Standing in the shattered doorway, framed by haze and flames, was Sydney. Her black hair was wild and matted with soot, her face streaked with ash and sweat, yet her blue eyes burned. The ethereal aura that surrounded her shimmered like liquid light — brilliant azure waves radiating from her body in rhythmic pulses that made the air itself vibrate.

"Sydney!" Daisy screamed from the staircase, voice trembling with joy and pure relief. For a fleeting moment, she forgot about the monsters, the fire, and the crumbling house — because Sydney stood there like a heroine from another world, her aura casting shadows back against the inferno behind her.

Her arrival hadn't been graceful, though. Sydney had appeared by launching herself through the flames in pure velocity, delivering a kinetic strike that sent the burning enhanced infected hurtling against a load-bearing pillar hard enough to splinter wood and stone alike. The fiery creature now lay half-crumpled under a heap of debris, twitching and growling as blue sparks flickered across its charred chest where Sydney's energy burst had connected.

"Hey, Christopher!" Sydney snapped, turning her head toward the man still standing by the shattered entrance with a smoking handgun in his hand. "Where were you aiming, huh? You should've blown its head clean off instead of letting that freak show get up again!"

Christopher scowled, wiping sweat and soot from his brow. "I was aiming for the head! I'm not freaking Hawkeye, you know!" He shouted back, slapping the gun's magazine to check the remaining ammo. "You're lucky I even hit it at all with this thing!"

"Christopher?" Elena called out, shock and relief equally heavy in her voice. Both she and Cindy turned toward him — exhausted, burned, covered in grime — but smiling with something dangerously close to tears. Reinforcements had arrived it seems.

Rachel, still on her knees near the staircase, weakly lifted her injured arm and shouted hoarsely, "Hey! Sydney! You're on fire—literally!"

Sydney blinked, looked down, and swore under her breath. Her boots, scorched from charging through the flames, were now fully ablaze. A trail of fire was licking up her pants, smoke curling from the fabric.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" She cried out, half-panicked and half-infuriated as she tried to stamp the flames out against the wooden floor — which, unhelpfully, was also smoldering. "I didn't even notice! Goddammit!"

"You idiot!" Christopher yelled, exasperated.

"Help me instead of giving commentary!" She shouted back, jumping awkwardly on one foot. "Do something useful, damn it!"

"With what?!" Christopher looked frantically around, surrounded by burning debris and half-dead furniture. "You want me to blow the fire out? Just take your pants off!"

Sydney froze, her expression caught somewhere between outrage and bafflement. "No way! Only Ryan gets to see me naked down there!" She yelled.

"I didn't need to know that!" Christopher groaned, his voice strangled as if personally offended by the mental image.

Even amid the deafening chaos, Liu Mei, standing at the corner of the ruined hallway didn't know what to say. "I can't believe I actually missed this kind of idiocy…"

Before anyone could add another word, a gush of water fell from above like a small waterfall. It landed squarely on Sydney's head, soaking her from hair to boots, extinguishing the flames with a sizzling hiss.

Sydney froze for a moment, stunned by the sudden deluge, water dripping from her hair and shoulders in rivulets. Slowly, she tilted her head up.

On the railing above, Alisha stood clutching an empty bucket, her face pale but focused.

"Wow, uh—thanks, Alya," Sydney said, shaking her arms and flicking droplets across the room. "Though I swear, I'm going to catch pneumonia at this rate."

"This is not the time for jokes," Rachel said as she staggered forward, pressing a bloodied hand against her arm. Her skin was pale, her lips trembling from exhaustion, but she still was able to move. "That thing's still alive, and its friend outside might not be far behind."

"Damn, Rachel..." Sydney exhaled heavily, finally looking at her and grimacing. "You look like shit. Did you wrestle that thing yourself?"

"Kind of," Rachel replied, her usual composure cracking into a tired half-smile. "And I lost badly."

"She held out far longer than any of us could've," Christopher said quietly, stepping up beside Sydney. His focus was on the enhanced infected, whose body was beginning to twitch again even while aflame. Its resilience was horrifying — it looked barely human anymore, nothing but a skeleton wrapped in glowing cinders and rage.

Elena and Cindy backed up toward Sydney. Both looked ready to collapse, yet neither showed fear. They'd been through too much to waste energy on terror now.

"Can we even kill this thing?" Cindy asked breathlessly, re-gripping her weapon.

"Ryan told us to run if we saw one of these," Elena said grimly. Her knuckles were white around her lightning-charged crowbar. "Now I understand exactly why."

Christopher let out a bitter, shaking laugh, wiping his face with the back of his forearm. "You're telling me that guy has actually killed two of them already? Because I'm starting to think he was a damn protagonist in some novel we got dropped into by accident."

