Rain and mud.
Those were the two things Kaelen Vance remembered most clearly. The relentless South American downpour hammered against his helmet like a funeral drum, turning the ground beneath his feet into a soupy mire that stank of wet earth and blood.
"Spectre to Titan! Target coordinates?"
Kael's voice was dry and urgent in his comms, fighting to be heard over the cacophony of rifle fire and the unnatural growls echoing from the jungle.
"...static... closing in! West flank! God, they're everywhere!"
The voice of Titan, Alpha Squad's heavy gunner, broke in panic. A sharp scream, followed by the sound of tearing metal.
Then, silence.
Damn it.
Kael took cover behind a fallen tree, his HK416 searing hot. All around him, hell had broken loose. BSAA's Alpha Squad, one of the most elite units, was being wiped out. Not by guerillas. Not by mercenaries.
But by things that shouldn't exist.
WHOOSH!
A black shadow zipped past his peripheral vision, impossibly fast. It didn't run like a man or a beast. It flowed, low to the ground, a wiry silhouette taut with misshapen muscle.
Kael spun, firing two quick bursts into the shadow. It staggered, but didn't fall. In the muzzle flash, he saw it. Ashen skin, slick with rain. Claws as long as daggers. And its eyes...
No, they weren't eyes. They were optical sensors, emitting a sickly yellow glow.
B.O.W.s.
But not like any in the BSAA briefs. These were too fast. Too smart.
"Raptor, cover! I'm pinned!" Kael roared.
"Spectre, fall back! Fall back now! It's a trap! The intel... it was all wrong!"
Raptor, his second-in-command, screamed in desperation.
Then Kael heard it. A sound he would never forget. Raptor's scream cut short by a wet SCHLICK.
Kael felt his chest tighten. Titan. Raptor. Everyone. They were all...
He had no time to grieve. Three of the creatures burst from the shadows, done with hiding. They moved like a wolf pack, with terrifying coordination. One charged him head-on while the other two fanned out, cutting off his escape.
Tactics.
These things were using flanking maneuvers.
The thought was colder than the rain.
Kael opened fire, the rifle bucking in his hands, hot shell casings spitting into the night. He dropped the one in the middle, a round pulping its head with a sickening SPLAT. But the other two were already on him.
One lunged, its claws scraping against his kevlar vest in a shower of sparks. The force of the blow sent him stumbling backward into the mud. His rifle flew from his grasp.
The other one pounced. Its weight slammed him down, its foul breath hot on his face. Kael threw up his left arm to block its snapping jaws, sharp teeth sinking deep into his tactical glove.
White-hot pain shot up his arm.
With his right hand, he fumbled for the SIG Sauer holstered on his hip.
BANG!
The point-blank shot obliterated the B.O.W.'s upper cranium. Blood and bone fragments sprayed across Kael's face.
He shoved the dead weight off him, scrambling to his feet. His left arm was a shredded mess, blood mixing with the rainwater.
Around him, the fight was over. An eerie silence had fallen, broken only by the patter of the rain and the faint crackle of someone's broken comms.
Alpha Squad was gone.
He was the only one left.
Standing in the muck of blood and mud, Kael looked up into the endless night. The sickly yellow lights of those optical sensors were still there, watching him from the treeline, not advancing. As if... as if their objective was complete.
Why? The thought screamed in his mind, desperate and confused. Why were they here? Who made them?
And the most terrifying question of all...
Why did they leave me alive?
Before he could find an answer, a searing pain from his arm pulsed, and his world faded to black.
Six months later.
The smell of cheap beer, stale cigarettes, and disappointment was the signature scent of this rundown bar. Kael didn't know the name of the city, and he didn't care to. They were all the same. Nameless places for nameless men.
He stared into the amber-colored whiskey in his hand. The hand that once held a rifle steady under fire now had a slight tremor. The scar on his left forearm was a permanent reminder of that night.
On the old TV hanging in the corner, a news report was playing. A host with a plastic smile was talking about some "international trade agreement." Kael snorted.
The world kept turning. It always did.
They'd found him a few weeks ago. The BSAA. A debriefing. Stern faces in crisp uniforms. They asked him questions he couldn't answer.
The official report: "An unfortunate incident. Faulty intelligence led Alpha Squad to encounter a pack of aggressive local predators, compounded by a natural gas leak that caused an explosion."
Natural gas.
