Chapter 157: The Scream [22]

"Wh...What is that?"

A chill ran down Jason’s spine like ice water being poured directly onto his spinal cord. The sensation was so visceral and immediate that his body reacted before his conscious mind could process what the warning meant.

Then everything felt reversed. Reality itself seemed to hiccup and stutter, causality bending backward on itself in ways that made Jason’s head spin with vertigo and impossible geometries.

Something like a dull vibrating sound echoed—except it wasn’t really sound at all, but rather the absence of sound, a void in the auditory spectrum that the brain tried to interpret as noise and failed. The sensation was profoundly disorienting, like experiencing sound backward or hearing colors or some other synesthetic impossibility that human senses weren’t equipped to process.

Then the explosion of sound Jason had launched came rushing back toward him.

Not deflected or blocked or absorbed, but reversed. Sent back along exactly the path it had traveled with all its original force and velocity intact, as if time itself had been rewound for that specific attack while everything else continued forward normally.

The sonic shockwave struck Jason with the full power he’d put into creating it. His own attack, reflected perfectly, hit him in the chest like a battering ram made of solidified sound.

Blood exploded from Jason’s mouth in a spray of crimson droplets that caught the firelight as they arced through the air. His right arm—already damaged from his crushed hand and dislocated shoulder—took the brunt of the reflected shockwave. The sonic energy tore through tissue and shattered bone with catastrophic efficiency, reducing the limb to hanging ribbons of lacerated flesh barely connected to his torso.

Every bone in his arm had been pulverized simultaneously, turned to fragments and splinters that pressed against skin from the inside like some horrific internal shrapnel wound. The muscles had been shredded, torn apart at the molecular level by vibrations that exceeded what biological tissue could withstand. Blood vessels had ruptured by the dozens, creating internal hemorrhaging on a scale that would have been instantly fatal to anyone without enhanced healing capabilities.

The momentum from the attack sent Jason flying backward at tremendous speed, his body tumbling through the air with no control or grace. He crashed through the destroyed entrance of the burning house, hitting the ground hard enough to crack the floorboards and send up a cloud of ash and debris.

Jason’s face was twisted in absolute disbelief as he lay there, struggling to process what had just happened.

The pain was extraordinary—beyond anything he’d experienced even during his transformation or subsequent battles—but more disturbing was the sheer impossibility of what Ryan had done.

Just what had happened? How had Ryan reversed his attack so perfectly? What was that green eye, and what kind of ability did it represent? The questions circled through Jason’s fractured consciousness, seeking answers that refused to materialize.

But he didn’t have time to think about it properly, didn’t have the luxury of analyzing what had occurred and formulating counter-strategies.

Because Ryan appeared.

One moment there was empty space between them, ash and smoke and firelight but no immediate threat. The next instant Ryan was there. His approach had been completely silent—or at least, Jason’s damaged hearing made it seem that way—giving no warning before he was suddenly looming over his fallen opponent.

Jason immediately tried to raise his upper body, some survival instinct screaming at him not to remain prone and vulnerable when a deadly threat was so close. His muscles tensed, his core engaged, preparing to push himself upright despite the extraordinary pain radiating from his destroyed arm and lacerated chest.

But Ryan moved faster. He straddled Jason’s torso, dropping his weight onto his former friend’s body and pinning him effectively to the ground. One knee pressed into Jason’s solar plexus, the other braced against his hip, creating a mount position that martial artists would have recognized immediately as optimal for ground-and-pound techniques.

Then Ryan raised his fist high above his head. The motion gave Jason a clear view of what was coming, allowed him to see the blood coating Ryan’s knuckles and the empty grey of his right eye paired with the eerie green glow of his left.

BAAM!

The fist descended like a hammer of judgment, landing squarely on Jason’s left cheek with tremendous force. The impact snapped Jason’s head violently to the side, his neck muscles straining to prevent complete cervical damage. More blood sprayed from his mouth—mixed now with fragments of broken teeth that had shattered from the force of his jaw being slammed shut.

Jason’s vision swam with stars and dark spots, his brain rattling inside his skull from the concussive force. He turned his gaze back toward Ryan, trying to focus, trying to formulate some kind of defense or counterattack.

But Ryan had already swung his fist again before Jason could recover from the previous blow, his knuckles connecting with Jason’s face squarely in the center—nose, cheekbones, orbital sockets all taking the full force of the impact simultaneously.

