Vide hunc perditum-XCIX

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DATE:22th of August, the 70th year after the Coronation

LOCATION: Concord Metropolis

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Waking up was like surfacing in a tar pit—slow, thick, and into a darkness that felt solid enough to touch. Then a smell hit me, cutting through the black: lavender. Not the nice garden variety, but the sharp, chemical blast from an aerosol can. Alice's apartment. The air freshener I'd bought her to try and kill the lingering ghost of cheap takeout.

My hand slapped around on the wall until it found the familiar, cheap plastic of a light switch. A click, and the room was doused in that sterile, yellow glow that makes everything look a little sick. It was empty. The blinds were shut tight, a neat set of bars sealing the place off from the city.

"Call her," I said, tapping my earpiece. It remained silent for a beat, then Emily's voice crackled to life, tinny and distant. "No answer."

"I have her phone's GPS signal," she offered, her tone dripping with that sickeningly helpful quality. "I can take you there."

"No," I said out loud, the word sounding like a gunshot in the dead quiet. "If she's not picking up, she doesn't want to be found. And she's not dumb enough to carry a live tracker on a mission." Especially not if she was out looking for her mother. That woman... A knot of pure, cold disdain tightened in my gut. I hate that bitch.

I flopped onto the sofa, and the cushions let out a long-suffering sigh. A hell of a lot had happened.

The memory of that last dream crawled over my skin, a vile sensation like a thousand oily insects burrowing under the surface. It was a greatest hits of the indoctrination from training camp, the way Emily's voice had been a constant presence in my ear, twisting my thoughts until I actually believed… A dry, bitter laugh escaped me. Believed she was something special. Hell, even the puppet she'd made of me—the softer, remade version—eventually saw through her bullshit and walked. He found a better use for himself dying while trying to kill his father.

It's what she deserves. One big, fat, failed project.

But then there was Anastasia. Her particular brand of delusion was almost more insulting. If I wanted an escape, a fantasy life, I could've just stayed in that gilded cage Emily was building for me. I didn't, did I?

Alice, for all her many, many faults, never fell in love with a ghost. She might conveniently overlook most of my problems, maybe pretend I'm a better man than I am, but at least she sees the monster she's dealing with. She fell for me, not some phantom echo of William Carter. I never even bothered playing the part for her.

And I'm supposed to throw that away? Betray the trust of this frail girl who's been alone her whole life for someone who can't even see who's standing in front of her? Prioritize a woman trying to resurrect a guy nineteen years dead over the one who accepts the creature that took his place? The arrogance is just staggering.

Let Anastasia find her happiness. I really hope she does. But maybe one that's based in reality, not some creepy fixation on the past. I am so done with my past. If I bother to save someone now, it won't be to wash away some sin I don't believe in. This cold-hearted bastard is who I am now. I'm not going to tear myself apart to fit into her fantasy.

She was right about one thing: my "heroism" has always been a transaction, a way to make my own life better or get some leverage. I saved people for the ego boost, just so I could have a private laugh at how messed up their real saviors were. Does she honestly think a guy like that is capable of loving her? The man she knew nineteen years ago was already a monster under construction. What makes her think the finished product would be any better?

Haah.

God, it was all too much. I shut my eyes and tried to grab a nap before someone inevitably summoned me to answer for my latest round of bad decisions. Or so I thought.

My shot at peace was predictably ruined by the pain-in-the-ass permanently buzzing in my earpiece.

"Kassius, you have to help! The heroes are battling the Combine gang! They're being torn apart!" Emily's shriek was like an ice pick to the brain, even through the cheap speaker.

"First of all, you don't have the right to call me that."

"I... I'm sorry..."

Well, that pathetic little whimper through the comms finally got me moving.

I was barely upright before her teleportation trick ripped me from the apartment and dropped me straight into a warzone.

The place used to be a park. Now it was just craters and scorched earth. Punches, bombs, powers—didn't matter. The result was the same ugly mess. This was supposed to be Eastern Concord's "green lung," four square klicks of grass meant to soak up industrial poison. Even at night, you could see the filth just hanging in the air.

No allies in sight. Just me, a large bush, and a pack of Combine grunts setting up shop. They were sporting new mil-spec suits, manning mortars and heavy machine guns. Looks like they got an upgrade.

