Chapter 154: The Scream [19]

“How could you do that to Jasmine?!” Christopher’s voice cracked with emotion as he advanced on Jason’s staggered form, crowbar raised for another strike. “How could you let them turn her into that? How could you allow it to happen?!” His face was twisted with anguish and fury in equal measure. “I won’t believe the bullshit that your mind fell easily under that damn stone’s control, Jason! You made a choice! You chose this!”

The crowbar swung again, aimed at Jason’s head with lethal intent. But this time Jason was ready.

His hand shot up with inhuman speed, fingers closing around the crowbar’s shaft mid-swing. The metal stopped dead in the air as if it had struck an invisible wall, all of Christopher’s momentum arrested in an instant. Jason’s grip was absolute—like the crowbar had been seized by industrial machinery rather than human fingers.

Slowly, Jason raised his gaze to meet Christopher’s eyes. Blood dripped steadily from the wound on his head, running down his face in rivulets that painted half his features crimson. But instead of pain or weakness, his expression showed only cold anger.

Christopher felt danger radiating from Jason like heat from a fire. His instincts screamed at him to run, to release the crowbar and get away before it was too late. He immediately let go of the weapon, stumbling backward and nearly tripping over debris in his haste to put distance between himself and his transformed friend.

“Damn,” Christopher breathed, his voice shaking slightly as realization crashed over him. “This bastard is as strong as Ryan. Maybe stronger.” His hand throbbed where Jason’s grip had briefly touched his fingers, the pressure having been strong enough to leave bruises through the metal.

Jason tossed the crowbar aside contemptuously, the heavy tool clattering across the floor like a child’s toy. “Don’t compare me to that weakling Ryan,” he spat, genuine offense coloring his distorted voice. “I just took care of him. He’s finished. Done. Defeated.”

“You probably used underhanded moves!” A clear, fierce voice rang out from outside the house.

Everyone’s heads turned toward the entrance where the artificial screams still echoed through the night air. The distinctive rumble of a large engine grew rapidly louder, accompanied by the crunch of tires over debris and broken asphalt.

A camping van—large, boxy, and moving far faster than seemed safe—burst into view through the destroyed doorway. Sydney sat behind the wheel, her face set in an expression twisted witj mad grin. Her blue eyes blazed with the same ethereal light that surrounded her body, her Dullahan aura flaring bright even through the vehicle’s interior.

“Oh shit! Cindy, dodge!” Christopher yelled.

He launched himself sideways, hitting the floor hard and rolling through ash and debris to clear the van’s path.

Thankfully, Liu Mei and Elena were already positioned near the staircase, well out of the vehicle’s trajectory. Alisha had pulled her sister as far to the side as possible, shielding Elena’s weakened body with her own.

Cindy dove right, her Dullahan-enhanced reflexes giving her just enough speed to clear the danger zone as several tons of metal and momentum came barreling through the space she’d occupied a heartbeat before.

But Jason, standing directly in the middle of the entrance with nowhere to go and no time to react, took the full force of the impact.

The camping van’s reinforced front bumper caught him square in the chest with devastating force. The silver stone embedded in his sternum flared blindingly bright for an instant as metal met flesh and alien crystal. Jason’s body was lifted clean off the ground by the impact, his enhanced durability the only thing preventing him from being instantly pulverized. He flew backward like a ragdoll, arms and legs flailing, before slamming into the far wall with a bone-jarring crash that sent cracks spiderwebbing through the already damaged drywall.

He crumpled to the ground in a heap, momentarily stunned by the violence of the collision.

Sydney immediately threw the van into reverse, tires squealing as she backed out of the house with the same reckless speed she’d entered. The moment the vehicle cleared the entrance, she leaned out the driver’s window and shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Get inside quickly! Move, move, move!”

Everyone reacted fast. Alisha was already moving before Sydney finished speaking, hauling Elena’s weakened body upright and half-carrying, half-dragging her sister toward the camping van. Rebecca appeared at the vehicle’s side door, yanking it open and reaching out to help pull Elena inside.

Liu Mei rushed out next. She practically leaped into the van, scrambling over seats to make room for the others.

Cindy and Christopher brought up the rear, jogging as fast as their exhausted legs could carry them. They were almost there—five feet from safety, then three, then—

“You aren’t getting anywhere!” Jason’s voice roared from inside the ruined house, filled with such rage and alien power that it seemed to shake the very air.

He staggered to his feet, blood streaming from multiple wounds—his head, his chest where the van had struck him, his arms and hands scraped raw. The silver stone in his chest pulsed erratically, its light flickering like a damaged bulb. But despite the obvious damage, despite being struck by several tons of moving metal, Jason was still conscious. Still fighting. Still dangerous.

His mouth opened impossibly wide once more, jaw unhinging to a degree that should have been anatomically impossible. This time when he screamed, he poured everything he had into it—all his rage, all his pain, all the alien power coursing through his transformed body amplified by the Screamer’s core stone.

The sonic assault that erupted was exponentially more powerful than his previous attacks. The artificial screams from Mark’s devices scattered throughout Jackson Township were instantly drowned out, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of Jason’s cry. The sound wasn’t merely heard—it was felt, a physical force that pressed against flesh and bone like an invisible hand trying to crush everything in its path.

Christopher and Cindy, caught in the open with no protection, immediately dropped to their knees on the hard ground. Christopher’s hands flew to his ears, pressing so hard his palms went white, but it did nothing to stop the assault that bypassed physical defenses and attacked directly at the neural level. His vision swam, black spots dancing at the edges as his brain struggled to process the overwhelming sensory input.

For Christopher, positioned closest to Jason and lacking any Dullahan enhancements to buffer the attack, it was catastrophically worse. He felt consciousness slipping away like water through his fingers, the world tilting dangerously as his body prepared to shut down to protect itself from the sonic trauma.

Inside the camping van, chaos erupted as everyone simultaneously cried out in pain. Sydney’s hands flew from the steering wheel to clamp over her ears, her enhanced Dullahan constitution the only thing keeping her from passing out entirely. Rebecca, Alisha, Elena, and Liu Mei all doubled over, faces contorted in agony as the scream penetrated the vehicle’s thin metal walls like they didn’t exist.

Jason chuckled darkly as he stepped out of the ruined house, walking with slow steps toward Christopher and Cindy’s vulnerable forms. Blood continued to drip from his wounds, leaving a trail of crimson droplets across the ash-covered ground, but he seemed not to notice or care about his injuries. The silver stone in his chest pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat—or whatever passed for a heartbeat in his transformed state.

“You really thought you could escape me?” His voice dripped with dark amusement and absolute confidence in his victory. “That a van and some clever tricks would be enough? How pathetic.”

“Stop it, Jason!”

A new figure emerged from the darkness beyond the van—Rachel, breathless and battered, her clothes torn and singed from her battle with the Fire Spitter. Beside her, Daisy’s face was pale as death, eyes wide with terror at the scene before them.

Jason’s smile widened even further as he took in the new arrivals. “Oh, Rachel. You came at just the right time. Now everyone is reunited—the whole family back together.” His tone was mockingly cheerful, as if they were gathering for a pleasant reunion rather than a life-or-death confrontation. “It’ll be so much easier to take care of all of you at once.”

He drew in a deep breath, chest expanding as he prepared to unleash another devastating scream. His mouth began to open, the silver stone flaring brighter in anticipation—

But when he released his breath, nothing happened.

No sound. No sonic assault. No weapon at all—just a normal exhalation of air that carried no more force than an ordinary human breath.

Jason’s eyes widened with confusion, then alarm. He tried again, pushing harder, channeling more power through the alien core embedded in his chest. The stone pulsed frantically, energy visibly coursing through it, but still no scream emerged.

Then he noticed it—the shimmer in the air around him. A faint reddish translucent barrier, like heat distortion made visible, forming a perfect dome that enclosed his body. The barrier’s surface rippled gently, absorbing the sonic energy he was trying to project and dispersing it harmlessly before it could propagate beyond the contained space.

Rachel’s barrier.

It had completely shut off his scream, trapping the sound inside the confined space where it could do no harm to anyone outside. The realization hit Jason lquite strongly—she’d countered his most powerful weapon with what appeared to be effortless precision.

“A soundproof barrier?” Jason breathed in disbelief, staring at the translucent red walls that imprisoned him. “That’s… that’s impossible. How?”

Rachel stood with one arm extended despite her obvious exhaustion. Blood still dripped from the injury on her arm where the enhanced infected had struck her earlier, and her entire body trembled with the effort of maintaining the barrier. But her green eyes blazed seriously.

It was Rachel who had given her barrier such evolution—not just protecting, but adapting. Where once her crimson shields could only defend against physical attacks and energy blasts, she had pushed her Dullahan abilities to their limits, discovering new applications through desperate necessity. The barrier now didn’t just block—it absorbed, contained, and neutralized threats of multiple types.

Including sound.

“That is enough…” Rachel said again. She narrowed her green eyes at Jason.

