Chapter 163: Vladislav Petrov

"My daughters."

Everyone flinched simultaneously, heads whipping around to stare at Elena and Alisha with expressions ranging from shock to dawning comprehension. Rachel, Cindy, Christopher—all the people who’d known them, survived with them.

As expected... it was him.

The one Elena had talked about to me several times during our quiet moments together, usually with trembling voice and nervously. The man who’d cast a shadow over her entire life even from a distance.

Their father. Vladislav Petrov.

Ultra-wealthy oligarch. One of the privileged elite who’d known about the apocalypse in advance.

"You have been outside too long," Vladislav said, his gaze resting on Alisha especially. His voice carried traces of Russian accent just like his daughters. "It is time to come home."

"Yes, Father." Alisha replied immediately. She nodded with mechanical compliance and stepped forward.

But when she took a few steps and realized Elena wasn’t following, she stopped. Turned back. Her expression cracked slightly, revealing genuine distress beneath the mask of obedience.

"Lena, you know what will happen..." Alisha’s voice dropped low enough that most people probably couldn’t hear, but my enhanced senses picked up every word despite the idling helicopter engines.

I could see Elena stiffen, her entire body going rigid as if she’d been struck. Tears were already streaming down her face. Her hands trembled where they hung at her sides, fingers curling into impotent fists.

Alisha reached out and grasped Elena’s hand with desperate firmness, physically pulling her twin sister forward when verbal persuasion failed. Alisha was dragging Elena toward their father’s helicopter, toward the gilded cage that awaited them, because she knew what Elena apparently couldn’t accept: that resistance was futile.

Something inside me shattered watching that—seeing Elena being pulled away from everything she’d told me she wanted.

I broke immediately from my shock remembering what I had to do.

"Wait!" The word tore from my throat as I stepped forward. "Wait, Elena!"

Immediately, multiple assault rifles swung toward me. Red laser sights appeared on my chest like targeting markers, at least five or six different weapons trained on my center mass. The implicit threat was crystal clear: one more step and they’d open fire.

But I didn’t care. Couldn’t care about bullets or death or anything except the sight of Elena being taken away.

"Elena!" I called again.

She glanced back at me. Her blue eyes were trembling, swimming with tears. Her expression was twisted with anguish—wanting to respond, wanting to stay, but paralyzed by fear of what would happen if she did.

You can’t leave me like that,

I tried to convey with my eyes, willing her to understand what I couldn’t shout with armed mercenaries ready to gun me down.

You said you wanted to stay. You said you loved me. You said we’d face everything together.

But she looked away. Deliberately turned her head and broke eye contact.

"Elena!!" The scream ripped from my throat as I started running, abandoning all caution and self-preservation in favor of reaching her before she could be taken away forever.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Gunshots cracked through the night air, incredibly loud at close range. Bullets struck the ground directly in front of my feet, kicking up sprays of asphalt and dirt that stung my legs. The warning shots forced me to stumble to a halt, my momentum arrested by the very real threat of the next volley hitting center mass.

"Ryan!" Rachel called me in panic. Christopher and Cindy moved with her, all three of them trying to reach me.

But immediately more guns swung toward them, mercenaries adjusting their aim.

I clenched my fists hard enough that my nails bit into my palms, drawing blood that I barely registered. My eyes remained locked on Elena’s retreating figure, watching her being pulled inexorably toward the silver helicopter.

"You said you wanted to stay, didn’t you?!" I shouted. "You told me you chose this! That you chose us! That you chose me!"

No answer. Just Elena’s continued retreat, each step taking her further away despite how violently her body trembled.

I clenched my fists tighter, feeling something forming in my throat—a sob or scream or some combination that threatened to choke me if I didn’t release it.

You can’t leave me.

The thought repeated like a mantra, desperate and pleading. After everything we’d been through together. After Jasmine’s death and Jason’s betrayal and the destruction of everything we’d built. After I’d already lost so much tonight, I couldn’t lose her too. I couldn’t survive losing her too.

"You... you have to stay with us!" The words exploded from me with renewed force, abandoning any pretense of calm or restraint. "With me! You can’t leave me like that! Elena!"