I stepped out from behind the foliage with the SmartGun in my right hand. Eleven of them. Three two-man mortar teams, a heavy machine gun nest of three, and two spotters trying to look important. They were so focused on their deadly toys they didn't even see me. Their mistake.

I didn't bother with subtlety. The first shot from the SmartGun was a dull thump, and the spotter on the left crumpled without a sound, a neat hole drilled through his chest plate. Before his partner could even turn, a second round took him through the throat. Two down.

Panic is a wonderful tool. The machine gunner started spraying blindly into the dark, giving away his exact position. I leaned against a charred tree stump and took out his two loaders with methodical precision. Three, four. The gunner himself went down a second later, a shot to the hip spinning him around before a final round silenced him for good. Five.

That just left the mortar crews. They were scrambling, trying to get a round off. Too slow. I moved in a low crouch, firing as I went. A round punched through the first mortar tube, turning it into shrapnel that shredded the two men operating it. Seven. The next two went down with clean shots to the chest as they tried to run. Nine. The last pair managed to drop a shell into their tube, but my final two rounds hit them before they could even get clear. They died in the flash of their own weapon. Eleven down. Frankly a waste of ammunition.

"Connecting you to the team channel now!" Emily chirped in my ear. The line switched, and the earpiece exploded with noise. It was a garbage fire of heroes screaming at each other and some HQ dispatcher screaming over all of them. I cut the channel.

"Why didn't you just connect me to HQ?" I yelled into my comms, standing over the smoldering bodies.

"I-I'm sorry! Right away!" she stammered back.

A new voice crackled to life. A woman's, with an accent so thick it felt like I was chewing on gravel.

"So, the prodigal son returns from his wanderings. You took your sweet time, Aionis." Son? They still think I am young? Yuck.

The words were Standard, but the cadence was all wrong, a blunt instrument. "Business is done," I said, ducking behind a hedge as a patrol jogged past, not even bothered by the corpses of their comarades. "Where's the real fight? I'm stuck cleaning up the cannon fodder."

I could hear her arguing with someone on an open channel, her voice sharp and dismissive. Total amateur hour.

"Don't you get uppity with me, boy," she snapped, her attention back on me. "This is the real fight, or what's left of it. You should have been here when it mattered." Boy? Wow, so much cadence in speaking with the leader. I'll beat her up later even if its the last thing I do in this position.

You'd think for a coordination job they'd find someone with people skills. Or at least someone who wasn't actively trying to piss off the fire support.

"Whatever. I'm here now."

The woman on comms kept talking. Liliam was fighting some brute. Five heroes were already dead. Five. Not a skirmish; a slaughter.

"Send the coordinates," I cut her off. Emily yanked me there before I could blink.

The world dissolved into a nauseating smear. My vision swam with static as I was pulled apart and stitched back together somewhere else. The ground under my feet vibrated with a deep, rhythmic thudding. Mini earthquakes. I'd only used the watch yesterday, but the sensation of being disassembled atom by atom was something you never get used to.

Whatever. A hard slap across my own face sent a jolt of pain through my skull. Focus.

Through the clearing haze, I saw Alice—Liliam, whatever—fighting a grotesque parody of a man. He stood a full four meters tall, a mountain of raw, mangled muscle shaped into a roughly human form. A torn flag was pinned to his chest, the logo on it so grimy it was illegible. A dirty cloth served as a makeshift executioner's hood, covering whatever horrors lay beneath.

Alice darted through the air like a desperate hummingbird, her left arm hanging at a sickening angle, clearly broken. The ground was littered with fresh wounds—deep craters that told a story of failure. She'd tried to crush him with gravity, but he was too dense. A waste of effort. Scattered around them like broken dolls were the five heroes the woman had mentioned. I didn't know their names. Didn't care to.

It didn't look so dangerous.

A cold sting in my side, sharp as a hornet. A drug flooded my system, spreading like ice through my veins. Before I could even process it, I tried to recoil, but the enemy was a shadow stitched to my back. Another blade slid into my chest, aiming straight for the heart. Just as I drew a breath, the world stopped.

Time didn't freeze. It just slowed to a glacial crawl. I carefully pulled myself back, stepping away from the blade as if pulling a nail from wood. My attacker was a woman. Her jaw was a ruin of shattered bone and torn flesh. The weapon she held was a wicked thing, a knife of impossible, geometric angles.