Sydney nodded, deadpan as her soaked hair clung to her cheeks. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure Ryan's the main character, and we're just his underpaid, expendable supporting cast."

Liu Mei, still catching her breath near the wall, threw her hands up incredulously. "Is this really the time to debate narrative roles?! The house is burning down, a monster's trying to kill us, and you're arguing about story structure!"

Her words shut them up — but only for a moment.

Because the next sound made everyone fall silent.

Rachel stiffened mid-step, body tensing like a drawn wire. Her green eyes flared faintly as her Dullahan senses triggered, warning of incoming danger even before the others could register it. Her heart skipped once, twice — and then she turned on instinct, thrusting her uninjured arm toward the shattered entrance.

Her barrier materialized instantly — a deep red hexagonal dome that shimmered with raw protective energy.

Sydney's own senses snapped online in perfect sync. Elena, Cindy, and Christopher turned toward the same point Rachel was facing, adrenaline spiking as they saw something bright and fast hurtling toward the house through the smoky darkness outside.

It appeared as a glowing ember at first. Then, in the next split second, it became a full-sized fireball streaking through the open ruins of their door like a meteor on collision course.

"Shit, get down!" Sydney yelled.

The fireball collided with Rachel's barrier in a deafening explosion of heat and light, flames washing across the red surface in a burst of energy that illuminated the entire room. The temperature spiked instantly, the walls groaning as fire spread through the wreckage.

Rachel stood her ground, her heels digging into the burnt wood as she poured everything into maintaining the barrier. Her jaw clenched, veins bulging at her temples, her arms trembling as the inferno pressed against her shield like the weight of a collapsing world.

For a few seconds, the deadlock held — until cracks spiderwebbed across the barrier's surface, glowing brighter and brighter like molten glass reaching critical temperature.

Then the pressure relented. The flames dissipated into thin smoke, scattered by a residual pulse of crimson energy.

Rachel dropped to one knee, gasping heavily. Blood splattered the floor as she coughed violently, a red spray staining her lips.

"Sister!!" Rebecca screamed, darting down the stairs to catch her before she could hit the ground, arms wrapping protectively around Rachel's shoulder.

"What the fuck was that?!" Sydney asked, spinning back toward the open doorway where the smoke was clearing.

No one answered immediately—partly because they were still reeling from the explosion, and partly because none of them had seen what Rachel had seen. Only she and Ryan had ever encountered one of the Fire Spitters before.

Rachel wiped blood from her chin with a shaky hand and stared into the smoke-filled void beyond the entrance. Her eyes narrowed as the silhouette of somewhere maybe two miles away.

"Get ready," she said weakly. "It's not just the enhanced infected anymore…"

Her voice dropped to almost a whisper as the faint smell of sulfur rolled into the room.

"It's…the Fire Spitter," Rachel added.

Sydney's brows furrowed as she turned toward her. "Fire Spitter? Wait, that thing that attacked the Municipal Office? You and Ryan already blew that freak to hell—don't tell me it's back."

Rachel shook her head gravely, gripping her bleeding arm as she steadied her breathing. "Another one. It's intelligent enough to space its attacks—it launches fireballs in intervals, scans for weaknesses." She glanced toward the shattered doorway, where molten debris still glowed faintly red. "If we stay here, we're dead. We need to move—now."

"That thing isn't going to let us just walk out the door," Elena said, her voice brittle but sharp as glass. Her crowbar sparked faintly in her hand as she stared into the smoke-filled darkness beyond the entrance where embers floated like drifting sparks of malevolent intent. "And the enhanced infected hasn't slowed down either. Look—the thing still burning, and moving."

The enhanced infected staggered at the far end of the hall, its charred muscles knitting back together with grotesque persistence. Flames still clung to parts of its body, illuminating the half-collapsed furniture with each lumbering step. Its flesh hissed audibly, and where its eyes should have been there was only glowing, empty sockets that burned with molten hatred.

Sydney clenched her fists, her aura flashing brighter for a heartbeat. "Fine. Then we don't fight them all—we escape. Ryan made sure we had a backup exit plan."

"What backup?" Cindy asked.

Sydney turned toward the others, smirking. "A camping van. Ryan hid one outside, stocked with supplies—food, fuel, even portable weapons. He told me the location. We can reach it through the field behind the property."

"A… camping car?" Everyone turned to her, disbelief cutting through their fear.

"Yeah, because Ryan thinks of everything." Sydney's tone carried faint humor, masking her own exhaustion. "He didn't think the Scream would happen this soon though, or he'd have told everyone."

"That's an understatement!" Rebecca's voice trembled between anger and terror. "You couldn't have mentioned this earlier?!"

