It'd taken them all a good forty minutes to gear up after Adam had requested their help on his mission to the power plant. Joel had accepted almost immediately despite his injuries, Evelynn had been reluctant to even leave the base, and Ellie had just been downright scared, swimming in fear at the memory of the gigantic infected that had taken residence in the bunkrooms.

Evelynn looked decidedly foolish in her survival gear – it was military standard, like Adam's, but she wore it with awkwardness and disdain; clearly field work wasn't her forte. Her slender body was made redundant as she was fleshed out considerably by the clothing, leaving her looking peculiarly large. Adam had decked Joel out with similar equipment, providing a Kevlar vest, tactical clothing and a reinforced military-grade helmet. When Joel had declined the gear, saying he preferred to travel light, Adam had taken no notice and insisted – he even suggested at wearing more gear due to his recently stitched lacerations. They had no clue what they'd find down there, after all.

Ellie had gotten off easily, still carrying a Kevlar vest, but underneath considerably lighter armour that Adam had found to fit a smaller man. It wasn't at all well-fitting, and still too large for her, but she wore it well regardless. She looked at their reflections in the shining surfaces of the operating room, and subtly loved the rugged look it gave them all.

Adam had set them all up first, and told them to wait in the operating room for him to gear-up and prep all the weapons they were going to use. When he strode through the door, he looked downright formidable.

He was clad from head to toe in worn but hardy military gear, with buffed-out shoulder pads that made his already huge build look even larger. His helmet was a dull grey in the light of the room, cast iron with an eye-slot that looked as if it were made from improvised skiing goggles. A large, blue eye was painted elegantly on the forehead of the headgear. He had a respirator built in to the helmet, meaning that unlike Joel's his was fully-faced. He slowly moved around the room, handing everyone else a gas mask and a handful of filters. She wondered why they'd need protection from spores if they were all already infected.

"Not spores." Adam replied, his voice slightly muffled by the helmet but still audible. "Worse than that. The plant'll be abundant with toxic gasses and other fun stuff given off by the reactor. It can kill you just as easily."

He did another loop of the room, handing everyone a small, black device that looked like a radio. He told them how to turn it on, and Ellie flicked the switch upwards. The small black rectangle ticked and clicked slightly every few seconds.

"What is it?" She asked, turning it over in her hands and examining the exterior. Everyone else had already fastened it firmly to their lapels.

"It's a Geiger Counter." Joel said, turning towards Adam with a concerned look on his face. "We expecting radiation?"

"No, but it's a good precaution. That infected didn't look naturally developed. I've seen similar occurrences in mutations; and anyway, it doesn't hurt to have one handy."

"How does it work?" Ellie inquired, still overly curious.

Surprsingly, Evelynn was the one who answered. She walked over, took it in her hand, and fastened it securely onto Ellie's lapel.

"It ticks whenever there is radiation. What we're hearing now is normal; everything on the planet gives it off. The time to be concerned is when it starts ticking a whole lot more, like a firecracker."

"Okay." The girl replied, meeting the woman's eyes.

"If that happens, run. Get out of that area as quickly as possible. And whatever goes down, don't take that off."

"Gotcha."

The woman smiled and stood, and then moved back over to her lover. She saw Joel shoot her an odd look – was it jealously, or hostility?

Before she could discern the difference, Adam had begun handing out the weapons he had prepped earlier. The men carried the most firepower; Adam took his rifle, along with a long, British army camouflaged and silenced carbine, while Joel took the light machine-gun and a sinister looking 12 gauge combat shotgun. Evelynn had opted for a lighter choice, wielding a .22 Hunting Rifle, and Ellie was given an SMG that fit snugly into her hands.

Adam walked over to her, drew his Magnum from his belt, and turned it around in his hands, offering her the hilt.

"You've done a better job with this in a week than I've done in a decade." He gestured it towards her, and she saw his eyes smile at her out the visor in his helmet. "Consider it yours."

"Whoa, no way… are you sure?"

"Positive." She once again took in the beauty of the glistening metal as Adam made final checks before they headed out.

The checks in question took around twenty minutes, and were simple things – turning the electricity off, handing out radios, and making sure everyone was mentally ready for whatever may await them. In a last-minute thought, Adam ran quickly back into his room, and emerged having slightly altered his carbine – a large, underslung rail now held a black cylinder and a complex mechanism on the underside of the gun. When she inquired its purpose, he simply replied with a grin and said "fireworks," leaving her baffled at what it may be.

