"Wake up, Rhett." A voice spoke above him.
The words sliced through the suffocating darkness like a blade, dragging him from the depths of a nightmare that clung to his consciousness like tar. Immediately, Rhett's field of vision changed—not the gradual swim of natural awakening, but a violent snap that felt like being yanked through dimensions. The transition was so jarring it nearly made him pass out as his eyes struggled to adjust to the new reality.
"Huh?" Rhett forced out unconsciously, the word scraping against his throat like sandpaper.
For one, it was still dark. He could tell the sun was just bleeding on the horizon, painting the sky in sickly amber streaks, so it was probably close to 6 AM. The air tasted of ash and something metallic that made his tongue recoil.
Henrik was crouched over him, and Rhett realized that he'd been gently—or not so gently—slapping his cheek in an attempt to wake him up. Henrik's face was tense as it always was, but there was something sharper in his expression now, a sense of urgency that made his gaunt features look almost predatory in the dim light.
"I told you, we move at first light. Let's move."
"Ahhhh." Rhett slurred, instinctively sitting up. The movement sent the world spinning, and for a moment he wasn't sure if he was still in the nightmare or awake. The images crashed back—his own flesh animated like broken mannequins, Lucille's beautiful face reduced to grinning bone, the endless sea of corpses that looked just like him.
As if his brain was finally reconnecting with his body, processing the visceral terror he had just witnessed, his stomach convulsed violently. The green, slick liquid shot out of his throat like a projectile, arcing through the air to splatter directly on Henrik's chest.
For a moment, Henrik stared at him in abject horror, his mouth slightly open as if he couldn't quite process what had just happened. The vomit clung to his skinny torso like some grotesque decoration, chunks of half-digested sardines from yesterday's dinner mixed with bile that burned Rhett's nostrils.
Then Henrik hit him on the chest, almost reflexively, before jumping back as if he was terrified Rhett would go for round two.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Henrik yelled in disgust, his voice cracking slightly as he made sure he was well out of the blast radius.
Rhett didn't have any smart aleck retorts to shoot back this time. His stomach convulsed again, and his neck muscles spasmed, forcing everything that still remained in his guts to come up—more bile, more chunks, more of that burning acid that made his eyes water. The smell filled his nostrils, a nauseating cocktail of bile and rotten fish that made him want to vomit all over again.
Get it together, he told himself desperately, but the images wouldn't leave him alone. Skeleton-Lucille's empty sockets staring at him with accusation. His own corpse-duplicates shambling toward him with that horrible, knowing grin. The weight of all those deaths, all that suffering, crushing down on him.
Once Henrik saw the genuine fear still stuck in Rhett's eyes—not the usual cocky defiance, his face morphed into concern unfamiliar to his gaunt features. The anger faded, replaced by something that looked almost like worry.
"What's wrong? Are you sick?" Henrik asked, his voice softer now, though still wary.
"I'm. Fine." Rhett wheezed between labored breaths as he tried to steady himself. He felt faint, hollow, like something essential had been scooped out of him. His head throbbed with a pain that felt deeper than physical, and his hands were shaking in a way that had nothing to do with the cold morning air.
It almost felt like he was dying—not the quick, violent deaths he'd grown accustomed to, but something slower and more insidious. Like his soul was being eaten away from the inside.
"You sure?" Henrik asked, drawing closer despite his better judgment. He used the water bottle Rhett had found yesterday and began washing the vomit off his skinny chest, his movements efficient. "Most people don't wake up vomiting."
"Yeah, sorry about that." Rhett forced a laugh, but it rang hollow even to his own ears. It was the kind of laugh you make when you're trying to convince yourself as much as anyone else. Henrik didn't buy his 'okay' act—Rhett could see it in the way his eyes narrowed, the way his jaw tightened with something that might have been frustration or might have been concern.
So he added details, hoping to deflect. "It was just a nightmare."
A very fucked up and unfunny nightmare. The kind that made you question whether your brain was your friend or your enemy. Why would his subconscious even conjure up something so messed up? His own dead bodies shambling around like broken toys? And Lucille's skeleton, grinning at him with that horrible, knowing smile?
He wanted to be angry, but he didn't know what to direct his anger at. Himself? His brain? His dreams? The world that had made nightmares feel more real than hope?
Don't think about it. Don't think about her bones. Don't think about your own corpse-face staring back at you with dead eyes.
He let out a final heave and forced himself back up, brushing the vomit off his lips with the cuff of his stolen shirt. The fabric was rough against his skin, a reminder of how far he'd fallen from anything resembling normalcy. He was just going to have to ignore the dream and pretend like it never happened.
