The blackened, poorly varnished and thin wooden floorboards creaked underneath his weight. Every carefully calculated and patient step downwards with his blackened, blood-stained boots was made to generate the perfect amount of sound, in an effort to stay undetected. The pouches and pockets strapped to his belt and harness shifted gently with an elegant, calm draft. The window at the end of the hall swayed back and forth, making a rhythmic thud every few seconds. Just beyond the window, the sound of a cool breeze slowly turning into torrential winds echoed down the hall, and throughout the nearby rooms.
Through the lenses of his mask, he carefully inspected every inch of the poorly lit hallway, each step closer to a room, growing slower, until swiftly and quietly stepping in front of the door, his eyes darting around the room looking for any movement. For each trashed guest room, empty bathroom, and locked door, the tension rose. He felt his blood begin pumping faster and faster. Left ajar at the end of the hall, next to the window and an upward staircase, sat the final door of the 1st Floor West Hallway. Carefully pushing it open, the flashlight attached to his custom-designed Five-Seven, Delta Edge, engulfing the entrance to the room like an instantaneous tsunami. Past the sheen of the three-pronged sights at the barrel of the gun, Ghost aimed gently, his hand squeezed tight on the grip, finger gently caressing the trigger, ready to fire at an instant. His hand felt loose through the thick black combat gloves, and so he gripped tighter, almost enough to cut the blood supply from his fingers.
Carefully entering the room, almost entranced in the fear and the tension, he turned the corner, and suddenly the echoing sound of wind was replaced by a soft chewing. Almost immediately, his light overcame the gruesome image of a monstrous creature- nowhere near human in anything but vague shape, hunched over the gored viscera of a corpse, if you could even call it a corpse. The reds and blacks, greens and whites were merely indicators of where bones and organs once were, now mushed, torn to pieces, and thoroughly reduced to just a grotesque pile of meat.
Turning gently, the creature came further into view. Elongated, long arms and legs, spindly and wiry, taught as though a single move would snap the creature in two. Its "face", which could vaguely have once been human, was split in two, jagged teeth running up the chasm that now split from the front to the back- almost as if someone had unzipped it.
Unkempt and loose hair swung from the sides of the maw, and the visible flesh was purplish and black, decayed so heavily that as it moved, pieces of its own flesh loosened and sloughed off. Although invisible at first, two slits began to slide open on the head of the creature, and two black dots peered into Ghost, through the light, and through the gun, into the unsettled terror that clearly had made his spine shudder.
Aiming as carefully as his tense hands could, Ghost pulled the trigger.
One. With an echoing, powerful bang, blood sprayed from the neck.
Two. The slide flew back with such force his tense hands nearly let go, the bullet grazing its face, blackish blood pouring onto the floor.
Three. A foot stepped back to help with recoil, another bang rang out, the hot brass and lead flying through the side of its mouth, causing it to stumble back.
Before he could fire off a fourth shot, the creature lunged forward, one of its spindly arms slamming into him, throwing him back against the door. He nearly dropped the gun, firing a shot off into the floor, before bringing it back up. The creature charged so fast that time seemed to slow down. Inside his mind, all he could think was FASTER! As his arm seemed to refuse moving any faster than that of a slug, the creature inching closer and closer, its mouth widening further, droplets of blood falling from its gaping maw onto his arms, and just barely-
Five. Straight through the eye.
It stumbled back.
Six. Seven.
Eight. He didn't think at all, he just fired- the creature so close that every shot landed, one in the stomach, the other two in its head.
Click. His breathing stuttered in a tense half-relief, fear still pulsing through him like his own blood. Click.
The creature clutched its stomach, a blue blood pouring out, as it fell to the ground, twitching violently, slinging blood everywhere, and smearing the viscera on the floor all over.
Ghost quickly reloaded his gun, dropping the empty mag into a pouch on his belt, before carefully inspecting the body of the beast- his gun primed and aimed directly at it for safety. He bit his lip. The creature, clearly, was dead, although it seemed as though the shots to its "head", if it could be called that, did nothing. He holstered his gun, and slid a combat knife out from a sheath on his harness. Carefully carving around the wound on its stomach, he pulled out a heart-like organ. Other than being blue, and almost fungus like in texture, it appeared to just be an enlarged human heart. Swinging the knife to rid it of some of the blood, he quickly sheathed it again, before retrieving a small camera from one of the pouches and taking some photos of the corpse and the heart. Immediately printing from the camera, he shook them, developing them faster, before taking a few more. Pocketing the first ones, he sat the others on the bed nearby.