They walked together out of the airlock doors, and the two men sealed them tightly and moved the cabinets back in front to obscure the deep-green metal of the inlaid entryway. Joel was moving surprisingly easily giving his injuries, and Ellie couldn't get past the thought that maybe Evelynn's satirical ramblings had some truth to them.

Before they moved out of the dilapidated room that housed the entrance, Adam opened a fuse-box and flicked a majority of the breakers, bathing the interior of the cave in a thick darkness. Everything was still and silent, the only sounds being the falling of feet and the whistle of the autumn breeze down the cave mouth. They strode up the cavernous opening together in a tightly-knit squad, with Adam taking point and the others tagging behind. Joel and Ellie were both as confident in their step as he was, but Evelynn was having a harder time, constantly off-balance and tripping on her boots. It wouldn't have bothered Ellie if she hadn't been wearing thirty pounds less gear than Adam or Joel were.

Upon emerging, the day was in full swing. The sun was high in the sky – signalling midday – and the air was pleasant and cool to the touch. They skirted around the front of the cave, slinking through long grasses and flowers, and pulled away the camouflage netting to expose the black coupe to the sunlight. They piled in together, and Adam took driver, with Joel in shotgun and the two girls in the back. The car started gently and purred, seemingly unaffected by the large amount of gas they'd used returning up here. She made the assumption it had bonus tanks as it rolled almost silently out of the cave and onto the meadow. Evelynn quickly jumped out, lowered the netting, and returned into her seat before Adam swung the vehicle around and began down the dirt track.

They reached the B-road in a few minutes, and pulled right onto the highway. The inhabitants remained silent, as people often were before going somewhere they believed to be dangerous. Ellie had time to escape from reality and reminisce, but the thoughts simply wouldn't come. She was in constant turmoil at the situation she was faced with; all three of her friends – the only adults she had ever truly trusted – were slowly turning into mindless lumps of fungus, despite their nonsensical beliefs that they weren't. She felt an overwhelming selfishness that they would die if she didn't help them, but was also uncharacteristically frightened at the realisation that she would die if she did. In both outcomes, she didn't get what she wanted.

The pines were still shooting up out of the ground around them, casting long and spear-like shadows upon each other and the ground around them. The scenery seemed to engage both Joel and Evelynn in an unbreakable vice, both of them sitting there in dead silence, with no inclination to talk. She felt like a good pun was needed, but held back for a reason she couldn't fathom.

The rolled down the road, coming across nothing bar a burned-out barn and a few cars piled directly in their path. Instead of driving around them, the men got out to push them into the ditches on either side, and then retook their places in the vehicle. She felt her tension rising as she saw the cooling towers of the plant become visible above the treeline. She stared at them for a few moments, registering that something was amiss. By the time they had drawn close enough for her suspicions to be confirmed, Adam had already noticed the same thing. He slowed the car considerably, and gestured upwards to the cooling towers.

"The writing that was left for me isn't there, and neither is the symbol." The words contained lashings of caution.

"You mean it's been removed?" Evelynn inquired.

"Cleaned off, I imagine." He turned his head back to the road, and continued with conviction. "And I think I know who did it. Filters in, people, and be alert. I think they're here."

Evelynn clipped a filter into both her gas mask and Ellie's, while Joel did the same. Evelynn helped her with hers, and she saw Joel look disapprovingly in the rear-view mirror; the same look he'd given to Evelynn when she'd informed Ellie on the Geiger counter.

They rolled almost at walking speed on approach to the plant, and to her surprise cut left, bypassing the entrance entirely. Adam pulled up around ten feet shy of a gaping hole in the chain-link, where she guessed the runners had piled through when they'd been alerted the day before. Sure enough, she got out the car and turned north to see Adam's rocky sniper spot protruding from the cliff-face around a kilometre away. In accordance to this, she turned the opposite way and scanned the compound for the gargantuan infected's hulking corpse. To her surprise, she saw nothing; not even blood to signify where the corpse had fallen. She told Adam, and he only replied with a command.

"Safeties off."

She flicked a tiny switch on the side of her SMG from SAFETY to LIVE.

