Stepping through the doorway felt like stepping into a world cut off from the rot that had consumed every corridor behind them. The transition was so abrupt that Daniel paused mid?step, thrown by the untouched calm pressing in from all sides. His boots landed on clean tile instead of tangles of vines and pulsing roots, and the contrast felt almost wrong. The plantlife stopped at the exact line of the doorframe, not thinned out or dying away, but halted, as if something had drawn a boundary it refused to cross. Even the walls inside, faded with age, showed no sign of creeping growth. Shelves sagged under the weight of dusty books, their pages curled but unblemished by moisture. Crooked picture frames hung where they had always hung, dulled by exposure rather than the corrosion. Along the right wall, chairs sat in a stiff, orderly line, each one wearing a thick coat of dust that suggested years of stillness. The whole space reminded him of a waiting room sealed away from the world, an executive’s outer office curated for comfort, then abandoned without warning.

  The deeper he and Alyssa stepped into it, the stranger it felt. Nothing here looked disturbed, yet the air carried the faint impression of something having happened, something sharp enough to press against the edges of the room. The emptiness held weight, the kind that grated Daniel’s instincts. It wasn't safe, not really, only absent of the trademark nightmares that had followed them through the hospital. It made the hairs at the back of his neck stand on end.

  Daniel swept in first, his Saiga moving with focused precision, as Alyssa closed the door behind them, the click sharp in the stale air. Without the usual tangle of vines masking every surface, the details stood out with stark clarity. A long smear of dried blood dragged across the front desk marked the frantic path of someone’s last moments, its edges flaked and brittle. Another imprint stained the administrator’s door, a palm-mark splattered beside the handle, its brown edges split from age.

  Daniel tightened his grip on the shotgun as he moved deeper into the room, his attention burning across the room. He had been expecting something, some grand reveal, Lester behind his desk like some cartoon villain, ready to give him a raving excuse as to why all these people had to suffer and die. Maybe roll on about his brilliance, or the cold necessity of what he was doing. That was Hargreave's play, after all, and while it might not be fair to paint with that broad a brush, Daniel didn't really give a shit after everything he saw here. Alyssa for her part was just a mystified, more at the strange duality of everything. Why did the overgrowth avoid this room? What was so special about it? It didn't make sense. It was…

  “Weird. This is weird,” she whispered. He only grunted in agreement.

  “Why do you think the plants are avoiding this room, Red?” she asked, waiting when he didn’t immediately continue.

  “No idea. I don’t like it, though. Keep your eyes peeled.” He circled the desk and peered over it. A body lay slumped against the far side, not armored and geared like the mercenaries they’d found downstairs but dressed in what might have once been an expensive business suit. The secretary, maybe? He vaulted the desk in a single movement, dropping him nearly on top of the corpse. It was dried out, desiccated with time and age, and given how it curled up into itself, he doubted it was infected. Which just raised more questions.

  It was a mummy, skin shrunken tight over bone, face hollowed out, hands curled in stiff, brittle claws. The suit was stiff with crusted blood and filth, and the throat was torn open in a way that looked like it had been a human mouth that did it, but then why was it here and not wandering the halls like the rest of those cabbage patch abortions? He tilted the head up, brushing the dust away. The eyes were gone but the shape of the face still held the imprint of a final moment; shock twisting into terror and something sharper, something that looked too much like betrayal.

  “What's-?” Alyssa asked as she stepped around the desk. The question died half?formed when she saw the corpse from Daniel’s angle. He was already going through the pockets, hands steady, movements clean and practiced.

  “What are you doing, Red?” she asked, the wrinkle in her brow giving away the distaste she tried to swallow.

  “Looking for ID. I’m wondering if this is Sundaram.” He spoke without pause, pulling free a wallet stiff with age and dried blood. He thumbed it open, eyes sharpening for a beat before he let out a short, almost perplexed sound. “Huh. Well, it’s not him. This is Albert Lester.”

  “What?” Alyssa moved closer, disbelief pushing her past her hesitation. He handed her the wallet without ceremony.

  Inside was a driver’s license, the photo washed out but still clear enough to show the white hair and sagging face. She looked from the picture to the corpse and found the same thin features, the same soft collapse of the jawline. That was all the confirmation they needed. This was the administrator. This was Lester.

  And that was it. No madman waiting to justify the horrors here. No ranting architect standing tall at the end of the maze. Just a shriveled body behind a desk, and not even his desk! His throat torn open, long dead before either of them arrived, an afterthought in his own story. The reveal fell flat in a way Alyssa hadn’t expected, the tension she had braced for dissolving into a muted, almost uncomfortable quiet in her chest.

  It should have felt like an answer, but it didn’t. It felt like someone had ripped a final chapter out of a story and tossed it aside, leaving only the corpse as an afterthought. A small, tired end to a disaster far bigger than the man who lay slumped at their feet.

  For a moment the discovery left Alyssa strangely hollow. After everything they’d found, after everything his name had been tied to, she expected something else. A confrontation. A revelation. Something. Finding him here, just another victim, felt almost disappointing.

  Red stood slowly and even he seemed thrown off, as if he had expected some kind of final puzzle piece, anything besides a corpse rotting behind a desk. The speaker on his mask picked up his sigh as he looked around the room again.

  “Bit of a letdown, huh?” she said softly.

  “Hmm… a bit.” His tone was dry, edged with something almost sardonic. Then he added, “Usually the lunatic behind shit like this is pulling the strings at the end of everything. Least that’s been my experience.”

  Alyssa blinked at that and tucked it away, the confirmation hitting harder than she expected. She had assumed he’d dealt with things like this before, but hearing him say it out loud still caught her off guard. It was one thing to suspect it, another to hear it spoken without hesitation. She wanted to ask him what he meant, to understand how someone reached a point where this kind of horror felt familiar, but she held the question back. Later. She would ask later, if they made it that far.

  For now, Red moved toward the administrator’s office door, shotgun angled up as he approached it, and Alyssa followed, leaving Lester’s body slumped in the dust behind them.

  Daniel grunted when he found the door to Lester’s inner sanctum locked. It figured the bastard would have invested in something sturdier than normal. Still, it was only wood. His first kick made the frame shudder, and the second split it cleanly down the center, the sharp crack echoing in the confined hallway. The remains sagged outward under his boot, splintered pieces skittering across the floor as he pulled the ruined panel aside. There was nothing elegant about it, just brute effort applied until the obstacle stopped being one.

  Alyssa had stepped back when he started, keeping clear but not saying anything. She had to admit she understood, at least a little. There was a frustration there, in not getting to have that confrontation with Lester. He was the mastermind, or at least he was supposed to be. But he wasn't, not really. He was a desperate man, maybe, or just too smart to be wise, trying to fix something that didn't have a solution, right up until it reached up and bit him. He was just another victim of his own hubris. It didn't excuse anything, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

  So she watched Red rip a door apart because he needed a little pick me up after this latest grand reveal and the catharsis was real. It was just one more thing about him that she took note of. Her night had been one defined by wild ups and downs, stark terror meeting moments of tense quiet, but for al that she'd seen of Red, the man was tight as a wire from the word go. He had a plan, he had the tools, and he seemed to have all the gadgets and gizmos in the world to get it done, and compared to her, he was a wolf to her chihuahua and she knew it. But that didn't mean he was any less stressed than she was, and this... he had been looking for evidence, or proof, or something to prove his grand conspiracy and finding someone who could definitively point the finger having been long dead before he even got here had to be a blow.

  He stepped inside and paused, taking in a room that didn’t belong in a hospital. Lavish didn’t begin to cover it. This was executive-level opulence, the kind of setup you’d expect from a Fortune 500 executive with stock options and a private jet, not from an administrator running a rural medical facility. The furniture was real leather, thick and expensive, the kind that didn’t crack even after years of disuse. The desk was solid hardwood, heavy enough to anchor the room, its surface polished to a mirror sheen. Real art hung on the walls, framed pieces that looked expensive even to his untrained eye. The shelves held awards and curated décor that glittered in the light, next to framed articles and certifications, all of them painting the image of a rich, brilliant scientist with a storied career. Every surface was spotless, arranged with deliberate care, a space built to send a message about power the moment someone stepped inside. But even all that expense couldn’t compete with the man slumped in the desk chair.

  Daniel swept the room, but his attention kept sliding back to the body. The man was tall, his build still obvious despite the way he folded back over the chair. He wore a tactical vest under a labcoat, a strange pairing that made grim sense now. His head had fallen back against the leather, but the wall behind him bore the thick, dark evidence of what had happened. A Mare’s Leg rifle rested in his lap, gleaming clean despite the mess around it. Daniel lifted it carefully, weighing the short-barreled lever-action in his hands. The thing looked almost pampered, maintained with care even as everything else had fallen apart. A bandoleer of .45-70 cartridges hung down the rifle's strap, brass catching the dim, flickering light.

