The high, piercing shriek of one of the attacking Enzyme IIIs alerted Drake to its position, and he fired. The Guyver-killer kicked its long, muscular legs and hurled itself across the hallway out of the path of the exploding shell. Cursing and reloading even as the explosion blew a small hole in the wall, Drake tried to sight and fire again. The scream of another Enzyme III, and the swiftly silenced scream of one of his fellow Hunters, caused him to orient to his right while he dodged another claw-swipe aimed at his head.
"Henderson!"
The twitching corpse of Larry Henderson, impaled on the large spike at the end of the Enzyme III's long tail, slumped slowly to the floor as the spike was ripped from his chest in a spray of blood and gore. A pair of gargling screams drew his attention away from the carnage in front of him, and Drake turned just too late to do anything but watch as Tanya Harding and Tom Berenson were fatally mauled by a pair of Enzyme IIIs. Another bellowing shriek, this one from almost directly behind him, let Drake know there was another threat.
Turning to confront it, wanting at least to see the thing that was hunting him, Drake confronted the creature: another Enzyme III.
The lithe, tall, broad-shouldered Guyver-killer swiped at him with its sharp claws. Either it had forgotten that its claws actually needed to penetrate to trigger the acid sacs, or the monster was getting tired after the battle it had just fought against what remained of his Hunters, but Drake's second layer of body-armor remained intact. Falling to the floor in an imitation of the mortally injured, Drake made sure he landed on one of the patches of floor clear of acid.
Lying there, he went as limp as he could while still breathing deeply enough not to pass out.
The screams of the rest of his Hunter Unit as they were mauled to death by those acid-blooded monsters filled Drakes ears as he forced himself to lie there. It was like some kind of esoteric torture: those were his people dying out there, but the only thing he could do for them was survive to report the outcome of this mission.
When the blood of one of his fellow Hunters - Drake wasn't quite sure whose since he had his eyes closed - splattered against his face, he took as deep of a breath as he safely could. Any large, obvious movements would get him killed here; he was playing dead so he wouldnt end up being dead, and all he could do was to wait. Wait, while the remainder of his Hunter Unit was slaughtered around him; wait, while he was forced to listen to the sounds of ripping flesh, shattering bone, and the screams of dying soldiers and hunting Zoanoids; wait, while the thick, cloying, coppery stench of blood and the stinging tang of fresh and stale acid filled his nose. He had no desire to die with the other members of his Unit, and more than that he had a mission; controlling his breathing with iron discipline, Drake Shepherd, sole survivor of his Hunter Unit, continued to lie very, expertly still.
When the hallway around him fell silent, except for the sounds of hunting Zoanoids, Drake willed himself to go limp again after having tensed up briefly. There was no way of knowing whether or not those Zoanoids suspected he was still alive, but he certainly wasn't going to be giving them any hints. For just a moment, as one of the Enzyme IIIs began to nuzzle against him like some grotesque parody of his family's old tabby cat, Drake found his resolve sorely tested; he willed himself to stay limp as any of the corpses scattered around him. If this was what he had to do to keep breathing today, it was what he was going to do; he owed it to his people to carry this mission through.
When the Guyver-killer was satisfied he was dead, or at least under the impression he was, the vicious, acid-blooded mutant dashed off in another direction. Drake took a moment to hope that the thing would end up getting itself killed in another encounter with the ACTF. Breathing slowly and deeply for what felt like the first time in days, Drake rose slowly back to his feet, trying to ignore the mutilated, half-dissolved corpses of the rest of his Hunter Unit.
Even when he was forced to walk over the top of Larry Henderson's mostly-intact corpse to avoid a large puddle of standing acid, Drake forced the thought of what he was actually standing on out of his mind. He just kept moving forward, one foot in front of the other, mindless action to take him away from the spent battlefield and all its horrors. The blood on his face had started to dry, caking and making him itch.
He welcomed the physical sensation; it helped distract him from the mingled scents, none of them particularly pleasant. Slinging his Zoanoid Buster Mk II over his back, since he didn't need it for the moment but knew that there would come a time when he would, he kept moving. He could hear the faint sound of marching feet, accompanied by the sound of voices.
He radio had been lost in the chaos, so there was no real way for him to know what he was walking into. The people he was hearing might be part of another Hunter Unit, or they might be one of the many groups of Zoanoids that had been dispatched to secure the White House; he wasn't going to speculate. He was prepared for them, either way: if they were another Hunter Unit, he would fall in with them and make his report to their team leader; if they were simply more Zoanoids, he would fight for as long as his ammo held out. He was comfortably numb, indifferent to either outcome.
When he finally came within sight of the people he'd been tailing, Drake found that they were indeed another Hunter Unit. He probably would have been glad to see them, if he hadn't been pushing all of his emotions aside so he could function. His eyes swept over the Unit, quickly locating their team leader.
He saluted crisply. "Captain Drake Shepherd, reporting for duty, sir."
