The engines roared overhead as the dropship turned and took off.

Everyone looked around with some dismay, knowing that this could potentially be their first and last official mission, except Corvin. He had his sight on the ground, focusing on something.

"Alright, guys, let's move out." One guy led the way, then realizing that he didn't know the way, stopped. "Where the hell are we supposed to go?"

"That way." Shane pointed to a nearby tree. He seemed to be the only one with a map on him. Didn't they learn to always bring a map when in foreign grounds in the training course? They trudged on, with the ghost slowly following them.

They advanced with more caution and less noise than ever. No creatures, at least no living creatures, were around them, all was quiet. Too quiet. Each man's eyes swerved left and right, up and down. Their hands gripped the guns like a football player running into a mob of ten guys would hold the ball. The usual chitchat that the marines made ceased to exist, it was all about survival, and if a single mistake was made while in hostile territory, it would be over.

Frozen ponds and a blanket of snow covered the ground. A few small shrubs and bushes grew far apart, all covered in the white flakes, as well as a dark green substance. Intrigued, Shane walked up to one of them to take a closer look at it. His first impression was that it was some Zerg blood, but as he neared, his assumption faded away. It was still biological, but it seemed to be more of a weapon than a vital fluid. His left hand loosened its grip on the gun and he reached to see what it was.

"Wouldn't touch that if I were you." A deep, throaty voice warned him through the COM link. He instinctively looked around and found a man standing next to him.

His armor was different in many aspects, especially the color. Instead of brown like most of the outer perimeter defense, the armor was a silvery color. There were some patches of azure, but it was very little. One reason why self-customized uniforms for soldiers were not encouraged was because during a battle within the human race, and that happens a lot, if one guy is colored differently, then it could cause a lot of confusion. However, this was against the Zerg, so it did not matter much.

"What is this?" Shane asked.

"Zerg Queen's spit, not acidic, but very sticky."

Zerg Queens, he felt the familiar chill of fear running down his spine, again. "Thanks for warning me." He held out his hand, "I'm Shane Becker, what's your name?"

"Jamal." It was his only answer, and then gripped Shane's hand in a short handshake. The man turned around, then back, lifted the faceplate, and said in a low tone, "Something's wrong about this-"

There was a sound of a earth ripping open, everyone turned to see the creature. Anyone's first instinct would be a giant cobra, at least a hundred times a regular one, standing steadily on its thick tail. Its head arched forward while the normally harmless flap of a cobra on this one was a hard shield protecting its soft spots. Two razor-sharp scythes for arms extended from beneath this shield, and its head looked more bug than snake with two lower jaws as opposed to one. The hydralisk growled menacingly before spraying a volley of nine-inch spikes at them.

Not that any of the spikes pierced the armors, but automatic systems were activated. Adrenaline fuels, better known as stimulation packs, were injected by a computer-operated system when the aggression-inhibiter reached a certain limit. Triggers were pulled, obscenities were thrown, and bullets whistled through the air. The Zerg warrior went down in ten pieces only a second after attacking.

The seven marines were now looking for fights instead of trying to avoid them. The drug not only made them more alert, it also increased some deep emotions. Shane could feel anger boiling up in his mind, blood-thirst also became apparent, but the anger was stronger. Something had to come, anything Zerg, it was time for revenge. Surely enough, sounds of pounding feet appeared from nowhere and everywhere. All around them appeared small velociraptor beasts.

Zerglings... perfect. His thoughts were far from the fact that they were surrounded by a number of ten to one, instead, he needed nothing more than a fight at the moment. The gauss rifles roared as lead flew out in a stream, and the zerglings started piling up in the distance.

"Concentrate on a single side, you idiots!" A voice sounded above the rest.

Shane thought it a bit rude to interrupt his massacre of the Zerg, but seeing the creatures gaining a lot of necessary ground got him into a bit of thinking. "Sure!" He heard himself scream at the top of his lungs, "it doesn't matter to me which of 'em die, just as long as they do!" The other marines probably thought the same, as all of the bullets began flying in the same direction.

