Cassian's eyes were wide, completely dilated around burning pools of flashing gold. The fierce, godlike aura radiating from him immediately vanished the moment he realized what was happening.
Cassian was having a massive, hyperventilating panic attack. And he was doing it while hovering four feet off the floor.
"You!" Cassian gasped, his golden eyes locking onto Ryker. The calm composure he usually maintained in public was completely gone. "What's... what's happening to me? Fix it! Get me down from here!"
Ryker's mind briefly short-circuited. He had seen Cassian break down and weep earlier that day over losing a brother, but he hadn't expected this this loud, frantic personality that didn't know how to shut up.
"Shut up!" Ryker whisper-shouted, his voice a sharp, lethal hiss. He backed up until his spine hit the cold concrete wall, his glare fixed on the floating man. "*Keep your voice down or you're going to draw every monster in the vicinity straight to this room!"
"I don't know what to do!" Cassian whisper-shouted back, though his version of a whisper was still entirely too loud.
He tried to wildly wave his arms in protest, but the movement caused a jagged, violent arc of golden lightning to whip out from his knuckles.
It blasted a hole straight through a wooden crate, sending a shower of splinters raining down on them.
Cassian flinched so hard he nearly flipped upside down in mid-air, a choked, offended sob escaping his throat. "Did you see that?! I didn't mean to do that!"
He was completely at the mercy of his own body, suspended like a tragic, glowing puppet.
The tips of Cassian's hair began to hum, igniting into a bright, golden glow that resembled miniature forks of lightning. The tops of his hair burned significantly brighter than the rest, tiny visible sparks jumping and crackling off the strands like a halo of static electricity. Every time he moved, the golden current flared, snapping painfully against his skin and giving his expensive tactical vest a fresh, distinctly smoky singe.
Ryker's hand slowly slid away from the fragmentation grenade and migrated down to the holster at his thigh, his fingers wrapping around the grip of his pistol. If the idiot didn't stop shouting, they were both dead anyway.
If I shoot him in the leg, Ryker thought, evaluating the situation,will the shock knock him unconscious and turn off the electricity? Or will he just bleed out while floating? Either way, he'll finally be quiet.
"I can't stop it!" Cassian hissed loudly, entirely unaware that Ryker was currently gauging which major arteries to avoid. The sheer panic had completely overridden his survival instincts. He clutched his head, the sparks on his hair violently arcing across his temples.
"Hey!! Look at my hair, Ryker! It burns!"
Ryker let out a slow, exhausted sigh, pointing the pistol directly at Cassian's knee.
"If you don't close your mouth in the next three seconds," Ryker whispered, his voice deadpan, "I am going to test if bullets can ground electricity. Choose wisely."
The threat of the bullet didn't even register. Suddenly, Cassian's entire body went rigid.
The frantic panic vanished in a millisecond, replaced by a raw, agonizing convulsion. A strangled, guttural scream ripped from his throat far louder than before as the golden current inside him violently imploded.
The lightning-tipped strands of his hair flared into a blinding, solid sheet of white-gold light. He curled in on himself in mid-air, clutching his torso as if his own ribs were snapping inward, his knees pulling tightly to his chest.
The scream was a death sentence in a building like this.
Ryker didn't hesitate. His grip remained steady as his finger squeezed the trigger.
The gunshot cracked through the room, aiming true for the meat of Cassian's thigh to force a system shock. But the bullet hit nothing but empty air.
In the exact microsecond the hammer fell, a sonic boom rattled Ryker's teeth. A shockwave of pure static pressure slammed into his chest, throwing him back a half-step. The space where Cassian had been hovering a fraction of a second ago was completely vacant, leaving behind only a scorched, black chemical burn on the ceiling and the heavy, metallic smell of ozone.
Ryker's eyes blinked away the severe purple afterimages burning into his retinas. He scanned the corners of the dark room, his pistol tracking empty shadows. "Where..."
A low, heavy crackle drew his gaze toward the far side of the room.
Cassian was standing by the basement entrance. His feet were firmly back on the concrete, but the sheer velocity of whatever movement had put him there had left deep, melted rubber streaks from his designer combat boots across the floor.
He wasn't shouting anymore. He was staring down at his hands, his breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches.
Ryker raised the gun, but his finger froze on the trigger. Cassian's face was completely unrecognizable. The terrified, loud-mouthed puppy expression was entirely drowned out by a terrifying, celestial radiance. The burning pools of gold had expanded, completely consuming his eyes. There were no pupils, no irises, no whites left. Just two solid, overflowing orbs of blinding, electric light that bled past his eyelids like smoke, illuminating the sharp lines of his face.
