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Tie the Noose Chapter 35
The door slid open silently, the hinges oiled well, as Daniel took his first breath of free air in what felt like an eternity. His body felt like it was on fire, like his blood was acid, burning its way through his veins, thundering through his ears as his heart hammered in his chest. He could taste the blood, the sweat, the grime of days spent hanging in that cell. He felt the ice cold concrete beneath his feet, chilled, icy, and sharp, but the numb shock was nothing to him. He was warm, despite his nudity, unbothered by the frigid bite that seemed to infest every surface. It was good, so good, though, against his flesh. A drop into the ice to burn off the rampaging heat that coursed through him.
On either side of the door stood a guard, both faceless behind their masks, both wrapped in USS armor that made them look like identical targets. Their heads snapped toward Daniel at the same time, surprised, shocked even, and the pause that followed lasted a heartbeat too long. One of them started to lift a hand, as if to speak into a radio. The other brought his rifle up in a sharp, panicked arc. Neither of them had a chance to finish.
The hatchet was already in Daniel’s hand, heavy, familiar, an extension of the rage that had burned through his nerves as it consumed his thoughts. He stepped out without hesitation, naked and bloodied, the cuffs still biting his wrists and the chain’s broken links dangling. He should have been slow from the exhaustion, the torture, the deprivation. He should have been stumbling, should have been weak. His body didn’t care about any of it. His arm snapped out, and the blade buried itself into the first guard’s neck with a wet, crunching snap that reported sharply when the blade punched through his vertebra and sparked off the wall. The man’s helmet jerked sideways, and the cut almost took his head off, leaving it hanging by a strip of meat, the force enough to send a sharp, pleasant shock up Daniel's arm.
The wall exploded into a slash of blood as the soldier's blood sprayed out, dousing the naked, battered man in red. He didn't even notice how his mouth opened, suckling the crimson as it dripped down his face. The second guard got one step back. He sucked in a sharp breath behind his mask and tried to shout, but Daniel’s pistol came up under the edge of the helmet before the word formed. Daniel didn’t even hear the gunshot. He saw the spray. He saw the helmet jolt. He saw the body fold, knees buckling like a marionette with its strings cut, and he stepped forward before the body hit the floor. The hallway was clear, and he drifted forward as if called by something.
That was when the screaming started.
It didn’t come from him, not at first. It came from deeper in the facility, from the soldiers who heard the shot and snapped into action. It came from their radios crackling, from their voices pitching high, from someone yelling an order he couldn’t make out. Daniel heard none of the words clearly, as if his head was under water. Sound arrived in fragments, washed out by the pounding of his heart and the sloshing of blood in his veins. His perception broke into jagged frames. Light and shadow. Movement. Targets. Two, around the corner, running.
He charged.
The first short fight ended almost as soon as it began, two USS soldiers rushing around the corner only to be met with six feet and two-and-a-half hundred pounds of blood-drunk killer. The pick of the axe slammed into the first soldier's helmet so hard it split, the metal spike burying itself into his skull like a metal tombstone, the other man screeching to a halt only for Daniel to shove the pistol into his chest and fire it until it clicked. The rounds were too light to punch through his armor, but that didn't matter. It stunned the man long enough for Daniel to get close, so close he could see the man's terrified eyes behind his goggles, as the pistol hit the ground and his hand went around his throat, dragging him in.
Daniel didn't register the delicious metallic taste in his mouth until his teeth were digging into the man's throat, salty and thick, he swallowed instinctively, as he bit until he heard a crunch and the mercenary gave a gargled, gasping cry as the meat came loose. He spit it out, messily, and absently dropped the corpse, the fire in his chest burning hotter, feeling so much better, so much more, than it had only moments before. He felt so good... so very alive…
Two more figures rushed into view, rifles up, shoulders squared, and froze, as they stared at him, bloody hatchet making a sick, squelching noise as he pulled it clear of the shattered skill of the other Meat. One of them tried to angle left for a clear line around the other planted and fired immediately, muzzle flashing bright before the other opened up from a crouch. Daniel felt the first bullets hit his bare torso like sledgehammers, the impacts punching him in the chest and stomach, sharp and hot, and he should have collapsed. He didn’t. The rounds tore skin and left streaks of blood that ran down his ribs, but the damage didn’t stop him. It was so distant, so empty, as he approached the two USS operatives with an almost lazy gait.
He slammed into the closer man with his shoulder, driving him backward into the wall. The armor took the hit, but the body inside still had bones and Meat, and Daniel felt something give as he rammed the soldier into the concrete. The guard’s rifle clattered, barrel scraping tile as it fell. The man tried to bring up a sidearm, but Daniel’s hatchet came up and under his arm, and the limbs fell to the ground with a wet thump. The guard made a choking noise. Daniel wrenched the blade free and hit him again, a short, brutal chop that splattered him across the uncaring stone.
The second guard kept firing, backing up, trying to maintain distance. Daniel crossed it effortlessly. He moved fast enough that the muzzle flashes seemed slow, each burst lighting Daniel’s skin and showing new holes that should have dropped him. Daniel felt them. Pain existed, but it was distant, muted by something that demanded... something... something so good, so refreshing... He grabbed the guard’s rifle barrel mid-burst, palm burning as the metal jerked, and yanked it down hard. The guard stumbled, and that was all Daniel needed.
His fingers found the edge of his helmet, and the guard’s head snapped sideways with a vicious tug. Daniel saw the spray in the air, the flesh ripping open from the force, and his face fell into the weeping hole, biting, chewing, drinking... the pain vanished, the burning and the bullets, all of it washed away under a torrent of maddeningly delicious lifeblood. Some distant part of his mind was screaming, but he didn't know why. It was so good... so very right... he needed to find more, to fill this strange hole he felt in his stomach, because he was so very thirsty…
The corridor opened up into a wider junction, and he ran into heavier resistance.
Three men were already there, forming a line, rifles steady, lights sweeping. One had a shotgun, held low and angled for close work. Another carried something heavier with a thick barrel and a rigid stance that suggested recoil management. The third started shouting into a radio, voice harsh, urgent, and fast. Daniel saw the man’s mouth moving behind the mask and didn’t care what he was saying.
They opened fire together.
The shotgun boomed, and the blast hit Daniel’s chest and shoulder, the impact so hard it knocked him sideways. Pellets tore into him and left a constellation of holes that should have been fatal. The heavier weapon hammered his ribs, and the force made his lungs seize for a moment. He kept moving. His feet didn’t stop. He didn’t slow. There... more... MORE…
He threw himself into a forward sprint, head down, hatchet tight in his fist. A man shouting into a radio reached for his pistol, too late. Daniel hit him first, burying the hatchet into his thigh where the armor didn’t cover him. The blade sank deep, and Daniel yanked it sideways, using the hook to pull the man off balance. The guard fell, trying to brace himself, and Daniel stepped on his chest plate and drove his weight down, cracking something under it. The man’s arms flailed as Daniel heard another shell rack, and in an instant he wrapped his thick, meaty palm around the man's face. He weighed almost nothing as Daniel ducked behind him, the roar of the shotgun shredding the human shield interspersed between them. Clutching the combat axe between his teeth, he grabbed the corpse's pistol out of its holster and leveled it at the mercenary.
The shotgunner tried to rack another shell. Daniel fired the stolen pistol twice. He didn’t hear the shots, but he felt the impacts. One round took the shotgunner in the throat, the other punched into jaw, shattering it. The guard staggered back, hands clawing at his neck, trying to keep blood inside his body. Daniel crossed the distance and drove the hatchet into the man’s faceplate, the blade biting through plastic and bone. He ripped it free and left the guard to drop.
The third man, rifle up, had been trying to keep Daniel centered in his sights. He fired again, and Daniel felt the round hit his stomach like a sledgehammer. His body folded a fraction. Blood poured down his abdomen. His muscles tightened, as if cradling the slug in his guts. He saw red, felt the fire grow hotter, angrier, more enraged as he coiled, and with a powerful flex of his legs, he lunged.
The guard swung the barrel up to use it as a club. Daniel caught it with both hands, fingers locking down on cold metal, and forced it aside. The guard grunted and tried to shoulder him off, and Daniel headbutted him hard enough to make the mask crack. The guard reeled. Daniel drove a knee up into the man’s groin, then seized him by the vest and slammed him into the wall. The weapon clattered to the floor. Daniel’s hands went to the guard’s helmet, and he twisted. The movement was brutal and quick. Something popped, and the man’s body went slack.
Daniel stood over them for half a second, chest heaving, blood running down his skin in sheets. He didn’t feel it though. He just felt alive, and he felt hungry. He lifted up the second guard, the shotgunner, who was still weakly struggling as he bled out slowly. Still alive. Still fresh. He hissed something, his throat raw and aching from the screaming, from the torment, from the cold, but most of all, from how dry it felt. He bit down, and felt the Meat twitch in his arms, weakly trying to bat him off but that was fine, if it moved it was the most fresh. He drank, and drank, and drank, but it was never enough.
Boots pounded in the distance. His head shot up, and his pupils dilated. Suddenly there was a heat there, moving, coming, lots of them. Good. He was still so thirsty. He needed so much, and it hurt, like he never knew it could. What was WrOnG WiTh HiM!? It ached, like the worst hunger he'd ever had, like the worst thirst he'd ever suffered, his chops so dry and his tongue thick and tacky, no matter how much he salivated.
A new cluster of voices rose, and Daniel turned toward it without thinking. He ran down a narrower passage, following the sound and the movement like an animal tracking its prey. A door at the end of the hall burst open, and a four-man team poured through, rifles up, forming a wedge. Their formation snapped into place fast, their discipline sharp even under panic.
"Contact!" One of them shouted.
Daniel saw their lights swing and pin him. The beam caught his naked, blood-slick body and the hatchet in his hand. For a fraction of a second they froze, why he didn't know, but it was a gift, as he serpentined down the hall, arms out like a linebacker as he closed, fingers splayed like claws, axe in one hand, the other bare and clutching.
They fired.
Rifle rounds hit him across the chest, shoulder, and thigh. He felt the impacts. He felt the tearing. He felt warmth spilling down his legs. The resistance of his body to it was wrong, and he didn’t care. He threw the axe, the blade swinging through the air end over end before it found soft and supple flesh to dig into. One guard went down clutching his face. Another stumbled when he fell into him, and that was all the hole he needed in their lines. The rest tried to adjust, dragging their wounded back, weapons barking erratically.
Daniel hit the wounded man first.
He crashed into him, grabbed him by the vest, and used him as a shield, dragging him forward. Rounds thudded into the armor. The guard in Daniel’s grasp screamed, a high, raw sound that cut through the corridor. Daniel shoved the man into his own team, using the body as a battering ram. That was silenced when he ripped the blade from the face of the first man, teeth and gristle coming with it.
The blade buried itself into the chest of the next Meat, biting through a seam in the plates, peeling him open. The guard staggered back, and Daniel was already on him. He wrenched the hatchet free and drove it into the weeping wound, dragging it deep, spraying a fresh ocean of blood all over him. The guard dropped, and Daniel stepped over him like he was stepping over shit.
The remaining two tried to fall back and reestablish some distance. One fired short, controlled bursts. The other started reaching for a grenade, fingers fumbling at the pouch. Daniel didn't let them. He took the shooter first, not with the hatchet but with his hands. He grabbed the rifle, yanked it down, and slammed the guard’s face into the wall hard enough to leave a smear. The guard tried to bring up an elbow. Daniel caught it, twisted, and snapped the joint with a clean, sharp motion. The guard howled, and Daniel didn’t wait. He drove his thumbs into the gap under the mask and ripped upward. The scream turned into a wet gargle.
The man with the grenade finally got it free. Daniel crossed the gap in an instant, grabbing the mercenary's hand like a steel vice. The man immediately started screaming and struggling as the bones in his hand popped and cracked. The grenade dropped, as the guard jerked, shock making him slow. Daniel kicked the grenade down the corridor and grabbed the guard by the collar. The guard fought, trying to pull free, and Daniel slammed him to the ground. Daniel’s hands went to the helmet again. He twisted until he heard a satisfying snap. He didn’t look back at the grenade.
The blast hit behind him, a pressure wave that slapped his back and threw dust and debris into the air. Shrapnel pinged off the concrete and tile, and Daniel felt a sting along his shoulder blade where something cut him. His back was covered in small cuts, weeping, but he didn't even feel it. What was pain, compared to everything else, compared to the last several days? All he felt was fire, mixed with the pins and needles of the raw numbness in his bones and the agonizing burn in his guts.
