When Jack came to, he was still inside the glass capsule. Ravager was rubbing his head while the lab technician hurried to pack up some equipment.

"We've done you a serious fuckup, Jack," Ravager said. Jack just looked at him. His head hurt, and something felt wrong about his body. He hadn't the strength to raise a worded question, but the intent must have shown on his face, regardless, since Ravager pre-empted him.

"It wasn't you, after all," he explained, "The higher-ups jumped the gun this time, and we all paid for it."

The phone rang, and he answered.

"Sir, it's reached the second basement."

"Close off the first basement. If it reaches the surface, there won't be a Cazar left to go home to."

"Yes, sir. It's been an honor, sir."

"I'm sorry we couldn't go back together. See you on the other side."

As he returned the phone, muffled machine gun fire racked the hallway behind the laboratory's door for a good few seconds.

"I can feel it from here... It's got a huge influence even from down there, huh," he mumbled to himself.

The surgical capsule's glass door popped open, and the lab technician saw to removing the needles and wires coming out of Jack, and finally removing his restraints. Not that he had the strength to move afterwards.

"Sorry for the trouble, Jack. Looks like I wasted my anger on you."

As Ravager said this, he placed a lanyard around Jack's neck, from which dangled an ID card.

"Bit of a consolation. The turrets won't lock onto you as long as you have this. You'll have to go on your own way, I'm sure you understand. Goodbye, then. Sorry for the trouble."

He placed a loaded revolver and a handful of spare bullets on the desk. With that, he and the lab technician vanished beyond the door.

Dizzy and faint, Jack sat up and eyed the revolver on the desk—another consolation, was it? Though it was clear that he had to leave, he only had a dismal amount of strength, and the surgical capsule's bed tempted him to stay. He elected to duct tape the capsule's door open and sleep in for a bit. Not even the machine guns on the other side of the door could rouse him.

* * *

When he awoke, the guns had gone silent. The lights were still on, and he could still feel the gentle blow of the airconditioning system. It was tempting to stay in such a comfy room, but the cupboards were empty, and the clock was at 4-o'clock. Whether that was in the morning or afternoon, he wasn't so sure.

Ravager had left him. "Sorry, we were wrong" was a little bit underwhelming as an excuse. He'd gone through hell because of someone else's mistake. Something like that—unfair. Unnecessary suffering found him in every turn, and just when he thought he'd settled into some sort of constant, someone would pick him up and kick him out into some other box.

He picked up the revolver. He hadn't touched one in his entire life, but there it was in his hands. It only took him a while to figure out what unlatched the cylinder, and just another moment to figure out how to remove bullets from it. It had helped that the revolver's operation was in plain view—that the cylinder turned while the trigger traveled, and the cylinder stopped in the briefest moment just before the hammer fell and hit a pin, which hit the rear of the aligned bullet. He fired one such bullet into the desk, confirming what the recoil felt like. The bang wasn't as loud as he thought, though that could just be the hearing damage from the past two days finally acting up. After removing the spent case—it was still quite warm—and replacing it with a new one, he collected himself.

The spare bullets, 11 in total, went into a leather satchel he had discovered in one of the desk's drawers. He wore the RFID lanyard inside his shirt, which was still stained with dirt from the Azerkal-Parasol border, and smelled of long-dried sweat. Looking around the room, there was a pipe wrench under the laboratory's sink.

With a revolver in one hand, and a long wrench in the other, he stepped out of the laboratory's door.

It was dim, but not dark, only managing to be lit up by the green emergency lights. The corridor leading up to the laboratory's door was littered with corpses, riddled by machine gun fire. The machine guns themselves, hanging on either side of the ceiling by the door, were pointing downwards—perhaps some sign that they had run out of ammunition. Jack proceeded onward, stepping between the bodies as best as he could. Soon, he had to step on the bodies themselves, as the density of the dead reached to the point that he finally recognized the plug on the end of the corridor.

It had been filled with corpses, each one trying to climb over the other. He beat on a few of them with the wrench, ascertaining whether they were truly dead or simply dormant. None of them moved.

