A few months later

As soon as I turn the corner in a blood soaked corridor, I come face to face with a mutant twice my size.

Fuck me.

I've gone through miles of the underground lab, fighting off dozens of mutated creatures, most of them former lab scientists, and after having walked through an entire section without encountering anyone, I cross paths with the biggest walking carcass of them all.

It stands feet away from me, clad in a torn lab coat like a toddler's clothes on a grown man, its head half man with the skin of a wrinkled chinchilla and the other half that of a… monkey?

Where would... oh, right, there were several mutated monkeys I had to fight just earlier. They were locked inside a blood-soaked lab room, flinging themselves against the glass until one of the bashed its head through and lunged at me through the hole with a glass piece the size of its entire face sticking out of its eye.

The image makes me shudder in disgust. Ugh, sometimes I wonder why the virus can't at least spare the animals, but they were, and are, the primary source for testing in the first place. And it's one of the not-so-few things I hate.

The monkey mutant in front of me roars, shaking the room, and a chunk of cement crashes from the ceiling between us. Coughing, I lift my arm to cover my nose and mouth from the sudden cloud of dust. And of course, Beast Face uses it to rush me.

Too bad these monsters are not dead in the brain. It would have made my job much easier.

Its ugly face bursts through the cloud, monkey canines flashing at me. I jump to the side, rolling over before turning around with one arm on the hot floor and one knee down. Aiming my gun at it, I pull the trigger three times, each bullet penetrating different points in its chest. It throws its head back with an ear-splitting shriek and lunges at me again.

This time, the tips of its nails, each as sharp and big as six-inch blades, graze my skin, leaving a blinding hot pain on my arm. It disappears almost immediately as I grab my knife from my belt and stab it into the side of the monster's neck.

It screams like a banshee, twisting its body around to try to throw me off, but I wrap my arm around its shoulder. And while I'm holding onto it as it thrashes around wildly, I switch out my knife with my trusty gun and shoot it three more times into the back of its head.

It freezes on the spot like a brick, right before my head could hit the light dangling just inches away.

Beast Face topples over face first, its body shaking like a plate of jello before mists of evaporation start steaming upward. With a grunt, I hop off the monster's back.

"Ugh," I groan in disgust, pinching my nose as a vile smell worse than rotten eggs spreads through the air. That's one part of the job I will never get used to.

The pain stabs my tricep again. I don’t have time to look at it, so I stuff my hand into my pocket. But it doesn't wrap around a bottle of pills that Wayne had provided me with in cases of contact with the monsters.

I'm already halfway down the corridor. It must have fallen out of my pocket during the monster swinging me around like a ragdoll.

I'm definitely not going back, even though it's just a half minute walk back. The sooner I get out of this hellhole into another hellhole, the better.

I'll be fine. It's just a small scratch. I've had worse and handled them just fine without popping a few pills.

A broken piece of glass crunches under my boot, the sound echoing through the emtpy corridor. Wincing at the loud noise, I glance back and squint through the flickering lights. I breathe out a sigh of relief when no one is there.

The  less shitheads for me to pummel through this shithole to retrieve the asset I was sent down to acquire, the better.

I continue down the hallway, passing rooms after rooms barricaded by large glass windows. Overturned stretchers, monitors flashing rapidly, vials and vials of different colored liquids strewn about on the floor in every direction.

But none of the rooms contain what I've come here looking for.

And thank fuck they don't contain any monsters in them either.

One, two, four five six. Five, six, eight nine ten.

I repeat them in that order, over and over. For some reason, it helps keep me focused and calm whether I'm in a high danger zone, I can't find the asset so far, or on the verge of a breakdown, all three of which I'm experiencing right now.

I stop dead in my tracks when I look into the room on the right. This must be it.

A buzzing light bulb above me coughs out a few sparks as I open the heavy, steel door. White, fluorescent light floods the room, centering on the object lying on top of the operating tabele. Nope. Not an object. It looks like a person in the black, zipper bag. At least, the length and shape look human, and I've seen enough body bags in my life to recognize one without hesitation.ɓɓh6

I reach my hand up to my ear and press the earpiece. “I'm here,” I say, nearly gasping as another blinding pain shoots up my arm. “There’s a black bag on top of the table. Is there a person in there?”

“That's none of your business, Lana,” Wayne's voice crackles through the earpiece. “You need to stop asking questions during missions. Your job is to do exactly what I say, grab the asset, and bring it. Understood?”

Yep. I'm just some mindless robot and killing machine who follows orders without wanting to know what and why.

“Yes, Wayne. I get it.” I sigh and look up. The skylight is there as he told me it would be, some fifty feet or more above. A bad feeling tingles at the back of my neck. I don't know why I'm uncertain about the escape plan. Maybe it's because getting in was a whole feat of slashing my way through hordes of monsters and getting out is just a simple matter of lifting myself up through a single skylight and I'm out.  An option that for some reason wasn't allowed for the way in.

Or maybe there will be monsters waiting to pounce on me when I'm halfway up.

Shaking the feeling off, I sling off my backpack and rummage through it to bring out a rope and a device at the end of it. With several swings of my arm, I propel the device upward. It flies toward the skylight, the rope following, until it crashes through and lands on the roof. Bits of glass fall, some of the shards cutting my face even when I shield myself with my arm.

I tug on the rope to make sure its stable before grabbing the bag. It's light and stiff, like a plank rather than a person. But I've been on too many missions to know that more often than what, what it seems is the opposite of what it actually is.

But before I can take a step to the waiting rope, another wave of pain, bigger than the last, strikes me like a million stabbings. With a groan, I let the bag drop back onto the table as I bend over, gripping rhe edge with my good arm.

Fuck. That monster's venom must be more powerful than the others.

Then, out of the corner of my eyes, movement catches my attention. Someone, or something, moves in the shadows like a blur.

I exhale shakily, my heart speeding up faster from both the pain that is spreading to my chest and the dread of having to fight another monster.

Just then, that something slams into me, knocking us both to the ground. The white fluorescent lights flicker on and off, but I can feel that they're human. The size, their grip, they're not a–

Oh fuck me. My vision goes blurry as they punch me in the face. Their hands hold me down by the collar. I grip their wrists, the heels of my boots scraping against the floor. With a yell, I kick them off me, sending them flying against the wall in a heap.

They fall to the ground on their hands and knees before they look up at me with a smirk on their face and wipes off the blood pouring from their lip.

No. She.

She's a woman, and not just any woman.

My heart stops, disbelieving my eyes. No, it can't be. Not her, out of all people.

Without thinking what I'm doing, I take off my mask, and her eyes go wide with shock, the smirk wiping off her face.

“Lana?” she breathes out, getting to her feet. Her dark red leather jacket alternates from red to black as my vision sways.

No. No. No, no, I can't collapse, not now, not in in front of– front of…

My breathing grows labored as I topple backward, each breath more hollow than the last. Footsteps run toward me, and someone is kneeling over me. Her face drifts in and out of focus, looking at me with that same look of worry she used to give me what feels like ages ago.

“Ryan,” I whisper.

My former best friend is here, on this mission, in this destroyed underground lab out of all places.

What are the odds? Why is she here? Who is she working for? Why the fuck is she here on the same mission I'm on?

But I don’t have time to finish those thoughts when darkness floods my mind.