He found himself in front of a stairwell, the concrete spiral of stairs reaching up several levels. A door opened above, and a figure leaned over the railing with a weapon that spat fire in a long, ugly stream. Bullets rained down the steps. Daniel threw himself out of the way, the sharp staccato chasing him as he sprinted, taking the steps two at a time. The rain of shells hit all around him, a constant chatter around him. He felt the impacts, one ringing off his skull, another digging into his bicep and a third blowing a toe off. He kept climbing. His body responded with the same agonizing burn, getting worse, getting hotter, as his feet slapped the concrete.
A second guard stepped into view at the top landing, trying to angle for a downward shot. Daniel reached the landing and swung the hatchet in a horizontal arc. The blade caught the guard’s forearm and nearly severed it. The rifle dropped. The guard screamed and tried to pull back, but Daniel grabbed him and slammed him into the wall, then down onto the steps. The helmet cracked against concrete. Dazed, he gave no resistance as Daniel tossed him headfirst over the railing, before he hit the ground with a wet crunch below.
The man with the automatic weapon tried to retreat deeper into the upper corridor. It didn't help as Daniel slammed through the closing doors. The guard fired over his shoulder, wild now, and the strange, three barreled rifle fired until it ceased with an ominous click. He caught the soldier at the next doorway and drove him into the frame. The guard tried to bring the weapon up like a club. Daniel caught the barrel and shoved it aside, then used the axe like a hammer, slamming it into the man’s mask until the plastic split. The guard stumbled. Daniel grabbed the guard’s helmet and forced him down onto his knee.
The hatchet rose and fell once.
The blade sank into the base of the skull. The guard’s body went limp immediately.
Daniel stood there breathing hard, blood slick on his hands and wrists. The corridor around him was smeared with the brains of the dead Meat. He was still naked. He was still bleeding. It brought a rictus grin to his lips as he reached down to the dead body. Not as fresh, but it tasted so good, and thick and rich with an undertone of... something.
More footsteps.
More voices.
They were trying to regroup.
Daniel's eyes snapped towards them. It was almost adorable. They thought more of them would save them. No, no the Meat was going to die. He had promised. He had, and he would... for... Rebecca, yes, that was her. They threatened her, and he was going to make them bleed bleed bleed!
They tried to corner him in a long hallway bereft of side doors. They thought they would pin him, capture him, but they didn't understand they were already dead. After all, they were trapped in there with him. Two soldiers stepped out together, trying to cut him off. One had a riot shield, thick and angled, and the other stayed tight behind it with a compact SMG. The steady gait belied the fear he could smell oozing off of them, and all it did was bring them right to him.
Daniel hit the shield head-on. The impact should’ve broken his ribs, from how hard he rammed it. He grabbed the top edge of the shield and yanked it down. The shield-bearer stumbled. Daniel drove the hatchet into the guard’s bared neck, chopping once, twice, in short, vicious hacks, and his head tumbled loose by the third. The man behind the shield fired point blank, the shots hissing by Daniel's head. He didn’t flinch.
He grabbed the second man’s weapon and twisted it away from him, then drove his forehead into the guard’s face. The guard’s mask shattered. Daniel saw teeth. Daniel saw blood. He drove into the man and his jaw pit deep into the side of his neck, pouring blood, hot, metallic, tangy, sticky and raw down his throat in a torrent that made the thirst abate, supping deeply and greedily.
The guard went limp, limbs jerking and twitching as Daniel's hand came around and pulled him deeper into his embrace.
A door at the far end of the hall opened, and a small group poured out, three men moving fast, rifles up, trying to bring overwhelming fire to bear. Daniel lifted the lifeless Meat up and ducked behind it as a dozen rounds slapped into it. His feet slapped against the ground as he came in low under the body. He grabbed the first rifle and tore it sideways, dragging the shooter into the wall. The man’s helmet cracked against the surface. Daniel used the rifle like a lever and snapped the man’s neck against the edge of the stock. The body fell.
The second man tried to step back and fire. It wasn't enough, the long handle of his axe singing through the air with a whistling omen. The blade took the mercenary in the chest and drove him down. The third man fired in frantic bursts, backing away, trying to keep Daniel in front of him. Daniel surged forward and seized him by the vest. He drove the man into the floor hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Daniel’s hands went to the man’s faceplate and tore it free.
The guard stared up, mouth open, trying to speak.
Daniel didn’t let him.
His jaw came down, engulfing the forehead of the man, and he bit down. Bone and gristle crunched as his mouth was filled with a jellylike mass, wet and slimy and bloody, but not like the tasty crimson. It was gross and disgusting and it made him gag as he spit the chunk out, dropping the faceless Meat onto the ground as he spit out the filth.
Daniel stood over the dead with blood dripping from his hands. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t speak. All he knew was that these men had to die. They had to die in agony. They had to suffer for what they did to him, for what they threatened to do to... something... something... that was important. It was so hard to think when he had this hole in him that was just getting wider, getting deeper. But there were more. There were always more. He would find them. All he needed to do was find a way to make it stop and he could think again.
He was almost blinded when he slammed through the doors at the end of the corridor, the pile of bodies in his wake leading to this room. The wall was a bank of dozens of monitors twice as tall as a man, showing dozens of images of... someplace... familiar... the... Power plant? Daniel's brain screamed as he tried to force thought through it, but it was all an agonizing haze. He was just so thirsty... that was when his eyes locked onto the man sitting in a chair, watching him.
He wore a white coat, unlike the Meat. New Meat? No. Not meat at all. The man didn’t flinch or lean away when Daniel crashed in. He sat with a calm that didn’t fit the carnage outside the door, posture loose, elbows resting where they belonged, like this was an office and not a slaughterhouse. The mask helmet on his head wasn’t a soldier’s gas mask. It was a strange, clinical thing paired with goggles that caught the glow from the screens, lenses glistening as his head turned a few degrees to follow Daniel’s stumble.
It didn't matter.
Daniel charged him, wanted to kill him, like he had so many others, to feed, to drink... His legs pushed off hard, bare feet slipping once and correcting without thought. The rage made him quick, jagged, unstoppable. But instead of panicking, or showing any concern, the man coolly raised a pistol, as if that would help him, but the eerie delight that had etched itself across his face…
He moved with a measured confidence, wrist steady, finger set on the trigger without any hurry. The movement was so minute, the gun letting off a hiss as compressed air fired a needle at him. Daniel could almost see it swimming through the air, but he didn't care. He was invincible, he was unstoppable, he was-
Slamming face first into the ground, the force of his charge sending him tumbling across the ground as he lost all feeling in his legs, the combat hatchet clattering onto the ground with a ringing crash. There was ice going through his veins, washing out the reactor that had been pounding in his chest, leaving him feeling like someone had replaced his heart with a chunk of dry ice. He tried to crawl to his knees, bloody palms dragging across the rough concrete as his mind swam like it was clawing through molasses. The bloodlust screamed at him to keep moving, to lunge, to tear, but for the first time in what felt like years it wasn't all-consuming, driving him deeper and deeper under the surface. He wanted to move, to fight, to do something other than sit there like a vegetable but his limbs wouldn't respond.
"Well, that's better, now isn't it, Mr. Carter?" The man said, as he stood, walking close while pocketing the strange injection gun. Daniel bared his teeth and forced his head up, breathing hard through a throat that felt scraped raw. His eyes tracked the grinning scientist as he circled like a hungry shark.
"What?" Daniel grunted. "What did you do to me...?" The words were coarse, rough. His voice cracked. His throat ached from all the screaming, but he forced the words out anyway. "Who... the fuck... are... you...?"
The man stared at him like he was watching a reaction in a petri dish, head tilted a fraction as if he was trying to stare into Daniel's soul. Much as Daniel tried to get up, to make the man answer his questions, to tell him something... ANYTHING! He couldn't. It was like all his strength left him, and he could barely feel his body below his neck.
"Now that is the question, isn't it? Mr. Carter, for now, let us just say that you and I serve the same master. And while you are not privy to his vision, you are very much important to it." The scientist's tone stayed even, almost conversational. He adjusted one of the goggle lenses with two fingers, precise and neat, then settled his hand back into place. "I have to admit, I was beginning to grow a bit worried."
"Worried?" Daniel ground out as he tried to force himself to move, inch by inch. His fingers dug into the floor as he tried to will his body to cooperate, barely getting one foot to start dragging itself under him. The man’s dry, cracked lips pulling into what might’ve been a smile. He leaned forward a fraction, interested.
"Indeed, I was. We had concerns that the injections wouldn't take, that you had built up too much of an immunity to the underlying sequences, so we needed to soften you up. I do apologize for your rough treatment, though. Captain MacKinnon was a bit too enthusiastic about his assigned task." The grinning bastard said as he pulled back and moved behind Daniel. He tried to follow the man, but he fell out of view again. Daniel’s vision pulsed at the edges. The ice in his veins fought the heat in his skull. He swallowed, then spat a string of blood.
"You did this to me."
"I did," the man replied. Daniel’s hands shook as he kept moving, still on one knee, shoulders hunched like he was bracing himself to just keep going. His leaden muscles just weren't cooperating, weren't doing what he told them to do.
"I'm going to kill you." Daniel growled hotly, his throat feeling like he was spitting up sandpaper, but he didn't care. The scientist shoved his face a hairsbreadth away from Daniels, giving him an unobstructed view of the man. His skin was gaunt, wrinkled, drawn back, his hair receding, unnaturally white, and his smile a broken rictus of yellowed teeth. For his part, the scientist looked downright delighted at what Daniel had just said.
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! That's what I like to hear. You're going to need that spunk, Mr. Carter. You're going to need it quite badly. Your job's far from over here." The man's fetid breath washed over Daniel's face, and he recoiled back as best he could. The lunatic, for he couldn't be anything but insane, just popped back to his feet, clapping his hands.
"The fuck... is that supposed to mean!?" He snapped out, before devolving into a coughing fit. The scientist stilled, watching him. "You think I'm going to work for you, you fucking psycho!?"
The man just laughed. He spread his hands in a small, amused gesture, like Daniel had said something adorable.
"For me? No. For our master? Absolutely. You see, the little prick I gave you, it was a stabilizing agent." The words froze Daniel from the inside out. "Ah, yes, I should probably have led with that, eh, Mr. Carter? Well, no matter. The important thing is that you know now. Knowledge is power, after all." He chuckled, letting it sink in, and Daniel had to bite off a retort at the glee on display. It disgusted him.
"Anyway, now that the Dhampir pathogen is fully activated in your system. It will continue to drive you. It's actually very exciting, you see." The scientist said, opening his arms wide. "Enhanced regeneration, pain resilience, hardened muscles, hardened tendons, enhanced bone structure, bio-armaments, and of course, epidermal armoring... it's quite the masterpiece. A combined prototype of Progenitor-injected megamycete mixed with T-counterstabilizers and even a bit of G-metagenics. A perfect combination of pathogens capable of giving a subject, dare I say it, Godlike adaptability. All of them potent advantages... though with a few... expected side effects. That rage, you didn't think that was just you, did you? No. That was the Thirst."
"The what?" He asked, quietly, as Daniel's thoughts slowly drifted back through the red haze, through the pain and the fire and the noise, and in his mouth he tasted something metallic, like licking a penny. No…
The man nodded as if Daniel had finally asked the right question.
"You see, the longer you go without proper nourishment, the more feral you'll become. Part of the process was to bloodlet you enough that you became ravenous, while activating the virus's inset fight or flight response, causing it to begin adapting to you. You didn't even notice that you were ripping pieces out of those men. Did you? Throat dry, mouth parched, a ravenous need to fill your belly but you don't know what with." The man dropped into his chair, an insincere look of sympathy on his face. "You were consuming them, but it wasn't satisfying, was it? No. That's because you need a very special kind of blood. Infected blood."
"I don't... how... I didn't... did I... eat those people?" Daniel croaked out, feeling nauseated as he began to realize just what he was covered in. What he'd had in his mouth, down his throat, in his stomach... what he'd licked off his fingers, when he'd killed the first guard... what was his name? Daniel didn't remember. The man’s head tilted again, almost indulgently, waiting as Daniel processed it.
"That's right. You see, a Dhampir... Do you know the etymology of the word Dhampir? You see, they are the cursed offspring of a vampire father and a human mother, at least according to the old folklore. They possess all of the advantages of their sire, and none of the disadvantages, but they suffered an oh-so-terrible curse." He lifted a finger as if he was lecturing in a classroom. "You see, despite their resilience to sunlight and garlic and symbols of the so-called true faith, they still suffered from the thirst. In that way, you and they are similar."
"No..." Daniel denied, as he tried to force himself to his feet, flopping back onto the ground, his limbs still struggling to respond to anything. Even the desire to curl up into a ball and scream had been denied to him.