With some hesitation, he tugged on their arms and pulled them out of the way, finally managing to clear enough walkspace after the better part of half an hour. He deferred from being in a hurry. He was still tired, probably some mixture of fatigue from the past few days and the physiological drain that a rushed surgery inflicted. Perhaps they had even accidentally forgotten to put something back, or even left something in—well, anyway, it wasn't really a problem right now.

He might die soon, for one reason or another. Regardless, there was something pushing him onward; perhaps some form of nihilistic curiosity about what life looked like in the moments before his end. No, beyond even that, there was a force that was calling to him from somewhere—somewhere down below.

He squeezed through the plug of bodies and followed the corridors, passing by empty offices and armories, or whatever these places were. Most of the corpses were wearing civilian clothing from his era, and most of them had decayed appearances; the clothes themselves only looked aged, but the skins of the dead themselves were dessicated. Here and there, however, seemed to be fallen soldiers with modern equipment, and others with antiquated styles. There didn't seem to be many of them, at least from what he could tell from the bodies that were still relatively intact. They were like bread crumbs that traced the retreat of their comrades.

For whatever reason, he went the opposite way—towards the reason for their retreat. He'd shoot it. He'd put all his spite in each of his bullets and shoot it in the face, whatever it was. It was calling him, and he hated it already. The guy just wanted to deliver some pizza and use the cash to fuel his writing gig. That's all he'd wanted to do.

He labored to breathe, labored to walk, and labored even to stand. He came into this era as a weak man, and it seemed that he'd be coming out of it as the weakest of all. Even so, it didn't even take a speck of energy to just pull the trigger. As long as he could do that even once, he'd be happy.

See that guy on the floor? Half his torso's gone, but his trigger finger never let go—he thought, looking to a dead man for inspiration. A trail of bodies died reaching for, but never quite reaching, the soldier in question, proof to him that there were still impressive ways to die.

He reached a blast door that had only managed to close halfway. A red warning light on the far wall spun 'round and 'round without so much as a sound. A number of bodies died fanning out—crawling out of the mouth of the blast door. It was like a diorama of some nth circle of hell, souls trying to escape its gate before it swallowed them whole, their dry, trunk-like faces lighting up in intervals as the warning light spun about.

He ducked under the door, expecting to find cerberus or some other disappointed gatekeeper.

Instead, he found Ravager. In the wide underground space, what looked like rugged shipping containers had been tossed about. Ravager leaned against one of them, right by the blast door. He was missing his left arm. Just past him, there were many other body parts and rifles thrown about.

"You came down here? That's amazing."

His voice was weak, but he still managed to tilt his head towards Jack. He chuckled with a bloodied cough at the absurdity of a civilian willingly coming down here. Jack walked over and crouched by him, finally noticing that many other wounds covered the commander's body, entire chunks of him gouged out.

"It's still here. It moves fast. You'll lose a limb just to make it keep still for a second," he advised, waving his red-black stump, the bandage around it already dripping blood. The man laughed as he did, which, Jack admitted, was somehow pretty funny under the circumstances. "The skin's too hard—try the eyes. Maybe the nose and mouth, too, while you're at it. It shields itself with its arms."

"That's it?"

"Don't follow me where I'm going. Good luck."

Ravager didn't even close his eyes. He just laughed, then stopped moving. Not that Jack thought much about the man. He stood and got moving.

Ahead of him, about 50 meters away, a small hallway of pure fluorescent white beckoned to him, and so he moved towards it. There was no plan. There was little chance of him doing anything smart or fancy in his condition. He had a wrench in his right hand, a revolver in his left, and a pouch of 11 bullets, for a total of 17 bullets at his disposal.

As he got closer, the form of the hallway became much clearer. By the mouth of the hallway, one ceiling turret hung with its gun pointed down, while another turret had been ripped out of its mount, electrical wiring frayed out and unfired bullets scattered. The hallway itself was like an overlarge shaft that extended out of the ground on one end, bent to become horizontal, then extended another 100 meters to meet the machine guns. It was nothing but a dedicated kill corridor, meant to contain or stall whatever came from the lower levels.

