Harem Apocalypse: My Seed is the Cure?!

Chapter 354: Atlantic Theatre [7]

"That should cover everything," Tommy said, leaning back slightly and sighing.We had spent the last stretch of time going over the plan in as much detail as either of us could manage given what we knew, which was not nearly as much as I would have liked. The broad strokes were clear enough. The execution was another matter entirely, and the execution was going to fall almost completely on Tommy’s shoulders.

That was the part that kept sitting wrong with me.

His job was the harder one by a considerable margin. Getting a boat ready was one thing. Getting Emily, Mei, and Keith into it without anyone noticing was something else, and the gap between those two things was wide enough to swallow the whole plan whole.

"You’re sure you can pull this off?" I asked.

"I know how it sounds," Tommy said, reading the look on my face before I could do anything about it. "But I can do it. I’m not going to take unnecessary risks, if that’s what’s eating at you."

"What I’m trying to understand is how," I said. "Emily is locked in a basement. Mei and Keith are being held as prisoners. That’s not exactly a quiet extraction."

"Which is exactly why nighttime gives us the best window," he replied. "Look, I’m not a fighter. Everyone knows that. That’s why they put me on guard rotation, moving around the perimeter, checking on things. I have access that most people don’t have because nobody looks twice at me." He held my gaze. "I can do this."

I looked at him for a long moment and said nothing. The concern didn’t go away but I knew pressing it further wasn’t going to produce anything useful.

Tommy seemed to take my silence as an ongoing objection. "Your side of this isn’t exactly a walk either, you know. Infiltrating Brigantine alone is about as dangerous as it gets, and Emily is being held somewhere completely separate. If you try to go in hard for Mei and Keith, Gaspar will see you coming from a mile away. At least my way has some cover to it."

"Fair point," I said.

"Fair point," he repeated, with just enough edge to let me know he thought it was more than that.

"Have the two of you finished," Maribel said from where she had been standing this entire time, arms crossed and patience clearly running on fumes, "or is this going to take another hour?"

"We’re done," I said, glancing at Tommy. Then something surfaced in the back of my mind, the question I had somehow managed not to ask through all of this. "Actually. What are you doing here in the first place?"

Tommy shifted slightly. "Zakthar told Callighan there was a Nexon Battery somewhere in this building. We came to collect it."

A Nexon Battery.

. I had taken the one from the hotel not long ago and the timing felt too neat to be coincidence. They needed a replacement, and this was where they had come looking for it? I turned that over quietly for a moment, because if there was another battery here and we left without it, that felt like a mistake I would regret later.

The Hybrid standing between us and everything else was a significant problem with that idea though.

Whatever else might be lurking in this building was another problem I couldn’t fully account for yet.

"You got separated from the rest of your group," Maribel said, staring at Tommy.

She was wary of him despite our conversation.

Tommy nodded. "That massive infected came out of nowhere and we scattered. Romero took the others right and we were the ones who nearly got cornered by that thing." He paused. "It was close."

"Where are Romero and the others now?"

"Somewhere on the other path, probably. They found somewhere to sit tight in one of the halls but I have no way of knowing if they’ve already moved. I wouldn’t count on it with that monster camped at the the stairs."

I stared at him. "You didn’t walk in here without knowing what was waiting, did you?"

"We knew, at least Romero knew," Tommy said, and something in his voice tightened. "Zakthar warned Callaghan it was a trap. We came anyway because the battery was worth the risk, at least that’s how Callighan saw it."

"Zakthar warned you and you came anyway," I said slowly.

"The battery matters that much."

I thought about that. "Zakthar. Is he actually working with Callighan or not? Because I cannot get a straight read on what he’s doing."

"He is," Tommy said. "But the full picture, whatever he and Callighan are actually building toward, that’s above my level. Callighan and Gaspar are the ones talking to him directly. What I know is that Zakthar is building something for Callighan. Something meant to end the fight with the Boardwalk for good."

Maribel was already moving closer before he finished the sentence. "Build what exactly?"

"I don’t know." Tommy shook his head. "I’m serious, I don’t have those details. But whatever it is, you should be careful. All of you."

"And the Nexon Battery is part of it," I said.

