Friday, 12:25 AM
4 minutes until incident
Kínitos pulled out his phone with his good hand, his broken fingers throbbing as he tried to hold it steady. The screen was cracked but still working.
He opened the calculator app, his mind racing through physics equations, trying to figure out how to weaponize the purple energy flowing through him.
Paradox energy. Volume. Radius. Compression.A gunshot rang out from somewhere in the suite. Kínitos's head snapped up. Through the open bathroom door, he could see shadows moving—the zombies shambling through the room, searching.
One of them had picked up a gun. One of the guards' weapons, probably.
"Great. Now they're armed" thought Kínitos
"What are you doing?" Marco whispered from beside him in the tub, his voice barely audible over the sounds of destruction in the other room.
"Math," Kínitos muttered, typing numbers into his phone.
"Math? We're about to die and you're doing math?" Marco spat in anger
"Shut up and let me think." Kínitos irritated and hot
The voice in his head—that instinct that had been guiding him all night—was speaking again. Not in words, but in concepts. In understanding. The purple energy. The paradox power. It can be shaped. Compressed. Released.
Like a fireball.
He'd seen it in movies, in anime—heroes gathering energy into a sphere and launching it. And in that man, the killer. But this wasn't fiction. This was real. And he needed to understand the physics of it.
Volume of a sphere. V = (4/3)πr³
He needed a reference point. Something he could visualize.
A basketball. About 9.4 inches in diameter. He'd held thousands of them growing up.
He typed the numbers into his calculator. Radius: 4.7 inches. Volume: approximately 434 cubic inches.
But that was just the starting point. The energy needed to be compressed. Denser. More volatile. Energy density. Joules per cubic meter. Explosive yield.
Another gunshot. Closer this time.
The bathroom door handle rattled.
Marco's eyes went wide, purple smoke leaking faster from his body.
"They're coming in."said a scared Marco
"I know." Kínitos kept typing, kept calculating.
If he could compress the paradox energy into a basketball-sized sphere, and then release it all at once…
Blast radius. Thermal output. Structural damage.The numbers were coming together. Almost there.A bed room door burst open.
Three zombies shuffled through, their dead eyes scanning the room. One of them held a pistol, gripping it awkwardly, finger on the trigger.
It raised the gun. Bang Bang gunshot fired randomly foot's step coming closer to the bathroom.
Kínitos pocketed his phone. The formula was incomplete—he was missing something, some variable he couldn't calculate sitting in a bathtub.
"Stay here," he said to Marco. "Don't move."
"What—"
Kínitos activated his speed and moved.
He blurred out of the tub, the world slowing around him. A zombie burst the bathroom door open. The zombie with the gun was pulling the trigger—he could see the mechanism moving in slow motion.
He needed to finish the formula. But he couldn't do it with math alone.
He needed to feel it.
Kínitos dodged the bullet, moving past the first zombie, his mind still racing through the calculations. Volume. Radius. Compression ratio. Energy density.
Basketball-sized. But how much compression? How much release?
The second zombie lunged at him with that horrible burst of speed.
Kínitos activated immovability for a split second—just long enough to plant himself—then released it and continued moving.
The formula. Almost there. The third zombie blocked his path to the suite door. Kínitos felt the purple energy building inside him, responding to his will, ready to be shaped.
Compression. Release. Expansion.
He held out his hand as he ran, focusing on the energy, trying to force it into a sphere—
The numbers clicked into place in his head. The final variable. The missing piece.
Time. Compression over time. Delayed release.
He had it. The complete formula.
Kínitos charged at the zombie blocking the door, purple energy beginning to swirl around his outstretched hand.
The zombie raised its arms to grab him.
And Kínitos—