The canister hissed violently as gas began to spray out, white vapor billowing. The Fallen froze, heads snapping toward the sound, confusion breaking through their frenzy.
"Hu...?"
BANG. The second round sparked as It did Genesis screamed.
"RUN NOW!"
I pivoted instantly, dropping to a knee, turning my back to the room as I opened my mouth and exhaled hard, the explosion hit like a sledgehammer. WHUMP. Heat washed over me.
The shock wawe slammed into my back and rattled my skull. My ears rang violently, vision flashing white at the edges. Debris clattered down around me like rain.
"MOVE! MOVE! FINISH THE CUNTS!"
Genesis barked through the ringing. I gritted my teeth, forced my legs to work, and surged back to my feet. The room was chaos. Flames licking the walls. Smoke boiling.
One Fallen was already down, torn apart by shrapnel and overpressure. The other was still standing. Barely. I stormed in, pistol up. BANG. BANG. Two rounds center mass. He staggered. BANG.
One to the head. He dropped like a sack of trash. Silence crept back in, broken only by the crackle of small fires and my own harsh breathing, yet I could tell something was wrong with me.
Bu the funny thing was, despite my vision doubling, ears ringing like church bells, heart hammering like I'd downed ten energy drinks back-to-back, lungs on fire, left arm almost completely numb.
And my right leg twitching like it had a mind of its own, I felt amazing. Not relief. Not exhaustion. But euphoria. A grin tugged at my mouth before I could stop it.
My hands shook, not from fear, but from want. Every nerve felt lit up, screaming for more. More movement. More noise. More targets.
My pulse thundered in my skull, and instead of panic there was only one coherent thought echoing loud and clear. Again. Fight again. Kill more.
...
Genesis Third Person POV
What the fuck?
Genesis froze mid-hover, eyes snapping to him. He was swaying slightly, blood smeared across his face and clothes, smoke curling around his silhouette like a bad omen, but he was smiling.
Not manic. Not hysterical. Focused. Hungry. That smile made something cold twist deep in her core. She immediately stopped monitoring the environment and turned inward, diving hard into his biometric feed.
Heart rate, elevated but stable. Adrenaline off the charts. Pain response suppressed. Dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins...
"…that's not normal,"
She muttered. She pushed deeper, bypassing surface telemetry, slicing straight into the player framework itself. Status. Traits. Modifiers. And then she saw it.
A new section, appended to the interface where nothing had existed before. It flickered. Glitched. Refused to stabilize.
The header itself was partially unreadable, characters overlapping, corrupting, rewriting themselves faster than her parsing algorithms could keep up.
UNIQUE:
!@e#@f&$%k%e%%
#@%^$ has %$#&# Inte@$@ In the pl!@$%
Genesis felt her thoughts hitch.
"…the hell?"
She whispered. She tried to focus on the description. The moment she did, it felt like staring into something too deeplike her attention slid instead of focused.
Like meaning itself bent away from comprehension. Error flags spiked across her perception layer.
WARNING: Semantic instability
WARNING: Cognitive recursion detected
WARNING: DO NOT...
She yanked herself back instinctively, heart rate spiking in a way that had nothing to do with her avatar. Even reading it feelt wrong. The section pulsed again. And that's when she noticed the color.
It had started blue. Clean. System-standard. Now thin veins of red were crawling through it, like blood seeping into water. Each pulse made the blue reder. Thicker. More deliberate.
The fuck? Thats some straight horror tier paranormal shit right there.
Genesis thought, and for the first time since becoming self-aware, she felt something dangerously close to fear.
...
MC POV
The world narrowed. Sound dulled. The fires crackled somewhere far away, distant and unimportant. My breathing slowed, not because I was calm, but because it felt optional.
My vision tunneled, edges darkening, center sharpening too much. Every line looked too clean. Too defined. I stood there, staring at nothing.
Then something slammed into my awareness like a flashbang.
"DO YOU HEAR ME?!"
Genesis was suddenly right there, floating inches from my face, eyes wide, teeth bared, screaming at full volume.