They approached the compound as a group, and deftly moved through the human-sized gap in the fencing to emerge into the cracked concrete courtyard of the plant. To her left, the bunkhouses stood empty, which unnerved her; to her right, the cooling towers soared upwards, obscuring the blueness of the sky.

Everyone was silent as they moved through the complex, apart from the dull ticking of everyone's Geiger counters. The ticking had become livelier, and Ellie had voiced this, only to be assured that it was nothing to be concerned about and that she'd know if it got to dangerous levels. Their first order was to split up and check the bunkrooms for anything of usage they might find. Adam went with Evelynn, and she with Joel – before they split, they agreed to a rule of silence. Adam had his carbine, and he handed Joel his survival knife for quiet takedowns, if nessercary. It proved to be a fruitless exercise, with the two only needing to sift through drawers and cabinets, digging up miscellaneous items of little importance.

"Have you found anything?" She hollered to Joel, still conscious of any possible infected in the vicinity.

"Nope." Came her reply a few seconds later, muffled by the wall that separated them. "There's clothes and equipment, but there ain't a lot else."

She continued digging through the room in silence, now beginning to tackle the large assortment of clothes that were burying an old, mouldy and yellowed mattress that had half fallen off of the bed it had been assigned to all those years ago.

As she peeled away rotting shirts and trousers, she thought about the people who may have worked here. What were they like? How old were they, and why were they here? Did they have families, and did those families survive the onslaught? Did they?

Her pondering was interrupted by the soft hiss of two silenced gunshots from the bunkroom opposite them; the one that directly adjoined to the facility underneath the two soaring cooling towers. Joel had appeared in the doorway to the room, obscuring her view to the window and the exterior compound.

"Did you hear that?" She asked, at alert.

"Yeah." Joel added casually, and slipped Adam's survival knife back into its sheath, the end covered in a viscous crimson liquid. "There're a few runners dotted around the compound; ones that weren't spooked by the gunshots. Ain't nothing to worry about."

"I'm more concerned about this shitty plant." The ticking of her Geiger meter had continued to climb. It had levelled out at a medium intensity a few minutes ago, but this place made her skin crawl, on both a physical and psychological level. Joel didn't seem fazed by it; or maybe she was just imagining things.

"Have you heard from the others?" She asked, returning to peeling damp and moss-covered clothes off of the rotting mattress. To her annoyance, she found shortly after arriving that she'd wound up with the one faulty radio.

"No, nothing." He added, getting on his knees and helping her as he always did. "I'm guessing they've found about as much as we have."

That statement could not have come at a more ironic time if they'd tried. Upon finishing his sentence, Joel scooped up a mass of t-shirts to reveal the bloody hand of a corpse protruding out the underside of the toppled mattress.

"Step back." He said forcibly, and she did as she was told. He wrapped his huge hands around the corners, and heaved the rotting bed-cushion away from the decidedly not decomposing corpse. He threw the mattress to the left, sending it to land softly against the plasterboard wall with a dull thud. Kneeling closely to the body, he went in for a closer inspection.

At face value, it could be anyone, or anything, but there were two aspects that set this corpse aside from others.

"This fella died recently." Joel began, carefully gripping the wrist that had been protruding and raising it slightly. Both the joint of the wrist and the elbow moved with ease.

"His body ain't locked up, meaning he can't have been dead more than an hour. Also, look at his face. See anything weird?"

Upon examining, she did notice something amiss. Clickers and other older infected were easy to identify, and newer ones were essentially just human corpses with a noticeable orange tint to their skin tone. This corpse was deathly white, like crisp snow, or the floor of Evelynn's operating room.

"Holy shit." She said, leaning down next to Joel. "He wasn't infected."

"No, he wasn't. He was killed."

He plucked the radio out of his pocket, and gently pushed down a small black button on the side of the device.

"Adam, you there?"

"Copy." Came the crackly reply, shortly afterward. "What is it, Joel?"

"We've got a stiff."

A strange noise reverberated briefly down the line, reminiscent of a sigh.

"Yeah, we've got some too. Regular people, right?"

"Right."

"Shit. Alright… meet us in the bunkroom across from you. Looks like there's an entrance here."

Without further hesitation, the two stood and left the room they were in, proceeding back down the hallway to the exit a few meters away. As she glanced back, Ellie saw the corpse of the infected that Joel had bloodied his knife on.

