The heavy metal of the lamp scraped harshly against the wood of the nightstand.
Ryker didn't hesitate. A cold, quiet instinct took over, bypassing thought entirely. Before her fingers could lift the weight of the metal, he closed the distance.
The blade caught the dim light, driving forward in a single, fluid arc. There was a wet, heavy thud as the steel sank into her throat.
The woman froze. Her hands slipped from the lamp, her fingers twitching in the air. Her eyes dilated into massive, glassy circles. She stared directly at him, her mouth parting, but only a quiet, choked rattle escaped her lips.
A thick sheen of tears welled in her eyes, brimming but never falling.
Her knees buckled, sending her crashing hard onto the floor. In a frantic, jerking motion, her hands flying to her neck, she gripped the hilt of the weapon and yanked it free.
The dark spray hit the floor instantly, soaking deep into the plush runner carpet and spreading in a rapid, heavy pool. She slumped onto her side, her chest rising in one last, shallow shudder before she went completely still.
Silence reclaimed the bedroom.
Ryker stood perfectly rigid. His hand remained suspended in the air, fingers still curled around an empty grip, stained with a fresh layer of dark red.
He didn't look down at her. His gaze was locked on a blank patch of wallpaper just above the closet door, his pupils dilated behind his lenses. His chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow hitches, the silence of the room punctuated only by the sound of his own uneven breathing.
Ryker stood entirely still, the heavy silence of the bedroom settling over the fresh pool of red.
His fingers felt strangely light. He slowly looked down at them, watching the dark, warm fluid drip from his fingertips onto the floor. Growing up, he had consumed violence through screens and stories, always observing it from a safe, detached distance.
He had always assumed that if he ever crossed that line if he ever actually took a human life the sky would fall. He had expected a crushing, suffocating weight to shatter his mind.
But as he stared silently at the lifeless shape on the carpet, the expected horror never came.
Instead, there was only a quiet, hollow void. His pulse was already slowing back to its resting rate. His stomach wasn't turning from remorse; he felt entirely at peace with the fact that she was gone.
The chilling realization that he felt absolutely no guilt that he could extinguish a life and feel entirely unchanged settled deeply.
Then, his gaze snapped to the bed.
Cassian's chest rose and fell in a slow, undisturbed rhythm.
A sudden, sharp panic finally pierced Ryker's chest, cold and demanding. It wasn't the dead girl that terrified him. It was the thought of those bright eyes opening.
If Cassian woke up right now, the fragile illusion of their partnership would vanish. The man wouldn't see a resourceful survivor or a useful ally to keep around. He would see a cold-blooded killer standing over a fresh, bleeding corpse. He would look at Ryker with disgust, with hostility, and brand him a threat to be eliminated.
Ryker could live with being a monster. What he couldn't live with was Cassian knowing it.
He would not let a dead civilian ruin his standing before it even began.
Crouching, Ryker gritted his teeth against the sharp, hot spike of pain in his cracked ribs. He reached out, his fingers locking around the woman's ankles. Her skin was already losing its warmth.
With a dull grunt, he pulled.
The body slid heavy and limp across the floor, leaving a broad, dark smear across the bedroom carpet. Ryker backed out of the room, hauling the weight through the doorway and into the dim, silent corridor.
He dragged her past the long line of unlabeled guest doors, the wet friction of her clothes against the floorboards echoing in the quiet hallway.
At the end of the corridor, near the top of the grand staircase, the shadows gathered thick. Down below, the dark, tangled shapes of the other corpses those who had fallen and turned during the initial outbreak lay piled haphazardly in the gloom.
Ryker hauled her to the edge of the descent. With a final, heavy shove, he let go.
Her body slid down the steps, tumbling loosely before coming to a rest among the cold, silent limbs of the others. In the dim light, she blended perfectly into the pile of casualties. To anyone else, she was just another victim of the horde.
Ryker stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at the heap. He wiped his hands on his jeans, but the tacky, drying blood remained.
He walked back into the bedroom and closed the door behind him, his eyes immediately landing on the dark, wet stain spreading across the carpet. He paused, a cool, calculating breath escaping him; he didn't have the time to completely clean the heavy plush fibers, but it was a zombie apocalypse after all if Cassian woke up and questioned it, Ryker could easily spin a story.
The drying blood on his own skin was starting to tighten, and the smell was utterly rancid a thick, metallic stench of iron and waste that made his stomach roll. He felt deeply, profoundly filthy, and he hated the sensation of how it clung to him.
