They fell from the ventilation shaft like broken dolls, landing on a pile of petrified cement bags in another warehouse. The air here didn't smell of chemicals, only dust and oblivion. The single steel door was locked from the outside, and the high windows were all barred with rusted iron. This place had been abandoned for a very long time.
It was safe.
For a moment, no one moved. They just lay there, breathing hard, their chests burning from the gas and exertion. The sirens and roars of the hell they had just endured were now just distant echoes. Here, there was only the silence of a tomb.
Kael was the first to struggle up. The pain from the sting in his calf was still there, a dull throb, but the anti-toxin seemed to be working. He looked around. The room was filled with old machine parts, dismantled engines, and empty oil drums. Their shadows stretched across the floor in the faint moonlight filtering through the grimy windows, looking like sleeping monsters.
Gryphon sat up too, coughing dryly and spitting out a dark-colored saliva. "Everyone... report," he gasped.
"I'm okay," Wraith answered, her voice weak.
"Just a few scratches," Kael said.
They had survived. Again. But the price of each survival seemed to be getting steeper. They couldn't keep running like this. They needed a moment to stop, to breathe, to think. And this room, this makeshift sanctuary of dead machines, was exactly what they needed.
They found a small office in the corner of the warehouse, less dusty than the rest. Rook and Jotun were already there, having reunited with them after finding a different route. They had set up a makeshift aid station. Viper was laid out on an old desk, her face flushed with fever.
"She's getting worse," Rook said, his voice full of worry. "The fever won't break."
Kael walked over, placing a hand on Viper's forehead. It was hot as coals. "The toxin is still in her system. It's fighting the antibiotics." He opened his medkit, taking out the drugs he had found. "We don't have modern medical equipment, but we have this."
He prepared a dose of antiviral medication and a powerful anti-inflammatory. "Gryphon, hold her steady. Rook, hold the flashlight. This is going to hurt."
While Kael carefully treated the wound and administered the injection, a solemn silence fell over the room. Gryphon held Viper's shoulders, his face a mask of tension. Wraith stood at the door, watching, her eyes showing a rare empathy.
Outside, Jotun had climbed onto one of the tallest machines, his sniper rifle sweeping the surrounding area, a giant watching over his wounded comrades.
They didn't talk. There was no need. In that moment, they weren't callsigns, not soldiers. They were a family, a broken and scarred family, holding a vigil through a long night, hoping one of their own would see the dawn.
After a long while, Viper's tremors subsided. Her breathing became more even. The fever seemed to be starting to break.
"She'll make it," Kael said, his voice exhausted but holding a hint of relief. "At least until we can get her somewhere better."
After making sure Viper was stable, Gryphon signaled Kael out into the main warehouse. They stood among the silent machines, two men carrying the weight of the team on their shoulders.
"I was wrong," Gryphon said first, breaking the silence. He wasn't looking at Kael, but into the darkness. "I was too rigid. Too by-the-book. If I had insisted on following Oracle's 'orders', we might all be dead."
"You're the commander," Kael replied. "You made a decision based on the information you had. That's all any soldier can do."
"No," Gryphon shook his head. "A good commander knows when to listen to his soldiers. Especially soldiers like you. You have an instinct I don't. The instinct of someone who's been to hell and back. I saw it as recklessness, as indiscipline. But I was wrong. It's experience."
He turned, looking Kael straight in the eye. "I'm still the leader of this team. But from now on, I don't just give orders. I'll listen. Your opinion, your experience, they matter. We make the decisions together."
It wasn't an apology. It was an acknowledgement. A respect forged in fire and survival.
Kael nodded. "Understood, Commander."
The tension between them had dissolved. The two alpha wolves had found a way to coexist in the same pack. They were stronger for it.
They returned to the office, where Wraith had connected her tablet to a backup power source she had found.
"I've been re-analyzing what we know," she began, a complex diagram appearing on her screen. "The rift between Hunnigan and Kante. Kante's dependence on the serum. And the weak point in the electrical system I found."
She pointed to the schematic of the complex. "Hunnigan is worried about Kante's instability. She needs a way to control him, a 'kill switch' in case he goes rogue. And I think I know what it is."
She zoomed in on the lab area where they had seen the "Little Queen". "Subject Zero. She's the source of the parasite. Hunnigan thinks she's also the key to controlling them. She's trying to create a signal, a frequency that can 'command' or at least neutralize the Plagas hosts."
"Like a queen bee commanding the hive," Gryphon murmured.
"Exactly," Wraith confirmed. "And she's about to receive a new shipment. Not serum. B.O.W.s. A shipment of new-generation Hunters, pre-implanted with the Type-III Plagas. They're going to be her personal army."
"And she'll use Subject Zero to control them," Kael concluded. "A completely loyal army of B.O.W.s. Without Kante's instability."
The final picture emerged. Kante with his army of MLF super-soldiers. Hunnigan with her upcoming army of Hunters. And in the middle, a child being turned into a living weapon.
"But to do that, she needs a lot of power. And her system has to be stable," Wraith said, pointing to the weakness she had discovered. "That electrical shock I mentioned... it won't just trip the doors. It could create a cascade overload, crashing the entire life-support system for Subject Zero's chamber."
They looked at each other. A plan began to form, not from desperation, but from intelligence and strategy.
"We can't fight both their armies," Gryphon said. "We have to act before that Hunter shipment arrives. We have to cut the head off the snake."
"We have three objectives," Kael said, his voice cold and precise.
He held up one finger. "One: Infiltrate Hunnigan's server room. Wraith, you need to download all her data. Proof of the experiments, the connection to The Broker, everything. We need weapons to fight them with after we get out of here."
He held up a second finger. "Two: Neutralize Subject Zero. Not kill her. Free her. Cause the electrical surge Wraith mentioned. Crash Hunnigan's system. That will render her Hunter army useless, or worse, make them go berserk."
He held up a third finger. "Three: Sabotage the helipad. Prevent that B.O.W. shipment from arriving. Create one final bit of chaos to cover our retreat."
It was a near-impossible plan. But it had clear goals. It had a foundation.
"This is no longer a recon or survival mission," Gryphon said, looking at the whole team. "This is a surgical strike. We go in, we hit our three objectives, and we get out. There is no room for error."
The team nodded. The exhaustion was gone, replaced by a new resolve. They had had their moment to breathe.
Now, it was time to go back into the storm.