His heart burst. The bullet pierced through his skin, flesh, muscle and bone until it reached the red organ pumping blood, spewing red mist like a fountain as it erupted from the other side.
It was painful, but Rhett had gotten used to it. As used to dying as any sane person could be.
What he cared about was if his sacrifice was in vain.
The bullet had pierced through his back and continued its path to Henrik. But its impact through Rhett had slowed its momentum, making it less deadly.
Henrik saw the opportunity. Before the round had gone off, he must have realized that Velez was aiming to kill, going for his head area and neck, so he raised his dislocated arm painfully and took the hit. The bullet pierced through his bicep, but lodged in it, not going all the way to impale Henrik's face.
He bit down on his lip, hard enough to draw blood, but he didn't slow down for one second despite the pain. He had bought a split-second opportunity, and he wasn't going to waste it.
Rhett's heart was already regenerating in less than a second. His consciousness had been out for less than that, so he quickly brought the wheels back in focus, pedalling as furiously as he could, but the thought in his mind formed anyways.
Could he really escape Velez?
He thought back to how he faced the Iron Knight, despite an uncountable amount of deaths, came out victorious. How he and Henrik had survived encounters with beasts from nightmares, the BeastMaster and his Behemoth, Marina and the Ice Queen, One-touch Death Natos, the HitDevil and Daimon.
When he looked at it from that perspective, it made Velez look tame.
"You wanna know what I remember about your men?" Rhett howled over the wind.
Velez's face tightened as he gripped the handles of the bike, but he didn't respond.
Rhett forced a smile despite how he felt, to sell his look of psychoticness. "Nothing. Not a damn thing."
"Damn you, IMMORTAL!" Velez practically screamed as he revved harder, speeding quicker to catch up.
Rhett bit back a psychotic laugh. Or cry. It was true. He didn't remember Velez's men, because he had absolutely no recollection of the 'Immortal' incident Velez kept accusing him for.
But when he phrased it like that, he made it sound like Velez and his people were such an insignificant footnote in his life, which had no doubt angered him immensely.
"Why. Would. You. Provoke. Him!" Henrik asked between laboured breaths as they picked up speed. Henrik's complexion was quickly turning paler due to blood loss, the veins on his head exerted. "You just pissed him off. That serves us no purpose!"
"Actually it does." Rhett smirked. "Angry people are more likely to mess up."
As he said those words, he glanced behind again and saw Velez crash into a small crate, his bike skidding against the brick floor. This agitated him, his torrents sending another wild range of bullets at them.
Recklessness like this would be his downfall.
In fact, the only reason they had made it this long without getting killed was due to the nightmare that was this side of the city's municipal engineering.
They plunged into the maze of the city, weaving between abandoned cars and piles of debris.
Most streets were short and tight, even for the two bicycles, much less Velez's Warbike. Every turn they took to leave a street, that was when Velez would finally catch up. They didn't even have any idea where they were going.
The random twists and turns made it feel like they were just rats in a cage, turning corners that led nowhere, alleyways that circled back into themselves, false exits with collapsed roofs and dead ends bricked up by time and war. Rhett's lungs burned, the taste of blood and rust in his mouth. Henrik was panting hard behind him, and every turn felt like a game of Russian roulette.
One wrong move and they'd be red stains on the street.
The sound of Velez's warbike echoed behind them like a persistent thunder, its armored frame growling through the alleys. The mounted guns roared again, chewing chunks of plaster and concrete from the walls just inches from Rhett's shoulder. Bullets tore past him with deafening shrieks.
"Go right!" Henrik shouted, his voice tight and choked with pain.
They darted apart at the next junction—Rhett veering into a drainage tunnel passage while Henrik curved into a narrow warehouse corridor. The warbike growled louder behind them, engine snarling like it knew its prey was close.
Rhett barely cleared the drainage outlet, narrowly avoiding a shot that splintered the pipe above him. Water burst from the breach, soaking him, but also buying him seconds. His tires skidded, caught, and he was back in the maze.
Somewhere nearby, Henrik reappeared, shoulder still oozing blood, but his eyes burning with focus.
They crossed again into a cramped industrial street. Derelict scaffolding loomed above them, rusted beams teetering from half-built high rises. Rhett pushed through, ducking under a swaying cable, then shot out into open space.
He didn't even notice the oil barrels at first—he was too focused on not dying.
But Henrik did.
His eyes caught the black and red biohazard symbols stenciled across a stack of battered drums. Leaking oil had formed slick puddles across the fractured road, iridescent sheens catching the light like gasoline rainbows. Just ahead, Velez's bike roared around the corner, skidding as it tried to realign its path.