Like he didn't see his own flesh and bone animated like broken mannequins.
Like he didn't see the girl he loved the most reduced to a fucking skeleton.
"Again, most people don't wake up to nightmares with vomiting," Henrik said, raising an eyebrow. There was something in his voice—not quite accusation, but not entirely dismissal either. Like he was trying to figure out whether Rhett was cracking under the pressure or just having a bad morning.
But he didn't probe further. It was almost as if his daily allowance of care had been exhausted with just this one interaction with Rhett, and now he was retreating back into his shell of pragmatic indifference.
Maybe he's just tired of pretending to give a shit, Rhett thought, but even as the bitter observation formed, he recognized it wasn't entirely fair. Henrik had his own demons, his own ways of coping with the endless horror of their situation. Not everyone could bounce back from trauma with jokes and bravado.
As Rhett's nose began working again, cutting through the lingering smell of his own bile, he caught a scent that made his nostrils tingle—the rich, earthy smell of charred flesh.
At the other side of the roof, he could see thin trails of smoke ascending upward, disappearing into the grey morning sky. Henrik noticed where his eyes had wandered and nodded knowingly, as if he'd been waiting for Rhett to notice.
Henrik briskly stood up and walked towards the source of the smell, his movements sharp and purposeful. The tiredness and surrender that had weighed down his body last night seemed to have vanished with the dawn. He still walked with a limp, his left shoulder was still dislocated, and there were dark circles under his eyes that spoke of sleepless nights, but there was a definite purpose in his gait now. Like sleeping—or whatever passed for rest in this hellscape—had reinvigorated his zeal for survival.
Rhett still felt like shit. He'd slept, sure, but it didn't feel like it had been long enough or deep enough to matter. He'd lain down, gone immediately to the nightmare, which had felt like barely five minutes of subjective time, and then woken up to find a whole night had passed. It was almost like the dream had actively drained his energy, leaving him more exhausted than when he'd started.
Still, he knew he needed to get up and move. For his list. For the people he'd sworn to save. For Lucille—the real Lucille, not the skeletal apparition that haunted his dreams.
"Whatcha got there?" Rhett asked, trying to slip back into his usual aloof personality. The mask felt heavier than usual, like it was made of lead instead of bravado.
"Food," Henrik said briskly, and Rhett walked closer to get a better look.
Henrik had apparently prepared a small fire using broken planks from discarded wooden boxes, most likely started with his cigarette lighter. The flames crackled and popped, sending up lazy spirals of smoke that smelled of burned wood and something more primal. Suspended over the fire with a makeshift spit made from a metal rod was some sort of blackened body, impaled lengthwise.
It had the elongated body of a lizard, but its paws were pink and fleshy like a rat's, with tiny claws that caught the firelight. Its head had been severed and set aside, the neck showing white bone and dark meat. The skin had been flayed away in strips, revealing muscle that had been charred to a dark brown. Its guts sat discarded at the far end of the roof, a small pile of organs that looked disturbingly familiar.
The smell was complex—earthy and gamey, with undertones that Rhett couldn't quite identify. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, but it wasn't exactly appetizing either.
"Food?" he asked back, confused. "What the hell is that?"
"Remember those creatures we faced before the BeastMaster?" Henrik asked, his tone matter-of-fact as he turned the spit to cook the meat more evenly.
"Uh, yeah?" Rhett replied, trying not to think about how the creature's pink paws reminded him of human hands. "The same creatures you used me as bait for?"
Henrik grimaced at the unpleasant memory, his jaw tightening with what might have been guilt or just annoyance. "Yes. But when I went on patrol this morning, I saw a couple of them roaming about. They're mostly low-tier, so I was able to easily kill one with my blade."
"I thought Marina and the Ice Queen took care of them?" Rhett replied, grateful for the distraction from his own thoughts.
"That's what I thought too. My theory is that when that hybrid bastard brought them as backup, Seraphina killed him before they could reach him. Marina must have taken out the first few, and the rest escaped into the ruins, since their master was dead." Henrik's voice took on a tactical edge, the kind of analytical tone that meant he was thinking several steps ahead. "I'm not sure exactly how many are still around, but we better tread with caution."
Henrik tore a strip of meat from the lizard's haunch and tossed it Rhett's way. Rhett barely caught it, the flesh still warm and slightly tough to the touch. He sniffed it cautiously, trying not to think about what it had looked like alive.
It didn't smell too bad, actually. It definitely had a swampy odor and coppery undertones that reminded him unpleasantly of blood, but the scent was dampened by what looked like spices sprinkled liberally over the surface.
"You seasoned this?" Rhett asked, surprised despite himself.