In the matter of seconds, one side of the ring became nothing but corpses. As the adrenaline began wearing off, Shane came back to reality. They were still outnumbered and in only a few moments the small group would be overrun.

"Guys, move back! We can't take them all!"

All around him the other marines grew more conscious to everything. They started backpedaling while still firing, the Zerglings were getting less distance, but would eventually catch up. There must be some way to get out of here, he thought to himself.

They were almost out of perimeter of the Zerg attackers when the ground behind them burst open and out came another creature. It reminded Shane of a centipede with two long legs in the front. The thing sort of gurgled something and gas started pouring out of its mouth.

"Kill that thing! It's a defiler!" He heard Jamal over the COM link.

Guns turned to the gas emitter and the defiler popped open in a messy explosion of flesh and blood, along with a pitch-black fluid. Seeing the other men's armor, Shane could tell that the liquid was some sort of acid that began eating through the armors. He heard his own armor begin to disintegrate and cracking sounds rose around him where the metal started breaking apart. There were other problems besides the effect of the substance. The thick gas around them were still expanding even though the defiler was dead. It became a dark red cloud that concealed everything around them.

Through the now static-filled COM link, he picked up someone's voice. "Where the hell is the way out of- ah!" There was a loud thud to his left, another scream and a thud followed directly to his right.

Shane felt a huge weight slam into his chest, knocking him to the ground easily. A loud triumphant screech erupted from above him. "Go to hell!" He blindly aimed his gun up and fired until he heard the splash of a pool of blood around him.

Something started pulling his body behind him. He tried to aim back and fire, but the gun was snatched from him. Feeling doomed, he let the thing drag him away. The heavy metal armor scratched on the snowy ground loudly. Still he heard the sounds of Zerglings screeching around him, but the marines' guns were silent now. The cloud around him dissipated when he was dragged out of it, and it was the first time he took a glance at the attacker. To his surprise, there was nothing there, he was just being pulled away by an invisible force.

"No, it's me. I knew I had to save your sorry ass from stupidity." The familiar voice entered his senses. "Now get up and start running so I don't have to waste my strength."

"Corvin? Where are you?" He pulled himself up from the ground, carrying the two hundred pounds of metal with him.

In front of him, there came a human-sized blur. It looked as if a hologram was coming into existence, bit by bit. First some spots of various colors appeared, then more, and more, and finally the ghost stood visibly in front of him. That was the reason why they are called ghosts in the first place. A rifle perched on his hands, aimed at Shane's shoulder, the trigger was pulled immediately. If Shane's body had been as big as he was with the armor on, it would've hurt, a lot, but because he was much smaller and the shoulder part of his armor had been eaten away by the acid, he was unharmed.

A cry of pain behind him. Turning, a dead Zergling lay dead on the ground.

"Come on, let's go. All the others are dead, you were the only one I could save back there."

He's right, the Zerglings weren't going to stay in the cloud for a very long without anything else with them. The two of them jogged away, looking back every once in a while to make sure nothing was behind them. At some point, Shane realized his armor had fallen apart onto the ground and he was running in t-shirt and pants. At least the gun wasn't destroyed by the acid...

"Where are we going?" He asked, hopeful that Corvin might know the answer.

The ghost did not answer.

"Corvin?"

Nothing.

"CORVIN?!"

The figure running beside him disappeared into a cloud of blue gas. What the hell? It reminded him of the battle broadcasted one night in the training camps, where a Protoss Hallucination disappeared in the middle of it. At last he stopped, out of breath, looking at what he had with him. A gun, clothes, and a pair of soft leather boots, nothing else. His final companion had left him with nothing more than an illusion. Now he was all alone, in the middle of nowhere, Zerg could be hidden underground anywhere...

"There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home." He mumbled to himself before proceeding to wander the snowy grounds around him, shivering and cursing.