Chapter 60: Shatter

The panic was a live wire in Claire’s chest, the frustration a sharp, metallic taste in her mouth. It was a familiar combination by now. Her journey to the central control room had been a brutal, close-quarters fight through corridors cluttered with fallen lab equipment and the reanimated remains of WilPharma’s staff. She’d had no choice but to fire and shove her way forward, the echoes of snarls and gunshots ringing in her ears. Rick forcing her to arm herself back at the quarantine camp had been the best waste of time in her life.

The first thing she did inside was cross to the bank of security monitors. She ignored the dead screens, her focus on the few that still flickered with life. She searched for Miller, cycling quickly to the garden sector feeds. It was the last place she had seen him.

She found him almost immediately. Or rather, she found what he had become. The creature on screen was massive and wrong, but one feature was horribly familiar: a single, huge yellow eyeball against the mutated flesh. A cold tremor ran through her. No matter how many times G mutated, that eye was the constant. It was the unmistakable signature of the G-virus.

Her breath caught, a sharp hitch in her throat, as Rick suddenly vaulted into the frame on the monitor. He was pulling Angela Miller from the path of the monstrosity. For a single, fleeting second, the tight knot in her chest loosened.

Then, the screens around her erupted in a synchronized, blood-red flash. Harsh, automated alerts scrolled across every functional monitor, their sterile text screaming a death sentence for the entire garden sector. A purge sequence. It was going to be incinerated.

Helpless, she could only watch as G tore through the remaining rangers. The creature moved with a brutal, efficient horror, extinguishing the last pockets of resistance. Each flicker of movement on the screen was a life ending. Her fingers scrambled across the console’s interface, stabbing at commands to override the doors lockdown. To no avail. All she could do was pray Rick, Leon, and Angela found a way out before the inferno unleashed and turned them all to ash.

She refused to give up, her hands still fumbling over the controls. But her heart, already hammering against her ribs from the terror of losing her friend, and the man she loved, seemed to lurch into her throat at what she saw next.

On the screen, Rick had engaged G. Alone. He pointed sharply toward the garden’s far wall, a direction Leon and Angela immediately fled toward. He discarded his empty shotgun, and before it had even struck the ground, he was already moving, closing the distance to grapple with the monstrosity.

Claire could not believe what she was seeing. Rick was landing punches on G with such force that the creature was reacting. The effect was not dramatic, but it was undeniable, each impact causing the monstrosity to take a heavy step backward. His movements were a blur, too fast for her eyes to cleanly follow on the grainy feed. It was that impossible speed alone that saved him, allowing him to weave aside from blows that carried enough power to crush stone.

Her fists slammed against the console when she finally accepted there was nothing she could do. The hit was so hard it dented the metal, sending a sharp, jolting pain up through the wound in her hand. The ache was immediate and deep, a bright, angry flare that anchored her to the helpless moment.

Right before her eyes, the purge countdown bled away its final seconds. Rick used his last flashbang. The screen whited out for an instant, and in the blinding aftermath, he seized a heavy steel beam from the debris. With a raw, powerful thrust, he drove it clean through the creature’s torso, pinning G to the ground as the beam buried itself in the concrete. Then he turned and sprinted in the direction Leon and Angela had gone.

Claire lost sight of him. It was not because he had outrun the camera, moving even faster than before, but because the entire monitor was suddenly consumed by a roaring wall of bright, hot flames.

The strength vanished from her legs, a sudden and total failure, and the hard floor rose up to meet her. A ragged, broken sound was torn from her chest, and hot tears spilled freely down her face, each sob shaking her frame.

She had not seen him in seven years. In less than a day, in only a handful of hours, his presence had reignited every feeling she had spent those long years trying to bury. She had tried to push them down again, to lock them away and focus on the crisis at hand. But her heart, as it always did where Rick was concerned, refused to listen and did whatever it wanted, like a stubborn spoiled child.

And now it was in pieces.

Because no matter how great the healing factor, nothing could survive that sterilization process, not even him.

Right under her eyes, Rick had died.

And part of herself died with him.