  Alyssa stepped in behind him, gasping softly when she took in the body. “Jesus…” she whispered.

  Daniel spotted the clipped-on badge at the man’s coat pocket. “Well, we found Doctor Sundaram.” He tossed her the ID card, which she caught after fumbling once. On the front, a younger Sundaram smiled from the washed-out photo, handsome in a clean-cut, earnest way that didn't match the ruined corpse in the chair. Alyssa studied the picture, then the body, and a faint sadness tugged at her expression. He had made it this far, only for it to end like this.

  Daniel moved to the desk and lifted the note lying beside the keyboard. He skimmed the first lines, then began reading aloud.

  “If you’re reading this, then we’ve failed. It was never supposed to be like this. We were doing good work. We were supposed to be helping people, but it all went so wrong. The company wanted more. Wanted results fast, to justify their expenses, and they just… kept pushing us, for more and more and more, and we made decisions. Bad ones. Even now I fear them so much I don’t dare write their name, for what they could do to my family if it came out, but I’m so very, very sorry to all those we… I… betrayed.

  I tried to make it right, but the company doesn’t care. I warned them that it was breaking containment, that blooms were appearing outside the quarantine zone, but none of my messages were ever returned. I had to take matters into my own hands. We were just supposed to observe, but I can’t, because we are on the verge of an ecological catastrophe. After three long years, the bloom is ready to germinate, and if it does, I fear what it might mean for the Arklay Mountains, Raccoon City, and the world at large. With no other option, I took it upon myself to hire mercenaries to help me break in. The plan was simple, we were going to collect the T-RXR compound and add it to the rooftop sprinkler system. In the final days of the outbreak, the company filled it with an Acetominol/Carcinodram weed killer mixture. Unfortunately, the plant has grown too large for the mix to kill it root and stem. The T-RXR needs to be added to neutralize the regenerative nature of the virus. It’s the only way to end it for certain.

  “Below you’ll find the instructions for how to add the chemical to the rooftop tank. I wish I could have done it. Could have fixed my mistake, but without power I cannot activate the system, and the men I sent to do so are dead. Everyone is dead. And soon, so too will I. I have been trapped in this room by the strange plant-infected that have populated this building. I refuse to let them take me. I’m going to end it on my terms. I’m sorry. Signed, Arjun Sundaram.”

  The instructions that followed were straightforward, but felt almost too simple. Retrieve at least ten vials of the undiluted RXR from the chemical lab, locked behind reinforced cabinets they’d seen earlier. Then reach the rooftop tank, a system built years ago that Sundaram had trusted enough to hinge a last-resort plan on. Mix the compound through an access spigot, hope the lines weren’t corroded, and pray the sprinkler array had enough piping still intact to douse the whole building.

  Only after that would they hit the activation switch, powering a dispersal system designed for fire suppression but repurposed into the final safety system just in case everything went to hell. And once it started, once the T-RXR began spreading across the rooftop, down the walls, and through the ventilation shafts, they had to hope enough of the building was stable enough to not immediately collapse in and kill them.

  Alyssa exhaled softly. Red had said it best. It can never be easy, can it?

  “So what now, Red?” she asked as Daniel set up the laptop on the desk. “Go get the T-RXR and take it to the roof?”

  “Eventually,” he said. “Sundaram’s notes say there's a rooftop access hatch hidden in here somewhere. Part of the reason he got trapped was that it needs power to work, but since I got that running, we should be able to get it open if we find the switch. After that it’s a short run back to the lab, grab the RXR, and we’re done.” He paused. “But before we do that, I want to scrape this computer. If there’s anything useful, it’ll be here.”

  And take a minute to catch their breath, went unspoken. Alyssa knew she was feeling the burn, and a glance at her watch told her it was almost four in the morning. She'd been at this for almost fourteen hours, and even with Red giving her some power bars and water, she was running into her limits. She had no idea where the man seemed to find the seemingly infinite font of stamina he had, but he didn't seem to be struggling at all, despite the literal ton of gear he was carrying.

  Watching him plug away at the armored computer (and where you got one of those, she wished she knew), she asked "Finding anything good?"

  “Not really. Lots of data files, lots of reports… wait. This is promising.” He tapped a command, opening a folder dated long after the hospital’s closure.

  A still image filled the screen.

  Alyssa’s breath caught. The woman staring back at her was unmistakably herself, younger and stripped bare on a sterile hospital bed. A tiny, shocked sound escaped her before she could stop it, heat flooding her face. Red didn’t react to the photo, uninterested in anything but the accompanying text.

  What he found wiped out the embarrassment entirely. The files weren’t simple logs; they were procedure notes. Detailed, clinical records of everything that had been done to her. Forced sedation. Restraints. Repeated injections straight into her skull. Memory blockers. Neural stimulators. Electroshock trials. Chemical cocktails with long names and short explanations. Sessions repeated again and again over the course of weeks. All labeled under the same term: “corrective memory adjustments.”

  Every page mentioned Dorothy. Every result tied back to her recovery, as if Alyssa had been nothing more than a placeholder, a substitute needed so Lester could perfect something meant for his wife.

  Her body and mind had been abused in ways that left her numb inside, numb, and enraged, all at once. Red had left her to looking it over, searching for the access to the secret rooftop ladder instead. It was a small privacy that she deeply appreciated, so she could process this. He’d been decent enough to realize that the thing that looked “promising” was anything but, and instead… it was a detailed file on her, on what was done to her, why, and how it had been done with such deliberate care besides. And it wasn’t even something she could lay at the feet of someone. Lester was dead. This whole fucking hospital was dead. A plant-infested tomb, and all she found here was… was too much.

  Red didn’t say anything when she slumped against the wall, or when she put her head in her hands and silently started to sob. He just kept looking, pulling things off of shelves and pocketing the occasional trinket. It was almost comical, really. All this time, all this pain, and what, it was all for some bitch who was probably a plant zombie and some bastard who had probably been eaten by her. None of it meant anything. The years of nightmares, the humiliation, the countless therapy hours, and in the end none of it mattered.

  “Goddamnit. What bullshit,” she whispered.

  “What is?” Red asked without turning.

  “All of this. This hospital. Lester. Me. None of it fucking mattered.” Her laugh cracked, thin and wild. “I thought I’d find answers. Something to hold onto. But no. I was an experiment. Not even an important one. Just something that fuck out there wanted to test for his dead bitch wife. I wasn’t even an afterthought.”

  “Not very fair, is it?” Red said. He stepped back to the laptop, his tone clipped in a way that told her he genuinely meant it. “I can delete the file, if you want. There’s nothing there that shows anything but Lester being a lunatic.”

  “Kind of you to offer, but… no.” Her voice wobbled, and she hated that she couldn’t stop it. “There’s so much in there that I wanna go through it all. Maybe just… to find out how fucked I am.” The laugh that followed wasn’t even a laugh, just something brittle escaping her because she had no idea what else to do with the weight pressing down on her chest.

  “If that’s what you want.” He went back to typing, fingers moving with practiced precision. “If you need some more- what?”

  The abrupt shift in his tone snapped her eyes up. His posture changed, tightening.

  “This… doesn’t seem right.”

  She moved to his side without thinking. “What doesn’t seem right?”

  “About a third of these files aren’t transferring cleanly.” His brow knotted behind the visor. “It’s like… something is chewing them up while I’m trying to move them.”

  “Is that not supposed to happen?”

  He let out a breath that wasn’t quite a scoff. “No, this is a first. It’s almost like- FUCK!”

  The desktop flickered violently, a spark jumping under the monitor before the whole machine went dark. Thin trails of smoke drifted from the vents.

  “Shit, fuck, FUCK!” Red snarled, slapping uselessly at the dead keys. “The system had some kind of failsafe. When I started pulling from the shared server, it tried to attack my laptop. Mine pushed back, so it tried to shred the files, couldn’t, and decided to kill itself instead. I lost over half the drive, and a good third of what I did pull is scrambled to hell.”

  “Is it recoverable?” Alyssa asked, grasping at anything that wasn’t the spiral she’d been sinking into.

  “No idea. I’m not a tech expert. No idea where to start.” He yanked the cables free with a frustrated snap, then let out a slow breath. “No use crying about it now. On the upside, I found the roof access.”

  He pointed to a bust perched on a side table, its marble head tipped back unnaturally to reveal a concealed button.