"You see," The bastard continued, not noticing, not caring, "Dhampir is an aggressive retroviral. It binds much in the same way that variants of the T or even the Progenitor do to the human genome. But that is where the similarity ends. When combined with the megamycete, the viral cells persist in the body, and they feed exclusively on hostile pathogens. Most specifically, impure Progenitor pathogens, ripping its genetic code apart, discarding the useless. the pointless, the weak genes, and condensing those that are useful in a form of almost perfect evolutionary impetus. Nothing unwanted is kept. Only the purest, strongest genes are retained."
"Of course, when there are no more of these pathogens in the body, it must subsist on whatever is left. It starts, of course, with damaged cells, more mundane infections, bacteria, viruses, all the little bits of genetic detritus left in the body, but those don't last long. The Dhampir clears them out in a matter of hours. Then it starts to feast on healthy cells. It starts breaking down organs, muscle, bone. I imagine it's rather agonizing." The scientist pondered, fingers folding together and legs crossed. The almost casual display would have pissed Daniel right off, if he wasn't in the middle of an existential crisis. "It feels like the worst burning you could ever experience from the inside out, or so I've been told. Drives the mind mad with pain, chokes out its ability to process, to think." The man said, dramatically sighing, "And when you strip away the... Human facade? We are but animals. Predators."
"I'm not... I won't... be like... THAT!" Daniel forced himself up, despite the weakness in his legs, as his hand flew down to grab the combat tomahawk, bringing it up. The man didn't even bother to rise. Five, steps, four, three- he almost made it! Then it hit him. Something huge, something massive, a fist, as large as his head, right into his ribs like a freight train. Daniel gave out a sharp, pained wheeze as he was sent tumbling to the ground, the axe in his hand vanishing into the dark. He looked up, tears in his eyes as he gasped and wheezed, his ribs screaming that they were turned to glass. Above him towered a mountain of a man, in a grey trench coat and fedora, staring soullessly down at him.
"That's enough," The man sighed, and the giant slunk back to vanish into the corners of the room. Dazed, Daniel barely noticed the second one also orbiting them. "I do admire your grit, Mr. Carter, but you need to keep a cool head. After all, that little prick I gave you is only going to last for a bit more. We don't want you losing yourself just yet, do we?"
Daniel coughed, spitting up blood as he forced himself into a sitting position. He had to close his eyes, focus on just getting his breath back as he felt the most unsettling popping sensation in his chest. Each one was accompanied by a sharp jolt, but it was a distant pain, and he blinked the tears from his eyes as he lolled his head back in the direction of the scientist.
"So what does that... mean to me? I'm just gonna keep going crazy. I'll kill myself before I hurt anyone... anyone I care about.... So you can go fuck yourself!" Daniel growled, as his chest throbbed again from the effort. His hands flexed against the floor, nails scraping, and his jaw worked like he wanted to bite through the air between them. The Bloodlust stirred at the edge of his thoughts and then fractured again, cutting his focus into hard, ugly pieces, making his mind swim, half erratic, half hungry.
"Oh, you misunderstand me. Neither I nor my master want to see you fall to such a base state. Which is where these come in." The grinning madman waved the device he'd shot Daniel with. "One dose of this is more than enough to go and sate you for several days. Think of it as a stabilizer. A mixture of infected hemoglobin, neutered viral carriers, and an extremely dense dosage of pure plasma. It's an extremely potent cocktail. More than enough to keep your new friend... Quite well fed."
He raised the injection gun a little higher so Daniel could see it, turning it so the magazine and the darts were visible. He handled it gingerly, thumb running along the receiver, then giving the magazine a small, confident tap to seat it. His eyes never left Daniel as he did it, studying the way Daniel’s breathing changed, the way his muscles twitched, as if he were enthralled. There was satisfaction there, as he watched it sink into Daniel just what hung over his head.
"You said... several days, but I... feel it... under my skin..." Daniel eventually spat out. "It's not... working..."
"Oh, but it is, Mr. Carter. Just one shot isn't enough to calm you down once you've fallen to the Thirst. It's just a temporary reprieve, an hour or two at most. You need multiple doses once you go too far just to wrangle the beast back into its cage, you see." The man shrugged. "A little more, each time, just to get you sane, and if you play too many games, well... let's just say that your days are numbered."
He let the sentence hang and pulled out two more magazines of the darts, setting them on the monitor table behind him. Daniel's eyes followed the darts as they were dropped onto the table almost casually. It wasn't hard to read between the lines, there. He needed the Stabilizers now, and it felt like there was a chain wrapping around his throat as he narrowed his eyes.
"And let me guess. Only you or your prick boss can get me that shit."
"I'm so glad that you're sharp enough to pick up on the subtext," The bastard said with a wide grin. "We both have very high hopes for you, you know. Of course, it's not a free service. Stabilizers are rather costly to produce Mr. Carter." The words hung in the air, before, out of the blue, he said, "We understand that you've had some sort of vendetta against Umbrella, for example."
"And you want me to stop?" Daniel asked, through grit teeth.
"Oh no, quite the contrary. My master doesn't care at all about what happens to the company. In fact, he's rather impressed by your drive and dedication to the cause. No, every so often, he will have a job for you while you are off gallivanting about, and in exchange, we will provide you with ample supplies of the Stabilizer, and if you do well enough, other rewards will follow as well."
He said it like this was an arrangement that already existed and Daniel was simply catching up.
"I don['t want any of your shit." Daniel ground out, but Victor just waved him off.
"Now, now, No need to be dramatic, Mr. Carter. We both know you need what it is I have to offer. These doses will only last so long, a few weeks at most, and then what? You kill everyone around you in a never-ending circle of psychotic Thirst? Maybe that pretty ladyfriend of yours, or your dear old STARS friends, or maybe just some poor fool in the wrong place at the wrong time?" The man snorted dismissively. "I understand that you're quite upset right now. I would be too, to be honest. But you can't really blame us. After all, we just want what's best for you, Daniel. So that's the deal. And quite the generous one, indeed."
"How do you know I'm not just gonna try to stab you in the back the first second I get?" Daniel forced himself back to his feet, his breath scraping in and out, and he hated how much it took just to keep his head level. The question was a bluff, and they both knew it. Daniel was fucked, no two ways about it.
"I would be disappointed if you didn't try." He chuffed, before looking at Daniel with an amused smile. "Oh, what fun we shall have, Mr. Carter. What fun we shall have." His laugh wasn’t loud. It was dry, wicked, and pleased, like Daniel had said something funny. He spread his hands again, theatrically, mockingly, as if he were taking it all in. The approval in his voice made Daniel’s stomach twist, because under it all was nothing less than pure anticipation. "Ah, but I'm afraid our time grows short. It seems MacKinnon has been regrouping his forces while we've been chatting, and after your little showing, I doubt there's anything I would be able to say to stop him from blowing you to bits."
The man glanced back at Daniel as he adjusted the front of his coat with a quick tug and checked the injection gun again, before setting it down to join the magazines. His gaze flicked over Daniel’s body, taking in the blood, the tremor, the hunger, and he looked satisfied with what he saw.
"Fortunately, a mutual acquaintance of ours has taken the time to gather your equipment, along with an extra special gift. You'll find it in the room over there." Gideon pointed to what looked like a closet off the side of the main room. "Do help yourself, and feel free to mop up the others. They've served their purpose, and, well, I suppose you can call this a gift from me to you. For all the trouble."
And then he was moving, striding over to a set of pneumatic doors that hissed open as he approached, before glancing back. "Before I forget, Mr. Carter, you'll need four more doses to get yourself out of the hole you're in. Then, it's once every four days, or if you ever feel... peckish. Doctor Gideon's orders!" He said with a jaunty wave, and the two giants strode out behind him, as the doors slammed shut with a heavy finality.
“Fuck.” Daniel whispered as he stared at the sealed doors, before glancing over to the injection gun and its spare doses. “FUCK!” He shouted, “FUCK YOU!” For a moment he saw red again, and it sent him stumbling as his chest seized with heat again, and sluggishly he moved over to grab the injection gun, lifting it up.
It was a sleek thing, compact and narrow with a CO2 canister slotted into the handle, the magazine well slotted into the top four darts full of a milky-white liquid resting in the clear magazine case. It had a toggle on the side, one that would fire the darts like bullets, and one that would inject the dart and then eject the drained cartridge. There was a small note tucked under the gun that simply said, ‘Neck only!’ With a little smiley face that stared up at him mockingly.
He pressed it to his artery and hit the button after setting it to the injection mode, and he felt the prick hit him hard, penetrating his skin and sending another, colder wave through him. Then he pulled it again, and again, and again, emptying the magazine. And just like that, the bloodlust was gone. The fire was doused. He could think clearly, could move without feeling like he was stuck in tar, could focus and breathe and he could remember!
But there was no time for that. The dead man was coming for him, and he needed his gear now that he wasn’t hopped up on some kind of psychotic break. Grabbing the two spare magazines for the injector, he made his way over to the door Gideon said his gear was behind. Like the other one, this one slid open with a pneumatic hiss, but as soon as he stepped through, he was blasted with high power jets.
“Shit!” He shouted, stumbling forward, as more jets activated, and then more, the patina of dried blood that had coated him washing away, before the hall finally gave way to a series of potent air jets that blasted him dry. The far door opened to what looked like a small locker room, just two walls of lockers and a bench down the middle. There was a door on the other side, but it had been one of the heavy bulkhead doors, and had been welded shut with a dozen steel bars haphazardly. That didn’t matter to David though. What caught his eye was the pile of weapons and armor just sitting there, neatly folded, washed, repaired and readied.
What was more, the emptied shotgun magazines had been reloaded, but all of them were full with the telltale green of grenade shells, eight whole magazines worth, plus one in the Saiga itself. Sitting on them, like a crown, sat a large handgun Daniel didn’t recognize. He lifted it, the gun’s solid steel make heavy in his hands, the words Mateba Autorevolver .454 emblazoned on the side, and a small charm of some kind hanging from the barrel. It was a crescent moon of some kind… no, looking at it now, he could tell that it was a tiny Karambit.
A hint at who had left it for him.
Daniel didn’t know how to feel about that, as he swiftly dressed, but he was glad to find all his batteries charged and his weapons cleaned. It was… oddly touching. If he ever met John again… he suspected one of them wouldn’t be walking away from that fight. But that was then, and this was now. He had a promise to keep, after all.
And despite the sense of crushing terror that gripped his heart about his new reality, he had a job to do. He would kill Umbrella, pull it out, root and stem, and then he would find Gideon and peel him apart to find his mysterious ‘master’. And once they were dead, and it was done? He would put that big gun into his mouth and end the threat once and for all.
000
Rebecca's boots slapped against the ground, the cold concrete echoing with a sharp snap with every panicked footstep as Jill dragged her along. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she struggled to hold onto her rifle, the two women running for everything they were worth through the dark.
Things had gone wrong almost immediately, the five of them being dashed against the oncoming nightmares like the tide against a cliff face. Whatever those things were, they weren't human, a fact that Rebecca was still coming to grips with. They soaked up damage like nothing she'd ever seen, eating up their ammunition as they tried to put the monsters down.
For every one that they managed to drop, two more crawled out of the darkness, and then three, and then four. Before long, there were dozens of the things shuffling around in the shadows, stalking them, charging them, attacking them. Rebecca'd almost been cut off from the rest of them, panicking, afraid, when Jill burst through the crowd and caught her hard by the arm, yanking her out of the encroaching encirclement.
She had Chris's shotgun again, the shells blowing through the cord of black, slimy, rotting beasts, but it was only a temporary reprieve. They'd been split up, Chris shouting at them to find somewhere safe to hole up, that they'd find them. That was when the grenades started going off, flashes popping in the distance and turning the whole mess into a scattered, broken route. Rebecca had tried to force her way to the others, trying to get back to them, but Jill grabbed her by the back of her collar.
"We've gotta move, we've gotta go," Jill screamed, and she was right, as much as Rebecca hated to admit it. As they broke off, the last thing Rebecca saw was some kind of hulking thing that looked like it'd been made out of a dozen bodies or more all melted together like a wax statue charging at them.
They managed to find a small access door, too small and thin for the thing to get through, but it tried its hardest regardless, sending its tentacles after them. Rebecca'd almost been dragged off her feet when the fleshy tendrils caught her vest and snapped her back. Jill had saved her life, right then, interspersing herself between the titanic monster and Rebecca, blowing the tangled cables of slimy meat apart with the shotgun.
The thing, whatever it was, continued to rage, and it crushed the door, collapsed the ceiling, and blocked off the exit. They'd have to find another way around. If they wanted to get back to Chris and the others, if they were even still alive after all that. Rebecca didn't want to think about that though. She had other things on her mind, as she tried to make the impossible make sense.
