He stood up, his gaze cutting toward the grand staircase where the sounds of gunfire and tearing flesh were rapidly growing louder. The others were down there, fighting a losing battle.
Ryker didn't hesitate. He turned his back on the stairs and bolted back into the guest room.
He crossed the room in three long strides, throwing his weight against the heavy glass window and shoving it open, preparing to drop down into the courtyard and vanish into the tree line. But the moment he looked down, his entire body froze.
The courtyard, which had been a quiet sanctuary just minutes ago, was filled with bodies. It looked as if dozens of survivors had suddenly collapsed across the cobblestones, just like Ryker had moments before.
Then, the waking began.
Right below his window, several people started groaning, dragging themselves up. For a few fleeting seconds, they were entirely human. They looked around with wide, confused eyes, completely conscious.
"Help me..." a man rasped, his voice trembling as his hands flew to his neck. He began clawing frantically at his own throat, his fingernails digging deep into his skin. "It burns... everything burns!"
Before anyone could move to help, the agony hit them fully. Screams of pure torment erupted across the courtyard. Through his lenses, Ryker watched in horrific fascination as the crying survivors erupted out of their own clothes. Their frames stretched and snapped as their bones elongated with a sickening, wet crunch. They grew exponentially, towering at easily seven feet tall, their torsos unnaturally broad and hunched over like rabid apes.
Their jaws unhinged, splitting open past the ears to reveal rows of jagged, newly formed teeth that dripped with a thick, smoking black bile.
They weren't slow, shambling corpses. They possessed a terrifying, explosive agility. One of the newly turned giants lunged forward, grabbing a nearby survivor who was still disoriented from the blackout, lifting him by his legs, and snapping him cleanly in half.
The System had upgraded the dead. The zombies had already undergone a horrific first evolution, turning them into apex predators designed to eradicate whatever was left of humanity.
Ryker slowly backed away from the window, his breath coming in short, calculated, shallow gasps. Escaping into the courtyard meant dropping directly into a den of giants. There was no exit. He was trapped inside the mansion with the chaos closing in from both sides.
His mind raced, desperately weighing his options. Should he take his chances with the window now, hoping the mutated giants were too distracted by their feeding frenzy to notice him slip away? Or should he stay put?
He looked around the empty guest room. For a split second, the urge to just hide took over. Every human instinct screamed at him to crawl into a closet, wedge himself under the bed, and wait for the nightmare to pass.
But Ryker knew hiding was a death sentence delayed.
With a system that could forcibly rewrite biological code and track synchronization metrics, a wooden closet door wasn't going to save him. It wouldn't be long before one of those things caught his scent, shattered the door, and ripped him apart in the dark. To survive a slaughterhouse, you couldn't just be a clever rat. You needed teeth.
He needed a weapon.
His mind flashed back to his earlier interactions with Cassian. The man had an armory, or at least somewhere he stored weapons. A reinforced storage room wouldn't be on the upper residential floors; it would be downstairs, tucked away near the lower security sectors or the basement.
Going downstairs meant walking straight into the epicenter of the initial breach. He could still hear the echoing cracks of gunfire mixed with those wet, ungodly shrieks.
It was an insane risk. But staying here meant guaranteed death, and dropping into the courtyard without a weapon meant being torn in half by seven-foot monstrosities. The armory was his only chance at survival.
Steeling his nerves, Ryker slipped out of the bedroom and back into the corridor.
The air was even thicker now, carrying the metallic tang of fresh blood and a sickening chemical stench the same burning odor he had smelled from the bubbling bile outside.
He kept his back pressed against the wall, moving with absolute silence as he approached the grand staircase. He didn't rush. He peeked over the polished rail, his eyes scanning the grand foyer below through the dim, flickering lights.
The elegant marble lobby was unrecognizable, slick with rivers of dark crimson. The bodies of servants and soldiers were scattered across the floor, their uniforms torn to shreds.
A squad of surviving guards formed a desperate firing line, dumping rounds into the center of the room. They weren't fighting a horde; they were throwing everything they had at a single, massive entity. While there had been multiple monsters outside, only one of the mutated giants had breached the mansion's lower level. But one was more than enough.
A soldier yelled something unintelligible over the deafening roar of rifle fire, but his voice was abruptly cut short as the giant lunged. With a sickening crunch, the monster backhanded the man across the lobby, sending his limp body crashing into a stone pillar.
Holding his breath, Ryker dropped low, using the shadows of the heavy banister as cover, and began to glide toward the service stairwell.
As he scrambled past a decorative alcove, his hand brushed against something metallic and cold. He stopped. Sprawled face-down in the shadows was one of the mansion's guards, his throat completely torn open. A sleek, black handgun was still strapped to the man's tactical vest.
Ryker didn't feel a shred of pity. Without a second thought, he unclipped the weapon.
Down in the foyer, a soldier caught sight of him through the smoke.
"Hey! Help us flank this piece of shit!" the man screamed, his voice cracking with desperation.
Ryker ignored him entirely. He didn't care about their frantic cries, and he wasn't about to waste his life trying to play the hero against a seven-foot mutant. A handgun was just a baseline security measure; what he truly needed were explosives.
If the estate didn't have an armory, Ryker knew he was completely fucked.
Leaving the soldiers to their fate, he slipped past the line of sight and entered the service stairwell, descending into the belly of the estate.