She hadn't reached my heart, otherwise I'd be dead. My regeneration would handle it. I'd just chalk up the future chest pains to suffering from love. I patted my chest instinctively. Damn it. No Exo suit. Forgot to get it back from Ventia. A sigh would have been a catastrophic waste of oxygen.

I stepped to the side, observing the woman in her scout coat and heavy-duty pants. The new breed of Secundo Manus soldier, then. I pressed the Ventium revolver to what was left of her temple and squeezed the trigger. Even in this dead-slow world, the meteorite slug was a blur of light, a miniature sun that erased her from existence.

One down. I moved toward the giant. Find his heart and brain, I tapped to Emily in Morse code on my phone.

"Hold your phone against his skin," she replied, her voice calm in my ear. "The micro-vibrations will give me a sonar map of his internals."

I didn't question it, pressing the device against the monster's leg.

"Got it," she continued. "Heart and brain have both been relocated inside his chest. They're encased in a reinforced cage of bone and cartilage."

Wow, Secundo Manus was getting clever. Or desperate. The head was just an empty decoy. Even a hack like me could see the flaw. The eyes were just cameras. The lag between seeing and reacting had to be a full second. A lifetime in a fight. How did this walking slab of meat kill five heroes?

I glanced at the wounds on its body—slashes, burns, frostbite. All shallow. "His muscle is woven with dense, non-biological fibers," Emily explained, seeing my curiosity. "It's like trying to stab a truck tire. Nothing penetrated deep enough."

"So how will you kill it?" she asked.

I raised the revolver.

"Ohhhhh."

Find me the angle, I tapped. Minimize bone contact. My rounds were big, but they weren't armor-piercing. Even with Ventium acceleration, they wouldn't punch through that cage on their own.

"Move three meters to your left," Emily instructed, her tone clinical. "Aim up at a forty-seven-degree angle. You'll be targeting the small gap between the third and fourth rib, just left of the sternum. It's a keyhole, Aionis. Your only one."

I took the stance, a statue in a frozen world. I fired. The first bullet hung in the air, a silver teardrop. I waited for the recoil to settle, then shot again. As the second bullet left the barrel to chase the first, the third followed.

I watched as the first round finally made contact. Skin didn't just break; it shredded. The second and third bullets followed a split-second later, drilling a single, devastating channel into the monster.

My lungs were screaming for air. I stumbled back, creating distance, and finally let the breath go in a ragged gasp as time rushed back in.

The three rounds punched into the giant's chest like high-speed drills. A strange, pathetic whimper escaped the creature as its massive hands pressed against the wound. For a second, it just stood there, a mountain of dying meat, before it swayed and collapsed with a ground-shaking thud that sent a cloud of dust into the air.

Alice lowered herself to the ground, her movements shaky. She started towards me, her face a mess of relief, about to launch herself into a hug. I put a hand up to stop her, gesturing curtly at her mangled arm.

Through the pink-tinted visor, I could see she'd been crying. A lot. Dark, bruised circles ringed her eyes. How long had it been? Three days? Had she even slept?

"What exactly happened here?" I asked, putting on my best 'concerned boyfriend' voice. It felt hollow and fake, even to me. A normal man would have been distraught if he saw his supposed love in such a state, but I wasn't moved at all.

"I… we… my mother…" she stammered, her eyes unfocused. Yeah, she was clearly not firing on all cylinders.

I told her to stop. With a sigh that felt heavier than it should, I stepped in and hugged her, my arms carefully avoiding her broken one. She was covered in a disgusting film of dust, grime, and what was probably someone else's blood. I could feel the dampness seeping through my own clothes.

This was real. Not a ghost pleading for a man who didn't exist anymore. Not a fantasy built on memories I didn't have. Just this. Covered in filth and shaking. It was better.

Still… she was my girlfriend. Ugh.

Tapping my earpiece, I cut through the moment. "Emily, explain the situation. Now."

"They tracked the Combine into the industrial sector to find Mara," Emily started, way too eager. "Red Head was spotted too—"

"Who the hell is Red Head?" I cut her off.

"You know! A lieutenant. One of the dangerous ones. They've been talking about him in the meetings you keep skipping," she accused, fake-cheerful.

I rolled my eyes. So much for comprehensive briefs.

"Red Head can control the concentration of blood in different parts of his body," Emily went on. "We believe he—"

I tuned out. Seriously, Red Head? That's the best they could do? Is the Combine running a circus or something now? Who picks these names?

