He instinctively knew what Velez was trying to do. He had let a shot go which just happened to be the exact moment when he entered the hallucination, which was why he hadn't heard it.
And now he was coming out on the other side of the coastal road which led into the main city, effectively blocking Rhett, the only survivor since he couldn't die, so he could capture him.
Panic clawed at Rhett's throat. What would Velez do once he got his hands on him? The man had learned from his mistakes—no more killing attempts, just binding and immobilization. Prison? Torture as revenge for allegedly killing his men? Rhett's mind spiraled through possibilities, each worse than the last.
How could he fight back? He was out of tricks, and Velez wouldn't resort to killing. No trump cards, no martial prowess. Velez, the stronger person, would finish him with ease.
Escape routes flashed through his mind—jump the guardrails into the sea, try to swim, hope Velez didn't catch him. Or face eternal death drowning at the bottom of the ocean if he failed.
But none of that mattered. The only thing he could focus on was Henrik.
The boy was on the ground, almost lifeless. His chest rose and fell in shallow, desperate gasps. His mouth moved slightly, as if trying to form words. The life in his eyes was fading rapidly, becoming more unfocused by the second.
It was a miracle he was still alive. The bullet had pierced into his brain—not deep enough for instant death, but lodged in the outer cortex, blood seeping steadily from the entry wound. Somehow his skull had deflected the worst of the impact, but Henrik was still dying.
"How—what do I even do?" Rhett thought frantically. CPR? Mouth-to-mouth? He knew none of that would be effective against a fucking gunshot wound to the head.
"Don't fucking die on me, you bastard!" Rhett seethed as he tried inspecting the wounds, forgetting about Velez's presence. About everything else. There was no exit wound on the other side of his head, so the bullet was still inside, pressing against fragile brain tissue. Should he pick it out? But Henrik was already bleeding out. He wouldn't be alive in the next few minutes.
At the same time, Henrik's eyes recognized Rhett, turning slightly and focusing on the hectic boy.
"Rhettttt." Henrik slurred, as if the sheer act of talking was draining all his willpower.
"Shut up and save your energy. I'm going to fucking save you. Don't do anything." Rhett said as he attempted to carry Henrik up. He had no real plan to escape from Velez's claws, nor one to treat Henrik. He was just trying to do something. To put some sort of effort into this.
"Rhett." Henrik said more firmly, even though his eyes were becoming even more unfocused and dead. Henrik weakly raised his hand towards Rhett's. "Hold me."
"What? What the hell are you—"
"Hold me." Henrik said more firmly, even though it sounded more automatic this time. His chest was slowing down, as if he couldn't breathe anymore. The last dregs of blood draining from the hole in his skull.
The last lights flickering out through his eyes.
"Okay." Rhett said weakly as his hands intertwined with Henrik's fingers. He didn't know why he was doing this, or why Henrik wanted this in his moment of death, but he wouldn't dare disobey his friend's dying wish.
As he did the action, something astonishing and disgusting started happening.
His fingers started fusing with Henrik's paper-thin skin. Rhett's flesh sank into Henrik's like wet clay being pressed together, the boundary between them dissolving. Skin and skin becoming one until they were inseparable unless cut with a knife.
And then the nerves started fusing.
A sharp jolt of agony shot up his entire being—not just pain, but Henrik's pain, raw and unfiltered. It was as if every injury Henrik had ever sustained, every moment of suffering he'd hidden beneath the surface, suddenly crashed into Rhett's nervous system like a freight train. His arm burned from the inside out, nerves crackling and short-circuiting as Henrik's trauma overrode his own sensory input.
Rhett screamed involuntarily, his voice mixing with Henrik's dying gasp as their nervous systems intertwined. He could feel Henrik's fear, his desperation, the cold creep of death crawling up through shared synapses.
Then their bloodstreams connected—a nauseating rush as Henrik's sluggish, dying blood mixed with Rhett's vigorous circulation. Blood vessels bulged along their fused arms, pulsing erratically before flattening as they synchronized into a single, shared circulatory system.
Soon the bones joined, marrow melding in a grotesque dance of calcium and tissue. It was like they were one being, merged into one conjoined person whose identity blurred at the seams.
And it was then that Rhett began to understand Henrik's plan, even as he experienced what it felt like to die through someone else's body—the suffocating darkness, the weight of failing organs, the terrible knowledge that consciousness was slipping away.
As they fused, he could see the color, or what little color Henrik had originally, begin returning to his body. His brain began pulsing underneath his skull, tissue regenerating and expanding until the organ pushed out the bullet that was still embedded in it with a wet, metallic clink.
The various cuts and bruises lacerated all over his body began healing and vanishing. His chest started rising with renewed vigor, his heart started pumping blood again with strong, steady beats.
And then his eyes suddenly widened.
He convulsed once, coughed furiously—blood and saliva spraying—and took a long, gasping breath in. And another. And another.
The corpse that Rhett had just cradled in his arms moments ago was breathing, coughing, looking at him with dazed, terrified eyes.
"I—wha—I thought—" Henrik started saying, as if just waking up from a dream. Rhett had never seen the boy so disoriented before. And then Henrik's eyes fell on his hand still fused with Rhett's and realization dawned on his face.
And sheer terror followed suit.
"So the plan worked." Henrik gasped as he ran his fingers over his repaired body with his free hand, while Rhett connected the dots on what had just happened, even though it was quite obvious.
Henrik had regenerated. With his quirk.
Rhett knew Henrik could merge with objects, but he never knew he could merge with humans. And by doing so, Henrik had taken share of his revival quirk. By merging with his body, his revival quirk considered Henrik part of Rhett, and when he had died, his quirk recognized it and revived him back to full health.
