F.E.A.R: Origins
By Genoscythe
Chapter 9: Epitaph
AN: Sorry this took a little longer than the other chapters. I wanted to get the ending right, so I decided to play through Extraction Point again. That got a little tedious, playing just to get to the ending, so I wrote it from memory instead. I'm sure nobody will mind or even notice that it's not verbatim from the game, but that's largely why this chapter was delayed.
"What is it?" Rowdy Betters Jr. felt compelled to ask. His father had gone silent, probably thinking about Jankowski.
"Nothing," he shrugged it off. "I'll bet they got him too."
"Isn't there some way to contact them?"
"Okay, so you're our new communications expert?" Betters rounded on him. "You've figured out what the fuck's wrong with our equipment already?"
"I just think there'd be at least one way, with all this expensive technology…"
"Well – hey, you smell somethin'?" Betters suddenly stopped and sniffed the air. "Oscar, I swear to God if that's you…"
Not me, Betters! Oscar reverberated.
"Huh." Betters obliged a dire need by his head to be scratched. It had been a long time since the Commissioner had been in the field, but the smell contained some of the distinct qualities of blood – and that was something you never forgot. But there was no blood in sight, and nobody else in the base with them unless the cameraman that had ran away didn't manage to find the exit.
It was probably nothing. "You'd better get goin'. I've got some more ghost stories, but it looks like you don't wanna hear 'em."
You did this to him…a small voice whispered, echoing and re-echoing about the room. You sent him there…Betters felt his head getting itchier. The cameraman standing on the other side of the desk pointed sharply at the ceiling, his face white and quivering. Stopping his display of puzzlement, Betters looked up to see what had gotten the cameraman spooked.
The ceiling had become a pool of blood, and some of it was beginning to run down the walls. Reflections in the surface showed various scenes of battle, all of them centered on F.E.A.R.'s new point man being attacked by Replicas.
I didn't want this for him…the voice continued, setting off a flash of light in the viscous pool that silhouetted the images being displayed. You made them fight each other…
"Uh oh," Betters murmured. He recognized the voice now. "I told you guys about Alma, didn't I?"
"You mentioned her," the reporter breathed. "After all that about appliances and blowing shit up I didn't think it would be worth it to ask." His voice cracked, high and shrill, as the dripping blood reached the floor. "Figured it was a name brand or something. Hey you're the paranormal expert. What should we do?"
"We should leave," Betters told him. On cue, the door slammed shut. "Wow. Uh, Alma?"
Yes…?
"Since you seem to know, can you tell me what's been going on with the new guy?"
They're fighting…Alma whispered. My children are fighting…
"Okay, well, I'll help get him back if you don't kill us, alright?" Betters bargained slowly. "That's what you want, right?"
The air around them suddenly screamed, an anguished, distorted scream. Almost as if by the power of sound, the cameraman exploded into a cloud of red mist. Betters Jr. dove for cover as pieces of Rob splattered in all directions. Where there was once a living, breathing human, now hovered a little girl in a crimson dress.
Both of the room's surviving occupants stared hollow-eyed at the manifestation of Alma's spirit. They didn't know this, but they were looking at Alma's good side. Her bad side, the body that had been locked up and tortured for years, was scuttling through air ducts all across the city and killing indiscriminately.
The difference was that her bad side killed for revenge, and her good side killed to protect her children.
"Hey!" somebody yelled from the other side of the door. Alma swiveled about quizzically. A heavy impact knocked the door off its hinges, and as it fell, Spen Jankowski was revealed with his thumb on the trigger of a gatling gun pilfered from the armory.
"Compel this, bitch!" he snarled, squeezing the trigger and pouring bullets into the office. Blood from the walls flew everywhere, coating the two Betters' as they ducked under any available shelter. Alma jerked at each shot, fading in and out until she was little more than a faint outline. The ammo drum had run dry anyway; Jankowski tossed the gatling gun to the floor and drew a shotgun out of his pants.
"I dunno what you did with Jin, or the new guy, or the whole fucking city…" he began, advancing slowly on the withering ghost. "I don't even know how to really kill a ghost. But I'll be damned if that's gonna stop me from trying." He fired the shotgun, ripping through Alma and causing a gout of blood to bloom from the far wall. Jankowski pumped it with one hand, and pulled the trigger again. The spirit shrank away, and more blood fell to the floor. He pumped it a third time, still advancing on Alma.