The air around Cassian began to warp, shimmering violently like asphalt under a midday sun. The immense heat radiating from his flesh was instantaneous. Within seconds, his tactical vest and uniform began to smoke, charring rapidly before bursting into brittle, golden-tinged flames. The clothes disintegrated right off his frame, dropping to the concrete floor in a shower of flaky black ash and melted nylon.
He was completely, undeniably naked.
Ryker, who had kept his pistol raised to track a threat, froze. The tactical problem in front of him had instantly morphed into a deeply uncomfortable, deeply personal one.
Worse,stripped of the bulky tactical gear, he was surprisingly lean, his frame possessing a sharp, athletic definition Ryker hadn't anticipated. The sudden, uninvited visual was a total shock.
A sharp, vivid crimson flooded Ryker's cheeks. He immediately ripped his gaze away, his head snapping to the side so fast his neck popped. He stared intensely at a completely unremarkable patch of concrete wall, his jaw clenched as he tried to claw back any semblance of his dignity.
"Put... put something on," Ryker muttered, his voice cracking slightly under the weight of a fierce, mounting embarrassment. He kept his gun pointed vaguely in Cassian's general direction, though his eyes remained glued to the wall. "Or at least dial down the brightness. You're blinding me."
A heavy, wet thud suddenly echoed from the top of the stairwell, cutting through the tense silence of the room.
Ryker's posture instantly changed. The embarrassment evaporated, the blush on his cheeks hardening into stone as his ears tracked a sound every survivor learned to fear: the rapid, erratic slamming of heavy feet sprinting down the concrete steps.
The commotion, the shouting, and Ryker's gunshot had practically served them up on a silver platter.
Bursting through the heavy doorway was a mutated zombie ,one the soldiers had clearly failed to take down. It didn't hesitate. With a guttural, wet roar that shook the dust from the ceiling pipes, the massive creature threw itself down the stairs, charging straight for them with terrifying speed.
Ryker's survival switch flipped instantly. He leveled his pistol and emptied a fierce string of bullets directly into the charging monster. The heavy-caliber rounds tore into the creature's chest and shoulders, spraying dark, coagulated fluid against the stairwell walls. But the mutation had made its flesh incredibly dense. It barely even slowed down, its dead, milky eyes locked onto the fresh meat at the bottom of the steps.
"Cassian, move!" Ryker yelled, his voice tight.
He glanced back, but Cassian was completely rooted to his spot by the basement entrance. His glowing, pupil-less eyes were still fixed on his own hands, his chest heaving as if his mind were trapped in a completely different dimension.
The zombie cleared the last step, its blood-stained claws reaching straight for them.
With his pistol clicking empty, Ryker dropped the useless weapon and lunged toward the basement entrance, intending to grab Cassian and drag him out of harm's way. But the closer he got, the more the air turned into a literal furnace. The ambient heat radiating from Cassian's bare skin became a physical barrier, warping the air and searing Ryker's lungs with every breath. It was like stepping directly into a raging bonfire.
"Screw it."Ryker gritted his teeth and pushed through the blistering wall of heat. He reached out, his fingers clamping down tightly on Cassian's bare forearm to yank him back.
The instant his palm met Cassian's skin, a horrific sizzling sound echoed through the corridor. The heat was white-hot. Ryker gasped, a spasm of agony ripping through him as the skin on his hand blistered and blackened instantly.
The sudden contact triggered something deep within the floating man. Cassian's head snapped up. But he wasn't really there. His expression was totally vacant, his mind completely submerged in a sleepwalking state of raw survival instinct like an apex predator operating on pure reflex.
Before Ryker could even register the agony in his hand, Cassian's arm twitched. A slap, completely effortless but packed with a terrifying, supernatural force, caught Ryker square in the chest.
The impact was catastrophic. Ryker was launched off his feet, flying across the room like a ragdoll. He slammed violently into the far concrete wall, the structural impact knocking the wind completely out of him and leaving a spiderweb of cracks in the plaster before he slumped heavily to the floor.
"Agh—"
Ryker doubled over, clutching his ribs as a violent fit of coughing wracked his body, splattering dark crimson blood onto the concrete beneath him. The hit had nearly shattered his sternum. His vision swam with severe purple spots, his lungs burning as he struggled to draw a single breath.
He looked up through bleary eyes.
Cassian was still standing there, entirely oblivious to the fact that he had just nearly broken Ryker in half. But he wasn't alone anymore. The massive, mutated zombie had completely closed the distance, its bloated, grayish-purple frame towering over him. With a guttural, wet roar, the monster raised its massive, blood-stained claws, preparing to rip Cassian to shreds.