"What the fuck was that thing?" Jill bit out as she clutched the shotgun to her chest like a security blanket.
"I don't know," Rebecca gasped out, hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath and get her heart rate back down. "Do you think the guys are okay?" she asked shakily, but Jill just shot her a complicated look and glanced away without answering.
"I've never seen anything like that before. The mutations, the... the walking corpses. It doesn't make any sense," Rebecca continued, mostly to herself. "Biology doesn't work that way. It just doesn't." There was panic in her voice that caught Jill's attention, and the woman moved in, gloved hands settling on Rebecca's shoulders to steady her.
Rebecca hated that she had to be coddled like that.
"It's fine," Jill said, the braver of the two of them. "You know Chris, Barry, and the Captain. They're tough as hell. They'll be fine, but we need to find our way out of here. There's no going backwards." There was a bravado there, a confidence neither woman felt, in those words. The silence dragged on as the two just gathered themselves. Jill asked, finally, "You still have your weapon?"
The rifle was clutched tight to Rebecca's chest. She nodded, though she was down to a single magazine. Jill's rifle was gone, just the shotgun remaining, and the pistol on her hip.
"Good. Take these," Jill said, as started stripping her extra magazines out of her pouches and handing them over, fast and practiced. "I lost my rifle out there. No idea what happened to it. Damn thing was yanked clean out of my hands by one of those things. I was lucky enough to be able to cut the strap before it dragged me off, too."
Rebecca tried to object anyway, to hand her weapon over to the ex-Delta operator, but Jill just shook her head. Rebecca almost objected on the spot, but Jill shot her a hard look. The words died on her lips as Jill just started shoving the 30-round boxes into her vest, making them fit and adjusting the straps so they wouldn't snag.
"I've got about a dozen more shotgun shells, just what was on the bandolier. Four mags for the handgun, though. It'll have to be enough, unless we get lucky and find something up there."
That caught Rebecca's attention.
"Up where?" she asked, and Jill just pointed.
While Rebecca had been freaking out, Jill had been scoping things, like the professional she was and the professional that Rebecca wished she could be. Jill just angled her chin, directing the younger woman's gaze across the room. Rebecca followed the point, forcing herself to stop staring at the floor and start tracking what Jill was tracking.
The room they were in was cavernous, some kind of pit at the bottom of some massive mechanical edifice. Looking up there was something that reminded her of a crankshaft, but massive, incredibly so. Big as a building, maybe more. There were shafts of light piercing down from the tall pit, but Rebecca couldn't guess how high it went. But that wasn't what caught Jill's attention. No, the thing that she saw was that there was an access ladder on the far wall, one that went straight up.
"That is our ticket out," Jill said confidently. "Come on."
It was then that Rebecca really took a look around, the light of her gun sweeping the walls. She gagged quietly as she noticed that there were chunks of meat and broken bone down here, a lot of it, scattered in uneven piles and smears that looked like they’d been dragged and stomped. Some pieces still had scraps of clothing clinging to them, fabric darkened and stuck to wet muscle. The walls and concrete floor were stained red in broad streaks, with thicker patches pooled in low spots where it had collected and dried tacky. She tightened her grip on the rifle to keep her hands from shaking.
"It's like a charnel house down here," Rebecca said, and she didn't want to be down here a second longer than she had to be.
"Don't focus on it," Jill said, pulling Rebecca out of her reverie. Jill’s hand caught her elbow and turned her a fraction, lining her up with the ladder instead of the gore. "Don't look at it, don't think about it. That's not going to do you any good here. We gotta stay focused, Rebecca. I need you here. I need you now, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah," Rebecca replied, nodding her head as she shut her eyes and forced the hellish images from her mind.
"Good," Jill said. "That's good, because I don't want to be here alone. This place is already turning into a nightmare. And I don't use that term lightly. I've seen some bad shit, Rebecca, but this is so far beyond fucked that it's redefining what the word means for me." Jill shifted the shotgun higher on her shoulder, checked the bandolier without taking her eyes off the ladder, her thoughts somewhere distant, then put a boot on the first rung.
Those were Jill's parting words as she started climbing. Rebecca followed immediately after, trying not to think of how tired she was already feeling. Her bones ached, her joints were sore, and her hands cramped around the rungs faster than she wanted to admit.
The overloaded pack on her back was weighing her down, but she didn't dare let it go. It was packed with supplies they needed. Worse, Jill had lost her bag, and everything inside of it was just gone. Rebecca could see the tension in Jill's posture, like she was pissed, though if it was their circumstances, herself, or Rebecca, the medic couldn't guess. Maybe all three.
She knew better than to comment, though. She knew Jill was probably kicking herself worse than anyone else could ever expect over the loss, a stupid mistake, she would have called it. Amateur Hour. Rebecca was nothing but Amateur Hour, yet she knew Jill would never say so.
She had to stop multiple times to catch her breath, just hanging there, letting the feeling come back into her arms and her hands. Jill was blessedly silent, not commenting on the delay, but she stayed close enough above that Rebecca could tell she was slowing her pace for the rookie. Just one more concession that made the medic hate herself for getting them all into this just a little bit more. Finally, though, they reached the top after climbing for what felt like forever. The hatch screwed open. Jill flipped it up, and the two crawled out into what looked like a T-junction.
The walls were covered in blood and strips of flesh, and the door had been ripped open from their side, if the claw marks inside it were any indicator. But it was clear, which was the important thing. There weren't any of the creatures there. Rebecca shut the hatch behind them as Jill raised her shotgun and leaned her weight into the corner, listening first, then looking.
"Lights off," Jill said. "We don't need to announce ourselves." Just as well, the two could see fine now. Apparently, the building they were in had power, enough at least to run the emergency lights.
Stepping out, Rebecca noticed the mangled hand crank bent against the wall. And what they walked out into was the scene of a firefight. Jill didn’t linger in the open. She guided Rebecca with a quick touch at the back of her vest and moved them to a better angle.
There were no bodies, not that Rebecca could see, but there were shell casings everywhere. Shotgun, pistol, even some long rifle casings marked with .45x70.
Jill picked one up. Glancing at it through her mask, "These are fresh," she said.
"How can you tell?" Rebecca asked.
"No dust on them, or very little. The brass is still clean. The colors are still bright. No, I'd clock these at about a week old, maybe. Maybe less, maybe more. Give it a day or two. These are new," Jill said.
Jill held the casing between thumb and forefinger for a beat longer as she pinched the rim, checked the stamp with a quick tilt of her wrist, then let it fall back among the others. Her eyes swept the floor in a tight arc, counting without speaking, tracking the spread like it told a story.
"What do you think it means?" Rebecca asked after a moment, but Jill just shrugged.
"Not sure. Somebody's clearly still active here, or at least they were as of a week ago."
Rebecca shifted her rifle higher on her chest and forced her hands to settle into a proper grip. She glanced where Jill had been looking, then checked the corridor again, then back to Jill.
"Do you think it could be Danny?" Rebecca asked after a moment.
There was a pause as Jill seemed to consider the question, before she looked back at the nervous rookie, who seemed a million miles away. In truth, Jill had a hard time imagining how Danny, no matter how actually skilled he was, could survive up here for as long as he was missing. She knew better than to voice it, though.
"Maybe," she said finally. "Anyway, let's move low and slow. We don't know what's been going on here and-" As she said it, they heard the crack of muffled gunfire. Jill reacted first, grabbing Rebecca by the sleeve and pulling her down.
"Against the wall! Against the wall!" Jill said sharply as she flattened out, Rebecca following almost immediately after. The two slid forward to what looked like an access hatch. It'd been ripped out of the wall, but there was enough mangled debris to give them good cover.
Jill planted the shotgun across her forearms and leaned into the cover, keeping her profile tight. She kept her head down, then lifted it just enough to track any movement in the massive atrium beyond without exposing her face. Her left hand came up once, quick, two fingers out and then curled back, a silent move that told Rebecca to hold, wait, and not get stupid. Rebecca tucked in tight beside her, rifle angled toward the opening, trying to find a clean line without giving up her position.
"What do you think it is?" Rebecca asked, as more gunshots rang out. They could hear screaming now, but it was muffled, distant. Jill leaned just enough to peek, then pulled back, jaw set. She let out a silent, hissing breath through her respirator, before answering.
"I don't know, but it sounds like someone's having a party," Rebecca gave a weak smile to Jill, and was about to ask another question when the doors slid open with a pneumatic hiss. Light poured out as three figures ran into the central atrium. They started moving around the crankshaft when a sharp crack rang out and caught the lead figure in the leg, sending him stumbling.
The other two turned as the third screamed and opened fire on the door, but it didn't seem to make a damn bit of difference to the massive figure that strolled out from that distant light. At first... It seemed like a man. He was tall, very tall, almost seven feet, if they had to guess. Unlike the soldiers in tactical gear, He was every bit the implacable wall, patient, unbothered, even as rifle rounds peppered his form. It was like that movie with the robots that traveled back in time, except instead of being a skeleton, this one was armored in solid plate. Helmet, mask, chest, legs, arms, all of it gleaming in steel.
The rifle rounds sparked off of it like it was invulnerable, and to the small-caliber rounds, it might as well have been. The man, if it was a man, seemingly entirely uncaring. He holstered his pistol and raised a shotgun, a boxy, mean looking thing that screamed military to the two STARS officers, though Jill recognized it immediately. He pulled the trigger and the world exploded into fire and light.
The first man was torn apart by the blast. His chest caved in as the explosive round hit and kept going, turning him into a collapsing mess of meat and gear, shredded by the compacted shrapnel. The second man let out a terrified shriek and tried to run, but the boxy black shotgun barked again, catching him in the back. The impact punched through him like the shot had been placed for effect, driving him forward and down, leaving his ribs and spine exposed as he skidded across the ground and went slack.
"Ye fuckin' bastard!" the man screamed as he gripped his leg, trying to crawl across the ground. "Ye fuckin' monster! Ye deserved it! Ye deserved all of it!" the man screamed.
The giant just strode forward, uncaring. He crossed the distance in a moment, and just stared at the ranting soldier, his voice so oddly familiar to Rebecca, but she couldn't place from where.
"Ye're a fuckin' freak! This place'll kill ye! I hope it does! Ye've earned every bit o' suffering!" The words were almost sobbed out, as he let loose another groan. The giant let his shotgun hang, and from his back, he drew a wicked, black tomahawk, almost two feet long with a broad, curving edge and a vicious spike.
"Whit d'ye think ye're gonna dae wi' that?" The man asked as he skidded back on his hands, a pointless effort when the giant reached down and grabbed him by his bad leg and dragged him towards him as the soldier let out an agonized scream.
Jill’s hand came up between Rebecca and the opening, a sharp, quiet signal to stay down and stay put. She didn’t look at Rebecca when she did it. She didn’t need to. Both were frozen at watching this execution, neither willing nor prepared to even try taking on the armored man. Rebecca doubted that her rifle would fare any better, and Jill's shotgun would have been a wasted effort. All it would take was for him to turn that cannon of his on them and fire another of those micro-grenades.
Instead, they watched as the titan brought his knee down into the wounded soldier's stomach, pinning him with a crushing weight. THe man let out a pained groan, as the terminator tore his helmet and mask off, revealing a bearded face that Rebecca could have sworn she knew. It was at the tip of her tongue, but was lost just as quickly.
"Ye think this changes anythin'? Anythin' for ye?" The man gasped out as the giant reached forward and grabbed him by his hair. "One of us will put ye doon. Ye bastard!" were the man's final words as the axe came down.
One, two, three sharp blows, and his head came loose into the giant's gauntleted palm. He put the axe away and lifted the head up to stare into its eyes. Then, in a horrifying feat of strength, the skull gave way and the head was crushed like a melon. Bits of bone and brain splattering on the ground as the giant opened his hands and let the remaining chunks hit the ground with a wet splorch. He wiped his hands almost dismissively on the uniform of the beheaded man.
Rebecca’s mouth went dry behind the mask. She kept the rifle up, as if it would make any bit of difference. Jill stayed still, tracking the armored figure as he paused, satisfied with his execution. Gunfire erupted from above and his head shot up as bullets pinged off of him. He turned quickly and Rebecca saw that there was a backpack on his back, loaded down with weapons and tools, including a massive rifle that looked like it had been carved straight out of a sci-fi flick.
Three men were on the gantry above, all of them opening fire on him, but like before, the bullets didn't seem to do much. The giant grabbed his shotgun again, raised it, and fired once. An explosion of fire and shrapnel detonating above, making both she and Jill flinch. One of the men was dead outright, but the other two ran into a door on the second level, slamming it shut behind them. The giant touched something on his belt, and the two women heard a sharp whine. Then he jumped, clearing almost two stories and landing on the gantry above, the damaged metal groaning under his weight. After that, all they heard was screaming and gunshots, as the two women looked at one another, and Jill summed it up in one, succinct statement.