"Yeah, raided the hotel pantry for some food earlier. Only came up with a few spices that had been left behind—some dried herbs, a bit of salt." Henrik's voice carried a note of pride, as if he was pleased with his resourcefulness.
"Gourmet chef," Rhett teased as Henrik hissed in what might have been amusement. Even at the end of the world, even when everything was falling apart, Henrik was still as resourceful as ever. It was one of the things that made Rhett feel so inadequate in comparison.
Rhett took the meat reluctantly, his stomach still churning from the nightmare and the vomiting episode. The texture was stringy and rubbery, requiring more chewing than he'd expected, but the flavor wasn't as bad as he'd feared. It tasted somewhere between chicken and fish, with a slightly metallic aftertaste that reminded him of pennies.
He tried to eat, but halfway through chewing, the image of skeleton-Lucille flashed through his mind again—her empty sockets, her grinning skull, the way she'd reached for him with bone fingers. His throat constricted, and he nearly gagged on the meat.
Stop it. Stop thinking about it. She's alive. She's alive and you're going to find her and she's going to be warm and breathing and human.
"So what's the plan?" Rhett asked between bites, forcing himself to swallow despite the way his stomach wanted to rebel. "Are we just gonna walk in blind?"
"That sounds like a Rhett idea. And it's stupid," Henrik said as he settled down cross-legged on the concrete floor. "Tomorrow Henrik already has a plan."
Rhett gave a small chuckle at the callback to their conversation from the night before, but the humor faded quickly when he turned his head toward the massive black crater at the center of the city. Only dull, grey smoke rose from it now, the fires long extinguished, but the damage was devastatingly evident. Buildings near the explosion zone had been completely eviscerated, either reduced to rubble or left as blackened skeleton husks that reached toward the sky like accusing fingers.
If not for Henrik kidnapping him and escaping through the tunnels, they would have been caught in that explosion. Who knew whether the blast would put the remaining villains in a state of heightened alert, making them more cautious about hunting down anyone left in the city? Or would it make them more desperate, more willing to take risks?
"Not blind," Henrik continued, pulling Rhett's attention back to the present. "While you were having your beauty sleep, I did some reconnaissance." He pulled out a hand-drawn map from his pocket, crude but surprisingly detailed. The lines were shaky but precise, showing streets and buildings with careful annotations. "There's a small military mercenary outpost about two miles northeast of here. Looks like they're using the old National Guard armory as a base."
"Okay..." Rhett said slowly, studying the map with growing unease. "So we know where to avoid. Good job, Henrik."
"No. Not avoid." Henrik's voice was flat, matter-of-fact in a way that made Rhett's stomach drop. "We're going to steal their supplies."
"Oh my God, you really are suicidal," Rhett said, letting himself fall backward onto the concrete, his back parallel to the floor. The sky above them was still dark, the sun barely bleeding color into the horizon. Above them, the clouds swirled ominously, heavy with the promise of rain or worse. "Isn't raiding a military place too risky?"
"Well, think about it like this," Henrik replied, his tone taking on the patient cadence of someone explaining something to a child. "I'm down to my last magazine, only three rounds left. I still need to get medical supplies or this wound is going to get infected, and then I'll be useless to both of us. Without a weapon restock, I'm just an average guy with a blade. Not much against an apocalypse. And you're not much of a fighter yourself."
Rhett nodded reluctantly. It made sense—without weapons, getting anywhere around the city would turn into a battle of attrition. That was how Rhett had started out anyway, stumbling from one near-death experience for hours to another. But still...
"What if we get caught? Won't they capture us?" Rhett asked, then grew even more confused. "Wait, I thought mercs worked for the government. Which means they're like heroes. Good guys. Aren't we on their side?"
"We're on nobody's side," Henrik said, and there was something bitter in his voice that made Rhett look at him more carefully. "I'm a deserted hero. I'll mostly be treated as a villain—or at best, a traitor. You're a mentally challenged civilian, which means they won't go out of their way to hurt you, but they won't hand out any supplies to you either. Their job would most likely be to detain you to keep you safe, and take you to some secure city when they restock. Which means you won't be able to rescue your girlfriend."
He'd been so focused on the immediate dangers—the creatures, the villains, the constant threat of death—that he hadn't really considered the larger political implications. They weren't just survivors anymore. They were fugitives.
"Okay..." Rhett said slowly, ignoring Henrik's casual barb about his intelligence. "But they don't know you deserted, do they? Can't you just go in and lie, say you're a hero on a mission? It's not like you're expected to carry ID in a place like this. Or you could tell them it was stolen. It just feels too risky to steal from trained fighters."
