Click-click-click.
The firing pin kept snapping on an empty chamber.
Rebecca smashed the M4 down against the floor.
She yanked a grenade from her belt, and her right hand was already reaching for the pin.
A powerful hand clamped down over hers.
“That’s enough.
It’s dead already, Rebecca.” Rebecca looked at Billy.
Tears stood in the corners of her eyes, and her pupils had lost their focus.
“Let go…” Billy didn’t budge.
He kept her arm pinned, guarding against anything stupid.
“I won’t say it twice.” This time there wasn’t even any cold in her voice.
Only a flatness pressed down so hard it had nowhere left to go.
Billy gave no ground.
He forced his own pain back down and kept his words as clear as he could.
“My brother isn’t necessarily dead, Rebecca.
This hurts me no less than it hurts you.” “I know how much he means to you.
I know how much you mean to him.
And that’s exactly why.” “That’s exactly why we need to stay calm right now.
Think about what his body can take.
Think about the fact that the bottom down there might not be solid ground.” “If something broke his fall…” Billy’s words brought a faint light creeping back into Rebecca’s eyes.
A second later her left hand seized his collar, clutching it the way a drowning woman clutches at a straw.
“Do you mean that?
Ivan, he’s still alive?!” Seeing that she’d finally heard him, Billy nodded quickly.
“Yes.
Didn’t you see that punch he threw?
Didn’t you see him jump two meters straight up?” “And this is an underground treatment plant, built inside a limestone cave.
A place like this always has a water source.” “So if we go down and look now, we’ll find him.” He didn’t dare use words like “maybe” or “probably” anymore.
He was afraid of jolting a mind that had only just come back to itself.
Otherwise Ivan might turn out fine and Rebecca would be the one who ended up broken.
And he had no idea how he’d ever explain that to the man who’d saved his life.
Besides, everything he was telling her was just as much for himself.
“Hff.
Hff.” Rebecca sniffed twice and let go of his collar.
“You’re right.
Then we can’t waste time.
Let’s go find him.” Billy still didn’t let himself relax.
He spoke to her again.
“Good.
We’ll go find him right now.
But you have to promise me something.
No stupid moves.” “Put this round little bad-tempered thing back where it belongs.” “Don’t you dare hurt yourself.
Think about Ivan.
It would tear him apart.” Rebecca nodded hard.
Billy’s words had struck straight to her heart.
“Don’t worry.
I won’t.” “And I’m sorry, Billy.
I was being a little willful just now.” The moment she said it, Billy knew the old Rebecca was back.
He released the hand that held the truth of high explosives and shook his head.
“It’s all right.
I understand what you’re going through.” “No time to waste.
Load up and let’s move.” Rebecca nodded, slipping the grenade back onto her belt while she set down her pack and dug out what little 5.56mm ammunition she had left.
Billy watched her sit on the floor, thumbing rounds into the drum magazine at speed.
That settled him.
He lowered his own pack, pulled out a handful of 5.56mm rounds, and passed them over to her.
And just as the two of them were loading.
A dry, crawling rustle.
Thick, layered scrabbling rose from beneath their feet.
No.
More precisely, from below the railing Ivan had fallen over.
Rebecca dropped everything, threw down the rifle and the rounds in her hands, and pushed to her feet to look over the rail.
Below it, the dark churned like spilled ink.
The rustling grew denser, like ten million dead leaves dragging across concrete.
Rebecca and Billy leaned out over the railing almost in the same instant, and their night-vision goggles tore the curtain of darkness open.
Then both of them froze.
The night-vision goggles rendered it all in sickly green, and it was perfectly clear.
Leeches beyond counting, packed black upon black, layer on layer, a living tide of squirming darkness.
They coiled around one another, piled on one another, and in the center they had raised a flat “platform.” And Ivan was lying on it.
His eyes were closed, his breathing even, as if he were having a quiet dream.
Those leeches.
The monsters that lunged and bit like rabid animals, that detonated, that dissolved flesh…
Right now they were as docile as tamed velvet.
They pressed close beneath him in their thousands.
Some of them cradled the back of his head, his wrists, his ankles, like a troop of careful attendants carrying something fragile and precious.
Not one leech bit him.
Not one crawled onto his face.
Rebecca’s breath stopped for a beat.
She’d expected to scream, to collapse.
Nothing happened.
Her fingers only locked harder onto the edge of the railing until her knuckles went white.
“I…
Ivan?” Her voice came out small, as if she were confirming a miracle too extravagant to be real, afraid that anything louder would wake her from it.
No answer.
But the leeches shifted.
Not an attack.
The whole “platform” simply tilted a fraction, adjusting its angle.
Billy stood beside her, his pupils shrinking to points.
His grip tightened on the M4 without thinking, the pads of his fingers pressing into the handguard, knuckles creaking once.
Not fear.
Sheer disbelief.
“Holy…
shit.” He forced the words out through his teeth, dry, shaking with the tremor of a man who’d just walked out of his own grave.
“These damn things…
they’re protecting Ivan?” Rebecca said nothing.
Her tears finally fell, striking the rust on the railing without a sound, falling on into that darkness.
She thought of the fist she’d clenched when Edward died.
She thought of the salute Ivan gave her after he pulled the trigger in her place.
She thought of her arms around him on the rear deck, and the sigh of his she never quite caught.
All the terror, the rage, the despair.
All of it crumbled under the absurd, tender thing in front of her.
Rebecca’s body shook beyond her control and the tears came in a flood.
“Please…
I’m begging you…” As though the black tide understood her, it began to move.
The leeches lifted Ivan slowly and started climbing the sheer wall.
They locked into each other, stacked, built an ascending black column that stretched steadily upward.
Through the whole thing there wasn’t a single hostile shriek, only that dense, orderly rustle.
Ivan’s body rose higher and higher.
His arms hung at his sides, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
The leeches went on cradling every joint of him with meticulous care.
Not a single jolt.
Rebecca stretched out a hand, and couldn’t reach.
Her fingertips hovered in the air, trembling faintly.
Billy had already dropped into a crouch, one hand hooked on the railing, the other reaching down as far as it would go.
“A little higher.
Come on!
Yes, just like that!” He was almost shouting with excitement, Ivan a hair’s breadth from his fingers.
Then something changed in the leech tide.
It surged all at once, carrying Ivan’s body up past the reach of both their hands in a rush.
In the space of a few seconds it had cleared the railing, and the tide turned itself into a soft elevator, delivering Ivan onto solid ground without so much as a bump.
Rebecca skirted around the leeches and ran to his side.
She laid her hand on his chest, felt the beat under his heart, and the weight went out of her all at once.
____ 👻🔥Walnut-chan — Patre*n🔥👻 🔥 New history: Zenless Zone Zero: