Chapter 448: Naive Hopes

"So you all came here?" I asked as Cindy guided me toward the Emerald Hotel.

Every step still hurt.

My ribs felt like they had been stomped on repeatedly, which, honestly, they probably had. My head was better than it had been right after the anti-Symbiote blast, but the dull pressure behind my eyes had not completely gone away. I kept my face neutral anyway. The last thing I needed was for Cindy to start worrying more than she already was.

The Emerald Hotel had become the center of the Boardwalk’s recovery effort. People moved in and out through the entrance with supplies, boards, water bottles, blankets, and weapons. Even from outside, I could hear tired voices carrying through the lobby.

Cindy kept hold of my arm as we walked.

"Yeah," she said. "I mean, we heard the Screamer. At first, I thought it was some kind of nightmare."

She glanced at me.

"But then it kept going. And you were here too, so... we got worried, you know?"

"Yeah." I looked toward the damaged streets around the hotel. "Zakthar rebuilt the Screamer using the Matrix device Gaspar stole from us."

Cindy’s expression tightened at the name.

"It’s not your fault," she said. "None of this is anyone’s fault except the people who made that thing and used it against everyone."

"Yeah," I replied. "Don’t worry. I’m not blaming myself for it."

Not exactly.

I did not blame myself for Callighan choosing to attack the Boardwalk. I did not blame myself for Gaspar stealing the Matrix, or for Zakthar helping rebuild the Screamer.

But I blamed myself for being naive enough to keep the Stones.

I blamed myself for thinking that powerful Starakian technology could be safely saved for later, that it could somehow help rebuild the world if the right people used it.

And more than anything, I blamed myself for being too weak to take it back before it all happened.

There was nothing else to blame for that.

We entered the Emerald Hotel lobby.

The place looked different from when I had last seen it. The furniture used to barricade the entrances had been moved enough for people to get through, but stacks of desks, chairs, cabinets, and broken boards still stood near the doors in case the Infected returned.

Nearly every open space had been turned into a treatment area.

People sat on benches, on the floor, and against the walls while their wounds were cleaned and wrapped. Most of the injuries did not look life-threatening. Scraped hands. Bruised arms. Cuts from shattered glass. Sprained ankles from running in the dark. Deep scratches from fighting Infected too closely. Some people had blood on their clothes that was not even theirs.

Still, the sight made my chest feel heavy.

I had heard that some people had died during the attack after being bitten.

I had not been there.

Even if I had been, I did not know if I could have reached them in time. I had been fighting Gaspar, trying to stop the Screamer before it destroyed even more of the Boardwalk.

But the guilt was still there.

Every time someone died from a bite, it reminded me that Dullahan’s ability to fight the Infection Virus was not some miracle that could save everyone. There were limits. There was timing. There were people I could not reach before it was too late.

And that was never easy to accept.

At the far side of the lobby, Shawn and Ivy were treating people together. Shawn was bent over a man’s arm, cleaning a long cut near the elbow. Ivy was checking another survivor’s shoulder while speaking calmly to keep them from panicking.

They were not alone.

Clara moved between the injured with a basket of bandages and cloth. Rebecca was helping organize supplies on a table near the wall. Daisy stood beside her, holding a bottle of water and looking like she had barely slept.

Then Daisy noticed me.

She stopped completely.

"R...Ryan!"

Before I could react, she hurried toward me.

Cindy loosened her hold on my arm just in time for Daisy to throw herself against me in a hug.

The sudden impact made pain flare through my ribs, but I swallowed it down. Daisy was shaking. She hugged me tightly for a second, as though she needed proof that I was actually here.

I gently wrapped an arm around her back.

"I’m here," I said.

Daisy pulled away quickly, her eyes moving over my face, my torn shirt, the bandages around my body, and the blood that had dried near my ears.

"Y...You’re okay?" she asked, panic rising in her voice. "You’re really okay?"

"Yeah," I said. "Somehow."

"He just needs to get treated properly," Cindy added from beside me.

Daisy’s face did not relax much.

"What even happened?" Rebecca asked as she approached.

Her voice was quiet, but her eyes had already settled on my condition.

"I met Gaspar," I said.

Rebecca went pale.

She had only met him once, on the day he kidnapped Mei. Still, that had clearly been enough. She knew exactly what kind of person he was.

"A...And what happened?" she asked.

I gave a weak, humorless laugh.

It was obvious what had happened.

"I got myself beaten up," I said. "What else?"

Rebecca’s expression fell.

I did not wait for anyone to answer. I walked past them slowly, keeping one hand against my side as I headed toward Ivy. But she was busy stitching up a deep cut on someone’s forehead, and Shawn was already helping another injured person nearby.

They had more urgent cases than me.

So I found an empty bench near one of the walls and sat down carefully.

The second I lowered myself, pain pulled through my ribs hard enough to make me breathe out through my teeth.

Cindy noticed immediately.

She looked toward Rebecca, gave her a small, understanding nod, then went over to Ivy to speak with her.

I stayed on the bench, staring down at the floorboards.

For a while, I listened to the movement around me. The quiet voices. The occasional groan of pain. Someone crying softly near the far wall. The sound of water being poured into a metal bowl. The low murmur of people trying to convince each other that the worst was over.

Then someone sat beside me.

Rachel.

"You don’t look well," she said.

"Hardly," I replied.

"I meant in your head."

I stayed quiet.

Rachel did not force me to answer. She simply sat beside me, looking ahead at the crowded lobby while she waited.

That somehow made it harder.

