"I... We have taken care of the third Remnant." Cynthia informed him.

There was something peculiar in her tone. He didn't think it was relevant to the mission, so he would leave it for another time. Anyway, it was probably as simple as she didn't like having to give credit to Ryan.

He hadn't seen the fight, obviously.

Seeing through walls wasn't one of his many skills. Too bad, it would be convenient. He'd have to keep it hidden, though. People were afraid enough of him, if they knew he could invade their privacy with a thought it would be a thousand times worse.

Behaving as if the government hadn't taken all meaning out of the word privacy already in and of itself.

But anyway, people were irrational.

Anyway, getting to the point. He couldn't be sure since he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, but he believed Cynthia wouldn't have used a plural if Ryan hadn't contributed significantly to the battle.

"I'm done too," Sylvester said.

Against the wall lay a strange piece of modern art. The alien creature was pierced by dozens of knives. Of course, the same knives that had stabbed him first.

It dissolved into purple energy in front of his eyes, reduced to those butterflies, which, confused, looked for a way out. But with their life, brief and fleeting as a spark on a starless night, they got nowhere. They didn't even make it out of the kitchen, much less fly to the moon, which was where they came from.

Where those sons of bitches should have stayed.

"Listen, the Remnant we fought with came out of a person." He lowered his voice. Then she must have been near some hostages, she didn't want them to hear her.

"Yeah. This one too."

"So, do you think this isn't over?"

"No." Surely not. It would be too easy. "I'm sure a lot of the people here are, like... infected. And in a five-star hotel, a tower this big, the easiest way to spread an infection would be..."

"The water and the food."

"Or the air, but if it were that easy something would have happened to us too."

"Thank you. I hadn't thought about that... Or rather, I didn't want to think about that."

Speaking of things that were better not to think about, transmission by food and drink was easy enough by itself. How many people had been spared, then, if it worked as he thought it would?

Would they have to give up the idea of saving anyone?

He grimaced.

If this was how things worked, was it too late?

And even if it wasn't, what could he do? He was a fighter. As long as he had something to hit, all well and good, but he couldn't save people from an evil that spawned inside them.

If he could do something miraculous like that, he would have solved the Lunar Remnant crisis and saved the world years ago.

But he couldn't.

He could only kill. Sylvester put a hand to his forehead, his head was going to explode, what a pain.

"Boss?"

Throbbing. It was as if his head had transformed into a second heart that throbbed painfully. He didn't know if he could do this. He didn't know, but he had to.

Everyone was counting on him. He had no other choice. He would manage somehow.

"It's nothing," he said weakly. "Cynthia..."

What? He didn't know what to say to her either. But he had to say something or it would be too obvious. He was the pillar here.

The boss. If his confidence wavered, so would the rest of his team's. He couldn't be human and have doubts.

"It's nothing. We'll assume we've taken care of all the threats and start escorting them out. The organization's scientists might be able to do something for them."

Was it a mistake, and even if it was a mistake, was it a terrible one from which he could not recover even if he realized it in time? He didn't know, but he didn't see any other option. Seeing the future wasn't among his incredible powers either.

"Okay."

The only thing they could do was to move forward with their heads held high. And accept the consequences, good or bad.

So that's what he set out to do.

There were only three agents in the building. Even if each went their separate ways, it would be difficult to escort such a large number of people to the exit. They could give up on the idea of getting them all out of the building at once even if no major complications arose.

There were simply too many guests, even discounting those who had been brutally murdered.

At least getting them to cooperate wasn't proving too difficult. At a time like this, where nothing was certain, they could overcome the instinctive fear they had and depend on him.

Sylvester felt like a father with many, many children as he escorted them through the halls.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

And he was thinking.

Every time he picked up a new person, he thought about whether they were still a human being or one of those things. He thought about how many infiltrating parasites there were already in the crowd.

It couldn't be as terrible as he had feared at first.

Thinking logically, there was no reason for them to have held back if they had already infected so many people. They would have discarded those empty shells and come for them from the first moment.

However, that didn't change things too much.

How many people were staying at the hotel? It could be ten, twenty, forty or fifty of them. Let's say it was a maximum of fifty out of two thousand people.

In any case, when they decided to reveal themselves the situation would get out of their control.

It was like the sword of Damocles over his head.

No, it wasn't that he was going to lose control when they revealed themselves. It meant that the control he'd thought he'd had was nothing more than an illusion before he'd even set foot in this hotel. How irritating, it was too good a trap. They had thought it through.

Sylvester wasn't going to be defeated, no one could defeat him, but he would leave here with a bitter aftertaste in his mouth anyway.

How much time was left until the moment when everything would get screwed up?

If there were infected among the crowd he had been collecting, then they would attack before they left. Before they could get them into the trucks, which shouldn't be far away now, and take them to be examined for testing by the syndicate scientists.

Then, there shouldn't be much left.

They had almost reached the exit. The elevators didn't work and it was a rather large hotel by today's standards, but even so the ride had been frighteningly short. They would spring into action...

As soon as they had the exit in sight.

When he saw the man lurch forward, making noises as if he were choking, all he could think was: I knew it. Fuck, I knew it.