The scenario only gave Rhett more questions, and a creeping dread he tried to push away. Did that mean that Henrik permanently had his regen quirk now? Could he just... merge and share it any time he wanted? And the question that terrified him most—would Rhett lose his power somehow if he merged too much? What if there was only so much regeneration to go around? What if he'd just given away his one guarantee of survival?
Those questions would have to wait, because the issue which needed his utmost attention had miraculously been solved, but things were far from over.
Henrik, still dazed and shaken, tried getting up, unfusing his hand from Rhett's with a disturbing wet sound as their flesh separated. Rhett turned around to deal with the next issue.
Velez.
Rhett had turned his back to the man for several seconds now, and yet he hadn't made any attempts to attack. Why? Was he toying with him or something?
That was Rhett's instinct—to find out what made Velez hesitate until now as he turned to face him.
The jacked man was still several yards away from the two of them, but instead of attacking, he was frozen in the motion of getting off his bike to incapacitate Rhett. He had stopped mid-stride, his eyes wide with horror as Rhett realized what was going through his mind.
He thought Rhett had just resurrected Henrik.
Like the Immortal legend, it was true to an extent. Rhett's quirk did bring Henrik back to life, but it wasn't due to his own doing alone—it was due to Henrik's application of his quirk, the fusion that had made them temporarily one being.
But from an outside perspective, it looked like Rhett had simply touched Henrik's corpse and brought him to life.
The ability to raise someone from the dead was not something to be reckoned with.
Rhett attempted to stand up, but he noticed something in Velez's gaze. Instead of focusing on him and Henrik, his gaze went upwards into the distance, and his eyes widened even further—not with fear necessarily, but with an urgency to leave.
Even if he was a bit far away so he couldn't hear what he was saying, Rhett could still read his lips and his expressions as he muttered to himself:
"I am not fucking with that."
He swung his leg back on the motorbike and after starting the engine rode out of the streets back into the main city, no doubt to return to his base.
What could make even Velez, who chased us relentlessly through this goddamn wasteland, turn away on such quick notice?
Rhett instinctively knew the answer to that question would not be encouraging, and when he turned his head in the other direction, he saw it.
Or more accurately, he heard it first before they even came into view.
From the curve off the coastal road they had ridden on their bikes a minute ago, a group—no, army—of people were coming through.
First there were about ten, but when they came into full view, Rhett estimated about fifty to seventy people in the army.
They were mostly men, with a few women in between, but what Rhett immediately noticed was that they were strong.
Most of them weren't the average person. They either had a powerful build, or carried destructive weapons and equipment on their person. Some of them wore haphazard salvaged clothes, while others were clad in cleaner, but still somewhat damaged armor and costumes.
Meaning they were a mix of heroes and villains.
That wasn't what made Rhett scared. It was the fact that they all walked silently, and in uniform, marching at the same pace with mechanical precision.
And their eyes—completely blank. Not a word passed between the army as they pressed on like robots, their faces void of any human expression or recognition.
Something about that made Rhett instinctively know something was very, very wrong.
"What's going on—" Henrik was about to say as he still tried standing up, but Rhett pulled him down forcefully.
"What the hell are you doing!" Henrik snapped at Rhett, but he had the common sense to keep his voice to a whisper.
Rhett didn't exactly have a plan to get out of this, and he knew neither did Henrik. The road was wide open, with nothing to hide behind. There was no way they could outrun the incoming army, whoever they were, back to the city before they caught up with them.
They wouldn't make it in time to the guardrails before they got captured, and god knows what they'd do if they did. Neither could he swim, so they would die if they jumped into the ocean.
Which meant there was only one real option.
To play dead.
Henrik's previous death had created the perfect scene. His blood from the healed gunshot wound still stained the asphalt. Their bikes were scattered all over the place from the chaos. And they were lying on the ground. From an outside perspective, it would look like they had gotten into some unfortunate accident and wound up dead together.
Even if Henrik's wounds had healed and Rhett had no life-threatening injuries, on surface-level inspection, it would look plausible enough.
There was no way they were going to fight against about seventy people who looked like they could put up a serious fight if push came to shove, and with no way out, they could only spare one move.
"Operation Opossum." Rhett spoke quietly. "Besides, don't bears leave food that's been dead for a while? That's probably what's going to happen. Right?"
Henrik didn't respond. His eyes were still uncertain, still frantic, but both of them forced themselves to be still as the marching army grew closer.
The morning sun that had seemed almost heavenly a moment ago now felt oppressive, the heat growing more intense as the army approached, their synchronized footsteps creating an ominous rhythm against the asphalt.
Would they just march past us? Rhett thought desperately. Or would they just trample on us for extra measure? Or because they simply don't care that we're in the way?
According to Rhett's game theory, this was still their best shot rather than getting up and running, since they would be captured either way. At least now they'd have some sort of element of surprise.
He couldn't die at least, that was for sure. And now he knew he could save Henrik even if he did—though the thought of what that might cost him still gnawed at the edges of his consciousness.
The marching came unrelentingly, and right when Rhett thought they were about to be crushed under dozens of boots, they abruptly stopped like robots whose power switch had been flipped.
His eyes were still closed to sell the illusion that he was just another random corpse, so he didn't know what caused them to halt. Were they planning on doing something to them? Had they seen through the deception?
On cue, he heard the clacking of something against the asphalt ground as footsteps grew closer. Rhett's fight or flight response was already kicking in when he heard a nasally, but also somehow croaky voice say from directly above him.
"Ewwww, why is he naked?"