Turning away from the horror of the estate grounds, Ryker gritted his teeth and moved up the grand staircase. Every step was a calculated exercise in agony, his boots leaving a wet, sticky trail of sludge against the plush runner carpet.
According to the layout he'd memorized, this floor housed the private quarters. The hallway stretched out ahead of him, flanked by a daunting number of identical, unlabeled doors. It looked like a boutique hotel, built to house the constant stream of guests Cassian apparently entertained. Ryker trudged past them, his breath rattling in his throat, until he finally reached the very last door at the end of the corridor and kicked it open.
Stepping inside, Ryker froze for a second.
Compared to Cassian's study room downstairs which only had a few small, neat plants on a shelf this bedroom was a complete jungle. Vines of dark ivy cascaded down the wall, and greenery was wedged into every corner of a sprawling bookcase packed with even more novels and textbooks. It was obvious which room the commander actually spent his time in; he clearly preferred his plants over his paperwork.
As Ryker carried Cassian deeper into the room, his eyes caught the various framed photographs scattered across the walls and dresser.
Cassian, it seemed, was completely incapable of posing for a camera. In almost every structured photo with family or military officials, he stood incredibly stiff, wearing a bizarre, tight little smile as if he were actively fighting the urge to burst out laughing.
The only exceptions were the candid shots foolish pictures with military friends, and photos with his younger brother, Julian where his smile completely softened into something genuine. Staring at the contrast between the ghost of the little brother and the man's awful, forced formal poses, Ryker couldn't help but let out a faint, amused smile.
With a grunt of exertion, Ryker finally dumped Cassian's limp body onto the center of the oversized bed. Blackish-red zombie viscera and dried soot immediately smeared across the sheets, but Ryker couldn't care less about the laundry.
He stepped back, wiping a layer of sweat and grime from his forehead with his uninjured forearm, and simply stood there.
He didn't say a single word, his eyes locked onto the Cassian. The longer he looked, the more his gaze lingered on the sharp lines of Cassian's features beneath the layer of grime. Slowly, Ryker lifted his uninjured hand, his fingers hovering for a fraction of a second before he leaned forward and touched Cassian's face.
Ryker's palm was thickly coated in fresh, wet mutated fluid far more than what was already drying on Cassian's skin. With a slow motion, he dragged his fingers across Cassian's cheek, smearing the dark, heavy blood across his pale skin.
Seeing the violent, messy contrast, the faint amusement on Ryker's face deepened into a wider smile. He actually liked the look of it. To Ryker, it made the man look even more beautiful.
He simply recognized beauty when he saw it.
If Cassian hadn't single-handedly vaporized that horde of monsters downstairs, Ryker would have left him to rot in the basement.
But things had changed. Cassian was now his only shot at surviving the apocalypse.
Ryker's smile vanished instantly.
Before he could even draw his hand back from Cassian's face, a faint, metallic scrape echoed from the far side of the bedroom. It was a minuscule sound.the tiny, sharp friction of metal against wood but in the heavy silence of the room, it landed loudly.
He stopped breathing, his entire body locking up as his instincts took over.
His eyes swept the room and locked onto the large walk-in closet. The heavy wooden doors were nearly shut, but not entirely. Through the narrow gap in the folds, the shadows inside shifted. The thin sliver of light spilling across the bedroom floor suddenly flickered and changed shape, obstructed by something moving within the darkness of the wardrobe.
Someone was peeking through.
Ryker didn't hesitate. Reversing his grip, he silently slid his combat knife from its sheath, the dark blade catching the dim light. He ignored the burning agony in his ribs, flattening his posture as he began a slow, predatory advance toward the closet.
With every agonizing step, the wet squelch of his boots was completely masked by his deliberate weight distribution. He raised the blade higher, angling the tip upward, fully expecting a frantic, hyper-mutated zombie to burst through the wood and lunge at his throat. He stopped inches from the frame, muscles coiled like a spring, ready to drive the steel straight into a skull.
The closet door violently slammed open.
Ryker lunged, but stopped his blade mere inches from a head.
It wasn't a monster. A young woman stumbled backward into the clothes racks, her arms throwing up frantically to shield her face as she stared in absolute horror at the gleaming edge of the knife. She was hyperventilating, her eyes wide and bloodshot, trembling so violently that the hangers around her rattled.
"Don't! Please, don't!" she shrieked, her voice cracking in a desperate, choked whisper. She scrambled further into the shadows of the coats, her hands raised in surrender as she looked from the blade up to Ryker's blood-soaked face. "I'm human! I'm human! I was just hiding from the monsters the things downstairs,please!"