"Enough. Find him for me," I said, reloading my guns. Alice tried to speak again—voice soft, pleading for something—but I shook my head. "Later. Stay here and don't make your arm worse."

Emily teleported me again. Nausea got me by the throat, world spinning, guts lurching. For once, she landed me upright, this time near a small, scummy lake.

The world twisted and reformed around a small, stagnant lake. Red Skull… Head? Whatever. He was locked in a sloppy brawl with some other hero, both of them slipping around in a puddle of mud near the water's edge.

Another man was sitting calmly on a bench a short distance away, watching the fight as if it were a park-side chess match.

Anyway, Red Head wore a bizarre combination of a military officer's dress uniform and a dramatic black cape, complete with gaudy red gloves. And to top it all off, a full-head mask in the shape of a leering skull. So cringe. Was he a traitor from the Unified Army? Would explain why his grunts were so organized.

The hero, on the other hand, wore a skin-tight bodysuit with what looked like ceramic armor plates strapped on. He had a crocodile-shaped mask covering his face. I guess the plates were supposed to be scales? Such a stupid theme.

It didn't seem like they'd noticed my arrival. I leveled the SmartGun, took a shot at Red Head—only to see him throw up a red-gloved hand faster than thought. The bullet shattered on impact, splintering against his palm like it hit a steel wall.

"A friend of yours?" Red Head asked the hero, his tone conversational, as if they weren't standing in the middle of a muddy battlefield.

I tuned out their little chat and fired again. And again. It didn't matter. He blocked every single round with precise, almost lazy movements, barely even glancing in my direction. The bullets shattered against his gloves like cheap glass.

"What the hell is wrong with this guy?" I muttered, tapping my earpiece.

"Red Head is a former hero," she said. "His blood flows at a hyper-accelerated rate, granting him superhuman reaction speed."

"The gloves?" I asked, watching him toy with his opponent.

"A special alloy," she replied. "It has micro-canals that allow his blood to flow directly into them. It's a direct neural interface, powered by blood."

As if to prove her point, the crocodile hero kicked Red Head high into the air. He followed up with a leaping attack, but Red Head simply plucked him out of the sky by the neck and, with a flick of his wrist, threw him directly at me. The hero was a mountain of a man, easily two meters tall and built like a brick shithouse.

"Emily, get me out of here! Ventia hotel, now!" I yelled.

In a sickening lurch, I was back in the hotel room. I scrambled to put on the flak suit, the heavy plates a welcome, solid weight against my body.

When I returned, the fight was over. The hero was a heap on the ground, his stupid crocodile mask staring blankly at me from a body twisted on its stomach.

I dropped into a boxer's stance and moved in. He didn't even bother to shift from his neutral position. Arrogant.

My fist shot out, a quick jab aimed for his face. He deflected it without effort, his right arm a red blur that nearly threw me off balance. He lowered his hand and laughed.

"The Legion has fallen far if this is their leader."

I threw another jab. He countered it just as easily. His own fist snapped my head back, the impact booming against my blank mask. I didn't flinch. Didn't give him the satisfaction.

He chuckled again. "I saw your little televised scrap with Big Head. A lot of barking. You were right about one thing, though. In the real world, fighting isn't fair."

He was monologuing. Idiot.

His focus wavered for a fraction of a second. I saw the opening and took it. My third jab wasn't a feint. The metal plates over my knuckles connected with his skull mask with a crack like stone breaking. The force sent him stumbling back and then crashing to the ground. I returned to my stance, waiting.

I expected him to stay down for a second. He didn't. He just pushed himself up, rolling his neck, and let out another low, mocking chuckle.

"He's concentrating blood into the impacted area," Emily's voice cut in, cool and clinical. "It makes the tissue denser, stronger. Almost unbreakable."

He was faster than my jab. He could harden his body on command. Fine. Time for a new approach.

He shouldn't know of my Ventian techniques.

I moved in again, my feet light in a shuffle. I feinted with a left jab and threw a hard right cross aimed at his jaw. He didn't even flinch, his left arm snapping up in a rigid, perfect block that felt like punching a steel girder. He countered with a brutish, straight punch, a move straight out of a bare-knuckle brawling manual. I didn't need to dodge; I felt the micro-servos in the flak suit fire, stiffening the armor over my ribs an instant before the blow connected. Emily was doing her job.

