Chapter 438: Facing Gaspar [1]

I rushed through the darkened streets of the Boardwalk alone.

The Screamer’s noise followed me everywhere.

Its buzzing pulse rolled through the buildings and alleys, sometimes loud enough to make the broken windows tremble. Infected growls came from every direction. Some echoed through side streets. Others sounded so close that I could hear wet breathing and bare feet hitting the pavement behind me.

Every time they sensed me, they reacted.

Heads snapped toward my presence.

Bodies turned.

The moment they felt Dullahan, they came after me.

But I was faster.

As long as there were no Hybrids among them, I could keep moving. Normal Infected were dangerous in groups, especially with the Screamer forcing them into a frenzy, but they could not keep up with me for long.

I held the flashlight in one hand and my axe in the other.

The beam bounced across the street as I ran, revealing broken barricades, abandoned carts, shattered glass, and bodies lying where people had tried to fight their way through the chaos.

The northern side of the Boardwalk.

There had to be a speaker device there.

I had heard it.

Still, I could have gone after one of the other devices instead.

I had not been completely honest with Sydney and the others.

They knew there were several sound sources around the Boardwalk. Sydney and Rachel had probably sensed the Screamer’s waves too, even if they did not understand exactly what they were hearing.

But among the four signals, one had been different.

Stronger.

Heavier.

It carried something beneath the Screamer’s ordinary noise.

Starakian energy.

The Three Stones Matrix had to be there.

That was why I had chosen this route for myself.

If I could destroy the device holding the Matrix, I could stop the entire attack at once. The other speakers might still be active for a few minutes, but without the Matrix feeding them power, they would not last.

And I could get the Stones back.

The thought made my chest tighten.

I regretted keeping the Screamer’s Stone.

Maybe I should have destroyed it after Jackson Township. Maybe I should have broken every single Stone the moment I understood what they could do.

But that had not felt right at the time.

The Stones held incredible power. With Starakian technology, humanity could rebuild parts of Earth that had been lost. We could create defenses, restore energy, build things people could no longer make with the supplies left behind.

In the right hands, they could have helped.

In Callighan’s hands, and with Zakthar helping him, they had become another weapon against survivors.

A weapon tearing apart the Boardwalk while people were still inside it.

This was my responsibility.

I had chosen to keep the Screamer’s Stone.

I had not expected a Starakian to help humans recreate one of those weapons. I had not expected Gaspar to steal the Matrix. I had not expected to get dragged into another disaster because of it.

But none of that changed what was happening now.

People had died because of the Screamer before.

People could die again tonight.

I did not blame myself for every decision other people had made.

I would have done that once. I would have let the guilt swallow everything until I stopped seeing the difference between responsibility and self-hatred.

Not anymore.

I could not change the past.

I could take the Matrix back.

I ran faster.

Infected appeared ahead of me, spilling from the gaps between two buildings. I cut hard to the right before they could block the street. One of them reached for my shirt, its fingers brushing the back of my shoulder.

I shoved it away with my elbow and kept moving.

Another came from the left.

I ducked beneath its arms, leapt over a broken wooden cart, and landed on the far side without slowing down. Behind me, the Infected crashed into the cart and stumbled over each other, their snarls swallowed beneath the Screamer’s relentless noise.

The northern barricade came into sight.

Or what remained of it.

The metal sheets and wooden boards that had once marked the boundary of the Boardwalk had been torn apart. Some had fallen into the road. Others leaned at useless angles, leaving a wide breach open to the streets beyond.

Infected poured through it.

I jumped.

My boots hit the top of a collapsed section of barricade. I used it for leverage and vaulted over the rest, landing outside the Boardwalk territory.

The moment I hit the ground, I took several more steps.

Then I stopped.

The moonlight revealed it.

The Three Stones Matrix stood in the middle of the road.

It was impossible to miss.

The cube-shaped Starakian device glowed with silver light, its surface covered in symbols that moved across its metal body like living lines. The markings traced along every edge, brightening and fading in a steady rhythm.

Three Stones had been embedded into its structure.