She continued walking, Alisha’s grip firm on her hand, pulling her forward despite how Elena’s legs seemed to want to stop with every step.

Vladislav had been watching this exchange with mild interest, like observing an amusing but ultimately irrelevant sideshow. Now his cold blue eyes—so similar to his daughters’ yet utterly lacking in warmth—shifted from Elena to me.

"Who is he?" Vladislav asked, the question directed at Alisha while he simultaneously raised a silver handgun with casual menace. The weapon looked expensive—probably custom-made, engraved, worth more than most people would earn in their entire lives. He pointed it at me.

"No one..." Alisha replied quickly. She was trying to protect me through denial, trying to make me invisible and therefore not worth her father’s attention.

"Elena. I am asking you." Vladislav said. He hadn’t moved the gun away from me, but his gaze had shifted to his other daughter with expectation of obedience.

Elena stiffened at being directly addressed, her shoulders hiking up toward her ears in unconscious defensive posture. "No one," she said, her voice small and neutral different from what I had been used to hearing. "We’ve just been together with the others the last two months. Just... survivors helping each other."

The lie was transparently weak, delivered without conviction, but it was what her father wanted to hear. What would keep me safe from immediate execution.

But I didn’t care about this.

"Elena!" I shouted again, taking another step forward despite the guns tracking my movement. I couldn’t accept this.

BANG!

The gunshot was deafening at close range, the sound seeming to stop time for an instant. Then white-hot pain exploded in my right arm as the bullet tore through flesh and muscle, entering just below my shoulder and exiting out the back in a spray of blood.

"Nghhh!" The grunt forced itself from my throat despite my attempt to suppress any sound. My left hand immediately clutched at my bleeding arm, fingers wrapping around the wound in futile attempt to stem the flow. Hot blood poured between my fingers, soaking through the bandages Ivy had so carefully applied earlier and running down to drip from my elbow.

"Ryan!!" Rachel’s scream cut through the night as she and the others tried to rush toward me. But Vladislav’s mercenaries moved to intercept, weapons raised and fingers clearly on triggers, creating a barrier of potential violence that kept them at bay.

"F...Father!!!" Elena’s voice cracked completely as she shouted at Vladislav, genuine horror breaking through her fear-induced compliance. Her free hand reached toward him in a pleading gesture. "Please! He’s not—you can’t just—"

Vladislav’s cold eyes locked onto Elena with an intensity that made her words die mid-sentence. The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees under that gaze—a look show her who held all the power in this situation and what the consequences of disobedience would be.

"Who is he?" Vladislav asked again.

"N...No one!

Nikto, Papa! Nikto!!

" Elena cried even speaking her Russian tongue, tears streaming freely down her face now. Her voice wavered between terror and desperation. "He... he is just a friend! Just someone I’ve been surviving with! Nothing more!"

The denial cut deeper than the bullet wound, though I knew logically she was trying to protect me. Trying to make me worthless enough that her father wouldn’t bother killing me. But hearing her reduce us to "just friends" after everything we’d shared felt wrong for me.

"I... I am not her friend..." The words scraped out of my throat before I could think better of them, driven by pain and heartbreak and stubborn refusal to let our relationship be erased. I took another step forward despite the blood loss making my head swim, glaring at Vladislav with every ounce of defiance I could muster.

"Ryan, no—" Alisha started speaking, real panic entering her usually controlled voice as she tried desperately to stop me from committing what she clearly saw as suicide. Her eyes were wide with genuine fear—not for herself, but for what was about to happen to me.

As expected Alisha was quick minded.

But I didn’t care. Couldn’t care. If I was going to die here, at least I’d die telling the truth instead of accepting Elena’s denial as reality.

I stared at Vladislav seriously, meeting those cold blue eyes with every bit of anger I had left in my broken, bleeding body.

"Elena is my girlfriend," I said clearly. "She belongs at my side. Not yours."

A long, suffocating silence followed my declaration. The only sounds were the idling helicopter engines, the wind rustling through the night, and the rapid beating of my own heart pounding in my ears.

Then Vladislav pointed his gun directly at my head. No hesitation. No visible emotion. Just calm intention to eliminate a problem.