His last shot completely evaporated the specter, and as she disappeared, the ceiling returned to normal. The blood on the walls remained, but without a source it started to thin.
Jankowski pumped the shotgun again, just for effect. Betters Jr. and Sr. got up slowly, not sure who had just saved their lives or why they were wearing Jankowski's skin.
"Holy shit!" the Commissioner exclaimed. "It's you!"
"I heard her all the way on the other side of the base. I saw what she could do back at the water treatment plant, so I decided not to take any chances."
"Is that the Turbo Lover, that thing shoved in your pants?" Betters Jr. asked, matching the gun with the description he heard from Betters.
"Yeah, I'm not just happy to see you," Jankowski returned. "Wait, who are you?"
"Rowdy Betters Jr." The reporter held out his hand, which Jankowski was reluctant to shake because it was covered in blood. Betters Jr. understood, and he retracted his hand, shaking off the dripping gore in the process. "I'm a reporter," he clarified.
Jankowski shot a glance at the Commissioner, who shrugged. "He wanted to do a story on F.E.A.R. to go with the Auburn coverage."
"Explain to me what the fuck's happened since I've been gone," he began slowly. "There's little creepy ghost girls running around turning people into skeletons, there's a big hole where a city used to be, and apparently you've procreated sometime in the past, and that kinda scares me more than anything else."
Betters gave him the short version – that the new point man had pursued Fettel, alone, all the way across town, fought up and down ATC corporate headquarters, uncovered a secret underground research facility and subsequently blew it up. Before the dust had settled, the F.E.A.R. team's rescue chopper went down and all communications had been lost for several hours.
The only thing they knew, beyond that, was that Jin had been killed sometime in the aftermath, and the psychic girl behind the whole incident was still at large.
Also, it was just a drunken one night stand that took a turn for the worse when their rubber broke. Jankowski was very relieved to know that the spreading of the Betters gene pool had been largely accidental, but it still didn't change the fact that there was more than one person in the world with the name 'Rowdy'.
It also didn't soften the news of Jin's death.
"How do you know?" Jankowski needled them.
"I've been checking the life support monitors. She's dead, Spen."
"Maybe that little girl's just fucking with you – "
"She's dead, Spen."
"Well…" Jankowski paced the room helplessly, inadvertently crunching what remained of Rob's skull. "Shit!" he hissed. "What – what about the new guy? Is he still alive?"
"Yeah, but I dunno what condition he's in," Betters replied.
Jankowski cocked his shotgun again. "I'm gonna save at least one person today."
"Are you kidding?"
Jankowski fixed him with a level gaze. "I don't kid."
Betters scoffed. "Yes, you do. That's my line."
"I just wanted to try it out."
"Well, it doesn't fit. Don't go killing yourself just because you're mad about Jin," he warned. "She was with F.E.A.R. longer than anyone else, but I'm not letting it get to me."
"That's because you never cared about her," Jankowski pointed out.
"You're absolutely right, but still…" Betters had to fish around for the right way to end that sentence. "I'm not a heartless bastard."
"Prove it."
Betters sighed. "Alright. I'll help you get the new guy back."
Jankowski pumped the shotgun in excitement once more, and they gathered around Betters's desk for an attack plan. They were all laboring under the false assumption that Jankowski did, in fact, know how to kill ghosts.
What the three men had just witnessed was one of history's greatest coincidences. At the moment Jankowski first opened fire with his gatling gun, Alma's spirit started gravitating back toward its body. The two had been separated for too long, and to correct the spatial anomaly, her soul was being forcefully ripped out of F.E.A.R. headquarters and transported to the morgue under Auburn Memorial Hospital where her body lurked.
Her spirit resisted – still hell-bent on vengeance – and its struggle made it appear as though it were being riddled with bullets. Jankowski's final shotgun blast passed harmlessly through it just as the last of her soul drained away, and it looked to all concerned as if this had been the nail in the proverbial coffin.