She couldn’t fully comprehend the mechanics of what had happened to Jason—how the integration of the Screamer’s silver core stone had fundamentally altered him on a level that went beyond mere physical transformation. But the evidence was undeniable, written across every wrong angle of his posture, every alien gleam in his eyes, every word that came from his mouth in that distorted, multi-layered voice.

The silver stone had completely warped Jason’s mind, overwriting or corrupting whatever remained of the friend they’d once known. Perhaps the process had been gradual, a slow erosion of humanity as the alien technology asserted dominance over his neural pathways. Or perhaps it had been instantaneous—a single moment of integration that had shattered his consciousness and rebuilt it according to patterns designed by beings from beyond the stars.

Rachel’s mind, even in her exhausted state, recognized the terrible implications. Jason should have been unable to move—should have been dead, in fact—without the silver stone now embedded in his chest. Whatever that crystalline alien heart was, it had become essential to his continued existence. He was no longer merely human hosting alien technology; he had become something fundamentally hybridized, neither fully one nor the other.

The thought made her stomach turn with a mixture of horror and profound sadness.

Jason recovered quickly from his initial shock at being trapped within her soundproof barrier. That predatory smile returned to his blood-smeared face as he examined the translucent red walls surrounding him, running his fingers along their surface.

“That is a dangerous ability,” he said, his tone carrying grudging respect beneath the mockery. “And quite handy too, I’ll admit. Being able to neutralize sound like that…” He paused, tilting his head at an angle that made his neck look unnaturally flexible. “But judging from your current state, Rachel, I suppose you can’t do this many times. Can’t even hold it very long, can you?”

The smirk that spread across his face was knowing and cruel, cutting straight to the truth she couldn’t hide.

Rachel didn’t reply. She couldn’t afford to waste breath on words when every ounce of her remaining strength was dedicated to maintaining the barrier that kept Jason’s sonic attacks contained. Her chest heaved with ragged breathing that she was unable to disguise, each inhalation feeling like it was dragging sandpaper across her lungs.

The battle against the Fire Spitter had been brutal beyond anything she’d experienced before. That alien weapon-creature had been relentless, launching fireball after fireball that she’d been forced to intercept with her barriers, each impact draining her reserves a little more. The heat had been suffocating, the constant threat of being incinerated requiring split-second timing and absolute precision in her defensive placements.

It had taken everything she had—every trick, every ounce of power, every desperate gambit she could conceive—to finally bring the Fire Spitter down. And even then, victory had come at a terrible cost. She was depleted in every sense of the word, running on nothing but willpower and the desperate knowledge that if she failed now, everyone she cared about would die.

The fact that she was even still standing was remarkable. The fact that she’d managed to summon another barrier—and not just any barrier, but one with the sophisticated sound-dampening properties required to neutralize Jason’s screams—was actually beyond what she should have been capable of in her current condition.

But she’d done it anyway, because the alternative was unthinkable.

She knew she had to hold the barrier for as long as possible, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how her vision swam at the edges or how her legs threatened to give out beneath her. If she failed, if she let the barrier fall before they could escape or find some other solution, Jason would unleash his sonic weapon again. And this time, with everyone already weakened and vulnerable, that scream would be devastating. Fatal, probably, for Christopher and the others without Dullahan enhancements.

Jason’s smirk widened as he watched Rachel’s silence, reading her inability to respond as confirmation of what he’d already deduced.

“Thought so,” he said with dark satisfaction. Then his expression shifted, becoming more predatory, more dangerous. “Your barrier can resist my scream—I’ll give you that. Very impressive evolution of your ability, Rachel. Ryan would be proud.”

He pulled his fist back in an exaggerated motion, chambering it at his side with all the coiled tension of a spring compressed to its breaking point. The muscles in his arm bulged unnaturally, enhanced by the alien stone’s power to levels that exceeded normal human capability.

“But what about my fist?!” Jason shouted, and launched his punch forward with explosive force.

Rachel saw it coming—saw the punch telegraphed clearly through her enhanced Dullahan senses—and immediately raised both her arms in a desperate defensive gesture, hands held up as if physical positioning could somehow reinforce the energy barrier that was already there.

Jason’s fist struck the translucent red surface with the force of a sledgehammer hitting glass.

CRAAACK!

The sound of the barrier fracturing was visceral and terrible, like the cracking of winter ice over a deep lake. Spiderweb patterns of damage radiated outward from the point of impact, spreading across the entire dome structure in less than a second. The red light that composed the barrier flickered and pulsed erratically, energy bleeding away through the cracks as the structural integrity catastrophically failed.

