The bones will not shatter. The muscles will not tear. I will not miss.
Reality disagreed.
The impact was a universe of white, painless noise for a split second, followed by the universe collapsing into a single, screaming point in his right leg. A wet, sickening crack echoed in his ears, separate from the thunder. He'd hit the rooftop parapet, tumbled over it, and landed in a heap on the wet asphalt. The command had been strong, but physics had levied a tax.
"THEO!"
Pras was there, hands grabbing his harness, dragging him across the rooftop, away from the punishing rain. He hauled him under the scant cover of a raised utility housing for the hotel's HVAC system. The relative quiet was sudden, filled only with their ragged breaths and the drumming on the metal above.
Theo looked down. His right tibia wasn't compound, but it was bent at a wrong angle. His hands were still pulped meat in the gloves. The pain was a tidal wave, threatening to pull him under. But beneath it, stronger, was the drive. Clue. Melin. Find.
He clenched his teeth, and put off his gloves, a growl building in his throat. He focused past the pain, into the marrow, into the torn muscle fibers.
Mend. Heal. Now.
It wasn't gentle. It was violent, internal realignment. He felt the bone fragments scrape and pull together, the ligaments knitting with a sensation like burning wires being twisted tight. His hands itched as new skin crawled over the raw patches. The healing was faster than in the pharmacy, more assured—a terrible proficiency born of practice.
Then the bill came due.
The fever ignited in his core, a dry inferno that blasted through the chill of the rain. His vision swam, and a hunger so profound it felt like his stomach was digesting itself clawed at his insides. He retched, nothing coming up.
"Water…" He fumbled at his pack with trembling, newly-whole hands. "Food."
Pras helped, pulling out a bottle of water and several protein bars plundered from the minimart. Theo drank, choked, drank again. He tore into the bars, swallowing them almost whole, then moved on to a package of biscuits, then a can of sardines he opened with a shaking pull-tab. He ate like a starved animal, not tasting, only consuming. Pras watched, silent, until Theo finally slumped back against the metal housing, breathing hard, his skin slick with sweat despite the cold. He dry-swallowed two pills from a packet of generic fever reducer.
They sat in the semi-darkness for what felt like an hour, Theo riding out the waves of nausea and heat. Slowly, the fever broke from a boil to a simmer. The calories were a log thrown on a raging fire; they didn't put it out, but they banked it, made it manageable.
"What now?" Pras's voice was low.
"Now we see what they're guarding." Theo pushed himself up. His leg was sore but solid. A deep, cellular fatigue remained, but the immediate crisis was over.
They found the rooftop access: a heavy steel door. Theo pulled out his lockpicks, but his hands, though healed, still trembled with residual fever and exhaustion. The fine motor control needed was beyond him; the picks slipped, scratched uselessly at the tumblers.
He cursed, leaning his forehead against the cold steel.
Pras touched his shoulder, then hefted the sledgehammer. "Step back."
It was overkill. It was glorious.
BOOM. The steel door shuddered. BOOM. The frame splintered. CRACK. The third blow shattered the lock mechanism, and the door swung inward with a groan.
They were met not by darkness, but by a deep, bloody crimson. The hotel's emergency battery lights were still active, casting a dim, hellish glow down a long, plush corridor. The VIP floor. Thick carpet muted their steps. Theo pulled his flashlight from his belt, the white beam cutting a stark path through the red gloom.
They were on the 15th floor. A discreet sign pointed to a 'VIP Pantry & Concierge Kitchen.' They found it unlocked. Inside was a treasure trove: sealed bottles of premium water, small cans of gourmet food, luxury snacks, and a first-aid kit better stocked than any pharmacy they'd raided.
Theo fell upon the food again, this time with slightly more control, but no less volume. He ate canned pâté, chocolate, packets of nuts. Pras joined him. They drank deeply from the cold water. As the calories hit Theo's system, the remaining fever seemed to recede, beaten back by sheer metabolic force.
Revived but wary, they began their search. The suites were all unlocked—a standard safety feature during a total power failure. They pushed open door after door.
The rooms were tombs of interrupted lives. A suitcase spilled open on a king bed. A laptop sat charging, dead. Room service trays with decaying food. There were no bodies. No signs of struggle. It was as if everyone had simply… stepped out in a coordinated hurry. Evacuated. Or taken.
"Nothing." Pras's whisper was barely audible, the eeriness getting to him. "Where did they all go?"
Theo felt a cold dread that had nothing to do with fever. This wasn't a plague zone. It was a cleaned site. "Down. We have to go down."
They took the emergency stairwell. The concrete stairs were bathed in the same relentless emergency red. Their flashlight beam bobbed ahead, a fragile bubble of white in the pervasive crimson gloom. The air grew colder, damp, carrying a faint, coppery tang beneath the smell of dust and concrete.
They descended slowly, their senses stretched thin. They saw nothing but stained concrete and the occasional discarded high-heeled shoe or broken phone. They heard nothing but their own breathing and the scuff of their boots.
They did not see the subtle, fleshy threads that began to extrude from the tiny cracks in the wall mere seconds after their flashlight beam passed over a spot. They did not see the glistening red film that seeped across the stairs behind them, thin as a spider's silk, absorbing the moisture and traces of their passing.
They felt only a vague, increasing sense of pressure, as if the stairwell itself was holding its breath. A subtle, organic scent—like wet soil and opened veins—crept into the air, but so faint they each blamed their own imagination.
The threat was not in front of them. It was in the walls. It was in the silence they left behind. And it was patiently, inexorably, creeping in their wake.