  “You’re… kidding.” She stared at it, because of course this ridiculous nightmare of a hospital would hide doors behind statues. “This is real, right?”

  Red shrugged. “I don’t even know why this is throwing me so hard, Red.”

  His chuckle was quiet, and the hand he laid on her shoulder was surprisingly steady. She didn’t know if she was actually getting herself under control or if she was just shoving everything down hard enough to function, but either way it was enough for now. They were close. Whatever came after, they’d deal with it later.

  “I didn’t want to open it yet,” he said. “Wasn’t sure if there was anything in there while you were… indisposed.”

  She nodded and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Lets just do it.” Only then did her gaze catch the rifle strapped to his pack. “Is that…”

  “Seemed like a waste to leave it. Did you…?” She shook her head at the implied question. She was good with the MP5.

  “Get ready then.” He said, and hit the switch. A section of wall next to the statue slid back and into itself, revealing… a relatively normal ladder, straight up. Daniel stuck his head up there, seeing it terminated in a hatch, but otherwise the route was clear.

  000

  The two of them made their way back to the Chemical Lab, the hallway still smouldering in places, the walls streaked with soot and scorched vines that twitched weakly from the damage. Heat clung to the air, a faint dry breath that made every inhale rough on the throat, and Alyssa lifted a hand unconsciously toward her collar as if trying to clear the tightness from her chest. Nothing moved. No shamblers staggered out to meet them, no twisting roots reached down from the ceiling, and Daniel felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise at the quiet. After the constant pressure of the last few hours, the absence of any immediate danger felt strange. Not safe, never that, but like the building itself was pausing, watching them, and waiting.

  They cut through the ruined stretch of corridor without speaking, boots crunching over glass and charred debris. Alyssa’s shoulders stayed tight, the MP5 kept close to her chest, eyes flicking to every doorway as they passed. Daniel moved at a measured pace, steady and deliberate, the familiar weight of his armor and gear grounding him now that they had a clear objective. Get the T-RXR. Get to the roof. Finish this.

  The lab itself looked the same as when they had left it, aside from the additional corpses on the floor. The shamblers Alyssa had dropped lay where they had fallen, twisted and broken, their plant-choked bodies already starting to stiffen. The sour, green rot stink in the room was stronger now, pushed up by heat and time, but it remained bearable. Along the walls, the cabinets still waited in silent rows, glass front panels intact, the metal mesh untouched and the locks rusty.

  Alyssa eyed the nearest cabinet and let out a frustrated breath. “Figures this part held up,” she muttered, stepping closer. The heavy lock and metal mesh looked untouched despite everything else in the room being half-destroyed. Through the glass she could see neat racks of vials, each one labeled in careful print, a grid of potential salvation or disaster depending on which ones they grabbed.

  “Here.” Daniel pulled a tool from a thigh pouch, metal folding in his gloved hands with the smooth familiarity of something well used. He snapped the compact bundle open and out came a pair of bolt cutters that collapsed down like an overbuilt butterfly knife. Extending the handles fully with two quick motions, then offered the tool to Alyssa. “This should make getting those locks off easier.”

  “I could just… shoot them though?” She lifted her MP5 a little, already imagining how fast it would be to sweep the locks away with a short burst. He shook his head immediately.

  “Don’t. Ricochets could hurt you, or break the vials we’re looking for.” His tone left no room for argument. “We’re short on second chances. Cut them clean.”

  She grimaced, but took the bolt cutters from him. The weight settled into her hands, heavier than she liked, but at least it was straightforward. Point, clamp, squeeze. No thinking around corners. “Fine. I’ll make it work.”

  Daniel nodded once and moved to the cabinet on the opposite wall. As he drew a crowbar from a loop on his belt, intending to pry open the first lock rather than shear it, he felt the building shift around them. It was subtle at first, a faint vibration that he registered in his boots more than his ears.

  The next tremor was not subtle.

  The floor jumped under their feet. Dust dropped from the lights in a thin curtain. Alyssa’s head snapped up, eyes wide. “Red?”

  “I feel it,” he said, already turning toward the center of the room.

  With a thunderous crash, the ceiling above them split open. Chunks of drywall, twisted rebar, and shattered tiles exploded downward, filling the lab with a choking cloud of dust and pulverized plaster. Alyssa flinched back, reflexively throwing an arm up to shield her face. Daniel pivoted and dropped a shoulder, crowbar clattering on the ground as he moved to dodge the falling debris.

  Something massive slammed into the floor hard enough to crack the tile and send a shock through the room.

  The Axeman landed in a crouch amid the crater of broken flooring, his new form half framed by the jagged edges of the hole above. Gone were the ragged, blood-soaked clothes he had worn before. In their place, a bark-like chitin plated his body in rough, overlapping armor. It clung to his limbs like fused plates of wood and bone, irregular but thick, glossy with sap that caught the light in hard amber streaks across his chest. His torso was encased in a solid mass of that same gleaming amber, like something poured over him and left to harden.

  His weapon had changed too.

  Where there had once been a long-handled executioner’s axe, now there was only the blade itself, gripped by a knot of root and vine that sprouted from his right arm in a writhing tangle. The limb shifted and flexed, cords of living wood tightening and relaxing as they curled around the severed haft and blade. The metal edge was pitted and stained, but it still looked heavy enough to take a head in one cut.

  The headsman’s hood clung to the top of his skull in tattered strips, burned and torn, revealing the thing underneath it. Where a nose and mouth should have been, a vertical rift split the lower half of his face in two, a gaping line running from chin to forehead. It opened with a sickening, wet flex, unpeeling like a monstrous Venus flytrap to show rows of thin, needle-like fangs. Filthy yellow fluid dripped between them, hissing when it hit the cracked tiles.

  For a heartbeat, everything held.

  Then the Axeman, or what was left of him, loosed a rattling hiss through that vertical maw and leapt straight at Daniel, the axe-blade screaming through the air in a brutal horizontal arc.

  Daniel threw himself sideways, boots skidding on tile as the blade cut through the space his head had just occupied. The shock of impact shuddered through the room when the axe bit deep into a steel support post instead, sparks bursting out in a shower. He hit the floor in a controlled slide, rolling over a shoulder and coming up already bringing the Saiga to bear.

  “Move!” he snapped.

  Alyssa did not need to be told twice. She bolted for the cabinets along the far wall, bolt cutters clutched in one hand, her MP5 still in the other. She ducked behind a lab table as the Axeman tore his weapon free of the post with a screech of metal and turned back toward Daniel, sap flinging off the blade in sticky arcs.

  The Axeman lunged. Daniel fired.

  The first buckshot round slammed into the creature’s chest, pellets smashing into the amber plating with a sound like gravel hitting glass. Some of them punched through the thinner sections, spraying chips and thick, dark sap across the floor, but most sank in shallow or skipped, their force bled away by the unnatural armor. The impact still rocked the creature back a step.

  It recovered fast.

  It came on again, faster than something that size had any right to move. Daniel backpedaled, firing a second and third shot, walking the pattern from the chest up toward the shoulder that anchored the weapon arm. Each blast staggered the thing but did not take it down. Chunks of bark and amber shattered away, exposing sinew and thick cords of twisted muscle beneath, but it only seemed to make the creature angrier.

  The axe-blade whipped forward with a snapping motion of its arm, roots flexing like a cable. Daniel twisted, letting the blade skim past his side close enough that he felt the wind of it through the armor. The sharpened edge tore a deep groove into the heavy bench behind him instead, sending glassware and instruments flying.

  “Red!” Alyssa called, breathless, already at the first cabinet. She set the bolt cutters on the lock, adrenaline making her hands clumsy as she fought to slide the jaws into place.

  “Just cut!” he barked, not taking his eyes off the Axeman.

  The monster lunged again. Daniel juked left, fired from the hip, and hit the knee joint. The low shot blew out a chunk of bark and twisted flesh, forcing the creature to stumble. It dropped to one side, but instead of falling, it planted a hand on the floor and used the momentum to spin, the axe arm whipping around in a brutal, sweeping backhand.

  It caught Daniel high on his chest.

  The blow did not cut through the Phalanx plates, but the impact was like getting hit by a truck. The force picked him up and threw him back, flipping him over the remains of a lab table. He crashed through a rack of equipment, metal stands and broken glass cascading around him. The breath blasted out of his lungs as he hit the floor on his back, ribs screaming inside the armor.

  He forced himself to roll as the axe bit down where he had landed a heartbeat before, gouging deep into the tile and leaving a spiderweb of cracks.

  “Come on, come on,” Alyssa muttered, voice tight in her throat. The bolt cutters clamped finally, and she squeezed with everything she had. The lock resisted for a second, then snapped with a harsh, metallic pop. The broken piece of steel fell to the floor.