Ryker lowered the knife, the tension instantly melting from his shoulders. He wasn't irritated or angry. If anything, he just looked exhausted, his expression settling into a relaxed, almost sleepy calm.
He tipped his head to the side, genuinely curious. "Why this room?" he asked. His voice was a low rumble that smoothly filled the quiet space. "I passed a dozen empty guest rooms on the way up."
The woman clutched a hanging trench coat, her breathing shallow as she looked up at him. "It... it was the furthest away," she stammered. "From the entrance. From the... the carnage."
It was a fair point. But as she spoke, her gaze dropped from his face to his chest. Her eyes blew wide, a fresh wave of terror hitting her as she processed the thick, smoking layer of blackish-red slime caked all over his clothes.
"It's zombie blood," Ryker said simply, his tone effortlessly steady.
The woman's jaw trembled. "You..." She swallowed hard, shrinking back slightly. "You killed them all?"
Ryker didn't answer. He didn't confirm or deny it, perfectly content to let her assume he was a one-man slaughterhouse if it kept things simple.
Instead, he just stood there in the silence. The absolute lack of hostility or panic radiating from him seemed to anchor her, forcing her frantic breaths to slow. He raised a hand and casually pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, the movement shifting the lenses and fully revealing his eyes through the dim lighting.
The woman stopped shrinking back. Now that the immediate threat of being gutted had passed, she really looked at him. She noticed how much taller he was than her, towering over her in the small closet space, and how completely unbothered he remained by the horrors downstairs. Seeing how entirely steady and calm he was, the last of her defensive panic short-circuited. Her tense shoulders dropped. Her guard finally came down, and she instantly calmed down. He didn't look like a threat anymore.
"Are there..." She swallowed, her eyes darting past his shoulder toward the door. "Are there any other survivors out there?"
Ryker simply gave a short nod. "A few. Downstairs."
He looked at her closer then, his gaze tracking the shape of her jaw and the specific tatter of her jacket. A sharp click went off in his brain. He recognized her. She was the exact same civilian who had panicked in the chaos earlier, shoving him violently into a wall to clear her own path before sprinting away.
He didn't bring it up. Her eyes remained completely blank as she looked at him; she clearly had no idea who he was. To her, he had just been a nameless obstacle in a dark hallway.
"You're more than welcome to go down and find them," Ryker murmured.
To anyone who actually knew him, his intent was glaringly obvious: he wanted her out of the room, immediately. He had zero interest in babysitting a liability, especially one who had already proven she would throw someone else to the wolves to save her own skin.
The woman, however, completely missed the underlying hint. Soothed by his calm demeanor, she took the offer as a gesture of genuine concern. A faint, grateful look washed over her face, thinking he was being incredibly sweet. "Thank you. I...."
Her voice cut off as her gaze drifted past his shoulder, finally landing on the oversized bed in the center of the room.
Her breath hitched. Through the dim light, she caught sight of the naked man sprawled across the sheets.
Before she could even process the sight or let out a gasp, Ryker stepped into her line of sight, completely blocking the view with his tall frame. His movement was entirely fluid and unbothered. Reaching down, he calmly grabbed the edge of the heavy comforter and pulled it up, covering Cassian to the shoulders without a single trace of urgency.
"Is he..." She took a step back, her voice dropping to a horrified whisper. "Is he dead?"
"Just unconscious," Ryker replied.carrying no real trace of concern.
The words had barely left his mouth before the woman's face drained of what little color it had left. The fragile calm she'd found shattered instantly, her eyes blowing wide with a frantic, unhinged terror.
"No, no, no," she stammered, her voice rapidly climbing in pitch. "That's what the others were like! The ones downstairs...the ones who stayed unconscious too long, they mutated!"
Ryker's eyes narrowed slightly behind his lenses, but he remained perfectly still.
"I woke up before the others did," she shouted, her hands flying to her head as she began to pace frantically within the small space. "I watched it happen! They wouldn't wake up, and then their skin... their eyes... they turned into those monsters! If he's been out that long, he's going to turn! We need to kill him!"
She lunged forward, gesturing wildly toward the bed, her voice growing louder and louder with every frantic word. "We have to kill him right now! There's no telling what he'll do when he wakes up! You don't understand, he's a ticking bomb, we need to...."
"Calm down," Ryker said, his voice dropping and a firmness taking over. "Listen to me-"
He was cut off as the woman completely lost her mind. Driven by pure, unadulterated panic, she shoved past him with surprising, frantic strength. She scrambled toward the nightstand beside the bed, her hands wrapping violently around the base of a heavy metal lamp.