That two machine guns—both of a caliber much larger than those that guarded the laboratory—could not stop whatever killed Ravager and his men, only meant that Jack had very little chance to kill whatever thing it was.

Little did that matter to him. As long as he could royally piss it off, then something else on this earth could feel the same thing he did. Shame that Ravager was too dead for him to piss off, too.

He stepped foot in the corridor. Blood painted the otherwise-white corridor—evidence that the guns had consistently hit their target, but also evidence that the target ignored such damage.

On the other end, a shadow lept up from below. At this distance, they were nothing more than vague figures to each other, nothing more than something else to attack.

The shadow charged—sprinted straight ahead with reckless abandon. Jack, too weak to reciprocate, idly stood his ground. His heart slowed, and he accepted his fate. It shields itself with its arms—that's what Ravager said, wasn't it? He couldn't just shoot it in the face while it charged him. He really, really wanted to piss it off, and doing something that anyone else would do wouldn't piss it off.

He waited, and waited, and the shadow grew larger. It took another step, and it wasn't a shadow to him anymore, but a raging, damned spirit—something that hated life and absolutely wanted Jack gone, but Jack wouldn't go, not even in the face of its jutting spines, black veins that spread like roots across its pale skin. Two arms, two legs, one head—barely qualifying as human-like. Its mouth gaped, more like a maw of two rows of serrated teeth, and its eyes sharpened into slits—a vision so narrow that saw only its prey.

Even so, until the penultimate moment, Jack stayed his hand. The monster lept.

He stabbed both the revolver and the wrench into its maw.

The momentum of its diving charge started to push Jack's arm into his body, and in turn, he started to fall on his back. Even then, his grip was strong, and the revolver never fell away; the barrel never left the monster's jaws. It tried to bite down, and Jack felt the points of its teeth dance over the skin of his wrist, but the pipe wrench, spread to its widest, kept its maw propped open.

The force of his back hitting the floor sent an electric shock up his spine, to which his brain replied: squeeze.

The bullet dug into the back of the monster's mouth, and the explosion that followed flooded through every other orifice. Gore and gunpowder ricocheted inside its own mouth, some of it erupting out onto Jack, who felt the arms and hands that grappled him twitch.

For a moment, he could not escape its grasp, but he felt no resistance from it, either. He pried its arms away from him, and, lacking the strength to push it away, he squirmed from out underneath it.

He was alive. Somehow, he was alive. Lying beside it, he saw that it was still breathing, and its slit eyes still radiated hate and looked at him with contempt and hunger.

I pissed it off! His half-assed attempt had managed to bring down an impossible enemy. He had the sudden idea to rub this shit in Ravager's competent face.

Though, the thing's twitching was growing stronger. Now that he had a chance, Jack got up on his knees and crawled over closer to the monster. Again, he shoved the revolver into its mouth and fired. Its twitching weakened, but it was still breathing. It wasn't enough. All of his problems were right in front of him, and he could physically shoot it in the face. He'd kill it. He'd absolutely kill it.

He kept shooting into its mouth until it was drowning in its own gore. When he ran out of bullets, he leisurely popped open the cylinder and emptied the spent cases over the monster's face. One by one, new bullets found their seats in the cylinder. With a close, snap, and click, he pointed the revolver into the monster's eye. The iris sharpened with fuming rage before he blasted it off, not once, but thrice. Three bullets per eye—its breathing stopped, but it was still twitching.

He said to try the nose too, huh—he thought back to Ravager's advice. He sprinkled spent cases over the monster's face once more, and, loading his last five bullets, he put two rounds through each nostril. He wished for the strength to imagine that the monster's brain had become a puree of brain matter, its skull and tissue too thick for bullets to pass through.

Well. Anyway. It's dead.

No breathing, no twitching, and no rage—the heat from its body dissipated, and so did Jack's purpose here.