"Rhett. Get ahead of me. Now!" Henrik growled weakly as he angled his bike for the perfect shot.
Rhett glanced at him, a dangerously curious expression on his face. He had no idea what Henrik was planning, but somehow, the unlikely bond that they had formed gave him enough faith to trust him..
He forced the last dregs of energy into his burning thighs and sprinted ahead of Henrik, almost skidding to a fall at the sudden acceleration.
Henrik didn't hesitate.
He let out a war cry and spun the rifle fused into his shoulder until the muzzle locked forward, bone and metal creaking as it adjusted position. He skidded the bike sideways, his bad arm limp and flailing, but he anchored the weapon with the other and fired.
The first shot sparked—ricocheted.
The second shot struck a leaking barrel dead center.
And the third… the third didn't just hit.
It ignited.
A breath later, the entire street erupted into fire.
The barrels went up in a gout of flame that cracked the air, roaring outward like a living monster. Orange fire coiled around the steel skeletons of the building, swallowing scaffolding and shattering glass. His ears rang. The fire sucked all the oxygen from the air. Heat washed across his bare back like a furnace blast.
For a brief moment, the shockwave from the explosion lifted their bikes in the air. It almost felt like time had stopped before they hit the ground hard again, the bikes struggling against the abuse.
For a few precious seconds, the city turned white-hot.
Velez's roar was lost in the explosion, swallowed by fire and debris.
When Rhett lifted his head, the road behind them was an inferno.
The buildings on either side were collapsing in slow motion, bricks tumbling, beams twisting, and the warbike nowhere in sight—buried, maybe. Or destroyed.
Henrik stumbled forward, his bike a twisted wreck behind him. His shoulder was coated in soot, his face slick with sweat and blood, but his lips quirked upward in a grim smile.
"We're not done yet." He growled savagely as they turned another corner. "That probably won't be enough to throw him off our tail. Keep moving!"
Rhett obeyed, pedalling as hard as he could until he was sure he couldn't hear Velez shouting or the murderous rev of his killer bike in his periphery.
They grabbed the less-burned bike and took turns pedaling, Rhett first, Henrik straddling the rear despite the blood still oozing from his side. They didn't talk as they escaped the smoldering heart of the city. There was nothing left to say. Only survival. Only distance.
They climbed the last slope before the ruins thinned out. Then it went violently down to the underdeveloped and abandoned parts of the city. Gravity took over as the scrambled between houses and buildings, trying to not collide with objects as the wheels skidded across the rough ground.
"Hold on. Just a little longer, Henrik." Rhett heard Henrik groan to himself as they shot downwards the crowded, tight rough road.
Hold on. Just a little longer, Rhett. Rhett found himself thinking, despite himself.
Hold on. Just a little longer, Lucille.
Then, as if the world had finally decided to throw them a bone, they emerged.
The urban wasteland broke open into something shockingly bright. The city dropped away behind them, and ahead stretched the coastal road—battered, yes, but mostly intact. It traced the sea like a scar, curving away into the horizon.
The sun had fully risen.
Golden light spilled across the cracked asphalt, glinting off salt-worn guardrails. The ocean beside them stretched infinite and silver-blue, its waves gentle, rolling, calm. For the first time in what felt like days, the wind didn't smell like blood or smoke—but like salt, seaweed, and sunrise.
Rhett blinked. The change was so abrupt it felt like a dream.
He felt alive.
Henrik didn't say anything, but he leaned back on the bike seat and closed his eyes for a moment, letting the wind run through his hair. He looked pale. Tired. But there was something peaceful there too. Something earned. "We made it."
"All that trouble, just for a single gun and a couple of bullets?" Rhett laughed, despite the precarious situation they had just escaped.
"And something else." Henrik muttered to himself, but Rhett didn't hear over the rush of the wind as the salt-licked air brushed against his brown hair and bare skin.
Who would have thought he would be here? Naked, riding through the city with their lives on the line?
But something deeper was stirring in Rhett's chest. Something he hadn't felt in... God, how long had it been?
All those deaths. All that dying. The Iron Knight slicing him to ribbons. The BeastMaster's creatures tearing him apart. The Hitdevil's unintentionally turning him to paste. Death after death after death, each one a small apocalypse of pain and terror and the awful moment when consciousness flickered out like a candle.
He had been a ghost haunting his own body. A walking corpse chasing an impossible dream.