But that wasn't what this was about, at least not yet. The man didn't open up like a cheap wrapper, like a butterfly's pupa, he just couldn't take it anymore so he collapsed and vomited violently between his legs, unable to stop shaking.

Yes. He doubted he was going to transform.

And Sylvester doubted the Lunar Remnants could act so well. Maybe they had started out human, but when you looked in the mirror and couldn't see a trace of yourself, how much humanity could there really be left?

Sylvester approached the man, crouched down beside him.

"It must be hard to believe, but I understand how you feel. The fear of dying. Worse yet, the fear of not having any control over your destiny.... The horror of realizing how fragile everyday life is. I understand, but you have to take a deep breath and start putting one foot in front of the other. That's the only way to get through anything."

Cynthia would have been better at it, but he could manage. That he himself said so was somehow wrong, but he thought it had been a more or less inspirational speech. It helped that it wasn't a lie even though it might sound like he was just saying what they wanted to hear, or at least what he thought they needed to hear.

He helped that poor bastard up. There was no caution in that move. At that point, he had completely abandoned the suspicion that he might actually be a monster waiting for his moment to get out.

They continued walking toward the exit. The rest of the group had stopped when he did, genuinely as if they were frightened children who didn't want to go too far from their father or perhaps the teacher who was supposed to be watching them.

Whatever it was about, things hadn't turned into complete chaos at this point. That was enough for him. It made things easier for him, so he wouldn't unnecesarily complicate things.

He wasn't wrong. The man he was helping walk to the exit had never been the one he had to worry about.

The sound of something cutting through the air.

Sylvester pushed the man leaning on him aside. At the same time he jumped away to avoid the attack. Gray tentacles passed where his head had been less than a second ago. Another creature just like it. It wasn't surprising, but... he'd had enough of Lunar Remnants that could 'breed'. He had encountered too many of them lately.

The tentacles changed trajectory. Naturally, they were a living thing, part of the beast's body, not a projectile. It was the most natural and easiest thing in the world. Its trajectory changed and...

It severed all the tentacles in mid-air before they could impale the civilian.

One more had transformed. He knew that person had been dead all along, but he still felt as if he hadn't been able to save them. This was a question of how many people had been dead before they even set foot in the hotel, not how many innocents he could save. That was how he had to think about this.

The weight of each life. If he thought too much about people he had never had a chance to save, he would go insane.

The creature that had emerged from its human shell was identical to the previous two, probably the same as the one Ryan and Cynthia had killed as well. That was because even though they appeared everywhere and were dormant threats that could be on any of the hotel guests, it was a single Lunar Remnant.

That much was clear at this point. They couldn't be that similar otherwise.

Much about the Lunar Remnants remained a mystery, but it wasn't as if there were species among them. Each of them was a different monster. Exactly, they were only alike in that they were all monsters.

"Abominations that should not exist in this world," Sylvester muttered, not realizing he was uttering it out loud.

Without even realizing that.

Then he leapt over the tables and couches, over the crowd. He descended on the Lunar Remnant, knocking him to the floor. Of course, he ended up on the floor too, but he recovered a little faster. A little was more than enough. A tenth of a second was enough to make the difference in a fight to the death.

Before the thing could get up, he thrust his sword into its stomach and pushed.

With great force, he shoved the monster through the receptionist's desk and into the wall on the other side. Just into it. The wall gave way, but didn't break yet.

That was fine with him, he hadn't intended to break it even though it would have served to keep the crowd away from the monster, at least. He just cut. He swung the sword from the stomach to almost the creature's neck as it writhed uselessly, unable to reach him.

Red blood gushed out. It wasn't particularly strange. Although most Lunar Remnants tended to have blood of a different color, there were some with red blood as well.

It wasn't strange, but it didn't mean it couldn't bother him.

Red, the same color as the blood in his veins. What a joke. There was nothing human or animal about them, they didn't even belong in this world. What a fucking joke.

The children abandoned their father and ran away while screaming towards the exit. Good.

He returned his attention to the fallen monster at his feet. He dismantled it into seventeen pieces with hardly any resistance. It was even easier than the fight against the creature in the kitchen. Yes, the problem was the way it spread, but individually they weren't a threat at all.

For them to be a threat, it would take....

Of course.

Sylvester should have learned by now not to push his luck. As if they'd been waiting for him to get that one thought through his head, five of those creatures emerged at the same time.

Many had already managed to get out of the death trap this building had become, but just as many were trapped by the appearance of these creatures.

Between a rock and a hard place.

They couldn't move forward since it would be throwing themselves into the clutches of these creatures, but they couldn't move back either since there were more creatures waiting for them.

Therefore, some chose to keep running anyway and were brutally torn to pieces. Some thought better of it, but it was too late to turn back, and they were already in the hands of the creatures.

For that very reason, some chose to keep running anyway and were brutally torn to pieces. Some had second thoughts, but it was too late to turn back, and they inevitably suffered the same fate. It happened too fast for him to do anything about it.

"I had expected something like this, but even so, I think I was too optimistic. I must be getting old."

But not too old for this.

That wasn't allowed, since there was no one to replace him. He went on the attack.