  She yanked the cabinet door open and stared at rows of vials, her heart already racing. She scanned the labels as fast as she could. RX-030. TX-11. G-72. None of them were T-RXR.

  “Shit,” she whispered.

  Behind her, Daniel forced himself upright, planting one hand on the floor and using the Saiga like a brace to shove himself back to his feet. His lungs burned, and his shoulder throbbed from where the blow had clipped him, but nothing felt broken. The Axeman turned toward him again, the vertical mouth opening in a shriek that sounded like metal tearing.

  It charged.

  He fired twice in rapid succession, the shotgun slamming back into his shoulder with each blast. Buckshot tore into the creature’s torso and arm, shredding off more of the bark armor and peppering the meat underneath. Sap and some darker, thicker fluid splattered the floor. The Axeman barely slowed.

  It swung. Daniel dropped low and rolled toward its off side, letting the blade pass over him. As he came up on one knee, he saw the next attack coming. The axe arm lashed out like a whip, the blade at the end snapping toward him on the end of a lengthened, root-laced limb.

  He threw himself back and felt the air split just above his visor. The blade buried itself in the wall, sending a crack up through the plaster as roots anchored in, then flexed to wrench the metal edge free again. Desperately, he kicked out the empty mag and slammed another in, racking it.

  “You okay?” Alyssa shouted, moving to the second cabinet already, bolt cutters dragging from one hand like an anchor.

  “Working on it,” he grunted.

  He pivoted and fired again with a frantic pace, finger fluttering the trigger, aiming for the shoulder joint where that root-tangle met the Axeman's torso. The shot blew more of the armor away and carved a deeper wound there, but the whip-arm still moved, still came snapping back into guard.

  The Axeman surged forward. Daniel backstepped, keeping distance, keeping its focus on him. As long as it fixated on the louder, closer target in heavy armor, it wouldn't think to go after the unarmored woman hacking at the locks behind it.

  Alyssa slammed the cutters around the second lock, muscles screaming as she bore down. The steel surrendered with another loud snap. She wrenched the cabinet open and scanned frantically. Rows of colored liquids. Different labels. Still no T-RXR.

  Her pulse hammered in her ears. She moved down the line inside the cabinet, searching for anything that matched the notation in Sundaram’s instructions. Nothing.

  Behind her, Daniel’s world narrowed to muzzle flashes and the rhythm of the Axeman’s attacks.

  The creature moved with animal aggression mixed with something disturbingly methodical. It didn't just swing wildly. It tested him, shortened its strikes when he dodged wide, adjusted its timing when he ducked. Its vertical mouth gaped and closed in rattle-screams as it pressed forward, each step loud on the ruined tile.

  Daniel sidestepped another brutal overhead chop, the axe biting into the floor with enough force to send shards of tile flying. He racked the Saiga, felt it run dry, and dropped the empty magazine with a practiced motion. It clattered away across the floor.

  He slammed in a fresh mag of buckshot and resumed firing, each blast chewing away more of the Axeman’s shell. Amber chips and bark fragments flew, raining down on the floor in a glittering, sticky spray. The creature fought through it, as if pain was only a distant alarm it could ignore.

  He needed space. He needed a reset.

  “Red, I still don’t see it!” Alyssa shouted, panic edging in.

  “Keep looking!” he snapped back.

  The Axeman lunged again, swinging low this time. Daniel jumped back, heel catching on a fallen stool. The sudden loss of balance nearly dropped him, but he twisted and caught himself on a lab bench with one hand, scraping the armor along its edge. The axe tore through the space where his legs had been a second before.

  The whip-arm snapped, trying to correct mid-swing, and the blade came back around faster than he liked.

  This time it clipped him square in the chest.

  The world went sideways as the blow sent him crashing into a bank of metal shelving. Equipment and boxes cascaded down. His visor filled with a smear of light and shadow as he hit, his body momentarily weightless before gravity reclaimed him. Pain flared hot through his ribs.

  His hand brushed the small of his back as he fell, fingers touching the familiar shape of a flashbang clipped to his belt.

  He hit the ground hard, armor clanging against tile, and the Axeman advanced, looming over him, arm already drawing back for a finishing strike.

  Daniel yanked the flashbang free, thumbed the pin, and rolled onto his side.

  “Cover your eyes!” he snapped.

  Alyssa didn't hesitate. She dropped into a crouch behind an open cabinet, eyes squeezing shut as she turned her face away, shoulders hunched.

  Daniel tossed the grenade at the Axeman’s feet.

  The world went white.

  The blast of light and sound hammered the lab like a physical force. Even behind his visor and with his head turned, the detonation made his ears ring and his vision blot for a heartbeat. For the creature, caught at the epicenter with no such protection, the effect was even worse.

  The Axeman recoiled with a guttural scream that sounded shredded at the edges. Its whip-arm flailed, the blade carving wild arcs through the air, cutting into table legs and support beams instead of meat. It stumbled, heavy feet cracking tile as it thrashed.

  Daniel forced himself up through the ringing in his skull. He pushed off the shelving, muscles screaming, and got his feet under him. The Saiga hung from its sling, still loaded. He grabbed the fore-end, brought it up, and poured another string of buckshot into the creature’s torso while it staggered.

  Pellets tore into the amber plate and the now exposed flesh beneath. Sap and blood spattered the floor and walls. The Axeman lurched, tried to find him, its movements jerky and unfocused.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Now, Alyssa!” he barked. “Next cabinet!”

  She sucked in a breath, blinked her eyes clear, and scrambled along the wall, dragging the bolt cutters. Her arms felt like lead, and her legs shook, but she did not stop. She reached the next cabinet, snapped the jaws around the lock, and squeezed. Her hands ached, but the metal surrendered with another loud pop.

  She wrenched the door open and stared at more vials. Still not the right label.

  “Come on, come on,” she whispered, scanning each row. Her heart climbed higher into her throat with every wrong combination of letters.

  Behind her, the Axeman shook off the worst of the flashbang, its vertical mouth opening in a ragged shriek. It swung blindly, then locked onto Daniel again as its senses realigned. It charged through the drifting haze, each step heavy and deliberate.

  Daniel saw the pattern in the rounds he had fired and what they had accomplished. Buckshot chewed the armor, exposed flesh, but it didn't dig deep enough to slow the thing significantly. He needed something stronger.

  He felt for his remaining magazines, fingers brushing over the marked one that held his last Dragon’s Breath shells.

  “Fine,” he muttered.

  He kept firing with the buckshot until the magazine clicked empty one more time. The last few blasts carved a ragged trench along the creature’s side and blew chunks off its left arm, but the monster kept coming, dragging its damaged limb without concern.

  He dropped the spent mag, grabbed the Dragon’s Breath load, and seated it with a solid slap. He racked the action, felt the heavier rounds slide into place, and took a breath.

  The Axeman closed the distance, whip-arm rising.

  Daniel aimed center mass and pulled the trigger.

  The effect was immediate and dramatic. The muzzle belched fire, a plume of incandescent streaks that licked out and splashed across the creature’s chest. The phosphorous mix bit into amber and bark, igniting with a hungry flare. Fire crawled along the sap-slick surfaces, burning hot and bright.

  The Axeman screamed.

  Its vertical mouth flared wide, the sound that came out no longer just rage, but something higher, sharper, threaded with what might have once been a human voice buried deep under layers of distortion. It clawed at its own chest with its free hand, trying to tear away the burning plates.

  Daniel didn't give it the chance.

  He kept firing, each shot painting more of the creature in fire. Flames raced along its armor, jumping from plate to plate, seeping into cracks where sap fuelled the burn. The room filled with the bitter, choking smell of scorched resin and something like cooked meat.

  He had to be precise. These were his last Dragon’s Breath shells. He focused on the joints, the lines where armor met flesh, burning into the weak points.

  Across the lab, Alyssa ripped open the next cabinet and scanned the shelves. More vials. More names. None of them the one she needed.

  Her eyes caught on something different in the bottom row. A gun-like device with a thick, reinforced barrel and a plunger mechanism, mounted in a foam cutout alongside sealed ampoules. She yanked it free, heart pounding.

  An injector gun.

  She stared at it for a beat, mind racing. The idea hit her hard and fast. If the T-RXR killed plant matter and neutralized the virus in the building, then it stood to reason it would do the same inside a walking mass of both. She just needed the compound and a way to get it into the monster.

  She clutched the injector and moved along the wall, dragging the bolt cutters to the next cabinet.

  Behind her, the Axeman staggered in the fire.