"Why can't you take a moment to think?" Henrik sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with the kind of exasperation that suggested this wasn't the first time he'd had to explain basic tactics. "The only proof I could have that I'm a hero is an AA communication device or my commanding officer to vouch for me. Since I have neither of those things, they have no reason to believe I'm not a villain either."
Rhett remembered what Marina had told Henrik about their commander—Reeves, wasn't it? That she had left for a mission and never come back. Just another casualty in a war that seemed to be consuming everyone, heroes and villains alike.
"Aargh! This sucks balls," Rhett groaned, covering his face with his hands. "We're really gonna rob a mercenary camp?"
Henrik's eyes narrowed as he leaned toward Rhett, close enough that Rhett could smell the blood from his bandaged wounds, the sharp tang of infection that was probably already setting in. "I never said you should come. Besides, you're more likely to be a distraction since you lack any sort of stealth, and clearly don't know when to keep your mouth shut."
The words stung, but Rhett recognized the deflection for what it was. Henrik was scared too, just better at hiding it behind layers of tactical thinking and cold pragmatism.
"Plus, the base isn't heavily guarded," Henrik continued, his voice taking on the tone of someone trying to convince himself as much as his audience. "Looks like the villains have worn down their numbers. Only spotted about ten guards total. It'll be hard, but doable."
"You don't have to come," Henrik said, and there was something in his voice that might have been relief or disappointment. "I only want one thing—to get out of this godforsaken city alive. You want to go save your bride. Then we split ways and never see each other again. Are you going to follow, or not? We can split paths here."
Rhett sighed, considering his options. Not that he had many. Henrik was the brain of their partnership, and also the brawn. He was tactical, sharp, and resourceful in ways that made Rhett feel like a bumbling amateur. Henrik was also a trained fighter, and if he could get more weapons fused to his body and restock on ammunition, he'd be a genuine force to be reckoned with.
In comparison to Henrik, Rhett felt pathetically small and useless. For a moment, an unbidden thought formed in his mind.
What if Henrik had my revival quirk?
For any person more powerful than Rhett, it would undoubtedly be a wonderful boon. Even someone who wasn't particularly strong could use it to wear down opponents in a battle of attrition. Even if they died, they could regenerate and finish off their exhausted enemies. The possibilities were endless.
He could see it so clearly: Henrik with his Merger quirk paired with Rhett's revival ability, becoming nothing short of a demon of death on the battlefield. Raining down bullets and blade strikes with reckless abandon, knowing that death was just a temporary setback. Unable to be killed, impossible to stop.
Not only did Rhett have a shitty quirk that required him to die to be useful, he also happened to be the worst possible person to wield it. Someone like Henrik would have used it to save people, to make a real difference. Instead, it had gone to someone who could barely save himself, let alone anyone else.
The thought made him feel sick in a way that had nothing to do with the nightmare or the vomit. It was the kind of self-loathing that ate at you from the inside, making you question whether you deserved to exist at all.
But even as the dark thoughts swirled through his mind, Rhett clenched his fist. He wasn't going to go down without a fight. Besides, he had saved Henrik from the Hitdevil, even if it had taken him multiple deaths to do it. That had to count for something.
And he had to remember who he was fighting for.
The thought of Lucille should have brought him comfort, but instead the image of her skeletal form from the nightmare flashed through his mind—bone-white fingers reaching for him, empty sockets where her beautiful eyes should have been. He slapped himself hard across the face, the sharp pain cutting through the intrusive memory.
Henrik raised an eyebrow at the sudden self-violence, his expression cycling through confusion and concern. "You okay?"
"Yeah, fine," Rhett said, forcing a smile that felt more like a grimace. "Just... motivating myself."
But he wasn't fine. He was haunted by nightmares, inadequate compared to his partner, and about to attempt something that would probably get them both killed. The only thing keeping him going was the thought of Lucille—the real Lucille, not the skeletal horror from his dreams.
He was going to see her again. He was going to run up to her and pull her close, feel her breath against his neck, the rise and fall of her chest, her warm soft skin under his hands. He was going to prove to himself that she was alive, that she was real, that all of this suffering had meaning.
Nothing in hell would stop him from achieving his goal, no matter how pathetic he was, no matter how much more deserving Henrik might be of his power.
"Let's go steal some weapons," Rhett said, and this time his voice didn't waver. It wasn't a joke or a throwaway line. It was a commitment, a declaration of intent that surprised him with its firmness.
Henrik studied his face for a moment, as if trying to read something in his expression. Whatever he saw there seemed to satisfy him, because he nodded once and began gathering his gear.