But now—now the sun was warming his face. Salt spray kissed his skin. The bicycle wheels hummed beneath him like a heartbeat. His lungs pulled in clean air that tasted of freedom and possibility. His heart—his real, regenerated, perfectly beating heart—thundered with something he'd forgotten existed.
Life.
Not just survival. Not just the grim march from one death to the next. But actual, breathing, feeling, living life.
Birds flew overhead in loose spirals, gulls screaming their wild songs. The waves kissed the stone barrier beside them, sending up soft white spray. The sun warmed his face. His heartbeat steadied. Everything smelled like freedom.
He hadn't felt this free since... ever. He couldn't even remember a time during his childhood, or after the war started that his life felt this... lively.
He had spent his first days after getting his quirk doing what? Dying over and over for an unseeable goal, while life was all around him.
Fish were swimming in the sea, corals anchored to the seabed, seagulls screaming in symphony on a new dawn. Wouldn't it have felt like just another day before? What made it special now?
Right. He had spent every day after getting his regeneration quirk dying brutally, with only a few hours of grim reprieve in between.
And yet here he was. Still breathing. Still fighting. Still here.
The realization hit him like lightning. Every death had been a choice. Every revival, a victory. He wasn't just surviving the world's cruelties—he was conquering them. Death itself bent the knee to his will.
I'm tired of dying, Rhett thought as his hands left the bicycle's handles.
Rhett could see the Clocktower, where Lucille would be waiting, just a couple of miles ahead. Most likely just four hours on foot.
He raised his arms from the handles and into the sky, his bicycle slightly veering off path due to the lack of steering.
I want to live.
"I AM ALIVE!" Rhett screamed to no one in particular as he pumped his fists into the air. He must have looked like a maniac, riding naked under the sunrise, but at that point, he didn't care. His lungs were moving perfectly. His eyes could see every detail of the world in crystal clarity. His heart was beating strong and true.
Not just existing. Not just enduring. Living.
"I AM ALIVE!" He screamed again, and the words tasted like victory in his mouth. Why had he never felt so invigorated when he had spent so many days dying on end, always trying to achieve his goal that always felt out of reach? "Come on, Henrik. Don't you feel it? You're a fucking human being! You're alive!"
Henrik glanced at Rhett with something that resembled disdain and worry that they weren't out of the woods yet, but Rhett could see the tears forming in his eyes, all the anxiety he had been holding in for so long.
"I am alive." He said as he gripped the handle bars harder, tears flowing from his face, the beauty of life overwhelming him.
"Louder!" Rhett roared.
"I am alive." Henrik said again. His volume didn't go any higher, but Rhett could feel it in him.
He could move. He could ride a bike freely through the city. Life was all around him despite the war.
What more could he want?
Lucille. He thought. But would that make me happier?
Would the girl he had promised to marry, his north star in this hellscape be the one to make things better?
Suddenly, his field of vision changed when he thought about Lucille, like paint dripping from paper. Sound faded. The blue skies were drowning in dirty crimson, the coarse ground below him turning to thin sand.
And in front of him, the skeletal bride, still dressed in a pristine white wedding gown turned to him with nothing on her face except for bone, grinning despite any skin or flesh.
All sound vanished, except for four words that seeped out of the skull's jaws.
"I'm still waiting, Rhett."
"I'm not coming to save you, bitch! I'm going to save Lucille!" Rhett roared as he swept his hand around the space in front of him to dissipate the hallucination. Surprisingly, it seemed to work. The Land of Death was vanishing like mist, replaced by the coastal street he had been on seconds ago.
He breathed hard, not realizing how tense he suddenly became. The hallucination urged him. Lucille, the human one was still waiting for him in the Clocktower. Nothing was going to slow him down, even if this scene felt like a momentary reprieve.
"Yo, Henrik, you good back there? We need to get closer to the Clocktower as soon as possible." Rhett said. He expected a snarky or stoic remark from him, but there was no response.
Henrik had gone very quiet. Too quiet.
"Henrik." Rhett repeated, turning his back to check on why the boy hadn't responded, just for his heart to sink into the pits of his stomach.
His bicycle sprawled uselessly on the ground, and Henrik lay motionless, staring blankly at the sky, a gaping hole pulsing with blood at the left side of his skull.
"Wha-? How...?" Rhett muttered, dumbfounded as he abandoned his bike to run back to Henrik's dying body.
Then he heard the familiar revving of a motorbike behind him. Turning, he saw the unrelenting Velez on his warbike, his hand on his hybrid gun, smiling savagely.