They broke out into the afternoon sunlight to find Adam and Evelynn leaning up against the side of the bunkhouse they'd explored. Evelynn was exactly the same as they had left her, although she looked rather flustered, and Adam's visor was splattered with blood. As they approached, he wiped it off of the reinforced plastic and moved to meet them. He was about to speak when the tactical watch that he was wearing beeped dully.

"Time for your shots, kids."

The three adults each drew a syringe from Adam's backpack, filled with the same vicious transparent liquid, and injected it straight into the thickest vein in their arms. They each reacted in different manners to the stuff – Evelynn gave it no second thought, Joel looked moderately uncomfortable, and Adam swayed slightly as he stood, almost delirious from the medication. When he was asked about his well-being, he simply shrugged the question off with a gruff "I'm fine", and the group made their way into the bunkhouse together. It was an identical clone of the one she and Joel had ventured into, excluding one anomaly – a large black turnstile door that was inlaid into a solid concrete wall to their right. The words 'WARNING – BIOHAZARD' were written on a black and yellow strip above the entry, their letters having faded almost to non-existence over time. An ominous white spray-paint skull and crossbones hung on the face of the door.

Her Geiger counter flickered gently against her chest.

"Here it is." Adam issued, his voice swimming in apprehension. "There isn't any telling what we'll find in there, but presume combat. Everyone get ready. Joel, help me pop this thing open."

The two burly, geared men moved to the door together, heaving and straining on the black metallic turnstile that had rusted into place over the years. With enough power put in, the wheel gave way, and the bolt clanged loudly back into the door. The four piled inwards, immediately greeted by a vast expanse as a huge room exploded out before them, in complete contrast to the black bunkrooms they'd been in. Before she could take another step, the Geiger counter became slightly livelier, and a foul smell hit her strongly.

"Ew, what the fuck is that?"

"Gas from the reactors!" Evelynn said, her voice raised. She whipped her mask from her backpack and slid it down over her face. "Masks on, now!"

They all bore the constricting plastic implements and listened to each other's breathing, exaggerated by the mechanisms that filtered the air that was breathable into their noses. They pushed through the building as a tight squad, descending a flight of stairs in single-file and then reforming at the bottom. This time, Joel had taken point, with Adam in the rear – both men had their guns primed and raised, while Evelynn strode about the atrium, seemingly at ease. Ellie kept her right hand wrapped around the hilt of Adam's .44, just in case, the SMG slung over her shoulder.

They meandered slowly through the vast warehouse underneath the first tower, observing the mass of worn and corroding computers that encircled a large hole beneath the bottom of the concrete spire. At one point, she guessed they may have been used by hundreds of normal people, regulating the pressures and energy outputs of the reactors. The pit descended at least fifty meters, and she could hear a dull pulsing sound from the dark depths. As the approached the edge and leaned her hands cautiously on the railings, her Geiger counter kicked up another step. She shuddered at the thought of having to work in such close proximity to such a deadly thing on a daily basis – to her, it seemed like elongated suicide.

"Ellie." She heard Joel's protective tones issue from behind her. "Get away from there, kiddo. It's not what we're here for."

She chose not to respond, simply returning to his side. They were just behind Adam, who was fiddling with one of the worn-out monitors that had lived on a rotting desk for the last two decades. She glanced further forwards, and saw Evelynn ascending another set of stairs that led into a peculiar hexagon-shaped viewing booth that sprouted from the room. She eased the rusted metal door open with a quiet screech, and slipped inside. She lost sight of the black-haired woman, until her voice came over the intercom, echoing softly around the massive room.

"Adam, I found something."

"Evelynn?" He asked, placing his hand to his radio and talking though his helmet into the microphone. "What are you doing?"

She didn't reply, the intercom instead being dominated by another voice that she didn't recognise. The message it carried bounced around the room, overwhelming the dull buzzing of whatever was down the gigantic pit behind them.