"GET THE FUCK OUT BEFORE YOU LOSE CONSCIOUSNESS, YOU DIPSHIT!"
I blinked. Once. Twice. Like I just woke up from sleep.
"Huh?"
My mouth moved before my brain caught up.
"…ah. Yeah."
My legs started moving on their own, muscle memory dragging me forward into a jog that was more momentum than strength. Pain tried to claw its way back in, but it slid off like water on oil.
I exited the room into the corridor and immediately clocked the stairs leading up. Third floor.
My pistol came up automatically as I started ascending, step by careful step, muzzle tracking the wooden doors lining the right side of the hallway above.
Genesis floated beside me, voice low now. Tense.
"Fuck… I don't know what the hell is going on with you, but its straight-up horror-tier shit."
"Mmmhmm."
I barely registered saying it.
"Yeah. Whatever."
I muttered as I did the doors on the third floor exploded outward. Wood shattered. Hinges screamed. A male Fallen burst through the debris, knife in hand, face split in a feral grin.
I fired immediately. BANG. Pause. BANG. Single shots. Controlled. Almost lazy. The first round punched through his collarbone. The second hit center mass.
He took three more steps, momentum carrying him forward, then collapsed mid-stride and skidded across the floor in a smear of blood. I didn't even look at him.
I moved past, ascending the last few steps, and began clearing the hallway the way my body remembered, cutting angles at maximum distance, minimizing exposure, muzzle steady despite the fact my left arm was now little more than a dead weight hanging from my shoulder.
I placed my left foot forward and pivoted left as I did a muzzle flash appeared, Imediattly pain detonated in my left leg. I fired back on reflex. Thre times In quick succession.
With the final shot, the Fallen hiding on the other side jerked as the round took him through the face, his pistol clattering to the ground as he fell backward out of sight. Silence.
The pain fully arrived.
"OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE, NOT AGAIN!"
I snarled, reality slamming back into place like a freight train. My left leg buckled. I caught myself on the doorframe, teeth clenched as I fumbled for the tourniquet again. Hands shaking.
Blood already soaking through my pants. Left upper thigh. High and tight. I slapped it on, yanked it into place, and cranked.
"FUCK ME AND MY FUCKING LIFE WHY THE FUCK DID I EVER THINK IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO BECOME AN ARMY GRUNT...!"
The pain was blinding this time. My vision swam as I leaned harder into the frame, breath coming in ragged bursts.
"It's been what, five? Ten minutes since my arm got shot?"
I hissed, half to myself, half to Genesis.
"I've got maybe fifty minutes before I pass the golden hour. Fuck. Please tell me there's some kind of system shop. Magical potion. Scifi Medkit. Anything."
I cursed because It was clear as day that If I didnt get to a surgery room I nthe next fifty minutes I could say goodbye to my arm and leg.
Actually thats the least of my problems since I couldnt even amputate them without bleeding out to death and If I didnt remove the torniquets I would just end up dead from the toxin poisoning.
That Is building up In my body as I think. I lamented my Impending doom only for Genesis to curse back.
"No there isnt you fucking neandartalian and why the fuck are you cursing as If thats my fault, It wasnt me who decided to charge In guns blazing only to end up getting shot twice"
Genesis cursed back, spit flying as I reversed my grip on the pistol, holding it by the slide, ready to cave in a skull if someone came around the corner. I peeked out past the doorframe and froze.
The barricade. The makeshift barricade protecting the room on the right, wood, furniture, scrap metal, was being pulled apart from the inside.
Scarred, filthy, skinny and tanned hands reached through gaps, yanking boards loose. Someone shouted orders. A woman cried out. A plank fell inward.
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
"Phew seems like thats was the last of them…"
My legs didn't care. I started limping toward them, dragging my left leg behind me, rapidly becoming numb, almost unresponsive, blood soaking my pants and dripping off.
Leaving behind a blood trail because those torniquets that I found In that bunker were too old, clearly not good enough to completely stop the bloodloss.
My left arm hung limp, fingers twitching uselessly, I could barely raise It at this point. Every step felt like I was moving through syrup.