The sound was sickening and immediate. Jason’s nose shattered instantly, cartilage and bone collapsing inward with a wet crunch that was audible even over the ambient chaos of burning buildings and artificial screams echoing through Jackson Township. Blood exploded from his nostrils in a spray that painted both their faces crimson, hot and thick and carrying the copper-salt taste that filled Jason’s mouth as it ran down the back of his throat.

"Guhhh!" The grunt that tore from Jason’s throat was involuntary and raw, forced out by the impact driving air from his lungs. He spat blood reflexively, unable to swallow through the combination of broken facial bones and overwhelming pain signals flooding his nervous system.

But Ryan wasn’t done. Not even close.

His fist rose and fell again with mechanical precision, each strike delivered with the same coldness as the last. Left fist. Right fist. Left again.

"Guuhu! Arhhh! Nghuu!!"

Jason’s vocalizations deteriorated from coherent sounds into animalistic grunts of pure agony as his face was systematically demolished. Each punch broke something new—another bone, another tooth, another section of soft tissue crushed beyond recognition. His cheeks split open under the repeated impacts, skin tearing to reveal the muscle and bone beneath. His jaw dislocated, then fractured, hanging at an unnatural angle that made breathing difficult and speech impossible.

The surrounding soundscape—the crackling of flames still consuming their home, the artificial screams Mark’s devices continued broadcasting throughout the township, the distant groans of infected drawn by the commotion—all of it was gradually drowned out by Jason’s grunts and the wet, meaty sounds of Ryan’s fists connecting with flesh and bone.

Ryan’s punches were strong and utterly ruthless. These weren’t strikes meant to incapacitate or control an opponent. Ryan was punching to make Jason hurt. To inflict maximum pain. To break him down piece by piece until nothing remained but shattered bone and pulverized meat.

At first, Ryan maintained that same cold, emotionless expression that had characterized his assault—the empty grey eyes, the blank face.

But slowly, inexorably, cracks began appearing in that carefully maintained façade.

His expression started to twist, neutral features contorting into something raw and wounded. Pain leaked through first—not physical pain from his own injuries, though those were extensive, but emotional agony that had been compressed and contained until the pressure became too great to hold back any longer.

Then came anger. Not the cold, controlled fury of violence, but something real and all-consuming. Rage that burned through his chest like acid, eating away at his composure from the inside out.

"Why?!"

BAAAM!

The word tore from Ryan’s throat like it was being dragged over broken glass, ragged and desperate and demanding answers that could never satisfy the question behind them. His fist crashed down again with even more force than before, the impact making Jason’s head bounce off the hard ground beneath him.

"Why did you do that?!!"

BAAAM!!

Ryan’s voice cracked on the last word, breaking into a higher register that suggested his vocal cords were reaching their limits. Another devastating punch landed, this one catching Jason’s temple and causing one of his eyes to swell shut immediately.

"She was the one who cared the most about you!!" Ryan shouted, and now the words were accompanied by tears—hot, angry tears that blurred his vision and ran in tracks down his bloodstained cheeks, mixing with Jason’s blood and his own until it was impossible to tell whose was whose.

BAAAM!

More tears came, building from a trickle to a flood as the emotional dam Ryan had constructed to protect himself finally gave way completely. Tears of anger, yes, but also tears of profound sadness—grief for what had been lost, for who had died, for the betrayal that had led to this moment.

BAAAAM!

"You never deserved her!!" Each word emerged with increasing volume and desperation, Ryan’s voice climbing toward something that resembled a scream. "She only wanted your happiness! She cared about you more than anyone else did! And you took away her life! You stole her future! You destroyed her happiness and turned her into a monster!!"

His fist came down again with such force that the floorboards beneath Jason’s head cracked and splintered, unable to withstand the accumulated damage.

BAAAAM!

"R...Ryan..."

The whisper came from behind. Rachel and Daisy stood together near the camping van, supporting each other as they watched the scene unfold with mounting horror and heartbreak. Tears streamed freely down both their faces now, their own grief and trauma reflected and amplified by witnessing Ryan’s complete emotional breakdown.

Rachel wanted desperately to reach out to him, to somehow comfort him or pull him back from whatever dark place he’d descended into. But her legs wouldn’t support her weight anymore. The exhaustion from her battle with the Fire Spitter, the repeated use of her barriers beyond safe limits, the accumulated injuries and pain—all of it chose this moment to overwhelm her completely. Her knees buckled, and she would have fallen if Daisy hadn’t been there to catch her.

Ryan’s voice had become contorted with utter pain, each word scraped raw from his throat in a tone that was hoarse and broken beyond recognition. The sound of it—the sheer agony contained in those words—cut deeper than any physical wound could have.