"What the fuck was that?"
On either side of the door stood a guard, both faceless behind their masks, both wrapped in USS armor that made them look like identical targets. Their heads snapped toward Daniel at the same time, surprised, shocked even, and the pause that followed lasted a heartbeat too long. One of them started to lift a hand, as if to speak into a radio. The other brought his rifle up in a sharp, panicked arc. Neither of them had a chance to finish.
The hatchet was already in Daniel’s hand, heavy, familiar, an extension of the rage that had burned through his nerves as it consumed his thoughts. He stepped out without hesitation, naked and bloodied, the cuffs still biting his wrists and the chain’s broken links dangling. He should have been slow from the exhaustion, the torture, the deprivation. He should have been stumbling, should have been weak. His body didn’t care about any of it. His arm snapped out, and the blade buried itself into the first guard’s neck with a wet, crunching snap that reported sharply when the blade punched through his vertebra and sparked off the wall. The man’s helmet jerked sideways, and the cut almost took his head off, leaving it hanging by a strip of meat, the force enough to send a sharp, pleasant shock up Daniel's arm.
The wall exploded into a slash of blood as the soldier's blood sprayed out, dousing the naked, battered man in red. He didn't even notice how his mouth opened, suckling the crimson as it dripped down his face. The second guard got one step back. He sucked in a sharp breath behind his mask and tried to shout, but Daniel’s pistol came up under the edge of the helmet before the word formed. Daniel didn’t even hear the gunshot. He saw the spray. He saw the helmet jolt. He saw the body fold, knees buckling like a marionette with its strings cut, and he stepped forward before the body hit the floor. The hallway was clear, and he drifted forward as if called by something.
That was when the screaming started.
It didn’t come from him, not at first. It came from deeper in the facility, from the soldiers who heard the shot and snapped into action. It came from their radios crackling, from their voices pitching high, from someone yelling an order he couldn’t make out. Daniel heard none of the words clearly, as if his head was under water. Sound arrived in fragments, washed out by the pounding of his heart and the sloshing of blood in his veins. His perception broke into jagged frames. Light and shadow. Movement. Targets. Two, around the corner, running.
He charged.
The first short fight ended almost as soon as it began, two USS soldiers rushing around the corner only to be met with six feet and two-and-a-half hundred pounds of blood-drunk killer. The pick of the axe slammed into the first soldier's helmet so hard it split, the metal spike burying itself into his skull like a metal tombstone, the other man screeching to a halt only for Daniel to shove the pistol into his chest and fire it until it clicked. The rounds were too light to punch through his armor, but that didn't matter. It stunned the man long enough for Daniel to get close, so close he could see the man's terrified eyes behind his goggles, as the pistol hit the ground and his hand went around his throat, dragging him in.
Daniel didn't register the delicious metallic taste in his mouth until his teeth were digging into the man's throat, salty and thick, he swallowed instinctively, as he bit until he heard a crunch and the mercenary gave a gargled, gasping cry as the meat came loose. He spit it out, messily, and absently dropped the corpse, the fire in his chest burning hotter, feeling so much better, so much more, than it had only moments before. He felt so good... so very alive…
Two more figures rushed into view, rifles up, shoulders squared, and froze, as they stared at him, bloody hatchet making a sick, squelching noise as he pulled it clear of the shattered skill of the other Meat. One of them tried to angle left for a clear line around the other planted and fired immediately, muzzle flashing bright before the other opened up from a crouch. Daniel felt the first bullets hit his bare torso like sledgehammers, the impacts punching him in the chest and stomach, sharp and hot, and he should have collapsed. He didn’t. The rounds tore skin and left streaks of blood that ran down his ribs, but the damage didn’t stop him. It was so distant, so empty, as he approached the two USS operatives with an almost lazy gait.
He slammed into the closer man with his shoulder, driving him backward into the wall. The armor took the hit, but the body inside still had bones and Meat, and Daniel felt something give as he rammed the soldier into the concrete. The guard’s rifle clattered, barrel scraping tile as it fell. The man tried to bring up a sidearm, but Daniel’s hatchet came up and under his arm, and the limbs fell to the ground with a wet thump. The guard made a choking noise. Daniel wrenched the blade free and hit him again, a short, brutal chop that splattered him across the uncaring stone.
The second guard kept firing, backing up, trying to maintain distance. Daniel crossed it effortlessly. He moved fast enough that the muzzle flashes seemed slow, each burst lighting Daniel’s skin and showing new holes that should have dropped him. Daniel felt them. Pain existed, but it was distant, muted by something that demanded... something... something so good, so refreshing... He grabbed the guard’s rifle barrel mid-burst, palm burning as the metal jerked, and yanked it down hard. The guard stumbled, and that was all Daniel needed.
His fingers found the edge of his helmet, and the guard’s head snapped sideways with a vicious tug. Daniel saw the spray in the air, the flesh ripping open from the force, and his face fell into the weeping hole, biting, chewing, drinking... the pain vanished, the burning and the bullets, all of it washed away under a torrent of maddeningly delicious lifeblood. Some distant part of his mind was screaming, but he didn't know why. It was so good... so very right... he needed to find more, to fill this strange hole he felt in his stomach, because he was so very thirsty…
The corridor opened up into a wider junction, and he ran into heavier resistance.
Three men were already there, forming a line, rifles steady, lights sweeping. One had a shotgun, held low and angled for close work. Another carried something heavier with a thick barrel and a rigid stance that suggested recoil management. The third started shouting into a radio, voice harsh, urgent, and fast. Daniel saw the man’s mouth moving behind the mask and didn’t care what he was saying.
They opened fire together.
The shotgun boomed, and the blast hit Daniel’s chest and shoulder, the impact so hard it knocked him sideways. Pellets tore into him and left a constellation of holes that should have been fatal. The heavier weapon hammered his ribs, and the force made his lungs seize for a moment. He kept moving. His feet didn’t stop. He didn’t slow. There... more... MORE…
He threw himself into a forward sprint, head down, hatchet tight in his fist. A man shouting into a radio reached for his pistol, too late. Daniel hit him first, burying the hatchet into his thigh where the armor didn’t cover him. The blade sank deep, and Daniel yanked it sideways, using the hook to pull the man off balance. The guard fell, trying to brace himself, and Daniel stepped on his chest plate and drove his weight down, cracking something under it. The man’s arms flailed as Daniel heard another shell rack, and in an instant he wrapped his thick, meaty palm around the man's face. He weighed almost nothing as Daniel ducked behind him, the roar of the shotgun shredding the human shield interspersed between them. Clutching the combat axe between his teeth, he grabbed the corpse's pistol out of its holster and leveled it at the mercenary.
The shotgunner tried to rack another shell. Daniel fired the stolen pistol twice. He didn’t hear the shots, but he felt the impacts. One round took the shotgunner in the throat, the other punched into jaw, shattering it. The guard staggered back, hands clawing at his neck, trying to keep blood inside his body. Daniel crossed the distance and drove the hatchet into the man’s faceplate, the blade biting through plastic and bone. He ripped it free and left the guard to drop.
The third man, rifle up, had been trying to keep Daniel centered in his sights. He fired again, and Daniel felt the round hit his stomach like a sledgehammer. His body folded a fraction. Blood poured down his abdomen. His muscles tightened, as if cradling the slug in his guts. He saw red, felt the fire grow hotter, angrier, more enraged as he coiled, and with a powerful flex of his legs, he lunged.
The guard swung the barrel up to use it as a club. Daniel caught it with both hands, fingers locking down on cold metal, and forced it aside. The guard grunted and tried to shoulder him off, and Daniel headbutted him hard enough to make the mask crack. The guard reeled. Daniel drove a knee up into the man’s groin, then seized him by the vest and slammed him into the wall. The weapon clattered to the floor. Daniel’s hands went to the guard’s helmet, and he twisted. The movement was brutal and quick. Something popped, and the man’s body went slack.
Daniel stood over them for half a second, chest heaving, blood running down his skin in sheets. He didn’t feel it though. He just felt alive, and he felt hungry. He lifted up the second guard, the shotgunner, who was still weakly struggling as he bled out slowly. Still alive. Still fresh. He hissed something, his throat raw and aching from the screaming, from the torment, from the cold, but most of all, from how dry it felt. He bit down, and felt the Meat twitch in his arms, weakly trying to bat him off but that was fine, if it moved it was the most fresh. He drank, and drank, and drank, but it was never enough.
Boots pounded in the distance. His head shot up, and his pupils dilated. Suddenly there was a heat there, moving, coming, lots of them. Good. He was still so thirsty. He needed so much, and it hurt, like he never knew it could. What was WrOnG WiTh HiM!? It ached, like the worst hunger he'd ever had, like the worst thirst he'd ever suffered, his chops so dry and his tongue thick and tacky, no matter how much he salivated.
A new cluster of voices rose, and Daniel turned toward it without thinking. He ran down a narrower passage, following the sound and the movement like an animal tracking its prey. A door at the end of the hall burst open, and a four-man team poured through, rifles up, forming a wedge. Their formation snapped into place fast, their discipline sharp even under panic.
"Contact!" One of them shouted.
Daniel saw their lights swing and pin him. The beam caught his naked, blood-slick body and the hatchet in his hand. For a fraction of a second they froze, why he didn't know, but it was a gift, as he serpentined down the hall, arms out like a linebacker as he closed, fingers splayed like claws, axe in one hand, the other bare and clutching.
They fired.
Rifle rounds hit him across the chest, shoulder, and thigh. He felt the impacts. He felt the tearing. He felt warmth spilling down his legs. The resistance of his body to it was wrong, and he didn’t care. He threw the axe, the blade swinging through the air end over end before it found soft and supple flesh to dig into. One guard went down clutching his face. Another stumbled when he fell into him, and that was all the hole he needed in their lines. The rest tried to adjust, dragging their wounded back, weapons barking erratically.
Daniel hit the wounded man first.
He crashed into him, grabbed him by the vest, and used him as a shield, dragging him forward. Rounds thudded into the armor. The guard in Daniel’s grasp screamed, a high, raw sound that cut through the corridor. Daniel shoved the man into his own team, using the body as a battering ram. That was silenced when he ripped the blade from the face of the first man, teeth and gristle coming with it.
The blade buried itself into the chest of the next Meat, biting through a seam in the plates, peeling him open. The guard staggered back, and Daniel was already on him. He wrenched the hatchet free and drove it into the weeping wound, dragging it deep, spraying a fresh ocean of blood all over him. The guard dropped, and Daniel stepped over him like he was stepping over shit.
The remaining two tried to fall back and reestablish some distance. One fired short, controlled bursts. The other started reaching for a grenade, fingers fumbling at the pouch. Daniel didn't let them. He took the shooter first, not with the hatchet but with his hands. He grabbed the rifle, yanked it down, and slammed the guard’s face into the wall hard enough to leave a smear. The guard tried to bring up an elbow. Daniel caught it, twisted, and snapped the joint with a clean, sharp motion. The guard howled, and Daniel didn’t wait. He drove his thumbs into the gap under the mask and ripped upward. The scream turned into a wet gargle.
The man with the grenade finally got it free. Daniel crossed the gap in an instant, grabbing the mercenary's hand like a steel vice. The man immediately started screaming and struggling as the bones in his hand popped and cracked. The grenade dropped, as the guard jerked, shock making him slow. Daniel kicked the grenade down the corridor and grabbed the guard by the collar. The guard fought, trying to pull free, and Daniel slammed him to the ground. Daniel’s hands went to the helmet again. He twisted until he heard a satisfying snap. He didn’t look back at the grenade.
The blast hit behind him, a pressure wave that slapped his back and threw dust and debris into the air. Shrapnel pinged off the concrete and tile, and Daniel felt a sting along his shoulder blade where something cut him. His back was covered in small cuts, weeping, but he didn't even feel it. What was pain, compared to everything else, compared to the last several days? All he felt was fire, mixed with the pins and needles of the raw numbness in his bones and the agonizing burn in his guts.
He found himself in front of a stairwell, the concrete spiral of stairs reaching up several levels. A door opened above, and a figure leaned over the railing with a weapon that spat fire in a long, ugly stream. Bullets rained down the steps. Daniel threw himself out of the way, the sharp staccato chasing him as he sprinted, taking the steps two at a time. The rain of shells hit all around him, a constant chatter around him. He felt the impacts, one ringing off his skull, another digging into his bicep and a third blowing a toe off. He kept climbing. His body responded with the same agonizing burn, getting worse, getting hotter, as his feet slapped the concrete.
