Harem Apocalypse: My Seed is the Cure?!

"Phew," Sydney said, then smirked. "Don’t worry. Sydney came to save the day, as always."

Then she turned properly toward them and stopped for a beat.

From where she stood, Lucy was still half on top of Christopher after tackling him out of the heat strike, one knee braced near his hip, one hand against the floor beside his shoulder while Christopher lay flat on his back staring up in the stunned, deeply offended way of someone who had almost died and was now being judged for it.

Sydney’s smirk stretched wider at once.

She let out a dramatic sigh.

"Goodness. Both of you, this is really not the time for a cowgirl. Lucy, please get off him. You can have your way with him once we’re done."

Both of them flinched so hard it would have been funny even without the Hybrid a few yards away.

Lucy’s expression twisted in outright disgust and she pushed herself off Christopher so fast she nearly did jump away from him. Christopher sat up immediately, then got to his feet with a look on his face that promised Sydney’s death would be personal if they survived the next five minutes.

"Glad to see you back, Sydney," he said.

He did not mean it.

Sydney only shrugged. "I saved your ass. You’re welcome."

Christopher ignored her and looked at Lucy instead. "You did save me. Thanks."

Lucy did not soften even a little.

"Why didn’t you move sooner instead of standing there and staring at the attack like an idiot?" she shot back.

Christopher blinked at her. "What?"

"Are you stupid?"

A vein rose visibly at Christopher’s temple.

For a second it looked like he might actually start arguing with her right there in front of the wrecked pillar and the still-moving Hybrid.

"Alright, enough bickering, lovebirds," Sydney cut in. "Let’s kill this thing first."

That shut both of them up, if only because the Hybrid had started dragging itself upright again through the broken concrete.

Across the corridor, Cindy had already dropped beside Rachel.

"Rachel, are you okay?"

Rachel tried to sit up straighter and sucked in a breath through her teeth when the movement pulled at her arm.

"Y...yeah," she said. "I think. Feels like I broke my arm, though."

She was clutching her right arm close to herself now, and the way she was holding it made Cindy’s stomach turn. Not dangling wrong, thankfully. But bad enough.

Cindy looked over it quickly, then lifted her head when Ivy moved in closer.

Ivy had knelt beside them now, finally looking more openly engaged than usual, her attention fixed on Rachel’s arm and the singed marks across her clothes where the heat strike had caught her.

"Not now," Rachel said before either of them could start fussing over it. Her eyes were already back on the Hybrid. "We end this first."

"Yeah," Sydney said, nodding. "We still need you covering us, Rachel."

Lucy kept her rifle raised toward the thing and frowned.

"I thought you would have killed it with that kick."

She meant it too. She had felt the impact. Seen it. The strike should have snapped a neck clean through.

Sydney rolled one shoulder loosely, blue light still twitching faintly around her.

"Well, I used speed to make the hit stronger, so yeah, it should’ve broken his neck." She grimaced at the Hybrid. "But this is still a Hybrid, and a weird one. Look at it. It’s releasing some kind of power out of its body. What even is that smoke?"

"It reminds me of that one Ryan had seen with me, Elena, and Mei when we were searching for electrical components," Cindy said, still half crouched beside Rachel. "That thing kept releasing electricity from its body with every strike."

Just remembering it made her skin crawl.

That had not been a normal fight either. It had been a disaster barely held together by Ryan doing something impossible at the exact moment they would have died otherwise. She still remembered the lightning crawling through its body and the way the air itself had smelled burnt.

"Oh, right," Sydney said. "Ryan told me about that one. So these are some kind of evolved Hybrids." She clicked her tongue. "God, how many of these freaks are there? We’ve seen too many already. Two just here."

Christopher’s head snapped toward her. "Two? Where’s the other one?"

Then his face changed. "Where’s Ryan?"

Cindy turned just as fast, panic hitting her a second later than it hit him.

"Yeah. Where is Ryan?"

Sydney looked at both of them like she was annoyed they needed it explained.

"What do you think? He’s fighting the other Hybrid."

Cindy stared at her. "A-Alone?"

"Calm down," Sydney said, and this time there was no teasing in her at all. "He can handle it. We deal with this one first. Focus."

The words worked, even if the worry didn’t go anywhere.

Christopher looked like he wanted to sprint in ten directions at once, but he knew she was right. Rachel was hurt. The Hybrid in front of them was still standing. Zakthar lay unconscious a little farther back near the wall where Sydney and Lucy had dragged him out of the way, useless to everyone for the moment. If they broke now, this thing would tear through them before anyone got the chance to help Ryan.

So they all turned back toward it.

The Hybrid had pulled itself fully upright.

Its neck still sat wrong from Sydney’s kick. One arm was ripped open and hanging ugly. Fresh bullet wounds and older cuts covered its torso. Dust from the broken pillar clung to its shoulders and face. None of that seemed to matter. Heat bled off its body more visibly now, twisting the air around it in wavering currents. Thin streams of smoke or steam crawled up from its fist and forearm in a way that made the whole right side of it look unstable, like something inside was overheating and feeding it more power instead of killing it.

Christopher lifted the rifle and checked his angle.

Lucy shifted a few steps left without being told, keeping her distance from him so they would not overlap lines of fire.

Sydney cracked her neck once and let the blue glow intensify around her legs and shoulders.

Rachel got herself upright using the wall, pale now but steady enough to stand. She kept her injured arm tight to her side and raised her left hand instead, red light already starting to gather there. The barriers would be weaker one-handed. Everyone knew it. No one said it.

Cindy stepped in beside her with the handgun raised, though her eyes kept cutting once toward the corridor where Ryan was not.

Ivy meanwhile just stood there but she gave a long stare at Zakthar.

The Hybrid looked from one to the next.

Then it growled.

"Yeah," Christopher muttered, sighting down the rifle. "I really hate this bastard."

"Get in line," Sydney said.

The Hybrid lowered its shoulders.

Heat swelled harder around its right fist.

Rachel’s hand came up at once, red shimmer already forming in front of them, while Sydney bent into motion and Christopher tightened his finger on the trigger.

Then all of them moved at the same time as the Hybrid charged.