The emergency grid came back online and the streetlights blinked on one by one, washing pale yellow light across the rubble. Wind pushed grit along the empty road. Somewhere in the distance, zombies called out in low, carrying tones that made the dead city feel even more closed in.
Ryan and Jill left the power substation and moved quickly toward the transit dispatch center a few blocks away. They needed the full subway line map to route around the worst of the hordes and get back to the station safely. Every minute counted.
They were moving along a stretch of cracked concrete wall when Ryan stopped and raised one hand.
No explanation. He stood still and looked at the wall.
On the other side, invisible to anyone without his instincts, a massive shape was coiled tight, waiting. He could feel the weight of it, the restrained violence of something about to erupt.
"Get ready," he said, voice low and even. "It's on the other side."
Jill didn't need it spelled out. There was exactly one "it" that had been hunting them. Her face went tight, and she moved fast and quiet behind the shell of a wrecked police cruiser nearby, bringing the assault shotgun up, finger resting on the trigger, breathing shallow.
Ryan stayed where he was. He raised his own assault shotgun and aimed at the precise section of wall that was about to come apart.
He waited.
The wall exploded.
Concrete blew outward in a wave of dust and broken stone. Nemesis tore through the gap like something that had never heard of obstacles, all momentum and fury, launching itself at the spot where the two of them had been standing.
Same trick. Same wall. Worked in the apartments once, should work again.
It stopped.
Ryan was standing in the open, weapon already up, watching it with an expression that could charitably be described as bored.
He let the silence sit for half a second, then said, "Hey there. Still not learning, huh."
Behind the police cruiser, Jill was locked on, not breathing, watching the massive shadow for any twitch.
Nemesis processed what it was seeing. The ambush. Again. The empty space where a kill should have been, replaced by a man with a gun already aimed at its face. Something in whatever passed for its mind went sideways.
How. How did they know again. I was completely silent. I didn't even breathe.
Ryan's finger moved.
The trigger came back so fast it was almost mechanical, pulling in a continuous burst that blurred at the edges, one shot rolling into the next with almost no gap between them.
The rounds hit Nemesis center mass, each one hammering it back a fraction of an inch, the cumulative force building until the whole impact arrived at once and launched the creature off its feet. It flew backward and came down hard in a pile of rubble fifteen feet away, throwing up a cloud of dust and debris.
The echoes died.
Nemesis lay tangled in broken rebar and concrete chunks. The wounds peppered across its chest steamed faintly. The aggressive tension it had carried was gone. What remained was a low, labored sound, barely audible.
Every attempt it made became a trap it walked into itself.
Jill came up from behind the cruiser slowly. She looked at Ryan with something between disbelief and relief that she didn't try to hide.
"It won't be moving for a while." Ryan lowered the gun. "Let's get to the dispatch center."
They were inside within minutes. The building had been ransacked, lights flickering across overturned furniture and scattered paperwork. Ryan went straight to the main console and pulled up the subway line map.
Most of the network was gone. Collapses, blockages, lines that showed red across their entire length. One remained viable: the main line to Clock Tower Station.
"Everything else is dead," Ryan said. "That's the only route left."
Jill studied the screen. "Clock Tower Station connects to the rest of the network. It has to be that one."
They confirmed the route and left.
They were back at the subway station platform thirteen minutes later.
Murphy was on his feet, leg wrapped, leaning against a support pillar near the entrance. When he saw them come through, he pushed off the wall and walked over, moving carefully but deliberately.
"I wouldn't be standing here without you," he said to Ryan. "I mean that. What you did back there... I'm not going to forget it."
Ryan nodded.
The platform had filled up since they'd left. Elderly civilians, a woman with a bandaged arm, a few others in rough shape, people who'd made it this far on luck and not much else. None of them had weapons. None of them had anywhere to go if something came through that entrance.
Mikhail stood by the train car, one hand braced against the side of it. He was pale, and the wound he'd been carrying was seeping again. He looked up when they approached.
"The route?"
"Clock Tower Station. Only line still running," Ryan said.
Mikhail managed a short, humorless laugh. "The drive systems have been cold too long. Engine needs to warm up, line diagnostics have to complete. We're looking at thirty minutes before we can move."
Jill's expression hardened. "Thirty minutes is too long. This position isn't secure."
"I know. There's nothing I can do about it." Mikhail's breath was getting short. "Getting it running at all is already pushing it."
Murphy had been standing nearby, listening. Now he moved closer to Mikhail, keeping his voice down, angling away from the civilians.
"Captain. Something you need to hear."
Mikhail looked at him. Tired eyes, but sharp.
"Nikolai." Murphy's jaw was set. "He wasn't running an extraction. When we got hit at the garage, I watched him cut his comms himself. He used us as bait. Pulled the zombies onto us so he could slip out."
Mikhail's hand tightened against the train car. The knuckles went white. He didn't look surprised. He didn't look shaken. What crossed his face was something quieter and colder, a man confirming something he'd already accepted.
"I know," he said.
Murphy blinked.
"The first time he went off without authorization. The first false report he filed. I knew what he was after that." Mikhail's voice was flat and very low. "He wasn't a soldier. Umbrella sent him to clean up anyone who saw too much."
He was quiet for a moment. "I was going to deal with it myself. After the train."
Then he looked at Ryan. "Thank you. For my man."
Ryan nodded. Nothing more needed saying.
He turned and looked out at the platform. Civilians clustered together near the far wall. No weapons, no cover, no exit if something came through.
The thought had barely finished forming when the floor shook.
Slow. Heavy. Footsteps that landed like something being dropped from a height, each one a little closer than the last.
And underneath that sound, the breathing. A wet mechanical rasp, like metal grinding on metal.
Jill went rigid. "It recovered that fast..."
Ryan felt it settle into him, a flat, cold irritation at something that kept coming back no matter how many times it hit the ground. Not fear. Not urgency. Something closer to the feeling of a problem that refused to stay solved, turning up again at the worst possible moment, when the people around him had the least ability to protect themselves.
His jaw tightened.
The platform was too small and too crowded. The moment Nemesis came through that entrance, the civilians would have nowhere to go and no one would survive it.
He looked at Jill. "Too many people here. We can't fight it in this station."
She understood before he finished the sentence. Her grip on the gun adjusted and she gave him a single nod.
"I'm going with you."
"We draw it away," Ryan said.
=-=-=
I'll lower the Powerstone goal to 50 for an extra chapter for now.
Read Advance Chapters at Patreon.com/NiaXD