A second guard stepped into view at the top landing, trying to angle for a downward shot. Daniel reached the landing and swung the hatchet in a horizontal arc. The blade caught the guard’s forearm and nearly severed it. The rifle dropped. The guard screamed and tried to pull back, but Daniel grabbed him and slammed him into the wall, then down onto the steps. The helmet cracked against concrete. Dazed, he gave no resistance as Daniel tossed him headfirst over the railing, before he hit the ground with a wet crunch below.
The man with the automatic weapon tried to retreat deeper into the upper corridor. It didn't help as Daniel slammed through the closing doors. The guard fired over his shoulder, wild now, and the strange, three barreled rifle fired until it ceased with an ominous click. He caught the soldier at the next doorway and drove him into the frame. The guard tried to bring the weapon up like a club. Daniel caught the barrel and shoved it aside, then used the axe like a hammer, slamming it into the man’s mask until the plastic split. The guard stumbled. Daniel grabbed the guard’s helmet and forced him down onto his knee.
The hatchet rose and fell once.
The blade sank into the base of the skull. The guard’s body went limp immediately.
Daniel stood there breathing hard, blood slick on his hands and wrists. The corridor around him was smeared with the brains of the dead Meat. He was still naked. He was still bleeding. It brought a rictus grin to his lips as he reached down to the dead body. Not as fresh, but it tasted so good, and thick and rich with an undertone of... something.
More footsteps.
More voices.
They were trying to regroup.
Daniel's eyes snapped towards them. It was almost adorable. They thought more of them would save them. No, no the Meat was going to die. He had promised. He had, and he would... for... Rebecca, yes, that was her. They threatened her, and he was going to make them bleed bleed bleed!
They tried to corner him in a long hallway bereft of side doors. They thought they would pin him, capture him, but they didn't understand they were already dead. After all, they were trapped in there with him. Two soldiers stepped out together, trying to cut him off. One had a riot shield, thick and angled, and the other stayed tight behind it with a compact SMG. The steady gait belied the fear he could smell oozing off of them, and all it did was bring them right to him.
Daniel hit the shield head-on. The impact should’ve broken his ribs, from how hard he rammed it. He grabbed the top edge of the shield and yanked it down. The shield-bearer stumbled. Daniel drove the hatchet into the guard’s bared neck, chopping once, twice, in short, vicious hacks, and his head tumbled loose by the third. The man behind the shield fired point blank, the shots hissing by Daniel's head. He didn’t flinch.
He grabbed the second man’s weapon and twisted it away from him, then drove his forehead into the guard’s face. The guard’s mask shattered. Daniel saw teeth. Daniel saw blood. He drove into the man and his jaw pit deep into the side of his neck, pouring blood, hot, metallic, tangy, sticky and raw down his throat in a torrent that made the thirst abate, supping deeply and greedily.
The guard went limp, limbs jerking and twitching as Daniel's hand came around and pulled him deeper into his embrace.
A door at the far end of the hall opened, and a small group poured out, three men moving fast, rifles up, trying to bring overwhelming fire to bear. Daniel lifted the lifeless Meat up and ducked behind it as a dozen rounds slapped into it. His feet slapped against the ground as he came in low under the body. He grabbed the first rifle and tore it sideways, dragging the shooter into the wall. The man’s helmet cracked against the surface. Daniel used the rifle like a lever and snapped the man’s neck against the edge of the stock. The body fell.
The second man tried to step back and fire. It wasn't enough, the long handle of his axe singing through the air with a whistling omen. The blade took the mercenary in the chest and drove him down. The third man fired in frantic bursts, backing away, trying to keep Daniel in front of him. Daniel surged forward and seized him by the vest. He drove the man into the floor hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Daniel’s hands went to the man’s faceplate and tore it free.
The guard stared up, mouth open, trying to speak.
Daniel didn’t let him.
His jaw came down, engulfing the forehead of the man, and he bit down. Bone and gristle crunched as his mouth was filled with a jellylike mass, wet and slimy and bloody, but not like the tasty crimson. It was gross and disgusting and it made him gag as he spit the chunk out, dropping the faceless Meat onto the ground as he spit out the filth.
Daniel stood over the dead with blood dripping from his hands. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t speak. All he knew was that these men had to die. They had to die in agony. They had to suffer for what they did to him, for what they threatened to do to... something... something... that was important. It was so hard to think when he had this hole in him that was just getting wider, getting deeper. But there were more. There were always more. He would find them. All he needed to do was find a way to make it stop and he could think again.
He was almost blinded when he slammed through the doors at the end of the corridor, the pile of bodies in his wake leading to this room. The wall was a bank of dozens of monitors twice as tall as a man, showing dozens of images of... someplace... familiar... the... Power plant? Daniel's brain screamed as he tried to force thought through it, but it was all an agonizing haze. He was just so thirsty... that was when his eyes locked onto the man sitting in a chair, watching him.
He wore a white coat, unlike the Meat. New Meat? No. Not meat at all. The man didn’t flinch or lean away when Daniel crashed in. He sat with a calm that didn’t fit the carnage outside the door, posture loose, elbows resting where they belonged, like this was an office and not a slaughterhouse. The mask helmet on his head wasn’t a soldier’s gas mask. It was a strange, clinical thing paired with goggles that caught the glow from the screens, lenses glistening as his head turned a few degrees to follow Daniel’s stumble.
It didn't matter.
Daniel charged him, wanted to kill him, like he had so many others, to feed, to drink... His legs pushed off hard, bare feet slipping once and correcting without thought. The rage made him quick, jagged, unstoppable. But instead of panicking, or showing any concern, the man coolly raised a pistol, as if that would help him, but the eerie delight that had etched itself across his face…
He moved with a measured confidence, wrist steady, finger set on the trigger without any hurry. The movement was so minute, the gun letting off a hiss as compressed air fired a needle at him. Daniel could almost see it swimming through the air, but he didn't care. He was invincible, he was unstoppable, he was-
Slamming face first into the ground, the force of his charge sending him tumbling across the ground as he lost all feeling in his legs, the combat hatchet clattering onto the ground with a ringing crash. There was ice going through his veins, washing out the reactor that had been pounding in his chest, leaving him feeling like someone had replaced his heart with a chunk of dry ice. He tried to crawl to his knees, bloody palms dragging across the rough concrete as his mind swam like it was clawing through molasses. The bloodlust screamed at him to keep moving, to lunge, to tear, but for the first time in what felt like years it wasn't all-consuming, driving him deeper and deeper under the surface. He wanted to move, to fight, to do something other than sit there like a vegetable but his limbs wouldn't respond.
"Well, that's better, now isn't it, Mr. Carter?" The man said, as he stood, walking close while pocketing the strange injection gun. Daniel bared his teeth and forced his head up, breathing hard through a throat that felt scraped raw. His eyes tracked the grinning scientist as he circled like a hungry shark.
"What?" Daniel grunted. "What did you do to me...?" The words were coarse, rough. His voice cracked. His throat ached from all the screaming, but he forced the words out anyway. "Who... the fuck... are... you...?"
The man stared at him like he was watching a reaction in a petri dish, head tilted a fraction as if he was trying to stare into Daniel's soul. Much as Daniel tried to get up, to make the man answer his questions, to tell him something... ANYTHING! He couldn't. It was like all his strength left him, and he could barely feel his body below his neck.
"Now that is the question, isn't it? Mr. Carter, for now, let us just say that you and I serve the same master. And while you are not privy to his vision, you are very much important to it." The scientist's tone stayed even, almost conversational. He adjusted one of the goggle lenses with two fingers, precise and neat, then settled his hand back into place. "I have to admit, I was beginning to grow a bit worried."
"Worried?" Daniel ground out as he tried to force himself to move, inch by inch. His fingers dug into the floor as he tried to will his body to cooperate, barely getting one foot to start dragging itself under him. The man’s dry, cracked lips pulling into what might’ve been a smile. He leaned forward a fraction, interested.
"Indeed, I was. We had concerns that the injections wouldn't take, that you had built up too much of an immunity to the underlying sequences, so we needed to soften you up. I do apologize for your rough treatment, though. Captain MacKinnon was a bit too enthusiastic about his assigned task." The grinning bastard said as he pulled back and moved behind Daniel. He tried to follow the man, but he fell out of view again. Daniel’s vision pulsed at the edges. The ice in his veins fought the heat in his skull. He swallowed, then spat a string of blood.
"You did this to me."
"I did," the man replied. Daniel’s hands shook as he kept moving, still on one knee, shoulders hunched like he was bracing himself to just keep going. His leaden muscles just weren't cooperating, weren't doing what he told them to do.
"I'm going to kill you." Daniel growled hotly, his throat feeling like he was spitting up sandpaper, but he didn't care. The scientist shoved his face a hairsbreadth away from Daniels, giving him an unobstructed view of the man. His skin was gaunt, wrinkled, drawn back, his hair receding, unnaturally white, and his smile a broken rictus of yellowed teeth. For his part, the scientist looked downright delighted at what Daniel had just said.
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! That's what I like to hear. You're going to need that spunk, Mr. Carter. You're going to need it quite badly. Your job's far from over here." The man's fetid breath washed over Daniel's face, and he recoiled back as best he could. The lunatic, for he couldn't be anything but insane, just popped back to his feet, clapping his hands.
"The fuck... is that supposed to mean!?" He snapped out, before devolving into a coughing fit. The scientist stilled, watching him. "You think I'm going to work for you, you fucking psycho!?"
The man just laughed. He spread his hands in a small, amused gesture, like Daniel had said something adorable.
"For me? No. For our master? Absolutely. You see, the little prick I gave you, it was a stabilizing agent." The words froze Daniel from the inside out. "Ah, yes, I should probably have led with that, eh, Mr. Carter? Well, no matter. The important thing is that you know now. Knowledge is power, after all." He chuckled, letting it sink in, and Daniel had to bite off a retort at the glee on display. It disgusted him.
"Anyway, now that the Dhampir pathogen is fully activated in your system. It will continue to drive you. It's actually very exciting, you see." The scientist said, opening his arms wide. "Enhanced regeneration, pain resilience, hardened muscles, hardened tendons, enhanced bone structure, bio-armaments, and of course, epidermal armoring... it's quite the masterpiece. A combined prototype of Progenitor-injected megamycete mixed with T-counterstabilizers and even a bit of G-metagenics. A perfect combination of pathogens capable of giving a subject, dare I say it, Godlike adaptability. All of them potent advantages... though with a few... expected side effects. That rage, you didn't think that was just you, did you? No. That was the Thirst."
"The what?" He asked, quietly, as Daniel's thoughts slowly drifted back through the red haze, through the pain and the fire and the noise, and in his mouth he tasted something metallic, like licking a penny. No…
The man nodded as if Daniel had finally asked the right question.
"You see, the longer you go without proper nourishment, the more feral you'll become. Part of the process was to bloodlet you enough that you became ravenous, while activating the virus's inset fight or flight response, causing it to begin adapting to you. You didn't even notice that you were ripping pieces out of those men. Did you? Throat dry, mouth parched, a ravenous need to fill your belly but you don't know what with." The man dropped into his chair, an insincere look of sympathy on his face. "You were consuming them, but it wasn't satisfying, was it? No. That's because you need a very special kind of blood. Infected blood."
"I don't... how... I didn't... did I... eat those people?" Daniel croaked out, feeling nauseated as he began to realize just what he was covered in. What he'd had in his mouth, down his throat, in his stomach... what he'd licked off his fingers, when he'd killed the first guard... what was his name? Daniel didn't remember. The man’s head tilted again, almost indulgently, waiting as Daniel processed it.
"That's right. You see, a Dhampir... Do you know the etymology of the word Dhampir? You see, they are the cursed offspring of a vampire father and a human mother, at least according to the old folklore. They possess all of the advantages of their sire, and none of the disadvantages, but they suffered an oh-so-terrible curse." He lifted a finger as if he was lecturing in a classroom. "You see, despite their resilience to sunlight and garlic and symbols of the so-called true faith, they still suffered from the thirst. In that way, you and they are similar."
"No..." Daniel denied, as he tried to force himself to his feet, flopping back onto the ground, his limbs still struggling to respond to anything. Even the desire to curl up into a ball and scream had been denied to him.
"You see," The bastard continued, not noticing, not caring, "Dhampir is an aggressive retroviral. It binds much in the same way that variants of the T or even the Progenitor do to the human genome. But that is where the similarity ends. When combined with the megamycete, the viral cells persist in the body, and they feed exclusively on hostile pathogens. Most specifically, impure Progenitor pathogens, ripping its genetic code apart, discarding the useless. the pointless, the weak genes, and condensing those that are useful in a form of almost perfect evolutionary impetus. Nothing unwanted is kept. Only the purest, strongest genes are retained."
