The Hollow Guard's Mission: Sector 9
The neural pulse hit Pierre like a bolt of lightning to the spine. He didn't startle, didn't gasp, his eyes simply snapped open in the dark, silver irises dilating to absorb the gloom. The order slithered into his mind, cold and serpentine:
Kill. Contain. Burn.
By the time his boots hit the barracks floor, Viktor was already armed, his clawed gauntlets gleaming under the flickering overhead lights. Rook cycled the chamber of his railgun with a metallic *snick*, the scent of ionized plasma sharp in the air. Dax cracked his knuckles, the sound like gunshots in the silence. Pierre said nothing. He never did.
They moved as one—a lethal symphony of shifting weapons and rattling ammunition. At the armory, Pierre's calloused fingers traced the edge of a monofilament whip, its razor-thin coil humming faintly as he clipped it to his belt. He slid Mercy into its holster, the pistol's weight familiar against his thigh. Twelve throwing knives followed, tucked into hidden sheaths.
———
The Chancellor's hologram flickered in the command center, its pale light washing over the Revenants' gray skin.
"Sector 9. Quarantine breach. All specimens terminated. No exceptions."
A list of targets scrolled—twisted codenames and blurred holos of creatures that no longer looked human. At the bottom, a single line pulsed red:
Pod 17 – Classified.
Pierre's stitched lips twitched. The Chancellor's voice cut into his skull, bypassing speech, bypassing reason:
"Burn the ivory one last. Make it suffer."
———
The lab's outer gates were a mangled ruin. Steel reinforcements hung in twisted ribbons, edges bubbling with corrosive slime. Pierre stepped over a severed arm, its fingers still twitching, and crushed a child's pink shoe under his boot without breaking stride. The air reeked of bile and burnt hair.
Dax snarled, nostrils flaring. "Spliced. Fresh."
Rook's scanner chirped. "Sublevel 5. Heat signatures clustered."
Pierre was already descending, Mercy drawn.
———
They carved through the lab like a scythe through wheat.
Viktor's claws snicked through necks with surgical precision, heads thudding wetly to the floor. Rook's incendiary rounds turned corridors into infernos, molten flesh dripping from the walls. Dax punched through ribcages, his fists emerging slick with still-beating hearts.
Pierre moved differently.
When they cornered Subject 011-IX—a former lab technician fused to the ceiling, her spine split into six arachnid legs, he threw a knife into the joint of her left limb. She dropped, screeching, acidic saliva spraying. He caught her mid-fall, gripped her jaw, and twisted. The crack echoed. Her remaining legs spasmed, clawing weakly at his chest until he ripped them off one by one.
"Sleep," he whispered, though she couldn't hear him.
———
Pod 17's door hung askew, glass shards glittering like ice. Inside, the scientist's corpse lay sprawled, throat slashed in four parallel gashes, Revenant claws.
And then—him.
The boy was slight, fragile, curled in on himself like a wounded bird. His skin was pale as milk, his black eyes wide but dry. No gray tint. No bioluminescent veins. Human.
Pierre's pistol pressed to the boy's forehead.
"KILL IT KILL IT KILL—"
The Chancellor's voice shrieked in his skull.
Miyoung didn't flinch.
For the first time in decades, Pierre hesitated.
Then he reached up, dug his thumb into the flesh behind his ear, and ripped out his neural comm implant. Blood dripped down his neck as he crushed the device under his boot.
"Mine," he growled, hauling Miyoung over his shoulder.
Behind them, the lab's self-destruct alarms wailed.
———
Viktor froze mid-swing, his claws dripping with the blackened blood of a Spliced subject. "Alpha—what the hell are you doing?!" Rook's railgun swung toward Miyoung. "That's a specimen. Orders said—"
Pierre turned, his silver eyes narrowing to slits. The air crackled with the static charge of his unspoken threat. "Move. Now."
The facility's self-destruct klaxon blared, red lights strobing as ceiling panels began to collapse. Dax cursed, ducking a falling beam. "We've got ninety seconds till this place cooks!" Viktor hesitated, staring at Miyoung's small form. "He's human, Alpha. You know what happens if we—"
Pierre lunged, closing the distance between them in a blink. His fist closed around Viktor's throat, slamming him into the wall hard enough to crack concrete. "Question me again," he growled, "and I'll leave you here."
Miyoung stirred weakly on Pierre's shoulder. "…hurts…"
Pierre dropped Viktor and turned, barking orders: "Rook—clear the east corridor. Dax—rear guard. Move."
———
They carved through the collapsing lab like a pack of wolves, Rook incinerating Spliced stragglers with precise bursts of fire. Dax crushed a mutated hound's skull under his boot, its whimpers silenced mid-snarl.
Miyoung's fingers dug into Pierre's armor as a ceiling beam crashed down, missing them by inches. "Put me down—I can run!"
Pierre ignored him, adjusting his grip to shield the boy's body from falling debris.
At the extraction point, Viktor slammed his fist into the emergency hatch controls. "Seal's jammed! Blow it!"
Pierre set Miyoung down—gently, absurdly gently—and drew Mercy. Three shots to the hatch hinges, then a kick that sent the steel door flying into the smog-choked night.
"Go!"
The Revenants piled into the armored transport, Viktor at the wheel. Pierre shoved Miyoung into the corner seat and braced himself in the doorway, firing Mercy at the swarm of Spliced pouring from the lab's ruins.
"Drive."