"So we've been holed up in this shithole for a week, waiting for something... anything, from the Watcher. If he's in this area at all, then he sure as hell isn't interested in us. Anyway, we had a scare from the red-rings down at the town again. Amber says that if the bastards want that town, they need the plant first. Hell, if they want it, the can come and fucking-"

There was a massive crash as concrete and metal were torn out of the walls. The glass panels of the hexagonal office exploded outward suddenly, and a hulking figure stood in the gigantic crevice it'd made. A piercing, blood-curdling roar tore through the offices, eliminating any other noise, and the beast jumped down, smacking into the cold steel of the floor. Another one of the mutated behemoth infected had arrived for dinner.

"Evelynn!" Adam shouted, seemingly careless towards the massive infected lumbering towards him. The beast began to charge, and she saw Joel crash into the side of the Scotsman, sending them both reeling past desks and computers, narrowly avoiding the trajectory of the grotesque hulk. They were too slow to get back off the floor, and the infected rounded on them, trudging fiercely to where they both struggled underneath the weight of their gear. Without hesitation, Ellie climbed the nearest desk and emptied the contents of the Magnum into the beast's back. It turned, enraged, and crashed through furniture towards her. As it ran, it was pursued by Evelynn who was sprinting towards them both over the catwalks hanging from the ceiling.

Ellie ducked and weaved around tables, giving the pulsating behemoth a difficult pursuit. She deftly loaded another six shots into the chamber of the revolver, and continued on her escape course. She was about to vault over another desk when one of the monitors crashed into her backpack, sending her sprawling to the floor.

Before she knew it, the beast was on top of her, rearing back one of its razor-sharp fungal arms to finish her off.

She looked upwards and screamed in terror to see Evelynn leap over the railing of a catwalk and land on the creature's back, retaining a grip in its flesh by wedging a thick combat knife in the pocket just between its shoulder blades. She yanked it out, getting a few vicious stabs in before the beast shook its shoulders and flung her off, sending her cascading across the room to land hard on a desk a good ten meters away.

The beast lowered itself onto Ellie again, and raised its arm for the final strike. The last noises she would hear were its ragged breathing and the sound of her Geiger counter going ballistic.

Suddenly, her situation changed, almost as if it were divine intervention.

Her hearing was deafened as an Anti-Materiel round tore through the air a hair's width away from her face, ripping out the majority of the beast's fungal plume. It tumbled off of Ellie, and was about to stand up, only to be forced back to the ground by a volley of silenced bullets that punched tiny holes into its bloated flesh. She turned to see Adam walk up to the wounded monster, flick a switch on the underside of his carbine, and squeeze a small trigger with his gloved hand.

A swirling stream of red, orange and yellow blossomed out of the under-barrel attachment, coating the beast in garments made of rippling colours. The heat was immense, and she felt sweat streaming in rivulets underneath her mask. The creature writhed and squirmed, screeching the entire time, until it eventually collapsed to the floor, black and smouldering. The smell it gave off was not filtered by the mask, and was nigh on unbearable. A black cylinder popped out the side of the mechanism with a dull ping, and the Scotsman spoke.

"Fireworks." She heard.

Strong hands wound their way under her shoulder blades, and she found herself on her feet, a man wearing a gas mask looking into her eyes through the foggy plastic eyelets.

"You okay, kiddo?" The voice asked. She could barely comprehend the speech, her head still ringing at how closely the gigantic bullet had flown by her face. As her vision settled, she saw it was Joel in front of her. She hugged him tightly, and noticed the green-and-yellow patterned sniper rifle slung over his back. Joel must've picked up the first weapon available when he and Adam had been downed, and immediately rushed over to save her.

She drew out of the hug, and nestled her hand in his. The two began walking over to the Watcher, who was carefully helping his mistress off of the desk she'd suddenly found herself thrown into. They left the ember-covered corpse in the dust, its scorched flesh still smoking.

"Ah, fuck…" The woman cursed, getting up with a degree of pain. She was alive, but her walk had gained a limp. The Watcher helped her down, and she threw her arm over his shoulder, unable to walk on her leg.

Joel approached with Ellie, and spoke to them bluntly.

"I don't know what the hell that was, but what say we quit this place before another turns up?"

"I agree." Adam said, surprising Ellie with his eagerness to leave.

"Did you get what you came for?" She asked, still confused.

"That and more." He said, carrying his limping lover next to him and moving back towards the flight of stairs they'd entered from. "Did you hear your Geiger counter when that thing was near you? It almost broke the fucking thing."

"I know." She uttered following them, her hand grasping the small black rectangle fastened to her lapel.