The air grew colder, holding a damp, subterranean chill as he reached the basement level. The mansion truly was a labyrinth of stone and reinforced concrete, stretching out beneath the surface. But just as he rounded a heavy structural pillar, he nearly tripped over a slumped figure.
He instantly raised the handgun, his finger tightening on the trigger.
It was Cassian.
The man was propped against the stone wall, his head rolled back, completely unresponsive. He hadn't been attacked; he was still knocked out cold, suffering from the exact same global fainting phenomenon that had taken down Ryker and the survivors outside.
Ryker lowered the gun slightly, his mind calculating the variables at lightning speed. Outside, the people who had fainted were waking up as agonizing, mutating beasts. Cassian had a high synchronization rate... he was practically priming himself to become a second, even more unstoppable apex predator right here in the mansion's tightest corridors.
Putting Cassian out of his misery wasn't just a mercy; it was a tactical necessity. If Ryker didn't kill him now, he'd likely have to fight a monster with military training.
Coldly, Ryker brought the barrel of the handgun directly in front of Cassian's forehead. His grip was steady. His expression was a mask of absolute indifference.
He began to squeeze the trigger.
Then, his finger froze.
Looking at the man's lax, unconscious features, a sudden, intrusive memory cut through Ryker's logic.
Julian.
Cassian was the only living connection left to Julian. Ryker's chest tightened, a rare, suffocating weight pressing down on his chest. He had already betrayed Julian once. It was a calculated, cold decision that had haunted him, and to look down at Julian's own brother not even knowing for certain if the man would actually mutate made Ryker hesitate.
For a man who prided himself on absolute coldness, the sudden paralysis of his own hand was jarring.
Slowly, Ryker lowered the gun. He turned his back on the unconscious soldier and walked away.
Left alone in the freezing, concrete hallway, Cassian looked entirely defenseless. Without protection, it was only a matter of time before his scent drew something down to tear him apart.
Ryker made it halfway down the corridor before his boots ground to a halt.
His fists clenched tightly at his sides. He stared into the darkness ahead, his jaw wound tight. He hated the emotion bleeding through his armor. He hated that his heart was overriding his brain.
Turning on his heel, Ryker marched back down the hallway, letting out a sharp, venomous hiss through his teeth.
"Fuck," he cursed himself internally, furious at his own sudden weakness.
Reaching the slumped man, Ryker bent down and hooked his arms firmly under Cassian's shoulders. Even with the heavy weight of tactical gear and body armor, Ryker's frame held a lean, deceptive strength.
Gritting his teeth, he began backward-walking down the dark corridor, hauling the dead weight of the unconscious soldier with him.
The vaulted hallway finally gave way to a massive, reinforced steel door that stood completely unlatched.
Ryker dragged Cassian through the threshold, bracing his shoulder against the frame to prop the commander safely against the wall before turning to scan the room.
His eyes widened slightly.
It wasn't a standard armory. There were no locked cages, no heavy industrial safes, and no digital keypads. Instead, the weapons were out in the open, pristinely mounted across expansive pegboards and custom glass display cases.
Cassian's legendary military background preceded him the man was an absolute elite. But looking closer, the display felt less like a bunker and more like an obsessive shrine to violence.
Every single rifle was aligned at a precise, identical angle. The ammunition crates weren't just unsealed; they were arranged meticulously by caliber, their labels perfectly squared. Hidden on a small shelf between two custom pistols sat a single, silver military medal, shined so aggressively it practically mirrored the room.
Cassian had been so utterly confident in his own security protocols, so certain that no intruder could ever penetrate this deep into the belly of his estate, that he kept his entire life's work on proud, unrestricted display.
Ryker didn't waste a single second admiring the aesthetic.
Dropping to one knee beside an open crate, he immediately began to harvest. He ignored the pristine rifles mounted on the walls; they were too bulky for the tight hallways, and he didn't have the time to configure slings.
He needed high-capacity handguns, light armor, and raw, destructive power.
He snatched two tactical combat knives, sliding them smoothly into the webbing of a discarded military vest he threw over his shoulders.
Next, his fingers locked onto a pair of semi-automatic pistols—sleek, black, and heavy. He grabbed six extra magazines, slamming them into the vest's front pouches without looking, his ears tracking the muffled sounds of the slaughter echoing from the floors above.
Then, his eyes found what he had truly been praying for.
Tucked into a reinforced green container at the back of the room were rows of cylindrical, olive-drab canisters.
M67 fragmentation grenades.
A cold, genuine thrill cut through Ryker's adrenaline. He grabbed four of the canisters, hooking them securely by their pins onto his chest rig.
As he tightened the straps of his vest, a low, ragged groan vibrated through the room.
Ryker spun on his heel, his hand instantly dropping to the grip of his newly acquired pistol.
Against the wall near the steel threshold, Cassian was stirring. The commander's head rolled slowly from side to side, a deep, painful grimace contorting his features. The brief, peaceful innocence of his unconscious state vanished instantly, replaced by a tense, hyper-acute awareness as his eyes fluttered open.
Ryker didn't lower his weapon. He kept the barrel aimed directly at Cassian's chest, his eyes narrowed, waiting to see what color looked back at him.
Cassian's eyelids snapped fully open.
They weren't bloodshot, and they weren't blood-red like the mutated giants outside.
But they weren't blue anymore, either.
Deep within the commander's pupils, a brilliant, crackling web of electric gold light was violently pulsing, casting a faint, metallic glow over his face.