Set the weapon down and sit," I said.
He didn’t argue. He leaned down, placed the weapon carefully on the floor, and moved back between the rows until he found a seat. He dropped into it like the weight had finally caught up with him, elbows on his knees, hands open.
"You’ve changed," he said after a moment. A slightly crooked, uncomfortable smile. "I mean... three months, I guess. A lot happens in three months."
"Three months yeah," I agreed.
He was quiet for a second. Then — "That was you, wasn’t it. When we were out looking for Emily. Someone was watching us."
The memory surfaced easily. The first time I saw Emily after three months, in Atlanticy City, I’d spotted them, Liam and Tommy both, moving through the area. And I’d watched them trying to find her as well and watched them take her.
"Looking for her," I said. "That’s generous. It looked more like hunting."
Tommy’s jaw clenched. His hands closed slightly. "You saw what state she was in." He said. Then he lifted his eyes to mine. "And you’re the reason she was in that state, aren’t you."
I held his gaze, said nothing. Kept my expression still.
How did he know that.
Did Emily tell about it?
She promised to me she wouldn’t tell anyone about me before parting away but circumstances may have forced her which I didn’t much blame her with how I left her to deal with Dullahan alone.
The question must have been readable on my face despite my best effort, because he answered it before I asked it.
"Mei told me."
I felt my grip on the gun loosen slightly before I caught it.
"Mei." I said "You’ve spoken to her..."
"I live in Brigantine as well. I see her regularly enough," he said simply.
I lowered the gun. Not all the way, but enough.
"How is she?" The words came out quieter than I intended.
"She’s alright. For now." He turned one hand over, a small gesture. "Callighan wants her kept in good condition so she’s treated reasonably well. That much I can tell you."
I stood there for a moment in the dark of the hall, trying to figure out how much of what Tommy was saying I could actually afford to believe. He was my classmate, once. I knew who he was before all of this. But before and now were two different countries and people crossed borders in both directions.
He raised his head.
"I think we need to talk," he said. "I know you have no reason to trust me right now. I’m not asking you to. Just, hear me out first, and then you decide."
I looked at him for a long moment.
Then I nodded.