This wasn't working. Brute force was his game. I needed to change the rhythm. I dropped my stance and flowed into the 5th move of the serpent pattern, a low, sweeping kick aimed at his ankle. It was a technique from the Way of the Open Hand designed to unbalance and cripple. For the first time, he seemed surprised, bringing his leg up in a clumsy, last-second block. The impact still made him stumble. A flicker of an opening.

He recovered quickly, lunging forward to try and trap me in a bear hug. As his arms closed in, the suit shifted my weight, allowing me to pivot on my heel and drive a hard elbow into his side. The blow landed with a dull thud on un-reinforced flesh. He grunted, the first sound of pain I'd gotten out of him.

He was fast, but not instantaneous. He had to choose where to send the blood.

I pressed the advantage, snapping out two quick jabs to draw his guard up, then flowing into the 2nd move of the stripe pattern—a slicing open-hand strike aimed at the side of his neck. He brought his arm up to block, and I saw it again: a faint, dark flush under the skin of his forearm as the blood rushed to the point of impact, turning it into a shield of iron-hard tissue.

He laughed, a smug, grating sound. "Clever moves. But a dance is no match for a battering ram." He swung a heavy fist, and I weaved under it, my own movements guided as much by Emily's calculations as my own instincts.

I needed to test the speed of the transfer. I threw a flurry of attacks, a chaotic mix of hooks and low kicks, forcing him to defend high and low. As he blocked a punch aimed at his head, I transitioned into the 3rd move of the tiger pattern, a deceptive, two-fingered jab aimed directly at his eye socket. Of course, I shouldn't be able to get through his helmet, but does he know that?

 His hand snapped up to protect his face, but his lower body was momentarily vulnerable. It was a fraction of a second, a heartbeat, but I saw it. The lag. The time it took for his power to shift from one limb to another.

That was the key. He wasn't invincible; he was just moving his single shield around his body at high speed.

I stepped back, breaking the engagement. He watched me, confident I was retreating. I let out a slow, deliberate breath, my mind racing with calculations. The fight wasn't about power anymore. It was about timing. I calmly reached back and drew the Ventium revolver, its weight a solid, deadly promise in my hand.

Time slowed to a crawl as I drew a breath. He couldn't reinforce his entire body at once. That was the trick. He had to choose. So, I chose for him. Six shots from the Ventium revolver, each one a silver teardrop hanging in the syrupy air. One for his head. One for each arm. One for each leg. And the last one, right in the center of his chest. He couldn't be strong everywhere. If his blood was spread that thin, he was just a man in a fancy suit.

Just to be sure, I holstered the revolver, drew the SmartGun, and emptied the entire magazine into his torso. A dozen more rounds to join the first six.

I let out my breath, and time snapped back into its frantic pace.

For a moment, it worked perfectly. Blood erupted from him in a dozen fine sprays, and he collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. But then, to my utter disbelief, he started to rise again, his body jerking back to its feet. He was laughing, a high, manic shriek that echoed across the water.

At first, I didn't understand. Then I saw it. The sleeve of his uniform was torn, and underneath, his skin was as dry and cracked as ancient parchment. He wasn't just a man with a superpower. He was a ghoul. An undead. The skull mask wasn't just for show; it was to hide his deformed, dead face.

"You figured it out!" he shrieked, his laughter unabated. "The madame sends her regards!"

"Who the hell are you talking about?" I demanded.

"Oh, you should know," he giggled.

He glanced down at the puddle of his own blood spreading in the mud. "Want to see a trick?" His open hand clenched into a fist, and the blood on the ground began to move. It slithered in thin, red streams, crawling back up his legs and seeping into his body through the bullet holes.

He laughed again, throwing his arms out wide. "Magic! It enhances the superpower, you see?" He scoffed, pointing a gloved finger at me. "Your creator wasted your potential, keeping that pretty face. It's a crime! You could have been so much more."

"I'd rather not die in a year like you will," I shot back.

He wagged his left index finger back and forth in a mocking 'no'. "My madame is improving her technique. She observes you with every little fight like this. She learns. Even now, she watches through my eyes." His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "She will catch up to the creature that made you."

"Who is she?" I yelled, fury finally boiling over my cold calculation. "Who is your madame?"

He just chuckled, that same arrogant, grating sound. "It won't be long now. You'll see her soon enough."