"Of course, when there are no more of these pathogens in the body, it must subsist on whatever is left. It starts, of course, with damaged cells, more mundane infections, bacteria, viruses, all the little bits of genetic detritus left in the body, but those don't last long. The Dhampir clears them out in a matter of hours. Then it starts to feast on healthy cells. It starts breaking down organs, muscle, bone. I imagine it's rather agonizing." The scientist pondered, fingers folding together and legs crossed. The almost casual display would have pissed Daniel right off, if he wasn't in the middle of an existential crisis. "It feels like the worst burning you could ever experience from the inside out, or so I've been told. Drives the mind mad with pain, chokes out its ability to process, to think." The man said, dramatically sighing, "And when you strip away the... Human facade? We are but animals. Predators."
"I'm not... I won't... be like... THAT!" Daniel forced himself up, despite the weakness in his legs, as his hand flew down to grab the combat tomahawk, bringing it up. The man didn't even bother to rise. Five, steps, four, three- he almost made it! Then it hit him. Something huge, something massive, a fist, as large as his head, right into his ribs like a freight train. Daniel gave out a sharp, pained wheeze as he was sent tumbling to the ground, the axe in his hand vanishing into the dark. He looked up, tears in his eyes as he gasped and wheezed, his ribs screaming that they were turned to glass. Above him towered a mountain of a man, in a grey trench coat and fedora, staring soullessly down at him.
"That's enough," The man sighed, and the giant slunk back to vanish into the corners of the room. Dazed, Daniel barely noticed the second one also orbiting them. "I do admire your grit, Mr. Carter, but you need to keep a cool head. After all, that little prick I gave you is only going to last for a bit more. We don't want you losing yourself just yet, do we?"
Daniel coughed, spitting up blood as he forced himself into a sitting position. He had to close his eyes, focus on just getting his breath back as he felt the most unsettling popping sensation in his chest. Each one was accompanied by a sharp jolt, but it was a distant pain, and he blinked the tears from his eyes as he lolled his head back in the direction of the scientist.
"So what does that... mean to me? I'm just gonna keep going crazy. I'll kill myself before I hurt anyone... anyone I care about.... So you can go fuck yourself!" Daniel growled, as his chest throbbed again from the effort. His hands flexed against the floor, nails scraping, and his jaw worked like he wanted to bite through the air between them. The Bloodlust stirred at the edge of his thoughts and then fractured again, cutting his focus into hard, ugly pieces, making his mind swim, half erratic, half hungry.
"Oh, you misunderstand me. Neither I nor my master want to see you fall to such a base state. Which is where these come in." The grinning madman waved the device he'd shot Daniel with. "One dose of this is more than enough to go and sate you for several days. Think of it as a stabilizer. A mixture of infected hemoglobin, neutered viral carriers, and an extremely dense dosage of pure plasma. It's an extremely potent cocktail. More than enough to keep your new friend... Quite well fed."
He raised the injection gun a little higher so Daniel could see it, turning it so the magazine and the darts were visible. He handled it gingerly, thumb running along the receiver, then giving the magazine a small, confident tap to seat it. His eyes never left Daniel as he did it, studying the way Daniel’s breathing changed, the way his muscles twitched, as if he were enthralled. There was satisfaction there, as he watched it sink into Daniel just what hung over his head.
"You said... several days, but I... feel it... under my skin..." Daniel eventually spat out. "It's not... working..."
"Oh, but it is, Mr. Carter. Just one shot isn't enough to calm you down once you've fallen to the Thirst. It's just a temporary reprieve, an hour or two at most. You need multiple doses once you go too far just to wrangle the beast back into its cage, you see." The man shrugged. "A little more, each time, just to get you sane, and if you play too many games, well... let's just say that your days are numbered."
He let the sentence hang and pulled out two more magazines of the darts, setting them on the monitor table behind him. Daniel's eyes followed the darts as they were dropped onto the table almost casually. It wasn't hard to read between the lines, there. He needed the Stabilizers now, and it felt like there was a chain wrapping around his throat as he narrowed his eyes.
"And let me guess. Only you or your prick boss can get me that shit."
"I'm so glad that you're sharp enough to pick up on the subtext," The bastard said with a wide grin. "We both have very high hopes for you, you know. Of course, it's not a free service. Stabilizers are rather costly to produce Mr. Carter." The words hung in the air, before, out of the blue, he said, "We understand that you've had some sort of vendetta against Umbrella, for example."
"And you want me to stop?" Daniel asked, through grit teeth.
"Oh no, quite the contrary. My master doesn't care at all about what happens to the company. In fact, he's rather impressed by your drive and dedication to the cause. No, every so often, he will have a job for you while you are off gallivanting about, and in exchange, we will provide you with ample supplies of the Stabilizer, and if you do well enough, other rewards will follow as well."
He said it like this was an arrangement that already existed and Daniel was simply catching up.
"I don['t want any of your shit." Daniel ground out, but Victor just waved him off.
"Now, now, No need to be dramatic, Mr. Carter. We both know you need what it is I have to offer. These doses will only last so long, a few weeks at most, and then what? You kill everyone around you in a never-ending circle of psychotic Thirst? Maybe that pretty ladyfriend of yours, or your dear old STARS friends, or maybe just some poor fool in the wrong place at the wrong time?" The man snorted dismissively. "I understand that you're quite upset right now. I would be too, to be honest. But you can't really blame us. After all, we just want what's best for you, Daniel. So that's the deal. And quite the generous one, indeed."
"How do you know I'm not just gonna try to stab you in the back the first second I get?" Daniel forced himself back to his feet, his breath scraping in and out, and he hated how much it took just to keep his head level. The question was a bluff, and they both knew it. Daniel was fucked, no two ways about it.
"I would be disappointed if you didn't try." He chuffed, before looking at Daniel with an amused smile. "Oh, what fun we shall have, Mr. Carter. What fun we shall have." His laugh wasn’t loud. It was dry, wicked, and pleased, like Daniel had said something funny. He spread his hands again, theatrically, mockingly, as if he were taking it all in. The approval in his voice made Daniel’s stomach twist, because under it all was nothing less than pure anticipation. "Ah, but I'm afraid our time grows short. It seems MacKinnon has been regrouping his forces while we've been chatting, and after your little showing, I doubt there's anything I would be able to say to stop him from blowing you to bits."
The man glanced back at Daniel as he adjusted the front of his coat with a quick tug and checked the injection gun again, before setting it down to join the magazines. His gaze flicked over Daniel’s body, taking in the blood, the tremor, the hunger, and he looked satisfied with what he saw.
"Fortunately, a mutual acquaintance of ours has taken the time to gather your equipment, along with an extra special gift. You'll find it in the room over there." Gideon pointed to what looked like a closet off the side of the main room. "Do help yourself, and feel free to mop up the others. They've served their purpose, and, well, I suppose you can call this a gift from me to you. For all the trouble."
And then he was moving, striding over to a set of pneumatic doors that hissed open as he approached, before glancing back. "Before I forget, Mr. Carter, you'll need four more doses to get yourself out of the hole you're in. Then, it's once every four days, or if you ever feel... peckish. Doctor Gideon's orders!" He said with a jaunty wave, and the two giants strode out behind him, as the doors slammed shut with a heavy finality.
“Fuck.” Daniel whispered as he stared at the sealed doors, before glancing over to the injection gun and its spare doses. “FUCK!” He shouted, “FUCK YOU!” For a moment he saw red again, and it sent him stumbling as his chest seized with heat again, and sluggishly he moved over to grab the injection gun, lifting it up.
It was a sleek thing, compact and narrow with a CO2 canister slotted into the handle, the magazine well slotted into the top four darts full of a milky-white liquid resting in the clear magazine case. It had a toggle on the side, one that would fire the darts like bullets, and one that would inject the dart and then eject the drained cartridge. There was a small note tucked under the gun that simply said, ‘Neck only!’ With a little smiley face that stared up at him mockingly.
He pressed it to his artery and hit the button after setting it to the injection mode, and he felt the prick hit him hard, penetrating his skin and sending another, colder wave through him. Then he pulled it again, and again, and again, emptying the magazine. And just like that, the bloodlust was gone. The fire was doused. He could think clearly, could move without feeling like he was stuck in tar, could focus and breathe and he could remember!
But there was no time for that. The dead man was coming for him, and he needed his gear now that he wasn’t hopped up on some kind of psychotic break. Grabbing the two spare magazines for the injector, he made his way over to the door Gideon said his gear was behind. Like the other one, this one slid open with a pneumatic hiss, but as soon as he stepped through, he was blasted with high power jets.
“Shit!” He shouted, stumbling forward, as more jets activated, and then more, the patina of dried blood that had coated him washing away, before the hall finally gave way to a series of potent air jets that blasted him dry. The far door opened to what looked like a small locker room, just two walls of lockers and a bench down the middle. There was a door on the other side, but it had been one of the heavy bulkhead doors, and had been welded shut with a dozen steel bars haphazardly. That didn’t matter to David though. What caught his eye was the pile of weapons and armor just sitting there, neatly folded, washed, repaired and readied.
What was more, the emptied shotgun magazines had been reloaded, but all of them were full with the telltale green of grenade shells, eight whole magazines worth, plus one in the Saiga itself. Sitting on them, like a crown, sat a large handgun Daniel didn’t recognize. He lifted it, the gun’s solid steel make heavy in his hands, the words Mateba Autorevolver .454 emblazoned on the side, and a small charm of some kind hanging from the barrel. It was a crescent moon of some kind… no, looking at it now, he could tell that it was a tiny Karambit.
A hint at who had left it for him.
Daniel didn’t know how to feel about that, as he swiftly dressed, but he was glad to find all his batteries charged and his weapons cleaned. It was… oddly touching. If he ever met John again… he suspected one of them wouldn’t be walking away from that fight. But that was then, and this was now. He had a promise to keep, after all.
And despite the sense of crushing terror that gripped his heart about his new reality, he had a job to do. He would kill Umbrella, pull it out, root and stem, and then he would find Gideon and peel him apart to find his mysterious ‘master’. And once they were dead, and it was done? He would put that big gun into his mouth and end the threat once and for all.
000
Rebecca's boots slapped against the ground, the cold concrete echoing with a sharp snap with every panicked footstep as Jill dragged her along. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she struggled to hold onto her rifle, the two women running for everything they were worth through the dark.
Things had gone wrong almost immediately, the five of them being dashed against the oncoming nightmares like the tide against a cliff face. Whatever those things were, they weren't human, a fact that Rebecca was still coming to grips with. They soaked up damage like nothing she'd ever seen, eating up their ammunition as they tried to put the monsters down.
For every one that they managed to drop, two more crawled out of the darkness, and then three, and then four. Before long, there were dozens of the things shuffling around in the shadows, stalking them, charging them, attacking them. Rebecca'd almost been cut off from the rest of them, panicking, afraid, when Jill burst through the crowd and caught her hard by the arm, yanking her out of the encroaching encirclement.
She had Chris's shotgun again, the shells blowing through the cord of black, slimy, rotting beasts, but it was only a temporary reprieve. They'd been split up, Chris shouting at them to find somewhere safe to hole up, that they'd find them. That was when the grenades started going off, flashes popping in the distance and turning the whole mess into a scattered, broken route. Rebecca had tried to force her way to the others, trying to get back to them, but Jill grabbed her by the back of her collar.
"We've gotta move, we've gotta go," Jill screamed, and she was right, as much as Rebecca hated to admit it. As they broke off, the last thing Rebecca saw was some kind of hulking thing that looked like it'd been made out of a dozen bodies or more all melted together like a wax statue charging at them.
They managed to find a small access door, too small and thin for the thing to get through, but it tried its hardest regardless, sending its tentacles after them. Rebecca'd almost been dragged off her feet when the fleshy tendrils caught her vest and snapped her back. Jill had saved her life, right then, interspersing herself between the titanic monster and Rebecca, blowing the tangled cables of slimy meat apart with the shotgun.
The thing, whatever it was, continued to rage, and it crushed the door, collapsed the ceiling, and blocked off the exit. They'd have to find another way around. If they wanted to get back to Chris and the others, if they were even still alive after all that. Rebecca didn't want to think about that though. She had other things on her mind, as she tried to make the impossible make sense.
"What the fuck was that thing?" Jill bit out as she clutched the shotgun to her chest like a security blanket.
"I don't know," Rebecca gasped out, hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath and get her heart rate back down. "Do you think the guys are okay?" she asked shakily, but Jill just shot her a complicated look and glanced away without answering.
