The narrow corridor became an arena. Kael and Hunnigan lunged at each other, not as soldiers, but as two predators fighting over territory. The sound of gunfire had ceased. Now, there was only ragged breathing, the clash of metal, and the dull thud of heavy blows.
Hunnigan was terrifyingly agile. She moved like a dancer, her knife tracing deadly arcs in the air. Every one of her stabs was aimed at Kael's weak points: his throat, his armpits, the arteries in his thighs.
Kael, in contrast, fought with a brutal efficiency. There was no finesse. Every one of his movements had a purpose. He wasn't trying to kill her. He was trying to disarm, to disable. His wounded arm throbbed intensely, but he pushed the pain aside, adrenaline being the best analgesic.
They locked arms. Two daggers pressed against each other, just centimeters from their faces. Kael could see the frantic hatred in Hunnigan's blue eyes.
"Why?" Kael growled, using all his strength to push back her blade. "The BSAA gave you everything!"
"The BSAA is a lie!" Hunnigan hissed, spittle flying. "A corrupt organization, shackled by politics and incompetence! They send their best soldiers to die on faulty intelligence, then cover it up with convenient lies! I saw it in Kijuju! I saw it in Edonia!"
She drove her knee hard into Kael's stomach, forcing him back a step.
"I am not destroying the world," she screamed, lunging again. "I am trying to cleanse it! To create a new order from the ashes!"
Her ideals were insane, but the fanaticism in her eyes was real. Kael realized he couldn't reason with this woman. He could only fight.
As they struggled, a roar echoed from the end of the corridor.
Both Kael and Hunnigan froze for a split second.
A Hunter Gamma-II staggered out from a ruined doorway. It was one of the ones that had been jammed by Wraith's signal. Its orange eyes no longer held any focus, only a blind, feral rage. It recognized no orders. It only saw two moving sources of life.
It shrieked and charged.
Hunnigan, being closer, became the first target. She had no time to react.
The Hunter pounced on her, its claws tearing through the tactical armor on her shoulder with ease. Blood sprayed. Hunnigan screamed, a sound of pain and fury.
With all her might, she plunged her knife into the Hunter's eye. The monster roared, reeling back, shaking its head wildly.
It was Hunnigan's chance. She didn't waste it attacking Kael. Her only thought was survival. She staggered to her feet, clutching her wounded arm, and fled back towards her control room.
The Hunter, maddened by pain, turned to its next target.
Kael.
But before it could attack, a precise three-round burst from behind slammed into the exposed muscle tissue on its shoulder. The Hunter collapsed, convulsing.
Kael turned. Gryphon and Jotun had arrived.
"Let's go!" Gryphon commanded. "Hunnigan won't give up that easily!"
They raced through the corridors, the sounds of sirens and monstrous screams echoing around them. With Jotun providing cover, they reached the door to the Level 4 containment area with relative ease.
"Wraith! Open it!" Gryphon yelled into his comms.
The heavy steel door slid aside. They charged in.
The scene was the same. The little girl, Subject Zero, was still standing in the corner, observing them with her deep, soulless black eyes.
Gryphon was the first to approach her. He had heard Kael's report. He had prepared himself mentally. But nothing could have prepared him for confronting a child who was the source of all this chaos.
He knelt, trying to keep his voice gentle. "Hello. We're not going to hurt you. We're going to get you out of here."
The voice echoed in his head, and in everyone's. "'Out of here'? This is my home. This is my body. You are the intruders."
Gryphon was stunned. He looked into the girl's eyes, trying to find some trace of a child within. But there was nothing. Only a cold, ancient intelligence.
He stood up, turning to Kael and the others. He was faced with an impossible moral choice.
"The plan was to disable the system," Wraith said, her voice full of hesitation. "Doing so might kill her."
"Leaving her here means Kante, Hunnigan, or someone even worse will continue to use her," Kael countered. "We'll be creating thousands, tens of thousands more monsters."
"So we kill a child to save the world?" Rook asked, his voice thick with disgust. "How does that make us any different from them?"
They were trapped. Killing her was a crime. Leaving her was a death sentence for countless others.
As they argued, Subject Zero tilted her head up slightly. Her black eyes seemed to look right through them, at something far away.
"They are coming," the voice echoed in their minds, this time with a hint of... concern? "My toys are becoming too loud. And the broken one... she is trying to do something foolish."
In her control room, Hunnigan, clutching her bleeding arm, had activated another protocol. The "Self-Destruct" protocol. She couldn't have her army, so she would destroy everything.
Subject Zero felt the change in pressure, the shift in energy throughout the complex. She sensed the threat to her "home."
And she acted.
She didn't speak. She didn't move.
She just opened her mouth.
And a sound came out.
It wasn't a scream that human ears could hear. It was a wave of pure psychic energy, a weapon of devastating power.
The Hummingbird team only felt an immense pressure on their temples, a splitting headache that forced them to their knees.
But outside, for any creature with a Plagas parasite, it was hell.
The screams of the Hunters and Plagas soldiers rose in unison. No longer roars of savagery, but cries of agony and despair. They clutched their heads, clawing at their own bodies. Their neural links were being overloaded, burned out by their own Queen.
The entire complex shuddered. Light fixtures shattered. Control panels exploded.
"Wraith! The data!" Gryphon roared, trying to stay on his feet.
"Downloading! Almost there!" Wraith replied, her fingers flying across her tablet even as her head spun.
Download complete.
"We have to go! Now!" Kael yelled, pulling Gryphon to his feet.
They looked at Subject Zero. She was still standing there, her mouth still open, emitting the silent wave of destruction. Tears began to stream from her deep black eyes. It was the first time they had seen her show a human-like emotion. Pain. Or fear.
Hunnigan's self-destruct system had begun. Small explosions started to sound in the distance, getting closer.
They were out of options.
"Let's go!" Gryphon ordered, his voice full of anguish.
They turned their backs on her. They turned their backs on the "Little Queen."
They ran out of the collapsing lab, leaving her alone in the symphony of destruction she herself had created.
As they ran through the shaking corridors, Kael couldn't shake that final image: a child crying in silence, left behind in a burning hell.
They had the data. They had survived.
But as they burst out into the fresh night air, none of them felt like victors. They only felt the weight of the choice they had just made.
And the girl's voice seemed to still echo in their minds.
"You... are abandoning me..."