PIC: "Operation Light-up."

Objectives:

Determine the exact nature of the paranormal threat.

Prevent the paranormal threat from destroying the world.

Find out if the yanks make good tea.

Current mission status.

The operative has made contact with the paranormal threat. He is now proceeding with SFOD-D operative Douglas Holiday and the FEAR Point Man to their prearranged extraction point.

Further to this, preliminary investigation team has gone missing. All attempts to re-establish contact have failed.

Genevieve Aristide's Penthouse. 3 hours earlier.

Sometimes, it is easier to say "investigate" than to do it. This was the case in the experience of recently-transferred-from-the-Royal-Marines-and-regretting-it-already trooper Aaron Lewis, who was currently being shot at by a bunch of Delta Force twats who seemed to have mistaken him for Armacham security. His mate George Stewart (George was a good bloke – polite, good shot, calm under fire. In every way he was the best of the UK's armed forces) had unfortunately taken a round or five to the head from the ATC black ops bastards.

"I keep yelling that I'm with the fucking British Army!" he yelled. "I'm here to investigate the bloody ATC mess!"

They weren't listening. Typical. He sighed, and unleashed a spray of fire designed to make the morons take cover. They must have been watching too much in the way of Hollywood movies, where British actors almost always played the villain. Meh, if they wanted to try and shoot him down, so be it. He was a marine. He would deal with it. He always dealt with it, even being transferred to this fucktarded excuse for a unit. No, he could deal with anything, and when he found out who the fuckers were who were shooting at him, he'd beat them fucking senseless.

Of course, there was, as there always was, one thing he didn't expect, nor did he have the ability to deal with it if it ever did happen. The thing he really, really could not deal with was a fucking massive nuclear (or at least it fucking looked nuclear) explosion going off right near the window he was looking at.

The last thing he heard was his own voice, going "oh shit," then the darkness took him.

When he woke up, he was in a hospital bed. It was not good. He didn't like hospitals, not one bit – he was a soldier and if you were in an hospital, that usually meant bad things had happened to you.

He sat up, and found himself still in uniform. He blinked, and looked up.

A yank in Delta Force uniform was looking at him. A fair few thoughts, most of them unpleasant, considering the fact that Delta Force jocks had shot at him before, went through his head, but he decided on the most polite, and therefore most stereotypically British attitude.

"Hello," he said, wincing slightly at his accent's over-polite Received Pronunciation. Nobody took him seriously until he started breaking heads because he sounded like he should be reciting Shakespeare. He could, in fact, recite Shakespeare, but he preferred Rugby.

"Hi," the yank said, breaking Lewis's reverie. "I'm Sergeant Michael Becket."

"Private Lewis," Lewis said in reply. "Paranormal Investigation and Combating, former Royal Marine."

"Nice." Becket didn't seem very talkative. Well fine, Lewis didn't feel like talking much either.

"Wanna go find a gun?" Lewis said after a moment.

"Hell yes," Becket smiled. "I thought you'd never ask."

Meanwhile, back in the warehouse section, the rag-tag little team of the FEAR Point Man, Douglas Holiday and Jon Davison wandered into the large, rectangular room; and a phone was ringing.

"Maybe it's somebody asking about the double glazing," Jon deadpanned.

"Somehow I doubt it," Holiday replied, having gotten used to the wisecracking. The Point Man picked up the phone – and a scream ripped through the room from the phone.

"Ok…" Holiday said.

"Heard worse," Jon said with a deadpan voice.

Have you?

Jon ignored the voice of Fettel as the others walked ahead of him. They came to a great big open space, where a few random noises started occurring in a part of the scaffolding.

"Point, go check that out," Holiday said.

"Are you nuts?" Jon said before the Point Man could follow the order. "This is a CDC situation. We have to stick together."

"We have to know what's running around," Holiday said calmly.

"We know what's running around," Jon replied. "CDS, CDC, and other ugly dead things. I don't see that we need to know more."

"Agreed," the Point Man said, and Holiday sighed.

"Come on then," he said. The three of them walked up to a gate, and Holiday opened it, before the three of them were suddenly forced to take cover by Replica fire.

"Bollocks!" Jon yelled, firing back, catching two Replica's quickly. The Point Man started – and Jon couldn't believe this – shooting dozens of them, spraying fire so quickly and accurately that it was almost inhuman.

"What the hell?" Jon said. Holiday ran by him, giving him a look that clearly said, "he does that." Jon shrugged, and followed the Delta, as the Point Man quickly slew every Replica in sight. He followed the two through two more rooms filled with the dead – a sad sight, and an ugly one – before coming to a door that looked buckled.

"Some of these people killed each other," Holiday said, looking over the corpses of the people who had tried to take shelter here.

"No shit," Jon said quietly. Holiday walked over to a door. He looked to the Point Man, and raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not exactly burning with curiosity about what's on the other side, are you?" he asked.

Jon shook his head, but Holiday kicked the door in anyway, and the Point Man followed him in. Jon followed slowly, seeing the massive warehouse room, and then he heard Holiday say "this is not right…"

He arrived as they came to an open space in the warehouse with blood covering it.

"Stop," he said. "That's a target, right there, in the blood."

Holiday looked down at the blood, and looked back at Jon.

"So…?" he asked.

"So, if you stand in it, shit will happen," Jon said. "We are in a HMS."

"Her Majesties Service?" Holiday asked.

"No, Horror Movie Situation," Jon clarified. "Stand in that target, you're screwed; the trope is quite specific."

"Oh come on," Holiday sneered. "You telling me that you think this is a horror movie? What are you, retarded? Here…"

And with that, Holiday stood in the target, hands on hips, and glared right at Jon with a self-satisfied smirk.

"See?" he said after a moment. "Nothing goddamn happened."

And the lights went out.

And then the lights started flashing off and on, revealing in due course, creepy dead shit.

Then Holiday lifted, and was thrown into a wall, then a ceiling, and chucked around. Jon watched the Point Man try to help him, and watched him fail.

"I did warn you," Jon said softly, but he didn't raise his voice. "Damn."

The Point Man ran out of the room. Jon skirted the target, and walked after him, in time to see Holiday's body dragged through the window. And explode, of course.

"BUD," Jon said. "Bloody Ugly Death."

The Point Man said nothing, instead choosing to vault a fence. Jon decided to follow him, because quite frankly, there wasn't much else he could do.

He briefly wondered how the rest of PIC were doing.

Lewis hated creepy dead shit. Which was particularly bad given that it was technically his job to deal with creepy dead shit, but just because he hated it didn't mean he was bad at dealing with it, just that he wished he didn't have to.

The creepy dead bitch was coming right at him, having already killed the poor, unfortunate Fox, and Lewis had no other option.

"Bullshit…" he said, aiming the gun, "so alright, you ugly...dead bitch! Come here and eat Brit-issue lead!"

He fired at her. She looked at him, unconcerned with the bullets. And then she was right in front of him, and grabbing at his throat.

"Any last words…?" and there her voice was, whispering in his head; he hated it, it was horrible, he hated it.

"Yeah," he said. "Fucking speak up you bitch."

And then darkness took him.