Holiday had always disliked her. Jealousy, she supposed. She had a sneaking suspicion that she was always Point Man in order to take the brunt of everything, to be the first one to be brutally slain, torn apart, atomized, and anything in between.
A shower of blood rained upon her. It speckled her goggles, her armor, her gun. It found its way onto a small area of exposed flesh on her neck and trickled down.
She continued firing, screaming every obscenity in her vocabulary, firing at the supernatural bastards. They dragged him around the room, slammed him into walls…
"Get out of here! Get to Jin!"
Static crackled over her COMM. Her heart fluttered as the lights flickered and Holiday was dragged into a back room. The door flung itself closed. She kicked, pounded, smashed the door with the butt of her Penetrator.
"Open the door, you fuckers! Open the goddamn door! Mother Fu-"
She staggered backwards as eyes stabbed at her, and a wrecked-beyond-recognition Holiday was hurled towards her. Her heart was pounding in her throat. Panic and regret set in. Why couldn't it all just go away? Alma, Fettel, Armacham… poof. Gone.
The lights had ceased their strobe-like flashing, and Holiday's shouts and fell silent. She crawled into a corner, clutching her Penetrator like a teddy bear. The blood dripped from the ceiling and pooled on the floor. It ran down the support beams of the shelves. The wooden boxes soaked it up like wine. It made her sick. She felt tired. She closed her eyes and willed her heart to slow.
She hated all of this. Most of all, she hated herself.
---
"Jessica."
The girl in the fetal position with a gun in her arms stirred slightly.
"Jessica!"
The dried blood on her goggles made it difficult to see. It was against combat rules, but she removed her helmet and goggles. "What the Hell…"
Holiday was standing in the center of the pooled and coagulating blood. He looked… normal. He was perfectly whole. No smashed body, no bloodied face.
A wide-eyed, black-haired Jessica stood on wobbly legs, and cautiously approached the impossibly alive Holiday. "Holiday… no… you can't… you can't be alive…"
His flesh decayed, organs and bones exposed themselves, and a sickening laugh echoed in the small storage area. The corpse lingered for a moment, then turned to a black mist.
You didn't actually believe he was alive, did you? So hopeful… so scared. So precious.
The mist closed on her. She felt it crawling across… no, inside her skin. Then it dissipated, vanishing in front of her. She shot a round at the air where it had been. "Fucker, burn in Hell."
Jess took a moment to gather her wits. The one time someone finally fought and traveled with her, he was turned into mush. She sighed, scraped off as much of the dried as she could, and reapplied her helmet. She patted it, checking its security. All good. "See ya, Holiday." She trekked into the unknown of the only open door.