"Yeah."

"Then we take it," Maribel said immediately, no hesitation anywhere in her voice.

My first instinct was to call it reckless. My second instinct agreed with her completely and drowned the first one out. Something about the whole picture was pulling at me in a way I didn’t like, a low and persistent unease that had been building since Tommy said the words end the fight with the Boardwalk. Callighan was serious about this. Whatever Zakthar was building, letting him get the pieces he needed for it felt like exactly the wrong move.

But this building was a trap, and not a subtle one.

There was the Hybrid to deal with first, a creature that demanded everything I had just to slow down. The Time Freeze would handle it, but only once, and the window after using it was a ten minute stretch where I would have nothing left. No ability to freeze anything, no buffer against whatever else was moving through these halls, and Romero’s group somewhere in the building on top of all of it.

Ten minutes was a very long time to be completely exposed in a place like this.

I looked at Maribel and then back at Tommy and tried to find a version of this that I liked.

"Whatever you decide, you need to decide it fast," Tommy said, nodding toward the floor where Liam and Crab were still out cold. "It’ll be easier for me to explain if you’re already gone. I can tell them you bolted. They’ll believe that. But if you’re still standing here when they come around, I’ve got nothing."

He was right. I knew he was right the moment he said it.

The question was what we actually did with the time he was giving us.

We could push forward, take on the Hybrid, and try to get to that battery before this whole building came down around us. Or we could walk away clean, get out while the exit was still an option, and leave Theo and the others to whatever was waiting for them somewhere deeper in this place.

I pressed my fists together at my sides and felt the weight of both options sitting on me at the same time.

"We get the battery," Maribel said, moving closer.

She seemed really serious about it.

Tommy’s warning about Callighan had done something to her. I could see it in her expression. It had done something to me too, if I was being honest with myself. Callighan wanting to end the fight with the Boardwalk was the kind of statement that deserved to be taken seriously, and Zakthar being involved in whatever he was building made it considerably worse. A Starakian’s involvement in something like this was not a detail you got to ignore and feel good about later.

"My honest advice," Tommy said, his voice dropping into something more direct, "is to leave. Right now. Both of you. You go deeper into this building and I don’t think you come back out."

"Keep that advice," Maribel said, not even looking at him.

I glanced at her.

She caught it and answered it before I could turn it into a question. "Don’t. You’re not going in there alone and I’m not standing out here waiting. You handle the infected, I go for the battery. That’s how this works."

It was not a reckless plan. If anything it was the cleanest division of the problem available to us, playing to what each of us could actually do rather than trying to do everything at once.

"Where is the battery?" I asked Tommy.

He exhaled through his nose. "Hall seven, according to Zakthar. But getting there means going up, and I have no idea what’s sitting between here and that hallway. Zakthar told us where it was, not what was guarding it."

Upstairs then. Through whatever was already up there waiting.

"We move now if we’re moving," Maribel said. "Every second we stand here is a second we don’t have."

I stayed still for one more moment, turning it over one final time.

This had stopped being only about our people somewhere along the way. Theo and the others mattered, they still mattered, but there was something larger pressing against this decision now and I couldn’t pretend otherwise. Walking away felt less like caution and more like handing Callighan exactly what he needed without making him work for it. Whatever he was building with Zakthar, whatever required a Nexon Battery badly enough to walk into a known trap to get one, it was something that deserved to be interrupted.

At the very least we had to try.

I thought about Maribel for a moment, about how easily she had planted herself on the wrong side of a door she knew was dangerous, and felt something close to admiration for it even as part of me wanted to argue her out of the building entirely. I already knew she wouldn’t go. There was no version of this conversation where she left and I stayed, and honestly I wasn’t sure I wanted there to be.

I walked over to where Liam was sprawled on the ground and crouched down, pulling the rifle from his grip. I stood and tossed it across to Maribel in one clean motion.

She caught it without looking, checking the magazine

"Better than the Glock," I said.

She nodded once.

"You’re really doing this," Tommy said, a bit in disbelief.

"Yeah," I said, wrapping my hand around the door handle.

"Don’t get yourself killed," he said from behind.

"Same to you," I replied.