Chapter 316: Meeting at the Golden Nugget Hotel

The moment had finally come.

I walked alongside Sydney, Rachel, and Cindy, our steps slow and deliberate as we made our way toward the State Marina. The Golden Nugget rose up ahead of us, tall, gaudy, the kind of building that had no business still looking impressive in a world like this. Glass and steel catching the pale morning light, its casino signage dark and dead but the structure itself still standing like it hadn’t gotten the memo that everything had fallen apart. It sat right across from the marina, massive and unmissable.

We made sure we were visible. That was the point, walk in plain sight, no sudden movements. Let them see us coming and make their own calculations.

Behind us, positioned further back and spread wide enough to cover angles, were the three people Marlon had sent. And yeah, even I had to do a double take when I saw who he’d chosen. Maribel, Rico, and Molly. His closest, most trusted people, the ones he kept near him like an inner ring. It took me a second to understand why he’d send them here of all places, but then it clicked.

The Golden Nugget. We’d had our eye on that building—it was a target, a future conquest, something we’d need to move on eventually. Marlon hadn’t just sent backup. He’d sent people he trusted to gather intelligence, to study the hotel’s layout from the front, count the guards, clock their positions, and bring that information back. Smart. Cold, maybe, but smart.

Rico had a sniper rifle. So did Molly. Maribel was carrying an AK-47, which I’ll admit looked slightly out of place on her, but the sight of all three of them back there settled something in my chest that had been wound tight all morning.

We weren’t going in unprotected.

The four of us were armed too, Rachel, Sydney, and I each carried fully loaded handguns, and Cindy brought up our rear with an M-16 resting across her arms like it belonged there. If things went south and shots started flying, Rachel would throw up a barrier immediately, we’d already talked through it. Quick evacuation if needed: Sydney takes one, I take the other, and my Time Freeze buys us the gap we need to get clear.

That was the worst case. Callighan turning this into something ugly. Gaspar being here.

We’d planned for it. Didn’t make me feel much better.

My nerves were doing what nerves do, tightening everything, making sounds feel sharper, distances feel longer. This had to work. We’d come without Lucy, which was its own weight, but this was about Mei. That mattered enough.

As the hotel drew closer, I could make out figures standing in front of the entrance. A loose cluster of armed men, watching us approach. None of them raised weapons yet, which was something. One of them broke away almost immediately and jogged back inside, probably to warn someone higher up.

We slowed our pace without a word passing between us. Instinct. You stop pushing forward when the other side starts making moves you can’t read yet.

I hoped Callighan was already inside. I hoped Mei was too.

"Damn," Sydney said beside me, her voice low and easy, like we were taking a morning stroll. "Mei’s inside that? She’s living pretty well for a hostage, isn’t she?"

"A luxury hotel with a psychotic Symbiote Host for company," Cindy replied drily, eyes still forward.

"Fair point." Sydney tilted her head. "Still though, we got lucky with Ryan, didn’t we? Think about it. Any other unstable guy walking around with the power to cure Infection the way he does? He could’ve gone completely off the rails with that. Done a whole lot of damage."

"Ryan isn’t like that," Cindy said simply.

"He’s been perfectly decent to you, sure," Sydney said with a smirk. "But from what I heard, he wasn’t exactly a saint when it came to Rachel."

My expression went flat instantly. "Are we seriously doing this right now?" I asked, voice strained somewhere between annoyed and embarrassed.

"No," Rachel agreed sharply, a flush climbing her neck as she kept her eyes fixed ahead. "There’s really no need."

She’d clearly told Sydney at some point and was already regretting it with every cell in her body.

Sydney sighed dramatically. "It’s just, what a missed opportunity for me personally. Ryan hitting you with that look and saying ’I want your body as compensation’—" she pressed a hand to her chest like she was containing something. "God. Hot and funny at the same time. That’s a combination you don’t find every day."

I was doing a terrible job of keeping my composure.

God.

Even now, just hearing it said out loud like that, I felt heat crawling up the back of my neck. I hated that it was still a story, something Sydney could pull out and use whenever she wanted a reaction. I regretted putting Rachel through that more than I’d ever said out loud. I should’ve just shown her what I could do from the start. Demonstrated the power, skipped the whole mess. But I’d been terrified back then, terrified of what it meant to let someone see exactly what I was. Some kind of superhuman. Something that didn’t fit neatly into any category anymore. And so instead of being honest, I’d been a coward dressed up in confidence, which might be the worst combination possible.