A clean, convenient lie to cover an inconvenient truth. And he, Kaelen Vance, callsign Spectre, the sole survivor, became the scapegoat. Dishonorably discharged. Labeled a failure, or worse, a coward who abandoned his team.
Lone Wolf. That's what they called him on the internal forums.
Kael downed the whiskey, the burn searing a trail down his throat. It didn't chase away the image of yellow lights in the dark. It didn't drown out Raptor's scream.
Nothing did.
"Another," he said to the bartender, his voice a hoarse rasp.
The bartender shot him a weary look but poured the drink.
Kael stared into the glass. He wasn't a soldier anymore. He was just a ghost, haunted by other ghosts. A cautionary tale for BSAA recruits to whisper about for years to come.
He was at rock bottom. And he couldn't see a way out.
The bar door creaked open, letting in a draft of cold night air. Kael didn't bother looking up. Just another drunk looking for a place to drown his sorrows.
But the footsteps that approached were light and steady. Not a drunk's shuffle.
A figure stopped beside his stool. Kael glanced out of the corner of his eye.
It was a woman. Tall, with a slender build that radiated a cold confidence. She wore a perfectly tailored black trench coat that looked utterly out of place in the grimy bar. Her platinum blonde hair was tied in a neat bun. Her ice-blue eyes were sharp as a scalpel, fixed on him.
She said nothing, merely placed a thin tablet on the bar next to Kael's glass.
"Not buying whatever you're selling," Kael muttered, turning away.
"I'm not selling anything," the woman's voice replied. It was clear, emotionless, with a faint Eastern European accent. "I'm here to make an offer, Captain Vance."
Kael froze. No one had called him by his rank in a long time. He turned, facing her for the first time.
"Who are you?"
"My name is not important," she said. "What is important is what I know."
She tapped the tablet's screen. A video feed flickered to life.
The quality was poor, full of static, filmed from a helmet cam. But Kael recognized it instantly. It was his point-of-view from that night. He saw himself firing back, saw the dark shapes of the B.O.W.s charging.
His heart began to pound.
"Where did you get this?" he growled, his apathy vanishing, replaced by a soldier's wariness.
"The BSAA scrubbed every recording from your mission. Called them 'corrupted confidential files'. But nothing is ever truly gone from the internet, if you know where to look," the woman stated matter-of-factly. She swiped the screen. An analytical photo appeared, zoomed in on one of the B.O.W.s.
"We know it wasn't a gas leak, Captain Vance. And we know those things weren't local predators."
The words hit Kael like a punch to the gut. Months of being doubted, dismissed, tormented... and now this stranger was speaking the truth he had screamed in silence.
"They are a new, unclassified variant," she continued, her voice level. "Faster, smarter, and equipped with tactical optical sensors. They weren't the result of a lab leak. They were a finished product. A weapon, sold to those guerillas."
She switched off the tablet, and the darkness in the bar seemed to deepen.
"We know who sold them," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, but every word landed like a hammer blow. "A broker who operates in the shadows, who is turning Umbrella's legacy into a global bio-weapon supermarket. He supplies anyone who can meet his price."
Kael was silent, his mind racing. A part of him wanted to dismiss it, to call it a sick joke. But the woman's eyes held no deception. And the proof on the tablet... it was real.
"What do you want with me?" he finally asked, his voice raw.
The woman leaned forward slightly. For the first time, Kael saw a flicker of something in her blue eyes. Something like... fierce resolve.
"The man who sold the weapon that killed your team. The man who ruined your life. We want him. And we think, so do you."
"Who's 'we'?"
"People who believe the current methods have failed. An off-the-books unit with no rules, no red tape. We call it Operation Hummingbird."
She pushed the tablet towards him. The screen now showed an encrypted file titled 'Spectre'.
"You have a choice, Kaelen," she said, using his first name for the first time. "You can sit here and drown in whiskey and regret. Or you can get back in the fight. Not as a BSAA soldier, but as a ghost. A hunter."
She straightened up, preparing to leave.
"We're offering you a chance at revenge. And maybe, just maybe, at redemption."
She left the tablet on the counter.
"When you've decided, turn it on. We'll know."
And with that, she turned and melted into the darkness outside, leaving Kael alone with his half-empty glass, a tablet full of deadly secrets, and a choice that would define the rest of his life.
Silence or Vengeance.
Ashes or Gunfire.
For a lone wolf, the answer had never been so clear.