After Forcing Me to Speak, They Regretted Everything Chapter 04

After Forcing Me to Speak, They Regretted Everything Chapter 04

Paul dragged me up the rough concrete stairs. Every violent jolt sent my broken ribs grinding against my internal organs. The pain nearly drove me into shock.

BAM!

I was thrown hard onto the cold infirmary floor. Paul followed up with a brutal kick to the back of my knee, forcing me to kneel heavily before the hospital bed.

On the bed, Emma was convulsing violently, black veins crawling across her face like a spiderweb.

She was turning.

“Lydia! Save her!”

Archie rushed over like a madman, grabbing a fistful of my hair and shoving my face toward Emma.

I clamped my mouth shut and stared coldly at this Alpha—the man I had once risked my life to protect.

Seeing my complete lack of response, a flash of viciousness crossed Archie’s eyes. He suddenly drew the dagger from his waist and pressed the icy blade firmly against my throat.

“Lydia, open your damn mouth!”

He snarled, the blade pressing down harder. Warm blood trickled down my neck and soaked into my collar. “Save her, or die here right now!”

The stinging pain in my neck was nothing compared to the ice-cold chill spreading through my heart.

Forced to tilt my head back, I gazed at him in silence.

This was the man I had saved my strength for three years to protect. The man I was ready to die for.

My complete indifference finally shattered what remained of Archie’s sanity.

His wrist shook, and the dagger clattered to the ground. He collapsed entirely, kneeling at my feet in despair. “I beg you… Lydia, I’m begging you!”

He wailed, wrapping his arms tightly around my legs. “If you save Emma, I’ll be your slave for life! If you let her die, I’ll die right here in front of you!”

Beside him, Paul drew his gun and pressed the cold barrel against my temple, grinding his teeth. “Mute! Open your mouth!”

I opened my mouth, but only a broken, wheezing hiss escaped my throat.

I wanted to tell them—just hold on a little longer, and we could end this apocalypse for good.

I looked down at my hands, wrapped in filthy bandages, all ten fingers shattered.

No pen. No paper. No way to gesture. Not a single person willing to hear me out.

I looked at the dying “rival” on the hospital bed. At the “comrade” holding a gun to my head. At the “lover” kneeling on the ground, threatening his own life to force my hand.

And suddenly, I found all of this utterly, indescribably absurd.

Three years of silence, never seeing the light of day. Countless scars left by zombies gnawing at my flesh. Seven days of torture worse than death…

What was it all for?

To hell with being a savior.

If all you people wanted was to survive just this moment, then I’d grant your wish.

My chest heaved violently. I forcibly tore open my vocal cords, atrophied and fused from three years of disuse.

A hoarse, broken voice rang out abruptly in the dead silence of the infirmary:

“Fine.”

The moment the word left my mouth, a searing pain erupted at the back of my neck, as if trying to rip my very soul from my body.

I could feel it with perfect clarity—that vast, ocean-deep power that had lain dormant inside me for three years, enough to purge every zombie from the entire world—shattering like a collapsed dam, draining away into nothingness.

And Emma gasped sharply for air.

The hideous black veins on her face receded at a speed visible to the naked eye. Color flooded back into her ashen skin.

Her eyes flew open. She drew in huge, heaving breaths. She was completely revived.

“Emma! Emma, you’re okay!”

Archie lunged forward in ecstatic joy. The two of them fell into each other’s arms, weeping with relief.

Paul and the squad members behind him erupted into thunderous cheers of survival.

Not a single person glanced at me, collapsed on the ground and coughing up mouthfuls of blood from the power’s backlash.

I swallowed the blood foam rising relentlessly in my throat and curled my lips into a cold smile.

Just as the celebration reached its fever pitch—

“WAAAAAAH!!!”

A bone-piercing, highest-level air-raid siren abruptly tore through the base’s night sky!

Over the radio in the hallway came the heart-rending screams of the front-line guards:

“Horde! It’s a tsunami-level horde beyond all assessed classifications!”

“The outer defense wall has been completely breached! They’re inside! AAAHHH—!!!”