novelraw Chapter 416: I Don’t Share
Chapter 416: I Don’t Share
The end of Region T had officially begun, and the facility reacted the way a dying human did...too late, too loud, and with no idea where the teeth were.
Alarms rose into a single long scream that bounced off white walls and stainless rails. Red lights strobed through the ruined chamber, painting the melted guards in fresh color every second.
And somewhere beyond the door, boots hit the floor in a running cadence that was still organized enough to think it meant something.
Aerenyx stood beside her as if none of it mattered.
The lab coat hanging off his shoulders was too small for him now, torn at the seams, wet at the cuffs, and he wore it anyway like a joke he didn’t bother explaining.
When he breathed, the very air around them seemed to change. It thickened in a way her creature could taste, a sweet rot that wasn’t trying to spread fast so much as simply existing too strongly for anything human to survive in.
"Shall we?" he had asked, and now he moved like he’d already heard her answer.
He stepped toward the door without looking back, trusting she would follow because predators didn’t abandon interesting things once they found them. And Aerenyx wanted to make sure that if nothing else, he interested Sera enough to be kept around.
Sera watched his combat boots cross the slick floor, watched the way nothing seemed to touch him. Not the infection, not the soldiers, not even the puddles that were once soldiers.
She continued to watch the way bodies softened under his shadow before he even touched them. She didn’t feel any sense of urgency.
Instead, all she felt was fascination.
Her creature stretched inside her ribs, purring like it had just walked into a room full of food. You opened a door with creatures who haven’t walked the Earth for centuries, now, make sure you watch what walks through it.
Aerenyx glanced over his shoulder at the sound of her creature’s purr, like he could hear it directly. His black eyes slid to her mouth for half a beat before returning to her gaze. "Come on, Trouble," he murmured softly. "Let’s take a walk."
He said it like walking through a CDC fortress during lockdown was a casual thing couples did to kill time. But there was nothing delicate in it. He didn’t need to perform or put on a show.
Just his very tone seemed to assume that their normal was violence and desire and that neither needed permission to mix the two of them together.
Sera followed him out.
The hallway beyond was brighter and colder than the chamber, washed in antiseptic light and the faint chemical sting of a sterilized system trying to save itself. The smell didn’t last.
Aerenyx’s presence pushed into the corridor like heat from a furnace, and the air turned wet with decay. It was almost polite how fast it happened.
Three soldiers rounded the corner in a tight line, rifles already lifting, boots landing in perfect rhythm because training kept moving longer than sense. The first man saw Aerenyx and inhaled sharply.
His skin blistered and split in seconds.
Black patches raced over his face and throat, swelling into boils that burst into green spray. He dropped forward, and his armor clanged once on the floor before the body inside it began to melt.
The sound the other two made wasn’t bravery or fear. It was confusion that didn’t have time to become either.
Aerenyx watched the first man collapse with a mild, interested look. "They still aim guns," he said to Sera, like the behavior was quaint like a child trying to play dressup. "Do they think bullets are antibodies?"
Sera stepped past the steaming armor plate without slowing. "They think the world still works," she answered, and her voice held the same kind of amused disbelief she used when she found something outdated in the ruins.
The other two soldiers tried to retreat.
However, they only got two steps before their legs softened under them. Their bodies folded, liquefying from the inside out until all that was left was a wet smear leaking through ash-colored fabric. The corridor fell quiet for half a second, then the alarms seemed to realize they should scream louder.
Aerenyx didn’t hurry.
He walked at the same relaxed pace he’d used inside Elias’s head, only now he wasn’t boxed in by human limitations.
Disease rolled off him in waves that didn’t look like smoke so much as a change in the air’s mood. It spread along the floor, climbed walls, threaded through any gap that carried oxygen.
Sera watched it with real interest. She had never seen death move like this. It didn’t hunt. It didn’t chase. It didn’t need to.
A door on their left burst open and three techs spilled out, dragging an older man between them.
Their eyes lifted, they saw Aerenyx, and what they tried to do next was useless. One clamped a respirator over his mouth too late, another screamed for a seal, the third just froze.
The older man was the first to breathe in the wrong air. His eyes rolled back, his throat bulged, and then his chest slumped inward like his lungs had turned to slurry. The tech holding his arm slipped in the sudden wetness as his body began to liquefy.
The other two died mid-motion, collapsing in opposite directions, their skin blackening with boils that burst as they fell.
Aerenyx stepped around them like spilled equipment. "This place smells like control," he said, and the word came out lazy, almost fond. "Humans never outgrow it."
Her creature chuckled. They need control because they know if they aren’t careful then they would fall to the bottom of the food chain...never to rise again.
Sera glanced at Aerenyx’s profile as they walked. His face was sharp and still, but there was humor in the way he held his mouth.
He liked this. He liked being out. He liked that she was beside him instead of cowering from him. He liked being watched.
He brushed past her shoulder, not by accident so much as a decisive move. He wanted her attention on him at all times, even while bodies softened into puddles around their feet. "Stay close, Trouble," he murmured, bending forward slightly so his breath rustled her hair. "I don’t like anyone touching what should be mine."
Sera’s smile lasted a heartbeat, quick and bright. "That sounds territorial."
"It is." He didn’t soften it. He didn’t excuse it. He said it like stating weather, then let his gaze sweep the hallway again.
"They built cages for you. That means they wanted to own you. Too bad for them... they will have to learn the hard way that I don’t share."