That had been maybe three months ago now. Three months, and the world had somehow managed to get both worse and more structured at the same time. We’d found Margaret’s community. We’d found Marlon’s. We’d built something resembling a defense, a real one, with people watching each other’s backs and actual systems in place. The need to cure anyone the way I’d cured Rachel and the others hadn’t come up again, and I was reasonably confident it wouldn’t, not with how seriously we were all taking protection and guard now.

But Sydney had a long memory and absolutely zero restraint.

"W...Wait, is that actually true?" Cindy asked, and from her tone it was clear she was hearing this particular story for the very first time.

"She’s obviously exaggerating," Rachel said, her voice a little too quick and a little too flat.

Sydney turned to look at her with the most serene smile imaginable. "Am I?"

Rachel’s face went scarlet. She turned her gaze forward and made the executive decision to pretend Sydney no longer existed.

Mercifully, the conversation died on its own because Callighan walked out of the hotel.

He came through the front entrance at an unhurried pace, two of his men flanking him at a loose distance. He looked like someone who’d never learned to rush, like the world had reorganized itself around his schedule and he saw no reason to question that arrangement. He moved until he was roughly ten feet from us, then stopped and let his eyes travel slowly over our group, me, Sydney, Rachel, Cindy taking his time, reading each of us like we were items on a list he was deciding whether to purchase.

Then something almost like amusement crossed his face.

"You’re all quite young," he said. "These are the companions you rely on?"

"I don’t see Mei," I said.

"Neither do I see Lucy," he replied.

I drew a slow breath and made the call I’d been turning over in my head since before we’d left.

"She ran away," I said.

The silence that followed had weight to it. Callighan’s gaze stayed fixed on me, unreadable, letting the words sit between us.

"She... ran away," he repeated. Not a question, more like he was turning the sentence over in his hands, checking it for something.

"We lost her," I said. "She may already be heading back toward you for all we know. We’re looking for her."

Callighan was quiet for a moment longer. "I don’t know how to understand these words," he said finally. His tone didn’t change, no anger, no suspicion that he let show. Just that same measured, distant calm. "And I don’t understand what you thought you’d accomplish by coming here without her."

"We wanted to see Mei." I kept it simple, kept it honest, or as honest as this situation allowed. "Make sure she was alright."

He studied me with a long, searching look.

"You understand the deal is void," he said. "She stays with me."

My hands tightened at my sides, not a fist, not quite, but close. "We’ll find Lucy."

"Perhaps," he said.

I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not. What I could tell, watching his expression, was that he was puzzled more than anything, trying to work out why I’d bother lying about losing Lucy when the lie made my own position worse. Honestly, I was asking myself something similar. Every passing second, a part of me was calculating what it would take to just send Lucy back. Force the trade, accept whatever fallout came from it, and get Mei home where she belonged. But the practical side, the side that had kept us alive through worse than this knew that wasn’t the move. There were cleaner ways to get Mei out. We just needed time and the right angle.

I just hated what that meant for right now.

"You came all this way hoping to see her?" Callighan asked.

"Yes," I said.

Another silence. Then he turned around without a word and started walking back toward the hotel entrance.

"Only you," he said over his shoulder.

"What?" Cindy’s voice came out sharp and loud. "We all came to see her—"

"One," he repeated, not breaking stride, not looking back.

I glanced at the others before Sydney or Rachel could start in on it.

"It’ll be fine," I said.

"Ryan—" Rachel began.

"I have the Time Freeze," I said quietly, letting the words do the work they needed to do. "If anything goes sideways, I walk out. Simple." I held Rachel’s gaze just long enough for her to believe me. "Stay here. I’ll check on Mei, I’ll talk, and I’ll come back."

Rachel pressed her lips together but gave a tight nod.

"And Sydney." I turned to her. "Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone."

She crossed her arms, the annoyance clear on her face even as she held it back. "You got it."

"I’ll keep an eye on her," Cindy said with a quiet laugh, nudging Sydney with her shoulder.

I managed a small smile at that then turned and followed Callighan toward the entrance.

His men quickly stepped aside as I approached, each of them running their eyes over me suspiciously and warily. I kept my gaze level and fixed on Callighan’s back as I followed quietly behind him while keeping a good distance.