The red Stone of the Fire Spitter.

The blue Stone of the Frost Walker.

And the silver Stone of the Screamer.

Each one glowed from within the Matrix.

Wires stretched from the device in every direction, disappearing through the road, beneath debris, and into nearby buildings. They might be connected to the speakers placed throughout the Boardwalk.

This was the source.

The thing Callighan had used to turn the settlement into a killing ground.

It was sitting out in the open.

Almost too openly.

My grip tightened around my axe.

"It was fifty-fifty."

A voice came from the corner of the road.

Footsteps followed.

A shadow moved into the moonlight.

A man stepped out from beside an abandoned car, a faint smirk already resting on his face. He had dark-brown skin and blond hair shaped into a spiked crescent mohawk.

There was no mistake.

Rebecca had described Gaspar clearly enough.

And I doubted there were two people in this city who looked like him.

"Either you would come," Gaspar said, "or you would stay hiding with everyone else, or maybe helping out like a good puppy."

His smirk widened.

"But I knew you would eventually take the bait."

I stared at him.

"Gaspar."

"And you," he replied, spreading his arms slightly as though greeting someone important, "are the great Ryan Gray."

My fingers tightened around the handle of my axe.

A part of me felt relieved.

I had made the right choice coming here alone.

If Sydney, Rachel, Christopher, or the others had followed me, they would have walked straight into Gaspar’s trap. He had not placed the Matrix in the middle of the road because he was careless. He wanted me to find it. He wanted me to come close enough for this conversation.

"You know," Gaspar said.

He walked toward the Matrix and casually sat on top of it, resting one arm over his knee. The silver, red, and blue Stones glowed beneath him, casting shifting light across his clothes.

"Mei talked a lot about you."

I kept my eyes on him.

"She told me I would regret taking her. She said you would come for her, that you would kill me, that I had made the biggest mistake of my life."

His smirk widened.

"And you know what? It has been almost two weeks." He leaned back slightly. "None of it happened."

Gaspar burst into laughter.

The sound carried through the empty road, mixing with the Screamer’s buzzing noise.

"Funny, isn’t it?" he said. "All that talk about Ryan Gray, the great savior, the guy who always shows up and saves everyone. Yet you didn’t even have the courage to come to Brigantine and take back that pretty girlfriend of yours."

I did not answer.

The anger inside me had reached a point where saying the wrong thing felt dangerous.

If I rushed him without thinking, I would give him exactly what he wanted.

Gaspar watched me stay silent and raised an eyebrow.

"Aren’t you going to say anything?"

He tilted his head.

"Or maybe you really don’t care about Mei as much as she thought you did."

My grip on the axe tightened further.

Gaspar’s expression became uglier.

"You know what men in Brigantine are like," he continued. "A girl with a face like hers draws attention. Callighan told everyone not to touch her, but orders do not always hold when no one important is watching."

My jaw clenched.

Gaspar saw it.

That was what he wanted.

He smiled wider.

"I could send one or several men into her room whenever I want," he said. "I could let them enjoy her all night and make sure she knows you never came for her and intended to come. Then maybe I would send what is left of her used body back to you, so she can cry about the great Ryan who was supposed to save her."

"You’re going to regret it," I said.

My voice came out cold.

Gaspar blinked once.

Then he laughed under his breath.

"Huh?"

He slid off the Matrix and stood in the middle of the road.

"I haven’t regretted a single thing so far," he said. "I had to come all the way here and put this little show together just to make you stop hiding like a coward bitch. You’ve been playing games while your girlfriend sits in Brigantine waiting for you."

"Mei wasn’t wrong."

Gaspar’s smile faded slightly.

I clenched my right arm.

Dark-green wind blades burst into existence around it.

The force shredded what remained of my sleeve, and the black chain tattoos along my skin lit up beneath the swirling wind. Dust and loose paper rose from the road, spinning around my feet as the pressure built.

"I’m going to kill you."

Gaspar looked at the wind around my arm.

Then he looked back at me.

A slow smile returned to his face.

"That remains to be seen."