Harem Apocalypse: My Seed is the Cure?!

Inside the Golden Nugget’s reception lobby, the wreckage from the long gunfight covered almost every part of the room.

The furniture that had once made the place look expensive had been torn apart and dragged into makeshift cover. Sofas lay on their sides with stuffing spilling from the ripped seams. Tables had been smashed into uneven pieces. The reception counters were covered in bullet holes, their wooden panels splintered and hanging loose in places. Several of the pillars had chunks missing from them where bullets had struck over and over during the fight.

Broken glass covered sections of the carpet, catching the lobby lights in little sharp flashes whenever someone moved nearby. Empty casings were scattered across the floor along with fallen plaster, blood, shattered bits of electronics, and bodies that nobody had gotten around to moving yet.

The smell of gunpowder still filled the building.

It mixed with blood, smoke, sweat, and the stale hotel air that had been trapped inside for who knew how long. My ears were still ringing badly enough that some noises came through distorted, as if I was hearing them from underwater.

But the gunfire had stopped.

Callighan’s remaining men were either dead, captured, or gone. The ones who had managed to escape had run while they still had the chance, leaving the hotel behind before Marlon’s people could close in on them.

We had taken the Golden Nugget.

And with it, we had taken the State Marina.

After I dealt with the men waiting on the upper level, the ones who had been positioned to shoot anyone who stepped into the open below, Time Freeze had run out. The moment everything started moving again, I had turned my rifle toward the remaining gunmen in the lobby.

That had been enough.

They had already been under pressure from Marlon’s people, and the second they realized they were getting shot at from above too, their defense fell apart. A few had tried to return fire. Others had ducked behind the reception desk or broken furniture. Most of them had panicked.

Marlon, Rico, and Molly had not wasted the opening.

They pushed forward through the lobby while Callighan’s men were still trying to understand what had happened. The fight ended quickly after that. Not cleanly, and not quietly, but quickly.

Now I sat on the stairs leading up toward the upper floor, with my back pressed against the cold metal railing.

My knees were pulled close to my chest, and my arms rested over them because I did not have the energy to hold myself up properly anymore. I tried to slow my breathing down, but it would not listen. Every breath scraped through my throat and dragged against my ribs. My chest kept tightening whenever I tried to take in too much air at once.

I was exhausted.

Not tired in the normal way.

My whole body felt used up.

I had activated Time Freeze twice in less than half an hour. Just thinking about it made my head hurt. The ability had always taken a lot out of me, but using it once was already enough to leave my body strained afterward. Twice, while fighting through a hotel full of armed men and Hybrids, had pushed me way past what I was supposed to handle.

That was not even counting everything else.

I had used wind blades until my arm felt like it had been twisted apart from the inside. I had relied on Dullahan Eye. My Symbiote membrane had been used as well. I fought two Hybrids. I had been thrown through a wall. I had fallen seven floors from the hotel and somehow still gotten back up.

At some point during all of that, my body should have stopped working.

Instead, I had just kept moving.

Now the pain and fatigue were catching up all at once.

My legs felt heavy and distant, like they belonged to somebody else. I could barely feel my right arm anymore. It lay over my knees, limp and streaked with dust and blood. When I tried to flex my fingers, they moved slowly.

My eyes burned whenever I looked toward the damaged lights in the lobby. If I lifted my head too fast, my vision blurred around the edges and the room tilted for a second before settling again. The ringing in my ears had not eased up either.

It might have been the gunfire.

With my enhanced hearing, every shot had felt louder than it should have. Even with everything else happening around me, I could still remember the sharp crack of rifles firing nearby, the sound digging into my head until I could not tell where one burst ended and another began.

Or maybe it was only exhaustion.

I did not know.

I only knew that I needed sleep.

Badly.

My black hair had come loose during the fight and hung in messy, blood-streaked strands over my shoulders. Some of it stuck to the sweat along my neck and cheek. There was dried blood on one side of my face, fresh blood darkening the sleeve of my shirt, and a layer of gray dust across both hands.

I probably looked horrible.

Considering how my body felt, that was not surprising.

"Move up! Stay careful!" Marlon shouted from somewhere below.

His voice reached me through the ringing, loud enough that I could make out the words even though they sounded far away.

"There could still be men hiding!"

Boots hit the steps beside me.

Several of Marlon’s people rushed past with rifles held close to their chests, heading toward the upper floors to clear the hotel room by room. Their clothes were dirty, some of them had blood on their sleeves or faces, and nobody looked relaxed yet. Taking the lobby did not mean the whole building was safe.

A few of them looked down at me as they passed.

None of them stopped.

None of them said anything.

I kept my head lowered and watched their boots disappear up the stairs.

It was fine.

The two Hybrids were dead.

Zakthar was in our hands.

Callighan’s people had lost the hotel, and they should not have had the time to call in proper reinforcements before everything fell apart. The fight had moved too fast. By the time they realized how badly they were losing, most of them had already been trapped inside or forced to run.

And Gaspar had not shown up.

That was the biggest relief of all.

At the beginning of the attack, I had been waiting for him to appear at any moment.

Every time the fighting got louder, every time one of the Hybrids did something that made the hotel shake, part of me expected Gaspar to walk into the lobby with that same calm look he always had. If he had arrived while we were still fighting, I honestly did not know what we would have done.

Maybe we would have tried to run.

Maybe we would have died.

If he appeared now, though, I would be useless.

I had nothing left.

Time Freeze needed time to recover. My wind blades were barely forming anymore. My body hurt too much to fight properly, and I did not think I could even lift myself off these stairs quickly if I had to. The rifle lay beside me, close enough to grab, but the thought of using it again made my shoulder ache.

I sniffed and wiped at my cheek with my sleeve.

It only spread more blood across my face.

Still, the fight was over.

The Golden Nugget belonged to us now.

That meant the boats at the State Marina belonged to us too.

It meant we had access to the Absecon Inlet.

And across that inlet was Brigantine.

Emily and Mei were there.

For a second, thinking about them brought a little relief.

We were closer now. Closer than we had been before. We had a place to launch from, boats to use, and a position that gave us a clear view across the water.

Then the relief faded, replaced by the anxiety I had been carrying for days.

Emily would not be hurt.

At least, I did not think Gaspar would hurt her.

He needed her too much for whatever he was planning. He would keep her alive. He would make sure she was protected because she mattered to him in a way that gave her value.

Mei was different.

She was still his prisoner.

Every day she remained there gave my mind more chances to imagine what might be happening to her. Every day that passed made it harder to stay patient. I wanted to take one of the boats right now, cross the inlet in the dark, get into Brigantine, and take both of them away before Gaspar even understood what was happening.

But I could not do that.

Not yet.

We had a plan with Tommy.

Taking the hotel had made that plan possible in ways it had not been before. We had more boats now. We had better sight over the marina. We had a safer place to prepare from, and we finally had a real route into Brigantine when the moment came.

Tonight had been a huge step forward.

A dangerous one.

But it had brought us closer to them.

I only had to wait for Tommy’s signal.

Once he was ready, I would go.

And when I did, it could not fail.

Gaspar could not suspect anything.

I lowered my head onto my folded arms and sat there on the stairs while Marlon’s people continued clearing the upper floors, listening to their footsteps fade deeper into the hotel.