Am I truly trapped here with no way out?

The thought sent waves of panic through my consciousness, but I forced myself to push past the despair and focus on finding solutions rather than dwelling on impossibilities. There had to be another way.

Think!

When clarity finally came, it arrived as a single idea that was dangerous.

If I failed to execute it perfectly, the enhanced infected would definitely knock me unconscious again, and this time I might not wake up for hours or maybe forever. Every moment of delay was time that Jason could be using to reach our house and carry out whatever horrible mission the Starakians had given him. Anything could happen to Sydney, Rachel, Elena, Cindy, and the others while I remained trapped here.

I would never forgive myself if something happened to them because I had been unable to do anything to prevent it.

I raised my gaze and glared up at the enhanced infected with all the hatred and defiance I could muster, channeling my rage at Jason, at the Starakians, and everything else that had stolen Jasmine from me.

I will never forgive them for what they've done, I thought with cold anger. Never.

Without giving myself time to second-guess or reconsider, I activated my time freeze ability, stopping the flow of time for ten precious seconds.

The world around me froze into absolute stillness. I had ten seconds of stopped time to work with, and every fraction of every second would need to count.

I immediately rose to my feet despite still being secured to the chair by barbed wire restraints, the awkward bulk of the furniture making my movements clumsy and restricted. Then, summoning all my enhanced strength, I jumped upward into the air as high as I could manage while carrying the chair's weight, twisting my body in mid-flight so that I would land on my back.

I let myself fall hard against the concrete floor, the impact driving the air from my lungs and sending shock waves of pain through my spine and shoulders. But the gamble paid off—the chair shattered on impact, its wooden construction unable to withstand the combined force of my enhanced strength and the fall from height.

Splinters of broken wood scattered across the floor in frozen time, and suddenly I was standing upright though my body remained tightly bound by barbed wire and my arms were still secured behind my back. The restraints hadn't been removed, but I could at least move now rather than being completely immobilized.

I looked around frantically, feeling my heart racing as I calculated how many seconds of frozen time remained. Maybe six or seven seconds left—not much time to accomplish everything I needed to do.

I can't kill that enhanced infected with my body tied up like this, I realized with frustration. My wind blade abilities required the freedom to move my arms and channel energy properly, and attempting a full-power attack while restrained would likely injure me as badly as it damaged my target. But I could at least buy myself time to escape and warn the others.

I rushed toward the opposite wall of the technical room, my feet finding purchase on debris and equipment as I ran. Then I planted my foot against the concrete surface and pushed off with all my enhanced strength, using the wall like a springboard to launch myself through the air at tremendous velocity toward the enhanced infected's frozen position near the window.

The flying kick I delivered caught the creature squarely in its midsection with enough force to cave in its enhanced torso and send it crashing backward through the reinforced window. Shattered glass exploded outward in a frozen spray of crystalline fragments that hung motionless in the temporal stasis, and the enhanced infected's body began its fall toward the ground three stories below.

Fuck! Only two more seconds before time resumes!

I scrambled across the broken glass-covered floor and reached the window just as my time freeze ability reached its limit. At the last possible instant, just as temporal flow was about to resume its normal progression, I managed to give the enhanced infected one final push that sent it tumbling completely out of the building.

Time resumed with a rush of sensation and sound. I gasped for breath, leaning against the window frame as I watched the enhanced infected growl with rage before its body struck the ground three stories below with a sickening impact that should have killed any normal creature.

I hoped stupidly that the fall might have been fatal, but my enhanced vision allowed me to see the creature moving almost immediately after impact. It let out another of its intelligent growls and I knew it would be climbing back up to rejoin me within minutes.

Worse, I could already hear the shuffling footsteps of infected creatures approaching from the lower floors, drawn by the sounds of our confrontation. The enhanced infected must have been controlling them somehow, directing their movements, and now that its attention was focused on recapturing me, they were being mobilized to block my escape routes.

Already?! Panic flooded through me as I realized how quickly the situation was deteriorating.

Infected creatures generally couldn't climb stairs with any competence—their lack of coordination and cognitive function made vertical movement extremely difficult for standard virus victims. Even infected with slightly enhanced intelligence would stumble and crash into each other, creating bottlenecks that slowed their group movement and gave defenders time to prepare counterattacks.

Then why so fast? Were there other Infected I hadn't felt in this floor?

Damn it! Why is everything going so badly? Even though I thought…even though I believed everything would work out…

I clenched my fists harder, preparing to snap the barbed wire restraints through sheer force regardless of how badly it would lacerate my arms. The injuries would be severe, possibly crippling, but staying trapped here meant death for everyone I cared about.

But just as I was about to force my arms through the metal bonds, I raised my gaze and widened my eyes in shock at what I saw standing in the doorway of the technical room.

"What... what are you doing here?" I asked, completely dumbfounded by the impossible presence before me.

It was Wanda.

She was also looking at me with expressions of surprise and shock that mirrored my own bewilderment at this impossible encounter. Her wide eyes took in the scene of destruction around us—the broken chair, the shattered window, the blood staining the concrete floor—and I could see her mind struggling to process what had happened here.

"What are you doing here?" She asked me.

"That's my question!" I shouted, my voice rising with panic and concern despite my attempts to maintain composure. "How did you even get here? This place is incredibly dangerous! There are infected creatures everywhere, and worse things than infected hunting through these halls!"

Without thinking about the pain it would cause, I immediately rushed toward the door and slammed it closed with a forceful push of my back, using my body weight to secure the barrier since my hands remained bound behind me. The door shut with a solid thud that I hoped would muffle any sounds from within and buy us precious moments before the approaching infected get there.

