novelraw Chapter 518: Let The Bodies Hit The Floor
Chapter 518: Let The Bodies Hit The Floor
The three of them, Lachlan, Zubair, and Psycho, moved deeper into the chaos without flinching.
The Sanctuary tried to reassert itself—alarms started and cut off, panels flashed directives no one followed, doors attempted to seal and then reopened because the people meant to maintain them were already coughing blood.
But it was clear to everyone that the system was flailing, and the flailing created new pockets of trapped bodies, new pressure points.
Psycho, on the other hand, looked delighted.
He drifted toward a cluster of guards trying to hold an intersection, rifles up, faces pale. They weren’t sick yet—at least not visibly. That made them dangerous because they still believed in authority.
"Stop!" one shouted. "You’re not authorized—"
Psycho moved before the sentence finished.
Frost erupted outward, not creeping, not decorative.
It snapped. It cut. It seized joints and tendons and lungs until even the very idea of taking in a breath was met with excruciating pain.
The nearest guard’s throat locked mid-breath, eyes bulging as air refused to move. Another raised his rifle and his fingers shattered clean off at the knuckles as ice sheared through them. Bodies hit the floor in pieces that didn’t align with their own limbs.
Psycho’s grin widened, bright with satisfaction. "Much better," he murmured. "I don’t do well with being told what I can and cannot do."
Zubair stepped through the collapsing line without slowing.
Heat flashed from his hand in a narrow arc—not a wall, not a spectacle. A precise burst that caught a guard in the face and dropped him like a cut wire. Another guard tried to pivot and run.
Zubair flicked his wrist and fire punched forward once in a massive ball. The runner fell without a sound, smoke leaking from his mouth as he hit the concrete.
Lachlan moved with them, lightning flickering low around his fingers. He didn’t strike randomly. He dropped anyone who lifted a weapon. Anyone who blocked. Anyone who tried to break away toward an exit.
It wasn’t cruelty.
It was closure.
Aerenyx was turning the Sanctuary into a sealed box. His disease was already inside the people. Letting them leave would just spread the consequence outward. Really, Lachlan was being a humanitarian by making sure that the lid that was Hope Sanctuary was closed.
Just think of all the innocent lives that he was saving by killing these people.
A group of civilians broke from the crowd toward a service corridor marked for maintenance and waste disposal. They sprinted like the sign at the end promised air, promised clean lungs, promised a world outside this one. Their faces were streaked with sweat and fear. Some were already coughing, trying to hide it as they ran.
Psycho watched them with interest. "They found a hole."
"No they didn’t," Lachlan snorted with a smirk on his face. "Weren’t you the one who said that a little bit of hope could be deadly?"
He lifted his hand and struck the control panel at the corridor entrance. Lightning snapped, sparks exploding across the metal. The heavy door slammed down with a brutal clang that shook the frame.
The civilians on the wrong side of it screamed and pounded on the door.
They yelled for help. They begged. They cried names. None of it mattered.
Zubair walked toward the sealed door, stopping close enough that the metal reflected faintly in his eyes. He didn’t look moved. He looked annoyed, like he’d found an incorrect piece in a structure that was already failing.
"They’ll try another route," he said.
"They won’t," Psycho replied, and his voice held the casual certainty of a man who had already decided.
Frost gathered along Psycho’s sleeve. He didn’t fling it at the door. He didn’t ice the corridor. He let it drift outward, thin and precise, slipping through seams, curling under the door like a living thing.
The pounding turned into coughing.
The coughing turned into choking.
The noise thinned.
Bodies hit the door from the other side and slid down it.
Lachlan didn’t wait for silence. He turned away before it was complete, because he had no interest in watching humans realize the trap was real. That realization served no purpose.
He moved back into the main corridor, eyes scanning, lightning ready. Zubair followed without hesitation, already shifting his stance to watch the next junction. Psycho drifted behind them, humming quietly, like this was the closest thing to peace he’d had in days.
Another barricade tried to form ahead—guards pulling bodies into a line, rifles raised, shouting orders to people who were already dying. The moment the guards saw Lachlan’s group moving with purpose through the chaos, their faces tightened. Fear recognized fear.
A guard lifted his rifle.
Lachlan struck first. Lightning snapped into the weapon, exploding the barrel. The guard screamed as shrapnel tore into his hands. Psycho stepped in and finished him with frost that took his throat cleanly. Zubair didn’t stop to watch.
"Enough," Zubair said, and it wasn’t anger, it was function. A demand for efficiency.
Lachlan nodded once. He didn’t argue. He didn’t moralize. He adjusted and moved on.
They were not here to save anyone.
They were here because Sera was missing, and everything else was background noise.
Bodies continued to fall around them.
Some from disease. Some from frost. Some from lightning. Some from fire.
But not a single person was still standing when the three men were done with them.
People tried to run and found corridors closing, intersections collapsing, exits sealing. The Sanctuary’s structure became a funnel, pushing everyone deeper, tighter, into fewer and fewer spaces where breathing became optional.
And through it all, Lachlan kept moving.
Not because he cared about the dying.
Because he cared about the one who wasn’t here.
He cut down another runner at the next junction with lightning that dropped the man mid-stride. Zubair stepped over the body without looking. Psycho laughed softly as a second runner slipped in blood and broke his own leg trying to stand.
"This is going to get worse," Psycho said, as if he was looking forward to it.
Lachlan didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
They pushed forward into the crush, into the next wave of bodies, into the next desperate attempt at escape. The Sanctuary wasn’t a place anymore. It was a trap closing, and they were part of the mechanism.
And no one was getting out.