  Daniel watched it burn, but his satisfaction was short-lived. The flames hurt it. They definitely hurt it. Chunks of bark-blackened armor cracked and flaked away, hissing as sap boiled and burst, but the creature didn't stop. If anything, it became more frantic, more aggressive.

  It lunged again, fire licking up its shoulder, axe whipping in a faster, more savage arc. Daniel threw himself aside, firelight strobing across his visor as the blade tore past. He racked another round and fired into its exposed flank, setting another line of plates alight.

  The magazine ran dry.

  He cursed under his breath and dropped it, grabbing for his last buckshot mag. The heat baking off the monster made sweat prickle along his spine under the armor. He could feel the temperature in the lab rising, the air growing thick with smoke.

  He slammed the new magazine home and racked the action. No more fire rounds. Just raw lead and will.

  The Axeman swung for his legs. He jumped, felt the blade scrape along the bottom edge of his armor, a nasty jolt that rattled his teeth. He landed hard, rolled, and came up firing again, each shot punching into the creature’s burning form.

  It felt the hits now. He could see it in the stutter of its movements, the way one leg dragged a fraction of a second late, the way its whip-arm’s recovery slowed. The fire hurt it, and the buckshot was finally finding more vulnerable targets in the charred mess beneath.

  Alyssa snapped another lock and tore open the cabinet door, eyes scanning desperately. Her gaze darted across the rows until it finally landed on a familiar string of letters and numbers.

  T-RXR.

  “Got you,” she whispered.

  She grabbed one of the vials with shaking hands and slotted it into the injector gun, pushing it into place until it clicked. The liquid inside gleamed a dull, unnatural color under the lab lights.

  She swallowed hard, throat tight, and turned.

  The Axeman was a tower of burning, thrashing rage in the middle of the lab. Flames licked up his sides, his bark armor cracked and peeling, pieces falling off to reveal blackening flesh beneath. He moved like something caught between agony and fury, each motion jerky but still powerful enough to snap bone if it connected.

  Daniel danced just outside the killing zone, using every inch of the lab space to stay alive. He ducked under a wild swing, fired two more shots into the creature’s chest, then had to leap aside as the whip-arm lashed out again. One of the lab benches shattered under the blow, metal legs bending, surface flipping and scattering glass and instruments.

  “Red!” Alyssa shouted.

  He did not look her way, but he heard the urgency. “What?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” she called. Her heart hammered against her ribs hard enough to hurt. “Just keep him busy.”

  “That is the plan,” he grunted almost sarcastically, teeth clenched as he fired again.

  She moved.

  Staying low, she slipped along the outer edge of the lab, keeping benches and equipment between her and the Axeman’s direct line of sight. The firelight strobed through the room in ugly flashes as the creature turned and swung, Daniel’s muzzle flashes cutting white lines across the chaos.

  She picked her moment when the monster’s broad back faced her, its attention fully locked on Daniel.

  “Okay,” she whispered to herself. “Okay. Just move.”

  She broke cover and sprinted across the open space, feet skidding on ash and broken tile. The heat coming off the burning creature hit her like a wall, making her eyes water and her skin prickle. She forced herself closer, injector gun clutched in a white-knuckled grip.

  She got within arm’s reach.

  The Axeman started to turn, some instinct or peripheral sense warning it of a new presence.

  Alyssa lunged, jammed the injector into its back between two plates of charred bark, and slammed the trigger with all her strength.

  The device kicked in her hand as it punched the needle through armor and into whatever passed for flesh beneath. The T-RXR shot into the monster in a single pressurized burst.

  The reaction was immediate.

  The Axeman roared, a sound that shook the air, its vertical mouth flaring wide as it arched its back. The whip-arm spasmed, the axe-blade carving a wild cut through empty space. It twisted toward her, every movement suddenly jerky, less coordinated.

  She yanked the injector free and stumbled back, tripping over debris. She hit the floor hard, the impact jarring her teeth. The injector flew from her hand and skidded across the tile.

  The creature turned fully toward her.

  For the first time, Alyssa saw its face clearly.

  The burned remnants of the headsman’s hood peeled back entirely, revealing what lay beneath. To one side, under the peeling plates of armored bark, she caught flashes of human skin. A cheekbone she recognized. The shape of a jaw that had once smiled beside her on camera. An eye socket framed in familiar bone structure, even if the eye inside glowed wrong, alive with some unnatural light.

  The other half of the face had been claimed entirely by the mutation. The vertical mouth tore up through it, splitting the features in two, rows of needle teeth lining the opening like a grotesque zipper that had been pulled up through his skull.

  “Kurt,” she whispered, the name ripped from her without thought.

  Some hint of recognition flickered in that one remaining eye. Or maybe she only imagined it. The creature staggered a step toward her, the vertical mouth convulsing. The sound that came out was not purely a roar anymore. It had shape. Broken syllables tried to form under the noise, torn between inhuman anatomy and some deep-rooted memory.

  It sounded like it was trying to talk to her.

  Alyssa scrambled backward on her hands and heels, heart slamming against her ribs, vision blurring with tears. “No. No, no, no.”

  Daniel saw the turn, saw the way the Axeman locked onto her, and knew he had seconds at best.

  “Hey!” he snapped.

  He slung the Saiga and reached over his shoulder, fingers closing around the Mare’s Leg strapped to his pack. He drew the cut-down rifle in one smooth motion, thumbed back the hammer, and shouldered it.

  The monster took another step toward Alyssa.

  Daniel sighted on the back of its head and squeezed the trigger.

  The .45-70 round hit like a freight train. The recoil slammed into his shoulder, a deep, heavy punch that reminded him why this was not a weapon to fire lightly. The bullet tore through bark and burning armor and punched into the skull beneath. A spray of dark fluid and shattered material burst out the front of the creature’s face, the vertical maw jerking open wider as the shock traveled through it.

  The Axeman reeled sideways, staggered, and then slowly turned back toward Daniel.

  It didn't fall.

  If anything, it looked angrier.

  “Of course not,” Daniel muttered under his breath.

  It let out another horrible, distorted cry, the attempt at words shredded completely now, lost to rage and pain. It lowered its shoulder and charged.

  “Alyssa, move!” he barked.

  She scrambled sideways, rolling behind a fallen bench as the burning bulk of the Axeman thundered past her, the floor trembling under each pounding step. The heat of it washed over her, making her flinch and curl in on herself as she crawled for cover.

  Daniel worked the lever on the Mare’s Leg, ejecting the spent casing in a spinning arc, and fired again into the creature’s advancing form. The round punched into its upper torso, near the base of the neck, blowing out another spray of darkened matter. It faltered for half a step, then recovered and kept coming.

  It was slower now, though.

  The T-RXR was doing something. Combined with fire, buckshot, and raw trauma, it was adding up. The monster’s movements had lost a fraction of their speed, its attacks a fraction of their precision. That fraction was the only reason Daniel wasn't already a smear on the wall.

  He took aim with the short-barrel rifle, racking another round as the Axeman closed the distance.

  Across the room, Alyssa pushed herself to her feet, tears streaming down her face. Her chest ached, a knot of grief and horror lodged somewhere under her sternum, but she forced herself to move. She scrambled back to the T-RXR cabinet and grabbed another vial, then another, shoving them into her pockets with trembling hands.

  She snatched up the injector gun from where it had fallen, checked the chamber with a quick, shaking glance, and loaded a fresh vial. Her fingers fumbled on the latch, but it clicked into place.

  She watched the Axeman and Daniel tear into each other.

  The creature swung. Daniel ducked, the axe screaming past close enough that it brushed the armor on his head with a glancing blow, rattling his teeth. He countered with a blast of 45-70 to the chest, then another to the shoulder, each shot carving more out of the burning, cracking armor.

  The Axeman didn't stop. If anything, the damage drove it forward harder, as if every injury stripped away whatever hesitation remained and left only a core of raw, murderous intent.

  Flames crawled up its neck and along the edge of its jaw. The vertical mouth frothed yellow and red as it roared, lunging with renewed force.

  Daniel barely dodged the next strike. The axe clipped his side, scraping along the armor hard enough to send a jolt of pain through his ribs. He stumbled, boots skidding on debris, and caught himself against a bench. He lifted the Mare's Leg and fired point blank into the monster’s midsection.

  The blast blew a hole through the burned armor and punched into the muscle beneath. It's guts started to pour out of the hole, filthy, rotting things covered in black veins burbled through the massive hole.

  The Axeman dropped to one knee for a second.

  Then it pushed back up, slower, but still clinging on to life, somehow.