"I've never seen anything like that before. The mutations, the... the walking corpses. It doesn't make any sense," Rebecca continued, mostly to herself. "Biology doesn't work that way. It just doesn't." There was panic in her voice that caught Jill's attention, and the woman moved in, gloved hands settling on Rebecca's shoulders to steady her.
Rebecca hated that she had to be coddled like that.
"It's fine," Jill said, the braver of the two of them. "You know Chris, Barry, and the Captain. They're tough as hell. They'll be fine, but we need to find our way out of here. There's no going backwards." There was a bravado there, a confidence neither woman felt, in those words. The silence dragged on as the two just gathered themselves. Jill asked, finally, "You still have your weapon?"
The rifle was clutched tight to Rebecca's chest. She nodded, though she was down to a single magazine. Jill's rifle was gone, just the shotgun remaining, and the pistol on her hip.
"Good. Take these," Jill said, as started stripping her extra magazines out of her pouches and handing them over, fast and practiced. "I lost my rifle out there. No idea what happened to it. Damn thing was yanked clean out of my hands by one of those things. I was lucky enough to be able to cut the strap before it dragged me off, too."
Rebecca tried to object anyway, to hand her weapon over to the ex-Delta operator, but Jill just shook her head. Rebecca almost objected on the spot, but Jill shot her a hard look. The words died on her lips as Jill just started shoving the 30-round boxes into her vest, making them fit and adjusting the straps so they wouldn't snag.
"I've got about a dozen more shotgun shells, just what was on the bandolier. Four mags for the handgun, though. It'll have to be enough, unless we get lucky and find something up there."
That caught Rebecca's attention.
"Up where?" she asked, and Jill just pointed.
While Rebecca had been freaking out, Jill had been scoping things, like the professional she was and the professional that Rebecca wished she could be. Jill just angled her chin, directing the younger woman's gaze across the room. Rebecca followed the point, forcing herself to stop staring at the floor and start tracking what Jill was tracking.
The room they were in was cavernous, some kind of pit at the bottom of some massive mechanical edifice. Looking up there was something that reminded her of a crankshaft, but massive, incredibly so. Big as a building, maybe more. There were shafts of light piercing down from the tall pit, but Rebecca couldn't guess how high it went. But that wasn't what caught Jill's attention. No, the thing that she saw was that there was an access ladder on the far wall, one that went straight up.
"That is our ticket out," Jill said confidently. "Come on."
It was then that Rebecca really took a look around, the light of her gun sweeping the walls. She gagged quietly as she noticed that there were chunks of meat and broken bone down here, a lot of it, scattered in uneven piles and smears that looked like they’d been dragged and stomped. Some pieces still had scraps of clothing clinging to them, fabric darkened and stuck to wet muscle. The walls and concrete floor were stained red in broad streaks, with thicker patches pooled in low spots where it had collected and dried tacky. She tightened her grip on the rifle to keep her hands from shaking.
"It's like a charnel house down here," Rebecca said, and she didn't want to be down here a second longer than she had to be.
"Don't focus on it," Jill said, pulling Rebecca out of her reverie. Jill’s hand caught her elbow and turned her a fraction, lining her up with the ladder instead of the gore. "Don't look at it, don't think about it. That's not going to do you any good here. We gotta stay focused, Rebecca. I need you here. I need you now, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah," Rebecca replied, nodding her head as she shut her eyes and forced the hellish images from her mind.
"Good," Jill said. "That's good, because I don't want to be here alone. This place is already turning into a nightmare. And I don't use that term lightly. I've seen some bad shit, Rebecca, but this is so far beyond fucked that it's redefining what the word means for me." Jill shifted the shotgun higher on her shoulder, checked the bandolier without taking her eyes off the ladder, her thoughts somewhere distant, then put a boot on the first rung.
Those were Jill's parting words as she started climbing. Rebecca followed immediately after, trying not to think of how tired she was already feeling. Her bones ached, her joints were sore, and her hands cramped around the rungs faster than she wanted to admit.
The overloaded pack on her back was weighing her down, but she didn't dare let it go. It was packed with supplies they needed. Worse, Jill had lost her bag, and everything inside of it was just gone. Rebecca could see the tension in Jill's posture, like she was pissed, though if it was their circumstances, herself, or Rebecca, the medic couldn't guess. Maybe all three.
She knew better than to comment, though. She knew Jill was probably kicking herself worse than anyone else could ever expect over the loss, a stupid mistake, she would have called it. Amateur Hour. Rebecca was nothing but Amateur Hour, yet she knew Jill would never say so.
She had to stop multiple times to catch her breath, just hanging there, letting the feeling come back into her arms and her hands. Jill was blessedly silent, not commenting on the delay, but she stayed close enough above that Rebecca could tell she was slowing her pace for the rookie. Just one more concession that made the medic hate herself for getting them all into this just a little bit more. Finally, though, they reached the top after climbing for what felt like forever. The hatch screwed open. Jill flipped it up, and the two crawled out into what looked like a T-junction.
The walls were covered in blood and strips of flesh, and the door had been ripped open from their side, if the claw marks inside it were any indicator. But it was clear, which was the important thing. There weren't any of the creatures there. Rebecca shut the hatch behind them as Jill raised her shotgun and leaned her weight into the corner, listening first, then looking.
"Lights off," Jill said. "We don't need to announce ourselves." Just as well, the two could see fine now. Apparently, the building they were in had power, enough at least to run the emergency lights.
Stepping out, Rebecca noticed the mangled hand crank bent against the wall. And what they walked out into was the scene of a firefight. Jill didn’t linger in the open. She guided Rebecca with a quick touch at the back of her vest and moved them to a better angle.
There were no bodies, not that Rebecca could see, but there were shell casings everywhere. Shotgun, pistol, even some long rifle casings marked with .45x70.
Jill picked one up. Glancing at it through her mask, "These are fresh," she said.
"How can you tell?" Rebecca asked.
"No dust on them, or very little. The brass is still clean. The colors are still bright. No, I'd clock these at about a week old, maybe. Maybe less, maybe more. Give it a day or two. These are new," Jill said.
Jill held the casing between thumb and forefinger for a beat longer as she pinched the rim, checked the stamp with a quick tilt of her wrist, then let it fall back among the others. Her eyes swept the floor in a tight arc, counting without speaking, tracking the spread like it told a story.
"What do you think it means?" Rebecca asked after a moment, but Jill just shrugged.
"Not sure. Somebody's clearly still active here, or at least they were as of a week ago."
Rebecca shifted her rifle higher on her chest and forced her hands to settle into a proper grip. She glanced where Jill had been looking, then checked the corridor again, then back to Jill.
"Do you think it could be Danny?" Rebecca asked after a moment.
There was a pause as Jill seemed to consider the question, before she looked back at the nervous rookie, who seemed a million miles away. In truth, Jill had a hard time imagining how Danny, no matter how actually skilled he was, could survive up here for as long as he was missing. She knew better than to voice it, though.
"Maybe," she said finally. "Anyway, let's move low and slow. We don't know what's been going on here and-" As she said it, they heard the crack of muffled gunfire. Jill reacted first, grabbing Rebecca by the sleeve and pulling her down.
"Against the wall! Against the wall!" Jill said sharply as she flattened out, Rebecca following almost immediately after. The two slid forward to what looked like an access hatch. It'd been ripped out of the wall, but there was enough mangled debris to give them good cover.
Jill planted the shotgun across her forearms and leaned into the cover, keeping her profile tight. She kept her head down, then lifted it just enough to track any movement in the massive atrium beyond without exposing her face. Her left hand came up once, quick, two fingers out and then curled back, a silent move that told Rebecca to hold, wait, and not get stupid. Rebecca tucked in tight beside her, rifle angled toward the opening, trying to find a clean line without giving up her position.
"What do you think it is?" Rebecca asked, as more gunshots rang out. They could hear screaming now, but it was muffled, distant. Jill leaned just enough to peek, then pulled back, jaw set. She let out a silent, hissing breath through her respirator, before answering.
"I don't know, but it sounds like someone's having a party," Rebecca gave a weak smile to Jill, and was about to ask another question when the doors slid open with a pneumatic hiss. Light poured out as three figures ran into the central atrium. They started moving around the crankshaft when a sharp crack rang out and caught the lead figure in the leg, sending him stumbling.
The other two turned as the third screamed and opened fire on the door, but it didn't seem to make a damn bit of difference to the massive figure that strolled out from that distant light. At first... It seemed like a man. He was tall, very tall, almost seven feet, if they had to guess. Unlike the soldiers in tactical gear, He was every bit the implacable wall, patient, unbothered, even as rifle rounds peppered his form. It was like that movie with the robots that traveled back in time, except instead of being a skeleton, this one was armored in solid plate. Helmet, mask, chest, legs, arms, all of it gleaming in steel.
The rifle rounds sparked off of it like it was invulnerable, and to the small-caliber rounds, it might as well have been. The man, if it was a man, seemingly entirely uncaring. He holstered his pistol and raised a shotgun, a boxy, mean looking thing that screamed military to the two STARS officers, though Jill recognized it immediately. He pulled the trigger and the world exploded into fire and light.
The first man was torn apart by the blast. His chest caved in as the explosive round hit and kept going, turning him into a collapsing mess of meat and gear, shredded by the compacted shrapnel. The second man let out a terrified shriek and tried to run, but the boxy black shotgun barked again, catching him in the back. The impact punched through him like the shot had been placed for effect, driving him forward and down, leaving his ribs and spine exposed as he skidded across the ground and went slack.
"Ye fuckin' bastard!" the man screamed as he gripped his leg, trying to crawl across the ground. "Ye fuckin' monster! Ye deserved it! Ye deserved all of it!" the man screamed.
The giant just strode forward, uncaring. He crossed the distance in a moment, and just stared at the ranting soldier, his voice so oddly familiar to Rebecca, but she couldn't place from where.
"Ye're a fuckin' freak! This place'll kill ye! I hope it does! Ye've earned every bit o' suffering!" The words were almost sobbed out, as he let loose another groan. The giant let his shotgun hang, and from his back, he drew a wicked, black tomahawk, almost two feet long with a broad, curving edge and a vicious spike.
"Whit d'ye think ye're gonna dae wi' that?" The man asked as he skidded back on his hands, a pointless effort when the giant reached down and grabbed him by his bad leg and dragged him towards him as the soldier let out an agonized scream.
Jill’s hand came up between Rebecca and the opening, a sharp, quiet signal to stay down and stay put. She didn’t look at Rebecca when she did it. She didn’t need to. Both were frozen at watching this execution, neither willing nor prepared to even try taking on the armored man. Rebecca doubted that her rifle would fare any better, and Jill's shotgun would have been a wasted effort. All it would take was for him to turn that cannon of his on them and fire another of those micro-grenades.
Instead, they watched as the titan brought his knee down into the wounded soldier's stomach, pinning him with a crushing weight. THe man let out a pained groan, as the terminator tore his helmet and mask off, revealing a bearded face that Rebecca could have sworn she knew. It was at the tip of her tongue, but was lost just as quickly.
"Ye think this changes anythin'? Anythin' for ye?" The man gasped out as the giant reached forward and grabbed him by his hair. "One of us will put ye doon. Ye bastard!" were the man's final words as the axe came down.
One, two, three sharp blows, and his head came loose into the giant's gauntleted palm. He put the axe away and lifted the head up to stare into its eyes. Then, in a horrifying feat of strength, the skull gave way and the head was crushed like a melon. Bits of bone and brain splattering on the ground as the giant opened his hands and let the remaining chunks hit the ground with a wet splorch. He wiped his hands almost dismissively on the uniform of the beheaded man.
Rebecca’s mouth went dry behind the mask. She kept the rifle up, as if it would make any bit of difference. Jill stayed still, tracking the armored figure as he paused, satisfied with his execution. Gunfire erupted from above and his head shot up as bullets pinged off of him. He turned quickly and Rebecca saw that there was a backpack on his back, loaded down with weapons and tools, including a massive rifle that looked like it had been carved straight out of a sci-fi flick.
Three men were on the gantry above, all of them opening fire on him, but like before, the bullets didn't seem to do much. The giant grabbed his shotgun again, raised it, and fired once. An explosion of fire and shrapnel detonating above, making both she and Jill flinch. One of the men was dead outright, but the other two ran into a door on the second level, slamming it shut behind them. The giant touched something on his belt, and the two women heard a sharp whine. Then he jumped, clearing almost two stories and landing on the gantry above, the damaged metal groaning under his weight. After that, all they heard was screaming and gunshots, as the two women looked at one another, and Jill summed it up in one, succinct statement.
"What the fuck was that?"