I breathed in, and the world slowed once more. I pulled an impact grenade from my belt, armed it, and, in one smooth motion, threw it at his chest. I let go of my breath. The explosion pulverized his torso, leaving a gaping, smoking hole, but he remained standing on two feet. He kept laughing. I grabbed another one and threw it at what was left of his neck. His head detached, flying through the air before landing in the mud with a wet squelch.

The head kept laughing.

I stalked over and grabbed it, the skull mask slick with mud. The helmet was fused to the bone; I couldn't pry it off. Fine. I grabbed a standard fragmentation grenade from my belt, jammed it into the fleshy, ruined hole where the neck used to be, and pulled the pin. With a final, disgusted kick, I sent the head flying into the air. It exploded in a satisfying flash of light and gore, though the skull-faced helmet clattered back to the ground, miraculously in one piece.

I really have to find this necromancer.

Oh well.

"Are you quite finished with your business?" a calm, formal voice asked.

I almost jumped. I'd completely forgotten about him. The old man on the bench. He was dressed in a similar officer's suit to Red Head, but his dark cape was a functional rain slicker, not a dramatic fashion statement.

He rose from the bench with a creak of old bones and drew a pistol from his chest. It was a long-barreled hunting model, elegant and deadly. Before I could even react, he fired. The muzzle flash was green. Ventium.

Emily's programming kicked in, forcing the suit's arms up in a defensive cross. It was useless. The metal bolt tore through both armored plates over my hands, punched clean through my palms, and slammed into my chest. The suit's internal framework kept me on my feet, but he shot twice more, two more green bolts drilling into my chest.

My limbs refused to obey. The world started to gray out at the edges. I couldn't move.

He holstered the pistol and approached, his tidy mustache a mocking line on his face. "I just concluded a call," he said, his tone conversational. "Despite my... differing allegiances, the elites from the Combine have instructed me to leave you be. It seems that a certain witch has taken a special interest in you." He paused, his gaze sweeping over my ruined suit. "Personally, I consider it a waste."

He got closer, the scent of rain and old wool filling the air. He drew a blade, and even through the haze of pain, I recognized it. A Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife. Straight from the Unified Army from the looks of it.

"Who... are you?" I managed to rasp, my voice weak.

"I am a part of the new order," he said, his voice laced with the cold certainty of a zealot. "And you... you are a symbol of the old. Of the Oligarchy. Of overconsumption." He brought the knife closer, its tip hovering inches from my faceplate. "All you so-called heroes are. You make me sick." He certainly wouldn't be the first to say that about heroes, but about me? Oligarchy?

"Then why bother teaming up with one?" I asked, nodding towards the puddle of gore that used to be Red Head.

He scoffed. "Red Head was a soldier first and a hero second. A good man who died in a recent skirmish against one of your Legion lackeys. A man called Dragonfist." So I assume that the necromancer brought him back to take the heat off her. Wait, if she was being followed….

Suddenly, the suit lurched forward without my command. It snapped out a jab, a desperate, automated attack. The old man dodged back with surprising agility, his eyes wide with surprise. He instinctively reached for his pistol, then stopped, letting out a huff of pure frustration.

"I do not believe in this corpse magic," he muttered, shaking his head. "But unlikely circumstances require unlikely allies."

"I will teleport you if he makes another move," Emily's voice said, a lifeline in my ear.

The old man seemed to make up his mind. He gave a dismissive wave, turning his back on me. "I have my orders." He started to walk away, leaving me there, a paralyzed statue full of holes, unable to do anything but watch him go.

Air hissed from the holes in my chest, but consciousness held on by a thread. I couldn't move. Couldn't fight. But I could still talk.

"Hey," I rasped, the sound wet and ragged. "You don't have long, do you?"

He snapped back, his eyes cold. He couldn't see the grin I was wearing. The mask took care of that.

"You're not Ventian," I continued, each word a struggle. "You should know what happens when you play with something so radioactive." If I had to guess, the skin under that tidy uniform was rotting right off the bone. A Normandian like him? He was a dead man walking. Give him a year, maybe less.

He didn't respond, just clutched the grip of his holstered pistol as if its presence alone was a threat. A threat…. I laughed, a raw, ugly sound. I couldn't use my powers, my body was wrecked, but something in me wanted to see this hypocrite break.

