Survive above all
Chapter 17
The smell of death soaked through the air, thick enough to taste, as the freak crept closer. Kaito stood dead still, eyes forward, like something carved out of stone.
He knew there was no outrunning it. From the corner of his eye — it was close enough now that he didn't dare turn his head — he could just make out what it had been. Middle-aged. White collar. Some office worker who'd probably died at a desk three floors up and ended up here.
The hallway was narrow. No blind spots, nowhere to disappear to. The only option left was the one everyone else had already taken — pressed low behind the cafeteria tables, hoping stillness would do what running couldn't.
Luckily, the freak seemed to be struggling to pin down exactly where its prey had gone. It kept sniffing, hard and rhythmic, like a hound working a scent trail through an airport terminal.
Kaito's hand moved slowly toward his pocket. A distraction — dangerous, but it was the only card he had left to play, and the odds on it were an honest fifty-fifty at best. Around him, the others stayed frozen, terrified. They all understood exactly how dangerous a freak was. The blood smeared across the hotel's entrance three weeks ago hadn't been there by accident.
Leo watched, helpless, fighting the urge to move. Jumping in now would give away every position in the room, and that was how you turned two deaths into a massacre. As a cop, he knew that particular kind of stuck feeling better than most people ever had to. *Life can be a real bitch sometimes,* he thought, right as he caught sight of Kaito's hand drifting toward his pocket. He understood immediately what Kaito was about to try, and almost laughed despite himself. *Does this kid have a death wish?*
*Better safe than sorry,* Kaito told himself, relief flickering through him the second his fingers found the lighter he'd pocketed earlier. He drew it out slow, scanning the length of the hallway, gauging the throw — how far, how much time it would buy him, what waited on the other side of that distance. He'd deal with that part once he got there. There was no backup plan. If the cafeteria held nothing he could use once he made it, that was simply the day he died.
Even Leo could tell the plan was reckless. But there wasn't time left to have a better one.
Kaito's arm was already in motion, winding up the throw, when his eyes caught the fire extinguisher mounted on the wall behind Leo — small, red, easy to miss until it wasn't.
He took one sharp breath. *Survive above all.*
The lighter clattered down the hallway. The freak's head snapped toward the sound, curiosity cutting through its hunt just long enough to buy Kaito the two meters of space he needed to break into a dead sprint. The second it registered the sound wasn't its prey, it let out a roar of pure fury — a sound so violent it cracked the glass in the nearest storefront window, sending everyone still hiding ducking lower, too afraid to even look up.
Kaito was almost at the corner when he saw Leo already moving, fire extinguisher raised overhead.
That's when the freak's hand shot out and closed around Jane — the woman Kaito had been carrying this entire time, left propped against the wall the second he'd had to move. He spun back toward it without thinking, putting himself between the freak and her, forcing the confrontation head-on whether he was ready for it or not.
Leo didn't hesitate. He brought the extinguisher down across the back of the freak's skull hard enough to drop it, but it lunged as it fell, catching both of them and sending Kaito and Leo sprawling a few feet apart. They scrambled back to it together, grabbing an arm each, wrestling it flat against the tile as it thrashed beneath them.
"ALEX! NOW! TAKE IT OUT, WE DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME—" Leo bellowed toward the table where Alex was still frozen, hiding.
Adrenaline did what courage alone might not have. Alex was moving before he'd even fully decided to, snatching up the fallen extinguisher and bringing it down on the freak's head again and again while Kaito and Leo held it pinned beneath him. Blood sprayed across the tile with every strike, the freak still snarling and hauling against their grip, the wet crunch of metal against bone echoing the length of the mall. It went on for two full minutes before the thing finally stopped moving, lifeless under their hands.
All three of them let go at once and just sat there, gasping, soaked in sweat and blood, alive.