I breathed heavily, my chest heaving with exertion and terror as Wanda looked at me with shock that was rapidly transforming into horror. Her gaze trailed down my body, taking in the full extent of my injuries—blood flowing from wounds on my head, torso, and limbs where the barbed wire had cut deep into my flesh showing pattern of lacerations that made me look like I'd been tortured rather than simply restrained.

"Damn it, Wanda," I cursed under my breath, gritting my teeth and lowering my gaze to avoid seeing the pity and fear in her eyes.

How was I supposed to protect her when I could barely protect myself? Getting myself out of this radiostation alive had already been almost impossibly complicated, and now with Wanda here, it had multiplied exponentially. I had to keep her safe while fighting through infected-infested territory with my hands bound and my body already weakened from sustained injury and ability overuse.

"What happened to you?" Wanda asked me.

I had no strength left to explain everything that had transpired—Jason's corruption, the Screamer's influence, Jasmine's transformation, the desperate escape attempt that had left me broken and bleeding. The words would have required energy I didn't possess and emotional control I couldn't maintain.

"Just hide somewhere in this room, Wanda," I said. "I…I will draw the infected's attention and run from here, leading them away from your position. Then I'll circle back and get you out of this building safely. If I don't come back within an hour, you need to try being very careful and quiet, and find your own way out of here."

I'm sorry, Joel, I thought with bitter self-recrimination. I'll do my absolute best to keep your granddaughter safe, but I can't be certain of success. After what happened to Jasmine, after failing so completely to protect someone who trusted me, I just...

My whole body began trembling uncontrollably, and I felt my heart racing at speeds that bordered on medically dangerous. My breathing became rapid and shallow, and I recognized with alarm the symptoms of a panic attack building in my nervous system.

What's happening to me? Why am I falling apart now, when I need to be strong and focused?

The answer came with devastating clarity: I was terrified. Really, genuinely terrified in ways I hadn't experienced since the earliest days of the outbreak. Not just fear for my own survival, but paralyzing terror at the prospect of losing someone else I was responsible for protecting. Jasmine's transformation had broken something in me, had created wounds that went deeper than any physical injury could reach.

I blinked in confusion as I felt Wanda's slender fingers on the barbed wire restraints around my wrists, trying to tear them away from my bleeding skin. But her hands weren't strong enough to manipulate the cruel metal bonds, and within seconds her own fingers were bleeding from dozens of small cuts where the barbs had pierced her delicate flesh.

"What are you doing? Stop this immediately!" I moved away from her with alarm, not wanting her to injure herself further in a futile attempt to help me.

Wanda looked at her bleeding fingers, watching as drops of bright red blood slowly dripped down onto the concrete floor to mix with my own. Then she raised her eyes to meet mine with an expression that was far too calm and controlled for someone who should have been terrified.

"I won't hide," she said. "I came here on my own, by my own choice."

"For what purpose?!" I asked, lashing out at her with frustration born of fear and helplessness. "Joel must be worried sick about you! Why would you come to this dangerous place when you could have stayed safe at the Municipal Office?"

Wanda raised her red-stained eyes to meet mine directly, and I noticed with growing confusion that her expression showed none of the fear or panic that should have been there.

Why was she so unnaturally calm? How could she maintain such composure in this situation where we surrounded everywhere.

I had always known Wanda was strange—her mannerisms, her way of speaking, her reactions to situations had never quite matched what I expected from here. But this level of calm transcended mere oddness and suggested something fundamentally different about her nature.

"I came here to surrender myself to them," she said simply.

I looked at her in stunned silence, not knowing what to say at first as my mind struggled to process the implications of her statement. "Surrender yourself?" I finally asked. "What do you mean by that?"

"They attacked the Municipal Office because of me," Wanda explained with the same unnatural calm. "I'm the reason all those people died, the reason grandfather and the others are in danger. If I give myself to them, maybe they'll leave everyone else alone."

"I understand that you're also a symbiotic host like me," I said, gritting my teeth against the pain radiating from my wounds and the emotional turmoil of processing her words. "But coming here is suicidal! The Starakians don't want to keep us alive—they'll extract whatever they need from us and then kill us once we're no longer useful. You're throwing your life away for nothing!"

My intuition told me that the only reason I remained alive was because the Starakians wanted to extract the Dullahan symbiosis from my body for study or weaponization. Once they had what they needed, I would be disposed of without hesitation or mercy. The same fate would await Wanda if she surrendered to them voluntarily.

"Host?" Wanda looked at me with slight confusion rather than recognition. "What do you mean by that word?"

I stared at her, my own confusion deepening. "You're a host of a symbiotic organism like me, right?" I asked, trying to understand why she didn't seem to know basic terminology about her own condition. "That's why the Starakians want you specifically—because you carry genetic material or abilities they're interested in studying or controlling."

"I don't know what a Symbiotic is," Wanda replied.

"Then why?" I asked, my voice rising with confusion. "Why did you come here?"

Why do the Starakians want you badly enough to attack the Municipal Office and risk exposing their presence? Why did they specifically mention needing to capture you?

If Wanda wasn't a symbiotic host like I had assumed, then what made her valuable enough to justify such a coordinated assault on that human community?

Wanda stared at me for a long moment, her expression shifting to something that looked almost like resignation or acceptance of an inevitable revelation. Then she slowly raised her right hand, holding it palm-up in front of her at chest level.

I widened my eyes in shock as red sparks began swirling above her palm, crackling with energy that looked nothing like the aura of my own Dullahan enhancements. The sparks coalesced into patterns that seemed to pulse with alien intelligence, and simultaneously, distinctive red marks began appearing around Wanda's eyes—geometric patterns that resembled ancient Egyptian mascara or the wedjat symbol of protection.

"I am one of them," she said quietly. "I'm Starakian."

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