"From what I hear, you aren't far from me. Just covered by make-up," he said, trying to sound bold. Failing.

"Laughable. All of you are pathetic. You think appearances don't matter? Look in a mirror."

"You shouldn't push me," he warned, his hand tightening on the gun.

"Or what?"

Just then, Emily's voice cut in."Combine agents are approaching,-Cars. Two minutes out."

Time to go. I whispered to her. Take the suit. Rip his uniform off.

The man before me was no hero. The gun was powerful, but he was slow. He wasn't fast enough to unholster it before Emily could move. She was a supercomputer. No contest.

And it happened. Just like that.

I was behind him. The suit's arms moved, a blur of motion. The sound of tearing fabric. His shirt ripped clean off his back, the holstered Ventium pistol torn away with it.

And I saw it. A big, grey patch of dead skin, spreading in a ragged map from his back to his chest like a disgusting mold. I'd give him three months. Tops.

He fumbled for a secondary pistol on his thigh. A normal gun. The bullets just pinged off my flak armor, pathetic and useless.

Emily moved my body forward. The suit's fist slammed into his chest with a dull, wet crunch. He flew backward, and I saw chunks of dead flesh flake off from the point of impact, falling away like rotted plaster. The fall probably did more damage than the punch itself.

He landed in a heap and went still, his eyes wide and vacant. I wondered if the shock had killed him.

Sadly, I wasn't able to check. The distinct sound of a car engine grew louder.

"Time to go," Emily's voice urged in my ear. "Teleporting now."

But before the world could dissolve into its usual nauseating smear, something went wrong. A silence fell, so profound it was more unnerving than the roar of the approaching engine. There was no grand magical display, no booming voice from the heavens. Instead, the lieutenant's corpse, the one I'd so satisfyingly blown to pieces, began to move.

It wasn't the clumsy shamble of a reanimated corpse. With a series of sickening snaps, bones reset and twisted. The headless torso rose from the mud with an unnatural, fluid grace, contorting into a fighting stance no living thing could achieve. It wasn't alive; it was being piloted.

At the same time, the old man, who I'd thought was dead or dying, began to stir. He didn't get up to fight. He screamed. It was a raw, terrified shriek that tore through the night as his own body moved against his will. His limbs jerked into motion, forcing him to his feet. Tears streamed down his face as his hands, guided by an invisible puppeteer, snatched his Ventium pistol from the dirt. He was a marionette, fully aware and trapped within his own flesh.

My suit's systems flared with warnings as two targets locked onto me. They didn't attack with mindless rage. They moved with a cold, coordinated, and terrifyingly intelligent strategy, orchestrated by an unseen mind. Their goal wasn't to kill me, but to systematically break me down.

"Emily, get me out of here!" I said, my voice fleeting.

"I can't… the watch detects that it is being observed by something… The manual function doesn't work either. There is some kind of presence nearby…" The necromancer. Red Skull was right that she was learning. Fuck.

The old man was forced to engage. His weapon targeted my suit's critical systems—servos, joints, and power conduits. The reanimated corpse moved in tandem, flanking me to physically tear at the components the Ventium shots exposed. It was a coordinated attack executed by a single, remote intelligence using two bodies. Emily's standard combat responses were ineffective against an enemy intent on disassembly, not direct confrontation. I regret not being able to move by myself.

"System integrity at forty percent," Emily reported. "Power conduits failing. I'm losing motor control." I regret goading this piece of shit. Had the necromancer taken offense to my actions? Was this supposed to teach me a lesson? Guess I bit more than I could chew.

The tactical objective was clear. My suit was being neutralized. In the first place I was only spared because the 'madame' was interested in me. Did I annoy her so greatly? Dammit.

 The psychological toll of fighting a weeping, unwilling puppet shattered my focus. I was overwhelmed. I was only hanging on by the stimulants added to the drug. The final move was not a punch, but a calculated act of sabotage. The necromancer forced the old man to aim his pistol not at me, but at the ground right beside my feet.

 He pulled the trigger, overloading the weapon in a final, desperate burst. I didn't even know you could do that with Ventium.

The resulting energy pulse was a massive EMP of raw Ventium power. The world flashed a brilliant, sickly green, and then my suit—and my consciousness—went silent. The last thing I heard was the sound of the old man's final, choked sob, hearing his skin being burned as my world faded to absolute black. -*-*-*-*-*-*-*