  Alyssa realized with a horrible clarity that this was not going to stop with one dose. Or two. Whatever nightmare had turned Kurt into this, whatever the infection and the mutation had done to him, had left him with a monstrous endurance. If they wanted to put him down, they would have to make sure the T-RXR got deep and there was enough of it.

  Her throat felt tight. Tears blurred her vision. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, injector gripped in the other. She drew in one deep, shaky breath.

  “Okay, Kurt,” she whispered. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  Then she ran.

  She circled wide, keeping to the monster’s blind side, using the chaos of the fight as cover. Daniel saw her move and adjusted instinctively, angling his position so that the Axeman’s attention stayed on him as much as possible.

  “Come on, you ugly bastard,” he growled, firing another shot into its chest.

  The creature lurched toward him, dragging one leg now, the bark armor on that side almost completely burned away. Exposed flesh beneath had started to blacken in a way that looked different from simple charring. It looked dead, or at least partway there.

  Alyssa closed the last meters in a sprint.

  She jumped.

  Her hands slammed into the creature’s back, fingers scrambling for purchase on cracked bark and slick, oozing sap. The heat was intense, searing her palms through her gloves, but she hung on, teeth gritted.

  The Axeman roared, whipping its upper body from side to side as it tried to dislodge her. Its whip-arm snapped, the axe-blade carving wild paths through the air as its balance shifted.

  She slammed the injector into the side of its neck, right where charred bark met the softer tissue around the vertical mouth.

  “Stop!” she screamed, voice cracking. “Just stop!”

  She drove the plunger home.

  The T-RXR slammed into its system again. The reaction made the first dose look gentle.

  The Axeman convulsed. The vertical mouth snapped open so wide it split what was left of its face even further, the seams around it tearing as the tissues inside swelled and twisted. A foul steam vented from its nostril slits, carrying the reek of burning rot and something chemical.

  It threw itself backward, smashing Alyssa into a support pillar. Pain exploded in her back as the impact knocked the breath from her lungs. She lost her grip and fell, hitting the floor hard enough to see stars.

  “I’m sorry!” she gasped, tears spilling freely now. “God, I'm so sorry Kurt!”

  Daniel saw her go down and saw the way the Axeman staggered, its movements now badly degraded. Its legs shook. Its whip-arm twitched erratically. Armor sloughed off in sheets, hitting the floor with wet, cracking sounds.

  He fired again.

  The heavy round tore into the creature’s chest, punching through now-softened armor and into the tissue beneath. Another blast blew out its shoulder, nearly severing the whip-arm at the root. The axe drooped, the limb barely able to lift it.

  The Axeman dropped to one knee this time and stayed there for a moment, one hand braced on the floor, vertical mouth opening and closing in labored motions.

  Alyssa, sobbing, forced herself upright on her knees. She grabbed another vial of T-RXR from her pocket with shaking fingers and slammed it into the injector, barely seeing through the tears.

  She pushed herself to her feet and stumbled forward. The room felt far away, the heat and smoke distant compared to the hollow, raw ache in her chest. Kurt had been her friend. Her co-anchor. Her partner on and off the camera. She had thought he was dead, cleanly, horribly, but at least gone.

  Instead he had been turned into this.

  She reached him as he sagged further, his free hand now pressed to the floor, the once massive frame shrinking in on itself as the T-RXR did its work from the inside out.

  He looked at her.

  For a heartbeat, she swore she saw him. Not the monster. Not the mutation. Kurt. His one remaining human eye focused on her with painful clarity. The vertical mouth worked, and this time the sound that came out was almost a word.

  “Al…ly…”

  Maybe she imagined it. Maybe her mind filled in the gaps on its own. It did not matter.

  “I know,” she whispered, voice barely audible. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  She slammed the injector into his chest and pulled the trigger.

  The last dose of T-RXR drove into him. The effect was immediate. His body convulsed again, harder than before. Black veining spread rapidly from the injection site, crawling along his chest and up his neck like ink spilling under skin. The bark armor above it split and flaked away, revealing flesh that turned black, then grey, then cracked.

  He sagged forward, hands and knees on the floor now, the once terrifying bulk reduced to a shaking, collapsing frame.

  Daniel stepped back, watching carefully. He kept the Mare's Leg ready, but he didn't fire. The creature was dying. Every additional shot risked hitting Alyssa instead.

  She stood in front of Kurt, tears streaming down her face, shoulders shaking with every breath.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please let this be enough. Please let this be over.”

  The Axeman, Kurt, whatever was left of him, lifted his head one last time. For a moment, something like peace flickered across the ruined features. The vertical mouth moved, but no sound came out.

  Then he slumped.

  His arms gave out. His chest hit the floor with a dull, final thud. The blackening that had spread from the injection sites continued for a moment longer, then slowed, then stopped. The flames that had been eating at his armor guttered out as the fuel died. What was left of him was a cracked, darkened shell.

  Alyssa stared for a second longer, then her legs gave out. She dropped to her knees, then to her hands, and then she folded in on herself, sobbing. The sound ripped out of her unchecked, raw and painful.

  Daniel took a half step toward her, then stopped. This... this was for her. He shouldn't... he shouldn't. Even if they didn't have time, even if they had to move, he could give her a few seconds.

  He turned instead to the T-RXR cabinet and grabbed every remaining vial he could reach, stuffing them into pouches and pockets with quick, efficient motions. He knew that they needed as much as they could carry, for the last stretch of this long, terrible road.

  He glanced back at Alyssa. She knelt beside Kurt’s body, shoulders shaking, whispering apologies he could not quite hear over the ringing in his ears and the crackle of settling debris.

  The floor shuddered.

  Daniel’s head snapped up. “Alyssa,” he said, warning in his tone.

  She didn't respond, lost in her grief.

  The ceiling above Kurt’s body bulged.

  A split second later, a mass of vines and roots exploded through the cracked tiles overhead, punching into the lab with terrifying force. Thick tendrils as wide as a man’s torso slammed down and wrapped around the corpse in a writhing net. Bark and blackened flesh crumbled under the pressure as the central plant system reclaimed what had once been its favored executioner.

  Daniel dropped the last vial into a pouch and sprinted.

  He reached Alyssa in a few long strides, grabbed her under the arm, and hauled her away from the spreading tangle. She came up half stumbling, half dragged, her sobs breaking into startled gasps as he yanked her back.

  The vines tightened their grip around the Axeman’s body and, with a wet, cracking sound, ripped him up off the floor. His remains disappeared into the mass of roots as it retracted into the ceiling, dragging him back up through the hole in a violent, jerking motion.

  They were already moving when the last of him vanished, Daniel pulling Alyssa along as the lab shook again under the strain of the building-size organism repositioning itself above them.

  The building groaned under its own weight as Daniel and Alyssa burst into the hall, the floor pitching beneath them with another violent shake. A massive root tore through the outer wall just behind them, smashing glass and masonry into a storm of debris that chased their heels. Daniel didn't look back. He tightened his grip on Alyssa’s arm for the half second she needed to get her balance, then pulled her forward.

  “We have to move! That fucking plant is taking the whole building down!” he shouted over the crashing of stone and twisting steel.

  Alyssa stumbled once, caught herself, and forced her legs to obey. She had cried herself breathless moments ago, but instinct and raw terror pulled her forward now, keeping her close behind him as they sprinted toward the admin office.

  They crashed into the outer entrance without slowing. Daniel wrenched the door fully open and shoved Alyssa through before diving in behind her. The office shook violently, dust raining from the ceiling as another distant structural beam groaned under stress.

  There was no exchange of words. No time. They ran straight to the hidden roof access, climbing over toppled furniture and skidding across the dusty floor as Daniel shoved the statue aside and hit the release. The wall still sat open, revealing the ladder. He grabbed the vials of T-RXR from his pouches and slapped them into Alyssa’s pack, loading her up with the kind of desperate speed only sheer terror could convey.

  “You need to get this into the system and get it running! I’ll distract whatever the fuck that thing is up there!”

  Her breath hitched, but she nodded sharply. “Got it!” Her voice trembled, but her eyes locked with his, steady with determination. “Don’t get killed, Red. Okay?”

  He gave her a look, short and dry. “You too, Alyssa. Lets get this done.”

  Then they climbed into a nightmare.

  The hatch opened into a blast of cold rooftop air and a scene so monstrous that even Daniel hesitated for a fraction of a second. The bloom dominated everything, a colossal flower sprawled across the roof like something grown from a fever dream. Petals the color of blood and spoiled pus unfurled around a central pit, spilling clouds of toxic pollen that drifted across the rooftop in thick drifts like diseased snow.

  Four enormous vine-limbs rose from the base of the bloom. They twisted and swayed in the air, each thick as a tree trunk, strong enough to crush a truck, never mind a person. Their movements were wild, erratic, almost grieving.