After a few seconds, I let out a breath.

"Do you think Mei is disappointed in me?"

Rachel turned toward me.

"What?"

"I mean..." I gave a weak laugh, though there was nothing funny about it. "She must feel betrayed, right? I let go of the chance to get her back because of Lucy’s brother, a guy I don’t even know. Then almost two weeks passed, and I still haven’t gone to save her."

My hands slowly curled into fists.

"She’s still stuck in that hell."

"Ryan—"

"No." I shook my head. "Don’t say it’s not like that. Whatever the reasons were, I still betrayed her trust."

The image came back before I could stop it.

Mei’s face when she had seen me.

The hope in her eyes.

She had really believed I had come to take her back.

"You should have seen how she looked at me that day," I said, my voice lower now. "She thought I was there for her. She thought I had come to get her out."

My throat tightened.

"And in the end, I just..."

I could not finish the sentence.

My fists tightened harder against my knees until my knuckles hurt.

Rachel reached over and took one of my hands in hers.

"It’s not your fault, Ryan," she said.

"It is."

"No." Her grip became firmer. "You are stronger than most people. That’s true. But you’re not immortal."

I looked at her.

"You have people here who need you too. You have people you can’t just abandon. Going into Brigantine alone and dying would not save Mei."

Her eyes stayed fixed on mine.

"It would be the real betrayal."

I said nothing.

"Because then you could never save Mei," Rachel continued. "And you could never save Emily either."

"I’m here, yet I still can’t save anyone," I said.

Rachel frowned immediately.

"You saved a lot of people last night. What are you talking about?"

"That’s not enough." I shook my head. "It wasn’t early enough, Rachel."

My eyes moved across the hotel lobby.

People sat with bandages around their arms and heads. Some held cups of water in shaking hands. Others stared silently at the floor, too exhausted to speak. Outside, the Boardwalk was still being cleaned and rebuilt, but there were people who would never return to see it.

The Screamer had stopped.

But it had already done what it was meant to do.

"If I couldn’t even protect the people right beside me," I continued, "what about everyone else?"

My throat tightened.

"Mei. Elena."

Rachel’s expression softened.

"Elena would never blame you for anything, Ryan."

"She probably already forgot about me by now," I muttered, looking away.

The words sounded pathetic even to me, but I could not stop them.

"I keep holding onto this stupid hope that I can somehow travel across the Atlantic, reach Europe, get all the way to Russia, then Saint Petersburg..." I let out a hollow laugh. "And after that, I’m supposed to get past her father, all his men, and somehow bring her back."

I rubbed my thumb against my palm, staring down at the floor.

"It sounds insane."

The truth was, I wanted to believe it anyway.

I wanted to believe there was still a future where I could see Elena again. A future where I crossed an ocean, found her, and told her that I had not forgotten her. That I had not stopped trying.

It was childish.

A stupid, fairy-tale kind of hope.

But whenever I let myself think that it might be possible, even for a second, it hurt less. I felt less alone. Less crushed by everything that had happened since she left.

"What kind of idiot would leave her father’s safe place just to come back into this dangerous world for me?" I asked quietly. "Alisha would probably question my intelligence. And Elena..."

My voice trailed off.

"Maybe she has already moved on."

Rachel did not answer immediately.

She looked at me for a moment, as though she was trying to decide how blunt she should be.

"Do you not want to see Elena anymore?" she asked.

My head came up sharply.

"I do," I said. "More than anything."

The answer came too quickly.

"But you and I both know how impossible that plan sounds."

Sydney, Christopher, Lucy, Cindy, none of them had said much about it directly. Still, I knew what they probably thought whenever I mentioned Elena. Traveling across the ocean in a world overrun by Infected was already insane. Reaching Russia afterward was worse. Finding one person in a city I had never seen, inside a country I knew almost nothing about, felt impossible.

And that was before dealing with Elena’s father.

"If you think Elena forgot you," Rachel said, "or that she would refuse to come with you even if you reached her, then you really don’t know her, Ryan."

I looked at her.

Rachel smiled.

"Yes, I’m sure Elena does not want you to risk dying just to rescue her," she said. "She would be scared. She would probably be angry too."

That sounded like Elena.

"But I think the one thing she wants more than anything right now is to be by your side."

"How would you know that?" I asked.

Rachel’s smile softened.

"Because I’m like Elena."

I stayed quiet.

Rachel looked down at her hand, which was still resting over mine.

"And I want to be by your side too."

For a second, I did not know how to answer.

She glanced away, her cheeks becoming faintly red.

"Elena loves you a lot," Rachel continued. "She was grateful that she met you. You saved her and Alisha. And I think she was happier with us than she had been in a long time."

Rachel hesitated before adding the rest.

"Especially during the time she was with you."

Her face turned a little more red.

"As your secret lover."

I looked down again.

A small, painful smile touched my face.

"As for Mei," Rachel said, bringing my thoughts back, "her situation is different. I know that."

Her voice became more serious.

"But I’m sure she’ll be happy when you finally come for her."

I looked at her.

"You know Mei," Rachel continued. "She’s prideful. She gets angry easily whenever something matters to her."

A faint smile appeared on Rachel’s face.

"And you clearly matter to her."

I let out a quiet breath.

"I hope she really still does."

The words had barely left my mouth when footsteps approached us from across the lobby.

I raised my gaze.

Ivy stood in front of us, carrying a small medical bag in one hand. Her eyes moved over the bandages around my ribs, the bruising on my face, and the dried blood near my ears.