He hadn’t felt this magnitude of pain since the outbreak’s beginning, when he’d been forced to kill his own infected mother.

This was that same caliber of soul-crushing agony, but somehow worse. Because this time, he’d failed to prevent it. This time, someone he’d sworn to protect had died while he could only watch helplessly as the infection transformed her from human to monster.

Jason was unable to answer anymore—likely unconscious from the repeated head trauma, possibly already dead but sustained by the alien stone’s influence, or perhaps simply too broken to form coherent thoughts let alone words. His face had been beaten into something barely recognizable as human, a mess of pulped tissue and exposed bone and so much blood that features were impossible to distinguish.

The silver stone in Jason’s chest continued to glow with that eerie light, pulsing weakly now but still active, still channeling alien energy through the broken body it had inhabited. The sight of it only made Ryan’s anger burn hotter, rage intensifying into something that bordered on madness.

It was all the fault of the Screamer. That alien weapon-creature had corrupted Jason, transformed him into a willing betrayer who’d sacrificed everything human about himself for power. The stone was the source of all this tragedy—the mechanism by which Jason had gained the ability to set his trap, the power that had allowed him to turn Jasmine into an infected, the alien technology that had stolen Ryan’s friend and replaced him with a monster.

Reaching out with his bloodied hand, Ryan grasped the silver stone embedded in Jason’s chest. His fingers closed around the smooth crystalline surface, feeling it pulse against his palm like a beating heart made of alien light.

Then he tore it free.

The extraction was not gentle or surgical. Ryan yanked the stone out with brutal force, ripping it from Jason’s chest along with chunks of flesh and tissue that had grown around it during the integration process. The sound was wet and horrible—meat tearing, bone cracking, connections severing all at once.

"AARRHHH!!"

The scream that erupted from Jason was unlike anything he’d produced before—not a sonic weapon or alien vocalization, but a purely human expression of absolute agony. His entire body convulsed violently, back arching off the ground as every muscle seized simultaneously. His eyes flew open wide—or at least the one that wasn’t swollen shut—pupils dilating until almost no iris remained visible.

It looked ike life was being forcibly sucked out of his body through the hole left by the stone’s removal. Without the alien core sustaining him, all the impossible modifications and enhancements that had kept Jason functional despite his catastrophic injuries began to fail catastrophically. His enhanced healing shut down. His augmented strength evaporated. The alien consciousness that had merged with his own retreated, taking with it whatever vital force had been animating his broken form.

Jason’s head slumped back against the hard ground lifelessly, eyes glazing over with the definite emptiness of death. No breath moved his chest. No pulse beat in his throat. The transformation was complete—from living being to corpse in the span of a single heartbeat.

But Ryan wasn’t finished.

"Answer me!!" His voice cracked completely on the demand, breaking into something that was half-scream and half-sob. The silver stone fell from his hand, clattering against the floor and rolling away forgotten as Ryan raised his fist once more.

The punch came down on Jason’s lifeless face with undiminished force.

"Why did she have to die?!"

BAAAM!!

Another blow landed, and another, Ryan unable or unwilling to recognize that his target was already dead, that no amount of violence could bring Jasmine back or undo the tragedy that had occurred.

Rachel watched from her position near the van, supported by Daisy’s trembling arms, and felt her heart breaking for Ryan even as her body refused to obey her desperate need to reach him. She wanted to rush to his side, to pull him away from Jason’s corpse, to somehow absorb some of his pain and grief so he wouldn’t have to carry all of it alone.

She gathered what little strength remained in her exhausted muscles and tried to push herself upright, tried to force her legs to support her weight one more time. But the moment she put pressure on them, her knees gave out completely. She collapsed back against Daisy with a soft cry of frustration and helplessness.

But when Rachel raised her gaze again, despair giving way to confusion, she widened her eyes in surprise at what she saw.

Ryan had raised his fist for another blow, arm pulled back and muscles tensed for the strike. But his wrist had been caught suddenly, held immobile by fingers that appeared seemingly from nowhere.

Silence fell over the scene—profound and shocking after the extended violence and Ryan’s anguished shouts. Even the background noise of crackling flames and artificial screams seemed to fade, creating a pocket of stillness in the midst of chaos.

Ryan’s entire body froze mid-strike, his breath catching in his throat. Slowly, as if moving through molasses, he turned his head to glance over his shoulder at whoever had dared to interrupt his grief-fueled assault.

Standing there behind him, her hand wrapped firmly around his wrist with surprising strength, was Miss Ivy.