  At the center of the flower, perched like a demented imitation of a pistil, was what remained of Dorothy Lester. Or what had once been her. Her body had twisted into a grotesque amalgam, fused with the plant in ways no living thing should endure. She screeched into the sky, a sound of pure pain and fury. Coiled around her roots lay the husk of the Axe Man, Kurt’s ruined body held close like some sick mockery of affection.

  Whatever she had become, whatever bond existed between them, the Lester bloom was mourning, and the hospital was breaking under her grief.

  Daniel and Alyssa split without speaking. Daniel raised the Mare's Leg and fired at the monstrous bloom. The rounds tore through petals and splattered sap but did little more than annoy it. He realized even the heavy 45-70 was useless, but he needed its attention.

  Behind him, Alyssa sprinted across the treacherous roof. The boards beneath her feet creaked and bowed as the structure trembled. The water tower sat on a raised platform near the corner of the building, its pump unit mounted just beneath it. The machinery rattled with age, its casing dented but intact.

  A vine-limb rose into the air.

  Daniel barely threw himself aside before it crashed down with a force that sent tiles exploding outward. Dust and debris rained over him as he slid across the rooftop.

  Making a split-second decision, he reached down and twisted the control dial on his Exoframe. The servos around his legs and spine activated with a rising hum, and the half-charge on his battery dropped instantly to a quarter.

  The power surge ripped through his limbs.

  He leapt, vaulting clean over another vine that swept low across the roof with murderous speed. He hit the ground running, boots skidding over pollen-slick tiles as he chambered another round.

  He closed the distance and opened fire.

  The blast tore away one of Dorothy’s extended arms. The creature shrieked, a horrible sound that rattled the air. In response, a wall of roots surged upward, forcing Daniel to dive and roll beneath whipping tendrils that stabbed down hard enough to punch through the roof itself.

  Alyssa reached the pump unit.

  The array of knobs, dials, and mechanical jackpoints sprawled across its surface like a maze. She let out a sharp curse. She had no idea what she was supposed to do with this! Her fingers shook as she scanned the layout, trying to match anything to Sundaram’s instructions.

  A vine slammed into the roof behind her, and she flinched, dropping to her knees.

  She looked up just long enough to see Daniel perform an aerial twist over a vine that swept horizontally, the Exoframe letting him move with superhuman speed. He landed hard, rolled, and fired again, drawing the monster’s attention.

  “Focus. Focus!” she snapped at herself.

  She dug through the jacks and toggles, heart hammering, finally spotting the intake port marked in the same format Sundaram had written in his notes. With shaking hands, she slammed a vial of T-RXR into place.

  One after another, she fed in nearly a dozen vials, her fingers slipping on glass slick with sweat and dust.

  Above her, the roar of rotor blades cut through the chaos.

  A Black Hawk thundered overhead, banking hard. Two rocket pods clung to its sides, and soldiers leaned out with rifles, firing directly into the bloom. Bullets peppered petals and vines, drawing furious screams from Dorothy.

  A second helicopter followed, weaving through the drifting pollen.

  The first salvo struck. Rockets streaked downward and exploded across the bloom in deafening eruptions. Petals tore free. A vine was severed entirely, the massive limb crashing down onto the rooftop like a felled tree.

  Dorothy retaliated.

  One vine whipped upward with terrifying speed, smashing across the first Black Hawk’s fuselage like a battering ram. Metal didn’t just shriek, it tore open in a ragged peel as the vine punched clean through the cabin. The helicopter lurched sideways, tail rotor snapping off in a spinning arc of shrapnel. It spiraled out of control, slamming toward the earth.

  The impact ignited the fuel within a heartbeat. A towering fireball erupted upward, a rolling column of orange and black that lit the rooftop in a violent flash and blasted a shockwave across the building, rattling Daniel’s armor and nearly knocking Alyssa off her feet.

  Daniel swapped weapons as soon as he heard the rockets. He had burned through the last of the 45-70, and he had little else left, except... He slammed in a magazine of explosive shells into the the Saiga, one of the last two he had. it was all or nothing now.

  He fired.

  The grenade slammed into the mass of roots shielding Dorothy. The explosion blasted them apart, revealing her central body. She screeched in pain, thrashing wildly.

  Daniel fired again, and another explosive round tore open the petals around her. The third round went wide, detonating against a vine that was rising to strike.

  The titanic tentacles went berserk.

  They stabbed downward, driving through the roof with brutal force. The entire building groaned. A deep structural shudder rippled up through the floor beneath them.

  Alyssa found the final switch.

  Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely feel anything else as she primed the system. Warning lights flickered. The machine gave a grinding mechanical protest.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Come on!”

  The pumps roared.

  She slammed her fist down on the activator.

  The machine shuddered violently, metal clanking and hissing as ancient pipes forced power through the network. Then a deep mechanical thrum spread across the rooftop.

  The bloom felt it immediately.

  Dorothy screamed. Not the shriek from before. This one was sharp, agonized, deafening. Alyssa clapped her hands over her ears, but it did little. Even Daniel staggered as the sound hit him.

  The petals began to change. The vibrant blood red dulled. Sickly yellow streaks darkened to gray. Black veins spread across every surface, crawling rapidly outward. The pollen drifting through the air turned grey as it shed, falling lifelessly to the roof.

  The vine-limbs spasmed.

  One crashed down across the far side of the rooftop, its weight punching through the roof. Another collapsed inward, smashing the water tower supports and sending metal screeching.

  The whole building shook violently. Windows across the top floor exploded outward. Cracks raced through the fa?ade like lightning.

  Below them, the hospital began to come apart.

  000

  Daniel charged toward her, running faster than she had ever seen him move, his boots digging divots out of the cracked tarmac as he ran. Alyssa barely had time to gasp before his arm hooked around her waist and hauled her up onto his back. “Hold on!” he barked, the words tearing out of him as he grabbed one of the fallen vine-limbs.

  The tentacle was already starting to rot, black veins racing across its surface as the T-RXR chewed through the bloom above. The decay spread so quickly that the once rigid limb shuddered under Daniel’s grip, softening and collapsing in uneven pulses that vibrated through Alyssa’s legs where they clung to him. Every foot they slid sent chunks of dying plant matter peeling away beneath them, leaving a greasy smear of blackened pulp along their path. Even with his enhanced strength, Daniel struggled to keep their descent controlled as the limb bowed inward like wet cardboard.

  It sagged harder with each passing second, the entire mass losing cohesion around them. The surface sloughed away in strips, exposing hollow pockets that gaped open as the structure failed. Alyssa felt the drop in her stomach before it happened, that lurch of weightlessness that meant nothing solid remained beneath them. They were more than twenty feet above the ground when he pushed off the collapsing vine, trying to angle their fall away from the worst of the debris.

  The limb finally gave way completely, shredding itself apart in a shower of blackened root-fibers as gravity claimed them both.

  The landing was rough, jarring every bone in Alyssa’s body and knocking the air from her lungs. Daniel hit first, absorbing the impact with his armor and momentum, rolling over his shoulder before coming up on his knees. He dragged her upright even before she caught her breath.

  The building behind them roared as entire sections of concrete sloughed off, sending it tumbling into the chasm. A rolling thunder of collapsing floors roared through the pre-dawn dark. Dust and debris blasted outward, a choking cloud that swallowed the world. Daniel threw himself over Alyssa, covering her with his entire body as pieces of the hospital rained down.

  The collapse felt endless. Minutes or seconds, she couldn’t tell. Her hands clutched blindly at him as the ground shook and the world groaned and died behind them.

  Then the noise faded, leaving a hollow quiet that felt wrong in the wake of the collapse. Dust drifted through the air in slow currents, catching what little light pierced the clouded sky. For a fragile heartbeat, the chaos had ended, as the ruins settled into themselves.

  The stillness shattered as a harsh mechanical whine cut through the settling haze. Daniel lifted his head, squinting through the swirling debris. A helicopter pushed down toward them, its silhouette dark against the pale horizon. When the last veil of dust rolled aside, Alyssa’s breath hitched at the unmistakable red-and-white Umbrella emblem gleaming across its fuselage.

  Her blood ran cold as she watched a man lean out, his rifle black and massive against the backdrop.

  Gunfire erupted a second later, the first shot slicing past Daniel’s head close enough that Alyssa heard the violent snap of air. Another volley followed in rapid succession, bullets tearing into the ruin around them and forcing the pair into frantic motion as they dove behind a chunk of fallen wall for cover. Concrete spat fragments into the air as rounds punched into it only inches from Daniel’s shoulder.

