Harem Apocalypse: My Seed is the Cure?!

"Shit. Run!"

Until Christopher shouted it again they stormed off as fast as their legs could run.

None of them needed convincing. They were already moving before the word finished leaving his mouth, boots hammering against the floor as they sprinted down the eighth-floor corridor with the Hybrid crashing after them. The hallway felt too narrow now, too straight, too exposed. Every step seemed to trap them more instead of getting them out.

And they had badly underestimated the thing.

It wasn’t just strong.

It learned.

Cindy glanced back for half a second while she ran and her whole face changed.

"Watch out!"

Christopher twisted first, Rachel right behind him, and both of them saw it at once.

The Hybrid had ripped splintered chunks from the stairwell door it had burst through, and now it was hurling them at them with enough force to kill. The first slab of broken wood and bent metal came spinning down the corridor fast enough to whistle.

Rachel threw up a barrier across the width of the hall.

The red surface flashed into place just as the door fragment hit it. The impact boomed through the corridor and made the barrier shudder from top to bottom. Cracks of light ran through it, but it held.

Then the Hybrid threw the second piece.

Rachel did not have time to lower the first barrier properly before reinforcing it again. The next impact struck harder, splinters and dust bursting outward as the red shimmer bowed inward under the force. For one ugly second Christopher thought it would break then and there.

It didn’t.

But when the debris dropped, the Hybrid was closer.

"Move!" Christopher barked.

They ran again.

There was nothing clever left in it now. No perfect angle. No smooth plan. Just distance, breath, pain in the legs, and the sound of that thing gaining on them no matter how fast they moved. Christopher heard it smashing through the wreckage of its own thrown cover and kept seeing, in the back of his head, the Hybrid from Jackson Township. That same ugly certainty that if it got hands on one of them properly, the fight was over.

The corridor finally opened into a broader junction where one hall split toward another aisle.

Christopher almost cursed when he saw it.

A wider space meant more room to move, yeah. It also meant more room for that thing to build speed. More open angles. Fewer places to pin it down.

But by then it hardly mattered.

They had all realized the same thing at the same time.

If they kept running, it would just keep herding them until one of them stumbled or Rachel burned herself out trying to block every hit. The only chance now was to stand, force it to divide its attention, and try to take its head off before it got one of them.

Christopher stopped first and swung around.

He planted his feet and opened fire.

His rifle kicked hard against his shoulder, muzzle flashes punching white bursts into the dim hall as the rounds tore downrange. The Hybrid raised its right arm again, the thick one, the one it kept using like a shield, and the bullets chewed into flesh, opened darker wounds across it, and still failed to make it stop.

This time, though, Christopher wasn’t alone.

Rachel broke right. Cindy moved left. Both of them raised their handguns and fired from separate angles, aiming for the head whenever the Hybrid shifted its arm even slightly. The reports cracked one after another through the junction, louder than anything had felt in the enclosed corridors before. Ivy dropped back toward the wall near the split hall with her own handgun up, staying clear so she would not end up in Christopher’s line or Rachel’s barrier range.

The Hybrid’s head jerked from side to side.

Its eyes moved over them with that same horrible, mechanical focus. Christopher saw the instant it made the choice. Not him. Not first.

Cindy.

It felt the Dullahan in her.

The thing lurched sideways and rushed her.

Cindy’s eyes widened and she spun at once, sprinting back through the wider hall while Christopher and Rachel fired continuously after it, trying to break its rhythm before it reached her. Bullets tore chunks from its shoulder, neck, and back. One clipped the side of its jaw. Another punched through the torn flesh below its ear.

None hit clean enough.

The Hybrid adjusted again mid-charge, almost as if it had judged Cindy’s movement and changed its mind in the same breath. Its whole body twisted toward Rachel instead.

It went at her harder.

Faster.

Rachel threw up a barrier directly in front of herself and the Hybrid slammed into it with a force that nearly folded her knees under her. Cracks burst across the red surface at once.

The Hybrid punched.

The barrier shattered.