Rachel gasped, feeling the feedback of the barrier’s destruction slam through her nervous system like an electric shock. The sensation was indescribable—not quite pain in the physical sense, but a deep, fundamental wrongness that resonated through every cell of her body. It felt like part of her had just been torn away, leaving raw nerve endings exposed.

Her legs finally gave out, all remaining strength abandoning her in a rush. She dropped to her knees hard, the impact barely registering through the overwhelming exhaustion that crashed over her like a tidal wave. She was completely, utterly spent—every reserve of Dullahan energy depleted, every backup system pushed beyond its limits and shut down.

She couldn’t maintain the barrier anymore. She could barely maintain consciousness.

CRACK!

Jason punched again, and this time the barrier shattered completely. The translucent red dome exploded into countless fragments of dissipating energy that evaporated into the night air like dying sparks, leaving nothing between Jason and his prey.

Without the barrier’s resistance to slow him, Jason exploded into motion with terrifying speed. His enhanced body covered the distance between himself and Rachel in the span of a heartbeat, moving so fast he was almost a blur.

Everyone watching—Sydney and Rebecca barley standing in the van, Christopher and Cindy still recovering on the ground, Elena held up by her sister—could only stare in horror as events unfolded too quickly for them to intervene. There was no time to shout a warning, no time to react, no time to do anything except watch helplessly as Jason bore down on Rachel’s defenseless form.

Rachel’s eyes widened as she saw Jason rushing toward her. Time seemed to slow down in that terrible moment, every detail becoming painfully, impossibly clear despite her exhausted state.

She could see the individual droplets of blood still dripping from Jason’s wounds. Could see the way the silver stone pulsed in his chest like a malevolent second heart. Could see the wrongness in his eyes that confirmed he was no longer the person they’d known.

And she knew, with absolute certainty, that she couldn’t defend herself. She had nothing left—no barrier to raise, no strength to dodge, no trick or technique that could save her now.

Instinctively, desperately, Rachel turned and shoved Daisy backward with what little strength remained in her arms. The younger woman stumbled, barely catching herself before she could fall, shock and terror written across her face as she realized what Rachel was doing.

“Rachel, no—!” Daisy’s scream was cut off as Rachel pushed her firmly away, removing her from immediate danger.

With Daisy safe, Rachel turned back to face Jason. She closed her eyes, unable to watch her own death approaching. Her mind filled with images—memories of her life, of her friends, of the people she was trying to protect with her final act.

Rebecca’s face appeared in her mind’s eye, clear and vivid despite the chaos around her. Her little sister—stubborn, fierce, complicated, infuriating, and so very precious. They’d fought so often, clashed over everything from cooking rotations to survival strategies, but beneath all that friction had been love. Deep, unshakeable sisterly love that Rachel had always assumed she’d have time to properly express.

Now that time had run out.

I’m sorry, Rebecca, Rachel thought, the words echoing through her mind with the weight of a final goodbye. I’m sorry I won’t be there to keep arguing with you. Sorry I won’t see what kind of person you’ll become. Sorry I have to leave you alone in this terrible world.

But I protected everyone as long as I could. I hope that counts for something.

I hope you’ll forgive me.

She could only hope Jason won’t touch the others taking her death as enough or perhaps…’he’ would come at time to save them.

Rachel braced herself for impact, for pain, for the end that was rushing toward her with unstoppable momentum.

But nothing came.

The expected impact—the crushing blow, the shattering of bone, the explosion of agony that should have accompanied her death—simply didn’t arrive. Instead, there was only a strange, suspended silence that seemed to stretch out impossibly, defying the laws of physics and time itself.

Confused, Rachel slowly became aware of other sensations. The night air was cool against her skin where sweat had soaked through her clothes. The distant crackle of flames from the burning house continued their steady rhythm. And there was something else—something familiar and impossibly welcome.

A scent.

It was subtle at first, almost lost in the smoke and ash that permeated everything. But as Rachel focused on it, the fragrance became clearer, more distinct. Something indefinably warm that she’d come to recognize and associate with safety.

A fragrance she’d grown used to over these past weeks and months. One that had become as familiar as home in this broken world.

Her heart, which had been racing with terror just moments before, suddenly stuttered with a different emotion entirely—hope so powerful it felt like it might crack her chest open from the inside.

Slowly, almost afraid that opening her eyes would shatter whatever impossible miracle was occurring, Rachel lifted her eyelids.

The first thing she saw was a back. Broad shoulders covered in a jacket she recognized, dark hair slightly disheveled from exertion, a posture that radiated both exhaustion and strength.

Standing between her and Jason, positioned as an immovable barrier with one hand extended to block whatever attack had been heading toward her, was the person she’d most wanted to see in the entire world.

Ryan had arrived.

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