The demoman was struggling to fight off sleep by the time Sorrell returned with Pyro. He looked up and stared at them with his one dark eye for a few moments.

"Where's Johnny?"

The Frenchman shook his head, "Hugo got him. He's dead."

"Oh," Duer frowned and looked down, "damn."

"How has Brandon been doing?" Sorrell changed the subject. The soldier would be just fine in the morning anyway.

"Ach, he's been sleepin' like a baby. I mean take a look at what he's doin'!" the Scotsman gestured towards the scout, who had rolled onto his side and was sucking on his thumb. Sorrell couldn't help but smile.

"He looks better at least. With three of our teammates dead, it would be risky to put the strain on respawn at night. We don't want any permanent deaths anytime soon."

"Aye, that's true," Duer briefly held his beer up in agreement and started drinking. After a few gulps he paused, "wait, three? I thought it was only Boggy and Johnny!"

The spy shook his head, "I managed to kill Hugo. Turns out he's not immune to bullets in the head."

"That's good to hear!" The three mercs turned to see their engineer walking in, followed by the medic, "at least we can take him out if we needed to."

"Yes, but killing Hugo won't fix his problem. In fact, from what Max und I have found from zhe samples, nozing will!"

"Wot?" Sorrell frowned and shook his head, "that's impossible!"

"I'm afraid not, boy. Whatever caused our sniper to change into that thing was infused to his DNA. It's part of him."

"Dammit!" the spy growled. Pyro sagged at the news. Did this mean that they weren't getting Hugo back?

"His DNA, huh?" Duer got up from his place on the floor, "and he has a daughter, right? What if she had some of that? It would be dangerous to just let her run around in the normal world. She'd be taken in by the government to experiment on or somthin'."

"I doubt that. After all, she's under Mann co.'s protection," Dolphus waved his hand, "however, I think it would be best if she was brought here for examination. We need to learn more about Hugo's situation after all."

Sorrell hummed and looked down, "by the way... doesn't any of this feel a bit... familiar?"

The mercenaries looked at him for a moment. they seemed a bit surprised, but yes. This did indeed feel familiar.

"I wonder if this has happened before," Max scratched at his chin, "Like maybe when... his wife died."

Duer nodded, "and his daughter was forced to leave to a foster home."

The pyro mumbled incoherently. Max nodded in agreement.

"Yeah... she didn't respawn either. I don't remember what killer her though."

"And why zhe respawn failed to revive her," Dolphus added.

The remaining group stood in silence as they tried to put together what happened, but none of them could remember the cause of Hugo's wife's death.

...

Hugo let out an irritated growl. He had no clue what just happened, but his forehead suddenly hurt real bad. He almost fell back from how sudden the pain was, it was like he had been shot, but didn't die. Or maybe he was dead. He wasn't sure.

"Bloody hell," he rubbed as his head to try and ease the throbbing pain. Yeah, he was probably dead right now. Respawn was certainly taking its sweet time reviving his ass. He wanted to get out of here, eat some food, take a nap in his bed, put some bloody clothes on. Hell he even missed taking a piss in a jar. It was a stupid thing to miss, but he missed it anyway.

Hugo slightly chuckled to himself as he recalled throwing a jar of jarate at a new BLU spy. Bloody spook looked so mortified when he realized what he was covered in.

The memory quickly faded though, and with that, Hugo sighed. He crossed his arms and let his head fall back as he stared blankly at the black sky. How long? When would he leave? He wanted so badly to be out of this place.

"I want to go back home..."

Hugo flinched when his vision went white. He blinked in confusion. He was suddenly lying on his stomach, on a cold metal floor. He could hear two other voices that he recognized to be the soldier and heavy.

He slowly sat up and looked towards them, only to hear John scream as a pair of hands wrapped around his throat.