Sydney shrugged, half-snarling. "I didn't plan for our house to turn into a barbecue this fast, either!"

"What do we do, then?" Cindy said, gripping her knife so tightly her knuckles turned white. "We can't just run blind!"

"I can get there fast," Sydney said. "I'll use my speed to reach the van, start it, and swing it closer to pick everyone up. But until then…" She hesitated, her gaze hardening.

"We'll hold the line," Rachel finished, straightening her posture despite her injuries. "Just hurry up, Sydney. If that thing fires again, I don't know how much barrier I can summon."

"You sure about this?" Sydney asked looking at everyone.

"Yeah," Elena said with a strained smile, sweat mixing with soot on her face.

"Hey—take Rebecca with you," Rachel ordered, glancing at her sister.

Sydney blinked. "I can, but—"

"Wait, what?!" Rebecca snapped, stepping forward. "Why me?"

"Because you'll only drag us down if you stay here!" Rachel's voice rose up. "Don't argue."

Rebecca flinched at her tone, but she recognized the truth in it. Her hands trembled as she forced herself to nod, biting down on her lower lip until she tasted blood. Silently, she walked toward Sydney.

Sydney sighed and gave her a tired smirk. "Alright, come here, princess."

Rebecca's eyes widened as Sydney scooped her up, one arm hooking under her knees and the other at her back. "Wha—! Put me down!"

"No time for dignity," Sydney said briskly, turning toward the burning entrance. "Hold tight."

In a blink of blue light, they vanished into the night.

Rachel exhaled, relief mingling with fear. "Alright," she said, turning back toward the others. "Now it's our turn."

"We take them both down—the Spitter and the brute," she continued.

"Can't we just ignore the Fire Spitter?" Daisy asked from the stairs, her voice trembling. "We could sneak out the back, follow Sydney."

Rachel turned toward her, eyes glowing faintly crimson in the half-light. "If that thing gets another shot off while we're driving, we're cooked. One fireball and the entire van turns into a coffin."

That was enough. Everyone's faces paled as the realization settled in. Running wasn't an escape yet—it was suicide if they left the Fire Spitter alive.

"Then we split up," Cindy said. "It's the only way."

Rachel nodded. "I'll take on the Fire Spitter myself. My barriers can handle its attacks if I'm close enough. I'll move forward slowly, shielding myself as I advance."

"I—I'll come with you!" Daisy said suddenly.

Rachel turned, surprised. "Daisy?"

Daisy's eyes behind her glasses burned with determination despite the fear within them. "I can't fight that —" She gestured toward the enhanced infected, which Christopher was still distracting with gunfire, "—but I can stay behind you, help however I can. Please, don't tell me to hide again."

Rachel softened, a faint smile on her lips. "Alright. Stay close, then."

Daisy nodded, her trembling hands tightening around a kitchen knife she had picked. "I won't."

Rachel turned toward the rest of the group. "Take care of each other. I'll draw its fire once it attacks again—use that time to take that thing done, it's nearly done but be careful."

"Noted," Elena replied, sparks already racing down her crowbar's shaft. Lightning flashed across her skin like veins of raw electricity, casting ghostly light on her pale expression.

Christopher's voice shouted over the din from across the room. "Hey, you three lovebirds done with the planning?! I've got problems!"

Bang—Bang—Bang!

His gun barked three sharp retorts, each muzzle flash illuminating the enhanced infected staggering under the barrage.

"I'm running out of bullets, and it's getting back on its feet!" He yelled. The hulking shape rose from the flames again, its burned feet sticking and tearing against the wooden floor with every step. The smell of scorched flesh turned the air sickly sweet. Its mouth opened, letting out a grinding roar that rattled the cracked windows.

"How do we even kill that thing?" Cindy asked desperately.

Christopher glared between shots. "If you have any miracle ideas, now would be a great time!"

"Should we just run already?" Mei called from the base of the stairs, clutching the railing. "We're wasting time!"

"Outside's worse," Elena snapped. "Dark, foggy, full of infected from the garden side—we'd be overrun in minutes!"

She wasn't exaggerating. Groaning silhouettes could already be seen pressing against what was left of their barricades outside, pounding on the wood with relentless hunger.

Christopher glanced up toward the staircase where Alisha stood watching helplessly. "Mei, get upstairs with her! You're no good down here without a weapon."

Mei frowned but obeyed, joining Alisha as they retreated higher.

Downstairs, Christopher reloaded with steady hands as ash drifted through the air like snow. He looked to Elena and Cindy.

"Alright, girls," he said with his crooked grin. "Let's do this."

Elena nodded steadying her ragged breath, tightening her grip on her lightning-charged weapon. "Let's make it count."

"And let's pray Ryan gets here before we're all torched alive," Cindy muttered under her breath.

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