  A sudden, jarring impact drove into Daniel’s side as one round found him, the force slamming him sideways even as the underscale plates absorbed most of the hit in his Kevlar catching the worst of it. He hissed and slapped a hand to the wound, pulling it back and seeing the bright red on his gauntleted fingertips. It didn't feel deep, but he couldn't tell under the plates.

  “Red!” Alyssa cried.

  “I’m good,” he grunted, teeth clenched. “Move!”

  Four ropes dropped from the helicopter, whipping in the rotor wash. Black shapes slid down them, USS operatives in full tactical kit, gas masks gleaming, rifles raised before their boots hit the ground. There were half a dozen of them, each tracked under Daniel's visor as he moved to break their line of sight.

  They opened fire immediately, rifles barking in harsh, controlled bursts that chewed into the rubble around him. Muzzle flashes strobed through the dust, turning the ruined lot into a stuttering nightmare of light and shadow as rounds hunted for gaps in his armor.

  Daniel returned fire, planting his boots and driving forward a step instead of yielding ground. Caught out in the open and covering Alyssa as he could, he chose the only option he had. They tried to pin him, but the Phalanx plates held under the first concentrated volley. Rounds sparked off his chest and shoulders, ricocheting into the dirt in bright, angry streaks. He pivoted through the incoming fire, bracing the Saiga against his shoulder and tracking targets across his HUD until he found the nearest operative, a woman already swinging her SMG toward Alyssa’s position.

  He fired.

  The grenade-shell hit her dead center, the impact almost lost in the chaos.

  A sharp, concussive pop followed half a heartbeat later as the round functioned. The upper half of her body tore apart in an instant, fragmentation ripping her arms free in a spray of gore. Her mask and most of her skull vanished in a cloud of red mist that hung in the air for a surreal moment before dispersing.

  The tone among the operatives shifted instantly as the reality of what had happened registered.

  What had been confident aggression curdled into shock, then horror, then a jagged edge of disbelief. The clean lines of their advance broke, and a hesitation slipped into their movements that had not been there before.

  Alyssa felt it as much as heard it. Even through the ringing in her ears, she caught the change in their shouted calls and the sudden crack in their discipline. Even trained killers had limits to what they expected to see on a job.

  Daniel fired again, capitalizing on that moment.

  The second grenade detonated near two soldiers regrouping behind a broken pillar. Both screamed as fragments chewed into them, shredding their legs and tearing open their gear. One dropped instantly, armor and body giving out together. The other tried to crawl, dragging himself through the dust until his strength failed and he collapsed.

  The remaining three scattered, their neat formation gone as survival instinct overrode whatever orders they had come in with.

  Alyssa lifted her MP5 without thinking. Her hands still shook from adrenaline and grief, but she fired anyway, emptying the magazine in a single desperate burst. Her rounds chased the fleeing operatives, forcing them to dive for cover.

  Daniel joined her, raising the P90 one-handed and sending a tearing spray of 5.7 millimeter fire across the retreating line. His rounds hit harder, stitching across one operative’s spine and dropping him face-first into the dirt. It was all he had left in the mag as the two backpedaled, and as that too fell silent his handgun ripped it's way into his hands.

  They ran, each step marked by the crack of his pistol. Both of them angled for the largest break in the shattered wall, lungs burning, legs shaking. Behind them, the one of the last surviving USS soldiers shouted into his radio, but the words were lost under the howl of the rotor.

  The two broke into the forest just as fresh suppressive fire chewed into the rubble behind them, but it was no use. The woods swallowed them, thick trunks and pre-dawn fog giving them cover as the helicopter circled overhead. They passed wilted flowers, rotting vines, and the curled corpses of the infected dogs that had once stalked them. All of it browning and decaying now that the master bloom was dead.

  They kept moving, pushed by a desperate need to get away, even as they heard more of the telltale whooping of spinning rotors. Despite the hunting, searching aircraft and the bristling of soldiers behind them, they managed to put more and more space between themselves and their pursuers. Hours later, long after the last helicopter had peeled away and silence had crept back into the woods, they emerged into a familiar, forgotten copse, the abandoned park a welcome sight to the two, running off of pure adrenaline and not much else.

  Daniel was limping faintly now, the bandage around his ribs spotted with blood. The bullet had not gone deep; he had pulled the fragment out with a pair of tweezers and used a First Aid Spray to stop the worst of the bleeding, the coagulants and painkillers doing wonders to keep him moving, but it didn't help with the crushing exhaustion.

  Alyssa looked worse, staggering under the strain of the past hours. Her limbs trembled with every step she managed, each one a slow fight against muscles that felt like they were seconds from giving out entirely. Her back ached sharply with every breath she drew, the constant pull of exertion leaving her chest tight and raw. Exhaustion clung to her like a crushing weight, threatening to fold her in half.

  Neither spoke as Daniel opened the back of the SUV. Alyssa’s legs gave out the moment she reached the bumper, her body surrendering before she could tell it not to. She slid down with a shaky exhale, the cold metal kissing her back as she slumped against it. The ache in her muscles flared in a deep, ringing pulse, a full-body throb that rolled through her like an echo of every sprint, every fall, every panicked breath. It hurt, but that pain was grounding, anchoring her to the simple reality that she was alive. For the first time since the rooftop, she let herself breathe without the threat of death hanging over her.

  Daniel stood over her, already stripping off gear with practiced, unhesitating movements. Piece by piece he dismantled the soldier she had known all night. The Exoframe came off first, its metal plates hissing as the tension bled from the servos. He laid it into the trunk like a burden he was finally allowed to set down. The helmet followed, then the chest rig, the pouches, and the armored layers, each cast aside in methodical order as the weight of combat peeled away from him.

  What stood there when he was done wasn’t Red. The armored giant who had torn through monsters and soldiers was gone, shed piece by piece with every plate, strap, and buckle he stripped away. What remained was startling in its own right, not because it was unfamiliar, but because of how profoundly human it was.

  It was a man. Flesh and bone instead of steel and composite. Someone real enough that she found herself staring without meaning to.

  His hair was short and brown, flattened in places where the helmet had pressed it down, but it suited him. The beard was tight, deliberate, well-kept even after hours of combat, and framed a face that should have looked older than it did after everything he'd survived tonight. Mid-thirties, she guessed, though exhaustion and grit clung to him in streaks of dirt and dried blood. His torso was a map of bruises and fresh cuts, the kind that came from impacts meant to kill, not intimidate, yet he carried them with a quiet steadiness that made him look even more solid. He was ripped, yes, but more than that he was built like someone who had never stopped fighting for anything he cared to hold on to.

  Without the gear he was still massive, broad-shouldered and imposing, but that wasn’t what caught her off guard. It was his voice. Unmodulated now, stripped of the mechanical filter that had always made him seem twice as far away. It was warm and low, grounding her in a way she didn’t expect.

  “I know you probably have a lot of questions,” he said, breath steadying as he closed the tailgate, “but we need to get out of here. You said your car is on the other side of the mountain?”

  She nodded, still breathing hard. “Yeah. It’s in a small parking path off I-19. Can't miss it.” Her voice wavered at first, but steadied by the end, as if speaking the words pulled her back into herself.

  “Got it.” He slid into the driver’s seat with a tight wince he tried to hide, the stiffness in his side giving away more pain than he wanted to admit. Alyssa eased into the passenger seat, her body sinking into the cushion with a soft groan she didn’t try to stifle. The interior felt impossibly quiet compared to the hell they'd escaped, the silence pressing around them like a gentle hand after a night spent drowning in noise.

  For a moment neither spoke. The hum of the engine filled the thin space between them, steady and warm, a grounding counterpoint to the adrenaline still coursing through her. Alyssa stared ahead, watching the faint morning light break through the trees, feeling the weight of questions pile up behind her teeth. She didn’t know where to start. Didn’t know how to begin to unravel everything she had just seen him do, everything he had survived, everything she owed him for being here at all.

  “So,” she said finally, her voice quieter than she expected.

  “So?” He raised an eyebrow, glancing at her with a gentleness that caught her breath. He looked tired. Really tired. But present. Willing to listen.

  “I have a lot of questions,” she admitted, the words dragging out of her in a long exhale. “And this was… a lot. More than I ever thought I'd live through.” She swallowed, nerves knotting in her chest. “But right now I only really have one.” She hesitated, almost embarrassed by how small it sounded after everything they had just faced. “What… uh… what’s your name? I can’t keep calling you Red, Red.”

  He chuckled, soft and warm, the sound cutting through the remnants of fear coiled in her ribs. It was the most human she had heard him sound all night.

  “Daniel. My name is Daniel.”