"Father! Wait, no! You can’t do this!!" Elena’ screamed as she tried to rush toward her father. But one of the mercenaries caught her mid-stride, arms wrapping around her torso and lifting her off the ground despite her struggles. She thrashed wildly, arms reaching toward me even as she was physically restrained.

I felt like she was trying to even use her Dullahan Abilities but she seemed too exhausted.

"You have quite the audacity to speak such words in front of me," Vladislav said. His finger moved to the trigger slowly, letting me see death approaching. "But trash from the lower classes like you could never stand beside my daughter. You are nothing. Less than nothing."

His finger tightened on the trigger, and I knew with absolute certainty that he was going to pull it. That I had perhaps half a second before a bullet entered my brain and ended everything.

So I activated the Time Freeze.

I knew it was risky—beyond risky, actually suicidal given how depleted my Dullahan energy reserves were. I’d pushed myself far beyond safe limits already tonight, and using the Time Freeze now could have catastrophic consequences. There were too many armed men, too many variables I couldn’t control, and no real plan beyond desperate need to reach Elena.

But I couldn’t let her go. Couldn’t watch her be taken away without fighting with everything I had. She wanted to stay, so they had to leave her behind. They had to let her choose her own life.

The world stuttered and froze mid-breath. Color drained from everything except me, replaced by that distinctive grey-scale pallor that indicated temporal suspension. Vladislav’s gun remained pointed at my head, his finger millimeters from completing the trigger pull. The mercenaries were caught mid-stance, some already beginning to react to my earlier movement. Elena’s face was frozen in an expression of absolute horror, tears suspended on her cheeks like diamonds.

I rushed forward immediately, my legs pumping despite the agony in my bullet-torn arm and the protests from my heavily bandaged torso. Vladislav was just a few meters away—close enough that I could reach him in seconds if my body cooperated.

I just have to reach him and—

"Uughhnn!!"

Pain unlike anything I’d ever experienced exploded in my chest without warning. It felt like someone had reached inside my ribcage and wrapped invisible fingers around my heart, squeezing with crushing force. The sensation was so overwhelming, so utterly devastating, that my legs simply stopped working.

I fell to my knees hard, the impact sending jolts of agony up through my legs that barely registered compared to the cardiac distress overwhelming my system. My vision blurred, darkness creeping in from the edges as my brain struggled to maintain consciousness.

No... not now. Please, not now.

Was this the price of overusing my Dullahan abilities within the last several hours? The accumulated strain from fighting the Enhanced Infected, being torn apart by barbed wire, pushing through injuries that should have left me incapacitated, and now forcing temporal manipulation when I had nothing left to give?

My body had finally reached its absolute limit and was shutting down whether I wanted it to or not.

I can rest later,

I tried to tell myself desperately, attempting to force my legs to work through sheer willpower.

After I save Elena. After I get her back. Then I can collapse and sleep for a week. Just not yet. Please, body, just a little more...

But my limbs refused to obey commands. I couldn’t even lift my arms anymore, couldn’t do anything except kneel there uselessly while the ten-second timer of my Time Freeze counted down with agonizing slowness.

I looked at Elena’s frozen form, at the tears suspended on her face, at the expression of devastation that would be permanently burned into my memory.

Elena...

The countdown reached zero, and time resumed with a violent lurch that made reality feel like it was catching up with itself.

Confused voices erupted immediately as people tried to process my sudden change in position. One moment I’d been standing ten feet away, the next I was on my knees much closer to Vladislav with no apparent explanation for how I’d crossed the distance.

All the guns swung toward me immediately, laser sights painting my torso and head with multiple red dots. Trigger fingers tensed, a dozen mercenaries ready to open fire on their employer’s signal.

Vladislav’s eyes were slightly wide—the first genuine expression of surprise I’d seen on his face. He stared at me kneeling before him, clearly trying to understand what had just happened. Then his lips curled upward into something that might have been a smile if it had contained any warmth or humanity.

"I see..." Vladislav said slowly. He lowered his gun slightly but didn’t put it away. "You must have one of these monsters within you the Starakians are hunting down."

I looked up at him through pain-blurred vision, narrowing my eyes.

As expected. He knew about the Symbiosis and Starakians. Not just knew—understood its significance, recognized what enhanced abilities meant, comprehended the larger context of the alien invasion.