Maybe he could find something like a pizza delivery job in this world. There was a coup in Samarin, so maybe they needed delivery boys or something. The pay might be shit, but at least he could fuel his writing gig with it or something. Neruz's writing desk looked nice. He vaguely remembered an unused brick oven there as well. Singer asked about pizza back then, didn't he? So pizza doesn't exist here? He could totally reintroduce pizza and make a killing.

He steadied himself to stand. He gave the monster one last glance. Perhaps it hated being alive just as much as it hated the living.

Well. Anyway. It's dead.

As he limped away and reached the blast door exit, all the while letting a feeling of soreness envelop his body, something moved in the corner of his eye. Ravager reached out to him with its one good arm. He hadn't noticed earlier, but both of its legs had been broken. All it could do now was reach out.

Jack stepped up, just out of reach of him. "Thanks for the advice," he said. He pointed the revolver at his head and fired. Ravager joined his men.

"Friend."

Jack turned to see Neruz by the blast door. Parasol commandos were already spread out around the area. Some of them went to checking the monster.

Neruz's mission ended here, as only Parasol's agents knew what else laid waiting in the lower levels. He escorted Jack out of the facility, shouldering him as he drifted in and out of lucidity. Out in the helipad, Singer and Frill were waiting. There were no smiles nor celebrations. Jack removed his revolver from his satchel. He popped out the cylinder and carefully extracted a single spent case, and handed it to Frill. She only looked at it for a moment, then understood what it meant.

Jack hadn't noticed—a crashed helicopter smoldered over the twisted and bent chainlink fence of the helipad. Two of Parasol's soldiers chatted idly by an armored car outside the warehouse entrance, sharing swigs from a flask of what couldn't be anything other than alcohol, as if the place wasn't a danger zone.

"It had already escaped," Neruz explained, "It reached as far as here, and we only managed to drive it back to its retreat. Even if you had killed it, the air spreads its contagion, now. We were too late."

Ah, so the soldiers weren't relaxed. They were resigned.

"Then, everyone here—"

"Survivors," Neruz replied, "It was only fate's consolation that the three of us already knew enough of this facility to hide."

Glances and gazes passed between the four of them. They each knew that there was nothing left for any of them, and all of their lives had already ended. Frill's ended when she hunted Ravager, and he was already dead, and it wasn't even by her clan's hand. Singer's ended when there were no more safe places to bring people to—only more war. Neruz's ended when Parasol and Azerkal failed to contain the threat within Cryo 6, and thus the world once again faced a scourge; as an agent, he was no longer needed.

And Jack's life ended the moment he woke up.

His knees buckled, and Neruz carefully let him down on the floor. He called for a nearby medic, who was busy tending to bodybags by the side. The guy jogged over and looked much too delighted to find someone who, though messed up as Jack was, was actually alive.

It was empty. He had a life as empty as the gun in his hand. Being left with nothing but an empty gun, one kinda-friend, and two kinda-acquaintances, in the middle of a secret-nowhere while Joe and Bob over there drowned their optimisms away in liquor—it didn't make sense.

The battle's survivors spent the night in the warehouse, gathered around barrel fires and keeping watch—for threats within and without. Zombies prowled the shadows, and their rations dwindled. Someone like Jack was a liability in the coming days, but people like Neruz, Singer, and Frill did not mind.

* * *

Gathered around the fires, survivors stood. He needed to stand, but he couldn't, so he asked for a hand, then a shoulder, then a crutch.

Traveling through the night, survivors feared. He needed to walk, but he couldn't, so he asked for a cart, and a helper, then a torch.

Stalking the wilderness, survivors hunted. He needed prey, but couldn't hunt, so he asked for a knife, a pot, then a fire.

Lined against the barricades, survivors fought. He needed to fight, but he couldn't wield the shield, so he asked for a gun, a bullet, then a target.

As to why he lived, the power of one man was the power of many;

Steel forged by factories

Barrels bored by lathes

Bullets cast in places

Where gunpowder waits

Woe be the many

For those that they shun

Humbled be the strong

When the weak hold the gun