Stepping into Cassian's personal en-suite bathroom, Ryker shut the door. Desperate to get the griminess off, he turned on the shower, the sudden, steady hiss of rushing water filling the small space.
He stripped out of his soiled clothes and stepped under the spray, grabbing a bar of soap to aggressively scrub his hands, his forearms, and his neck. He washed his face until his skin burned, letting the pale pink water swirl away until he felt entirely clean again.
_______________________________________________
It was the heat that dragged him back to consciousness an oppressive, suffocating weight that felt less like air and more like liquid fire.
Cassian's first conscious thought was highly critical: If this is the afterlife, the thermostat is criminally mismanaged.
A dry, choking furnace of a fever seemed to radiate from his own bones, boiling him from the inside out. Sweat poured from his hairline, stinging his eyes. But as the fog of sleep began to crack, his body reacted before his mind quite caught up.
Through the heavy hum in his ears, the distant, steady hiss of a running shower cut through the quiet, and his nervous system violently misfired. His body suddenly went rigid as the latent, chaotic energy from his sudden power-up locked his muscles. His head twitched sharply to the side, his neck snapping in a rapid, involuntary spasm that hit with enough raw, unnatural force to rattle the heavy wooden frame of the bed beneath him.
The physical jolt shattered the last of the paralysis, and Cassian bolted upright with a sudden, ragged gasp.
He woke up exactly how he had been trained to survive not like a frightened civilian screaming into the dark, but like a soldier waking mid-battle. His eyes scanned the perimeter of the room in a cold, sweeping assessment, his hands instantly reaching to grab a weapon that wasn't there, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
The transition from the nightmare was a violent blur, the horrific images still burned into his retinas. He hadn't just dreamt of generic monsters; his mind had dragged him straight back into the chaotic ambush from earlier today, twisting it into a suffocating trap.
He remembered the desperate, echoing shouts of his soldiers men who weren't just under his command, but close friends he had bled and survived alongside for years. He could still hear them screaming his name, begging him for help, but before Cassian could even take a step to reach them, everything had violently gone dark.
When he finally opened his eyes in the dream, that grotesque, mutated zombie was pressing its snarling face directly into his.
The crushing weight of knowing he had been completely useless to the people he cared about most hit him all at once. The absolute powerlessness of it forced a single, heavy tear to well up and slip down his cheek without his permission, leaving a long, wet stain through the grime on his face.
Cassian immediately ground his teeth, thoroughly pissed off at his own body for betraying him with such a pathetic display of vulnerability.
He closed his eyes for a moment, forcing a deep breath into his lungs as he tried to collect himself. He knew this room all too well. It was the same space he had spent hours on end locked inside, sometimes letting whole days bleed together without moving.
The sudden, abrupt silence was deafening.
The steady hiss of the shower cut off, leaving only the sound of heavy water dripping against the tiles. Cassian's entire body instantly locked up. Every instinct he had spent a lifetime honing screamed at him to move, to defend his perimeter.
'Who the hell is in my bathroom?'
His room was a fortress; even before the world ended, he hadn't allowed his own younger brother inside. The mere thought of a stranger using his shower while he lay entirely defenseless made his skin crawl.
He tensed, preparing to throw the heavy blanket aside and search the nightstand for anything he could use as a weapon.
But his fever-ravaged body was too slow. Before he could even swing his legs over the edge of the mattress, the bathroom door clicked open.
A thick cloud of warm, clean steam billowed out into the dark bedroom, carrying the sharp, crisp scent of soap. Through the white haze stepped Ryker.
Cassian froze, his breath catching in his throat.
Ryker was wearing nothing but a single white towel slung incredibly low on his hips, the damp fabric clinging to his waist. He was holding another small towel, carelessly rubbing it through his messy, wet hair as he walked.
He looked thoroughly, flawlessly clean not a single speck of the ash, sweat, or dark apocalyptic grime remained on his pale skin.
But it wasn't the steam or the lack of clothing that made Cassian's mind abruptly grind to a halt.
It was his face. Ryker wasn't wearing his glasses.
Without the thick, glare-reflecting lenses shielding his eyes, Ryker looked entirely different. The soft, vulnerable line of his jaw and the startling, dark intensity of his eyes were completely exposed.
Without that familiar academic barrier, he didn't look like a helpless kid anymore.
Cassian just sat there, completely paralyzed beneath the blanket, unable to do anything but stare confused.