Which meant he was indeed aware of everything. Not only him, but all the other great VIP figures of Earth had been made aware through some means. They’d known about the Starakians, known about the virus, known about the apocalypse before it happened and prepared accordingly while leaving the rest of humanity to die in ignorance.

What the hell is happening here?

The question screamed through my mind with rage and confusion.

What’s the meaning of this? How much did they know? How long have they known? And why didn’t they warn anyone?

"Judging from how you closed the distance this quickly," Vladislav continued, speaking more to himself than to me, "you either have the ability to teleport..." He paused, considering. "Or perhaps something enhancing your speed to superhuman levels. Or maybe something that slows down our perceptions while you move normally..."

His blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

"Or..." His voice dropped lower. "Something far more valuable. Something going as far as tempering with time itself."

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer even if I’d wanted to, my jaw clenched too tightly against pain to form coherent words. I just gritted my teeth and tried to keep from collapsing completely.

"Father!!! Please!!!" Elena shouted again for me. "Please don’t kill him! Please! I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t—"

Vladislav looked at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then, almost contemptuously, he lowered his gun and turned his back on me—the ultimate dismissal, suggesting I wasn’t worth the bullet it would take to kill me.

"We are leaving," he said. He began walking toward his helicopter without sparing me another glance, but paused to look back at his daughters. "Don’t test my patience anymore, my daughters. This is your only warning."

The threat underlying those words was clear: obey now, or there would be consequences. Terrible consequences that wouldn’t be limited to me.

Alisha nodded nervously. She immediately dragged Elena toward the silver helicopter, clearly terrified of what would happen if they delayed any longer.

"W...Wait..." The word barely made it past my lips as I tried to force my body to stand. My legs trembled violently, muscles spasming with the effort of supporting my weight. I managed to get one foot under me, then the other, rising on shaking legs while still clutching my bleeding arm.

One by one, the mercenaries began retreating to their helicopters with military discipline, maintaining weapons pointed at us until the last possible moment before boarding their respective aircraft.

I watched Elena and Alisha being pulled inexorably toward the silver helicopter, saw Elena’s expression of devastation as she looked back at me one final time.

"Wait!!" The shout tore from my throat with desperate force as I got fully to my knees and then started running. Ignored the pain shooting through every nerve ending in my body. Ignored the feeling of blood dripping from my wounds, fresh bleeding soaking through Ivy’s bandages as the exertion tore open partially healed injuries. Ignored the protests from muscles that had nothing left to give.

I just ran. Ran as much as I could despite my body’s betrayal, despite knowing it was futile, despite everything.

"E...Elena...!!"

I saw Elena looking at me, tears streaming profusely down her face as she covered her mouth with one hand. Our eyes met for one perfect, terrible moment. Then she turned away, unable to watch what was happening, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

The helicopter began to lift off, rotors spinning up to full power and generating tremendous downdraft. Wind pushed against my weak body like a physical barrier, making each step forward feel like wading through molasses. But I pushed through it stubbornl, refusing to stop even as the helicopter rose higher.

"Boy."

I looked up with trembling eyes to find Vladislav staring down at me from his seat in the ascending aircraft, a lit cigarette now dangling from his lips.

He took a slow drag, the ember glowing orange in the darkness, then exhaled a light puff of smoke that was immediately caught and dispersed by the rotor wash.

"If you want to see her that much..." A mocking, disdainful smile spread across his face—the expression of someone who found my desperation amusing but ultimately meaningless. "Come."

He paused, letting the word hang there.

"Saint Petersburg."

He then turned back in his seat dismissively, having said everything he intended to say. The helicopter continued rising, the other two transport helicopters lifting off in formation around it.

I watched them fade up into the night sky, growing smaller with each passing second. Watched Elena disappear into the sky.

My legs finally gave out completely. I fell to my knees, then forward onto my hands, blood dripping from my arm to pool on the ground beneath me.

"E...Elena..."

The world tilted sideways as consciousness began slipping away. The last thing I saw before darkness claimed me was the three helicopters disappearing into the sky, taking Elena with them.

Then I collapsed completely, and everything went black.