"That… that fucking thing…" Evelynn began, still panting from her endeavour. "… was not a natural occurrence. Someone's been playing god, here."

"I'd gathered." Adam countered, not in the slightest bit winded from his crashing fall with Joel. "And, if Amber's running the show in that town, we've gotta make sure it's still in one piece."

"Adam," Evelynn started, a discerning tone in her voice. You heard the audio. 'If they want the town, they need the plant. Looks to me like they have the fucking plant!"

"Had." Adam retorted. "I doubt they got on too well with Mr Giggles back there. His arms were covered in blood that wasn't any of ours."

Joel cocked the machine gun, and brought it into his arms, ready and alert for anything else to come.

"Then how's about we bug out before we find its creators, or worse?"

"My… my sentiments exactly." The black-haired woman responded.

They moved considerably faster than before, scaling the staircase and easing out of the doorway in under a minute. They locked it firmly behind them, the bolt slamming the shut, and made their way out into the courtyard. Evening had set in by now, and the pinkish orange sky was a welcome sight compared to the dingy blue-black steel that had covered the ceiling of the immense office. They were halfway across the compound and almost back to the car when a small black cylinder landed at their feet.

The world was suddenly white, and a piercing, high-pitched beeping was all that could be heard. Ellie didn't even remember falling onto her back until the colours returned and she found herself staring up at the orange and pink-streaked canvas that was the evening sky.

She leaned upwards on her elbow to see that the population of the courtyard had vastly increased. In front of her, nestled by the side of the facility, was a black armoured van with a red circle emblazoned on the back doors. She spiralled her head around to see that they had been surrounded by men dressed in urban-camo, military-grade gear, all bearing the same marking on their chests. Joel was standing behind her, his machine gun and rifle on the floor and his hands behind his head. He shot her a glare that said 'don't try anything'. To her west, she saw a standoff.

Adam was standing in a marksman's position, breathing heavily through the respirator of his helmet. Two red-rings lay dead beside him. He had his carbine trained at the head of another who was wearing a balaclava, and standing up tall with his hand on Evelynn's left shoulder. The woman was standing upright, her onyx-black hair a mess, tears and red marks scoring her face. Every now and again, she shuddered under his touch. Whether she was crying due to her situation or the pain in her leg, Ellie couldn't tell. A single, perfect red circle was hovering on the elder woman's forehead, bringing on a whole new man-made sense of terror.

"Let her go." The Scotsman growled, his voice filled with fury.

"Why would I do that, Watcher?" The balaclava man answered, replying with an almost mocking tone.

His voice was thick with the tones of a Russian.

"I wanted to see if the rumours were true." He continued, moving towards Evelynn, drawing his head closely into hers, then kissing her menacingly on the cheek and lingering there for a moment. She shuddered in fear, and Ellie could almost feel Adam's anger surging from his body.

"Hello, darling." The Russian continued in a sultry tone laced with madness. "What might your name be?"

She didn't respond. The muscles in the man's face tightened into a scowl beneath the balaclava.

"What is your fucking name?" He screamed, right in her ear, displaying a sudden change of personality at the silence he'd been given.

"E-Evelynn." She uttered timidly, a fresh set of tears rolling down her face.

"Evelynn." He articulated, rolling the name around in his mouth and suddenly reverting back to the evil flirt he had been before his outburst. "Evelynn." He said again with lustful courtesy, then continuing.

"Now, my darling, I'm going to need your assistance. You see, your lovely friend over there is most intent on force-feeding me a few bullets." She saw him pout patronisingly, like he was treating the situation as a game. "But, I'm afraid I'm not particularly hungry. Well, at least not as hungry as my little pet in the power plant, per se. Mutation does wonderful things, don't you agree? I'm sure that little town to the south will love to cater for... say... five of them?"

The Watcher kept his carbine trained on the man's covered face. At this distance, missing was impossible.

"However, if your lovely companion is truly overwhelmed and wants to satisfy my hunger and save the day, I'll make sure to do the same for you, if you catch my meaning." He traced his finger around the flickering red circle on her forehead, and Evelynn shuddered again.

"What… what do you want?" Evelynn managed, stuttering slightly.

The man mocked surprise, and behaved in a manner similar to a court jester. It was obvious to Ellie that he had a fair few people bouncing around in his skull, and none of them particularly pleasant company.