Taking a pencil from the nightstand nearby, he scrawled "WEAKNESS" onto the Polaroid of the heart.
Quickly scavenging the room, turning up only a few more 9MM Parabellum rounds, he left, trailing a bit of blood under his boot on the way out.
"We'll commute your sentence, if you do some work for us. Consider it 'pro bono', if it makes you feel any better." A silence fell over the room. The muggy, late autumn air seeped in through the windows just as much as the overpowering darkness of the night did. Seated around the central piece of the room, a conference table, a group of suited men and soldiers smoked on cigarettes and carefully sipped on water. Lit only by the dim light of an overhead cone light, he could barely make out the faces of the men in front of him. But as far as Oliviera was concerned, these were just government men, all of them. Just as bad as Umbrella, just here to use him as just another expendable asset.
"What exactly will I be doing? The only pro-bono work I do is charming the ladies," He said, lightly chuckling. The silence persisted.
"Take this seriously, Carlos. You were a part of the USS. We don't want to see you locked away for life, just as much as you don't want to be," The well-dressed soldier, perhaps a general, said.
"Fine. But I want to know what I'm getting myself into before I say yes," Carlos said firmly. His bedraggled hair complimented by the thick beard he had grown in the months since Raccoon, as he tried, unsuccessfully, to make it to Columbia. His scarred arms, tied behind the chair with zip ties were released with a snap, as an unseen aide cut them off. With a gentle glide, a series of manila folders and papers were slid across the table to him, the light now clearly placed just to illuminate these.
H. WATCHMAN ADVANCED MANUFACTURING
[PROJECT FORTUNATE ICARUS]
"What's the 'H' stand for?" Carlos asked, flipping through the documents and photos in the folder. The photos showed a luxury hotel on the side of a mountain somewhere near the ocean, satellite images of a massive mining complex, facilities, and factories all around the area.
"Hephaestus." One of the businessmen said. Carlos looked up, and he could almost feel his eyes locking with the man through the darkness.
"Hephaestus. Got it. So what does all of this…" He began to speak, opening a new folder and skimming over the photos inside. It left him speechless. Dozens of photos- of gruesomely butchered corpses, crashed cars, mass graves, a military blockade, satellite photos of massive pyres and large monsters, hordes of "people" with guns roaming streets, engaged in combat with the blockades.
"Jesus Christ!" Carlos nearly shouted, disgusted and shocked. He skimmed one of the lines on a mostly redacted document,
"... Project deemed failure. Oakmont to be abandoned, assets to be liquidated." and another line further down,
"... God help us. Please. The military won't let us leave, something's going wrong! My husband was mauled by one of those things outside-".
The silence seemed louder than ever.
Carlos looked up, gritting his teeth, firm.
"Why me?" He asked. "... You survived Raccoon. You're one of the few capable people who experienced that hell. All S.T.A.R.S survivors are MIA, and the few other survivors we have aren't qualified or experienced enough in combat to help," The general said, before puffing a ring of smoke into the air.
"Dammit. What do you even want me to do here? Put a stop to it? How?" Carlos said, a bitterness overflowing from every word.
"We don't know the specifics, especially since Watchman went under a few years ago, but our investigators believe that there is a large reactor beneath the main complex. We need you to go in and set explosive charges, so that we can blow the whole facility to kingdom come," Another puff of smoke drifted into the air. The smell of nicotine, pungent and venomous, clouded Carlos, as the light hummed and buzzed to the tune of ad nauseam, facilitating his imagination to manufacture screams and anguish from the brutality of the images laid before him.
He grimaced.
"Why not just nuke it like Raccoon?" He asked.
"Simple. Two reasons. One, it's bad PR. Raccoon has the president almost guaranteed he won't be reelected, and he isn't happy. Two, we think there are still survivors inside Oakmont," The businessmen chimed in.
Carlos forced a laugh.
"You fuckers actually care that there are survivors? YOU care!?" He nearly shouted. The room remained silent. He leaned forward, "This is all just for Claymont's reelection campaign. And you can't even be bothered to do the damn job right, I know you have experts in this kind of thing! But NO! You have to send in the 'expendable asset' you corrupt fucks!" He shouted, before relenting with a sigh, and slumping back into his chair.
"Are you in, or out?" The general said firmly, his tone only tinged with a slight hint of annoyance. The tension in the room became palpable.
"In. But fuck you nonetheless."