Rachel summoned another one instantly, the next red wall flashing into place almost on top of her own face before the follow-up strike could land. Christopher kept firing from the side, trying to get a shot past the Hybrid’s guard. Cindy had already turned back and was shooting too, but the thing ignored both of them now. It wanted Rachel.

Its damaged arm stayed up, half protecting its head from Christopher’s rounds while the other fist drew back again.

Then Christopher saw it.

Heat.

Not light. Not fire exactly. Just a visible pulse of heat curling around the Hybrid’s fist in a way that made the air near it distort.

Rachel saw it too.

Her face changed immediately.

The Hybrid punched.

The fist hit the barrier and the red surface did not just crack this time. It burst apart instantly, like the heat had gutted it before the physical force even finished the job. A wave rolled out of the strike right behind it, hot enough that Christopher felt it from where he stood.

Rachel took it full on.

The blast caught her in the chest and stomach and hurled her backward across the hall. She hit the wall hard with a broken grunt and dropped awkwardly to the floor.

"Rachel!" Cindy shouted, already running.

The Hybrid surged after Rachel at once, intent and fast, like it understood exactly what finishing her there would do to the rest of them.

Christopher moved before he thought.

He closed the distance recklessly, rifle still up, and fired from much nearer now, almost close enough to feel the spray of blood and torn tissue coming off the Hybrid’s raised arm. The reports battered his ears. He kept firing anyway, forcing the thing to turn.

It did.

The Hybrid swung its head toward him and growled, low and hateful, its dead white eyes fixing on his face now that he had made himself the nearest threat.

"Christopher! Move!" Cindy screamed.

He didn’t.

Not yet.

He planted himself there in the middle of the wrecked hall with the rifle barking over and over, fully aware of how stupidly close he was and using that anyway. If the thing wanted him now, good. Let it want him. Let Rachel breathe. Let Cindy get to her.

"You fucker," he shouted at it over the gunfire, rage coming out louder than fear now, "you can understand me, right?!"

The Hybrid only answered Christopher with a growl.

Then it rushed him.

It was already too close, only an arm’s length away now, and Christopher had no real room left to work with. He took several quick steps back anyway, still firing as he moved, the rifle jerking hard in his hands with every shot. The rounds slammed into the creature’s upper body and shoulder, tearing more ruined flesh away, but it kept coming.

Then Christopher saw it happen again.

The Hybrid’s fist clenched.

Heat gathered around it at once.

His eyes widened.

He knew exactly what was coming now. He had already seen what that strike had done to Rachel. The bastard did not need to touch him directly. He just needed to punch, and the heat wave behind it would hit like a wall.

Christopher tried to pull back harder, but he already knew it was too late.

The Hybrid punched.

Christopher threw one arm up on instinct, bracing for the blast—

And someone hit him from the side.

The impact took him off his feet completely and slammed him to the floor just as the heat wave tore through the exact spot where he had been standing. It burst across the corridor with a heavy, violent rush, making the air throb and the nearby wall shudder from the force.

Christopher grunted, half from the fall and half from the shock, and opened his eyes fast.

A pair of blue eyes stared down at him.

Lucy.

She had taken him down a second before the hit landed.

"Are you an idiot?" She asked, looking at him with a hard, openly judging expression.

Christopher blinked at her, still caught between relief and disbelief. For one stupid second he was too thrown off to answer at all.

Then his eyes widened again.

Because the Hybrid was right there.

"Careful—!"

He got the warning out too late.

A streak of blue flashed across the corridor.

The Hybrid had just enough time to start turning before a leg smashed into the side of its neck.

The impact landed with a crack so violent it seemed to punch the air itself. A burst of force rolled outward from the kick, sharp enough to make dust jump off the floor and debris rattle across the hall. The Hybrid’s entire massive body lifted sideways and flew through the air before crashing into one of the thick support pillars near the edge of the wider junction.

The pillar shattered under the hit.

Chunks of concrete broke away. Dust and fragments burst outward. The Hybrid crumpled into the wreckage and hit the ground in a twisted heap before it could even recover from what had happened.

Sydney landed a second later where the kick had been thrown from, her whole body still glowing blue with charged light that always made her movement look faster than normal even when standing still.

She let out a breath and rolled one shoulder.

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