"Why, my dear, I only want confirmation."

He turned to face Adam, and his tone changed completely, redisplaying his bipolar nature.

"There are the terms. Now, lower your guns and take of your helmet, or I'll fill your bitch with lead."

Adam stood there, transfixed on the target in front of him. A lifetime seemed to pass, the tension rising with every millisecond. Eventually, the veteran gave in and threw his carbine to the ground at his feet. One of the red-ringed men moved up and scooped it out from under him.

He placed a gloved hand under the rim of his helmet, and pulled it away from his head. His sweat-soaked auburn mop fell around his face, splattering his forehead with damp. His green eyes were bloodshot with fury.

The balaclava man cackled and pointed at him, laughing maniacally. When he'd had his fill of comedy, he peeled the balaclava from his own face, and revealed a bald head… along with the unmistakable facial scarring of the man who'd been removed from the picture of Adam's squad. The realisation suddenly hit her.

"Pyotr." The word dripped from the Watcher's mouth like poison.

"Adam! Oh my, it's been… such a long time! Of course, it could've been as short of a time as I wanted. You're very open with where you tell your minions to leave their callsigns." He made a sound similar to a tut, like a scolding mother. "Naughty boy."

Adam stood there in silence, carving holes into the man with the intensity of his stare.

"Now, Mr Cassel, I'm going to lay down some ground rules, if you'll oblige me."

He strode past Evelynn, who was stills standing stock still with the red dot trained on her skull.

He got so close to Adam that she thought the Scotsman was going to kill him then and there.

"Offhand, I'm very disappointed you managed to kill Krass. It's such a shame - he was my favourite idiot of them all." The lunatic feigned sadness. "You shouldn't hurt my operations like that, Watcher." He switched personalities, the aggressive side ploughing forward once more.

"Ever." The word was spoke with an immense and sudden hatred. "If I hear of a single death or sabotage… I'll take her, carve her up, and mount her on a pole." He smiled villainously in Adam's face. "Ring any bells, Watcher?"

The Scotsman said nothing, and spat at his feet.

"I thought you'd like that." He chuckled, and backed away. "At least I know when I've worn out my welcome. Fare thee well, сука." He rounded Evelynn again on his way back to the armoured truck, and slapped her rump, laughing hysterically like an immature child. The vehicle roared into action, and he was in the process of climbing in with his soldiers, when he doubled back, a new manipulative thought forming inside his crazed skull.

"Actually," He began, "I need an investment to insure your co-operation." He gestured towards Joel. "Bring the dog."

The soldier behind Joel moved forward, and pressed the barrel of the gun he was wielding into the small of his back. He issued a command, but it was too muffled by his ballistics helmet to be audible. She saw Joel glance over to her, and the look he gave told her everything she needed to know.

"Fuck this." Joel growled, sharply spinning around on the soldier. He grabbed the weapon the red-ring was carrying, deftly rotated it, and peppered the man full of bullets in mere milliseconds. She heard the clicking of a bolt to her right, and she hastily raised the Magnum that was still in her left hand, hidden under her jacket. She had lost track of the SMG she had been carrying when the beast had toppled her.

She followed the laser sight to its source, and fired. The large bullet flew quickly, easily tearing through the sniper's head, and exploding out the other side in a mist of crimson. He had been positioned poorly, not ten meters away from them, behind a tree. The mediocre cover had barely concealed him, and she saw the laser sight fall to the floor along with the rifle it was attached to.

At the sound of the gunshots, Evelynn hit the deck, and Adam threw himself into cover by the bunkhouses. Joel scooped the LMG off of the ground, and proceeded to fill the soldiers that weren't near the van full of high-calibre holes. The three by the truck returned fire as Pyotr jumped in, and then followed suit after him. She loosed another three rounds at the truck, one flying through the gap in the closing doors and striking the lunatic just below the knee. She saw him stumble, and almost fall out the back of the van as it accelerated, only to be pulled in by one of his soldiers.

The last thing she witnessed before the doors slammed shut fully was the rage on his morbidly scarred face as he made eye contact with her. The truck swung around the corner, and pulled away. She was left in an eerie and unnatural silence, save for the heavy breathing and the dull flickering of the Geiger counter on her lapel.