Chương 141: A Game of Tag with Death

He'd already run a fair distance, breathing hard, his lungs burning, before he finally allowed himself to glance back. The Phantom was slithering at breakneck speed, straight toward him — or at least that's how it seemed to Lloyd, when the massive scaled body briefly fixed its blazing crimson eyes on him, cutting through the cloud of dust and debris behind it like two glowing embers. Straight at him.

He ran even faster, leaping over abandoned bags and overturned street stands, dodging passersby scattering in every direction — it felt like he'd never run this hard in his entire life, his lungs on fire, his heart hammering somewhere up in his throat — and then he suddenly nearly knocked over some kid, short, in black-and-white sneakers, matching dark shorts, and a baggy hooded sweatshirt, the hood pulled low enough to nearly cover his whole face.

The kid was absorbed in something on his phone, completely unaware of the danger closing in right behind him. Just a couple more seconds, and he might never get the chance to look up from that screen again. Lloyd slowed his run and turned back, feeling a cold, sticky dread climb up his throat, an icy wave of realization washing down his spine. The serpent, it seemed, would reach the kid within mere seconds — and the kid didn't have the faintest clue.

He just stood there, casually scrolling with one thumb, swaying slightly to what was presumably music in his earbuds, utterly cut off from the chaos unfolding around him. It looked like his own inattention, or those very earbuds jammed firmly into his ears, were about to become the cause of his sudden, senseless death, playing out in the middle of a busy street in front of dozens of terrified witnesses. Lloyd shouted at the top of his lungs, his throat scraping raw with the effort: — Run!

He repeated it several more times, his voice cracking into something close to a shriek, waving his arms over his head in a desperate bid to get the kid's attention, but the boy never heard him, standing there perfectly still, as though he existed in some entirely different dimension, leaving nothing but his body behind in this one — helpless, vulnerable, right in the path of the oncoming mass.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it," raced through Lloyd's mind as he frantically scanned his surroundings for any solution, any thread he could pull to change the outcome. It was obvious that words alone wouldn't reach him — the distance between them, combined with the roar of cracking asphalt behind him, simply didn't give the kid any chance of hearing a shout over all that chaos on the street. But what else could Lloyd possibly do, standing several dozen meters away from the tragedy unfolding right in front of his eyes?

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. Approaching him directly would mean death for both of them — the Phantom was moving at least ten times faster than Lloyd, if not more, judging by how quickly the distance between the serpent and the kid's motionless figure was closing, devouring entire blocks within seconds.

He almost turned to run further, away from all of it — every instinct in him screamed to run as fast and as far as possible, to save his own skin while he still had the chance, while his legs could still carry him. But there was a living person standing right in front of him, utterly unaware of the danger looming over him. Fortunately or unfortunately, it wasn't pure instinct steering him, but his own will, forged over years that had come long before his Awakening.

And people's actions, as it turned out, rarely relied solely on cold, calculated logic — especially not in moments like this, critical moments, when someone else's life hung in the balance. And then a thought struck him, piercing straight through him like a blade, leaving behind nothing but a ringing emptiness and clarity.

"If it were my sister standing there instead of him, wouldn't I save her? If some other Player had been in my place, had a chance to save my sister, and just ran off to save his own skin instead — wouldn't I hate him for it for the rest of my life?" The image of his sister, sharp and vivid, as though he'd seen her only a few days ago, flashed before his mind's eye for a moment, making his chest tighten painfully.

But it was already too late to dwell on any of that, given how rapidly the distance between the serpent and the oblivious kid was shrinking. Lloyd was already sprinting with everything he had, straight at the boy, trying to outrun death itself, now mere instants away from its unsuspecting victim, feeling the ground shudder beneath his feet with the approaching monster, the deafening, animal roar of the Phantom swelling in his ears until it felt like his eardrums might burst.

Dust and debris flew in every direction from beneath the writhing serpent's body, settling over Lloyd's face and clothes in a fine, prickling layer, while an acrid, sulfurous smell grew stronger by the second, cutting through even the scent of smoke and scorched asphalt. Somewhere behind him came someone's desperate scream, instantly swallowed up by the general roar of shattering storefronts and alarms blaring from the tremors shaking the ground.

Every second now stretched out in his mind to an unbearable, agonizing length — he watched as the kid's head turned slowly, as though through thick, viscous syrup, as his fingers finally froze above his phone's screen, as if he were about to sense that something was wrong after all, but it was already too late for such premonitions.

The hood on his head swayed slightly, as though caught by a gust of wind stirred up by the approaching colossal body of the serpent, and for one fraction of a second it seemed to Lloyd that the boy might actually turn around on his own, without any outside help at all.

The distance between Lloyd and the boy was closing fast, but so too was the distance between the boy and the deadly mass bearing down on him, and in that instant Lloyd himself wasn't even sure he'd make it in time — or whether he'd simply become one more meaningless body, buried under the rubble beside the person he'd failed to save.

His lungs burned like fire, his legs threatened to give out from the strain, and his heart pounded so hard it felt ready to burst from his chest, but he kept running anyway, refusing to let himself slow down even for a moment, fully aware that even the smallest hesitation could cost them both their lives.