Firing a shotgun at a ghost could have worked if Hollywood theatrics were involved, which was probably why they immediately believed it. However, the plan they eventually laid out consisted of giving Jankowski as many guns as he could carry and dropping him into occupied territory to lay the smackdown on anyone and anything between himself and the Point Man. Unless every single one of his encounters came with a perfect coincidence, he would be dead faster than Douglas Holiday could say "Hey, what's this thing on the ground?"
However, a tiny ray of hope existed as Alma's two halves combined and she was unable to continue blocking radio transmissions into the city. Betters's computer began radiating static, which slowly congealed into identifiable sounds. A moment later, the Point Man's camera feed clicked on and displayed a hospital morgue in the bottom corner of the monitor.
"Hey, he's alright!" Betters exclaimed. Jankowski pumped his shotgun in tentative hope. Immediately, Betters called up SFOD-D coordinator Shepherd, who filled them in on the situation.
"We've got a Black Hawk en route to Auburn Memorial," Shepherd explained. "The surviving Delta forces set it up as an extraction point. Where's your man now?"
"He's in the morgue," the F.E.A.R. coordinator relayed. He gave instructions to the Point Man, and watched with palpable relief as the camera feed showed him boarding an elevator and taking it straight to the roof. The cables didn't snap, the lights didn't flicker, the elevator didn't stop at the wrong floor. It was the most incredible thing Betters had ever seen before. Jankowski pumped his shotgun in disappointment, realizing that he wouldn't get the chance to use it now.
However, as soon as the Point Man ran out into the setting sun, a host of Replicas burst out of every opening on the hospital roof. He burst into action, running to the nearest pillar so quickly that it made the camera feed look like it was on fast forward. The three men huddled around the tiny computer screen stood in silent awe as the Point Man dispatched every clone soldier thrown at him. He even managed to ignite several explosive gas tanks, something that made Jankowski very jealous.
In no time, all the Replicas were dead (including a heavy armored one, wearing a much-improved model to Jankowski's prototype) and the Point Man was running for the helipad. SFOD-D's chopper had just landed, but as soon as he reached the open doorway, it…exploded.
"Oh, COME ON!" Jankowski bellowed, throwing down the shotgun and slamming his fist against the table. "What the fuck, man? How did that even happen?"
Betters Sr. and Jr. were too dumbfounded to answer. They merely watched as the Point Man picked himself up off the floor and hobbled, lifelessly, to the helipad where rescue had been swiftly replaced by a burning wreckage. It was no doubt the work of Fettel, but the camera was unable to pick up his telepathic conversations so it was hard to be completely sure.
If it had been Fettel, the psychic commander already escaped. The Point Man was now alone on the helipad as he stumbled to the railing and gazed at the smoldering cityscape. Jankowski picked up his shotgun so fiercely that he forgot to pump it.
"That's it. I've had enough of this. If Delta can't do anything right, then I guess we have to."
"Did you…just see the helicopter explode?" the reporter murmured slowly, not turning away from the monitor.
"Yeah. I don't care. This has gotta stop sometime, and I'm gonna make it stop now." Betters still had not said a word. "Are you still with me?" Jankowski asked him.
At length, Betters turned around and looked at him. "Do you know about the secret tunnel?"
"The one that leads to the basement of First Escrow Amazing Real-estate?"
"That's the one. It's not too far from Auburn Memorial. With enough guns, you might be able to make it."
"I'll take my chances," Jankowski muttered as he headed out the door. It didn't bother him that he still knew nothing of fighting a real enemy, or that the closest he had ever come to a firefight was unwittingly using a flamethrower to combat a possessed gasoline stove.
He felt a little possessed himself, possessed by determination. The only reason he never really tried to get away from F.E.A.R. was because he had held onto the hope that he and Jin could get together one day. Alma had taken away that hope, and – quite frankly – it pissed Jankowski off. The moment he stepped back out into the wrecked city, laden with weapons and tactical gear, he believed determination would be enough.
The End
AN: Thank you all for reading this story, and special thanks to those who left reviews! No, I'm not going to make a sequel. As much of a cliffhanger as this is, I honestly don't know where I would go with a sequel. It's probably best for you to use your imaginations anyway. Aaand with that...I'm off!
