--Earlier--

“What the hell is this?”

Following the trail of blood, four Black Viper scouts had come across a large mass of flesh that had been forced into a dumpster. They poked and prodded at it, not sure what to make of the strange sight. It was most likely some kind of Institute mess, but could it have something to do with the target they were hunting?

‘Follow the blood trail,’ Dark Cobra had said. She seemed in an evil mood. ‘Slaughter the one who is bleeding, and anyone with him. Relay your position back at all times, and do not hesitate to call for backup.’

“Do you think it’s dangerous?”

“I’m not worried if it could hurt us, I’m just wondering whether or not it has something to do with our target. I mean, this is where the blood trail leads.”

“True. Oh! I heard that Institute monsters hate fire. Should we burn it?”

“Fuck if I know. Go ahead.”

The one man who asked lit a match and tried to catch the fleshy blob on fire, but it didn’t seem to do much. With a sigh, he stomped the match out.

“Seems like this was a bust. I guess we gotta keep searching?”

But the mass shuddered, and instantly the men regained focus and took distance from it, aiming their weapons. The abomination moved, like the inside of a womb, and it looked like there was someone inside, trying to crawl out. There were hands, inside, and a face, trying to push against the skin. And eventually, it found a spot and burst through, spilling out a tall and muscular man with blonde hair. He coughed out some kind of strange mucus that also coated him; whatever that goo was, it also filled the flesh blob. As the man made distance from it, the assassins’ jaws dropped as the skin started to molt away, melting and dispersing into fumes until it was almost completely gone.

Slowly, the man stood up, completely in the nude. He looked confused and blinked at the men who had taken cover.

“Uh...where am I? Are you Black Viper?”

Nobody could expect even the best trained assassin not to panic at the sight of this man and his knowledge of who they were. He had to be a target.

So the men opened fire on him, shredding his body into swiss cheese.

***

“Have we heard anything?” Dark Cobra asked, rubbing her face with a moisture pad. If there was one way to help her stress, it was a good massage. “Anything of use, I guess I should clarify.”

“Nope,” Shadow Komodo replied. His arm was in a cast; Bear God had fractured a few of his bones, and using his special sword technique made it worse. Now he was entirely on intel duty. “Nada. Zilch. Everyone is combing out into the city. I was expecting the guys tracking the blood trail would’ve found something, but they went quiet a while ago.”

“They went quiet?”

“Yes, that is what I said.”

“Did they see or hear anything before that? Can you contact them?”

“Not that I know of, here, give me a second, I’ll reach out.”

Shadow Komodo left the car she was in and went to one of the trailers they had parked out of the concert hall. It was their temporary base. He grabbed a headset that was connected to their mass radio device. It could connect to multiple walkie talkies, and almost like the switchboards of old, could be connected in many sorts of ways to direct individuals. It was a special device, and the outgoing communications were on such a wavelength that they couldn’t be captured by anything but the exact receivers. Komodo had no idea how it worked; the Black Viper got tons of gear from the Institute, but he was only ever trained in how to use it. Nothing more.

He located the scouting squad’s number and connected, hearing static.

“Hello? Anyone there?”

...

Chills ran down his spine and his throat went dry.

Why?

Half a second after he spoke, from only a meter behind him, he heard:

‘Hello? Anyone there?’

From right behind him, without making a sound, someone had appeared. Komodo could sense his presence; the heat from this intruders body. How had he entered the trailer? Was he here the entire time?

The walkie talkie landed in front of Shadow Komodo.

When he turned, a hand grabbed the front of his face and slammed the back of his head down on the machine. He tried to swing his good arm around, but whoever was attacking him lifted the man in the air and smashed him down hard enough on the ground that Komodo heard the sounds of bones cracking.

A foot placed itself on Komodo’s currently stunned face, pushing down on his eyes hard enough to make his skull creak.

He heard a voice that sounded like hell. Like metal grating on metal. Deep and guttural.

“Weak.”

The foot pulled off of Komodo’s face, and he could see again.

Standing over him, completely naked, was the man in the cowboy hat who had tried to escape with Loren Dames earlier. The one who was bleeding from heavy wounds.

But there was something different about him. The man was larger, and his muscles were so tight to his skin that it looked like they were going to rip out. No, that was wrong. They were ripping out. Veins and other parts of his body were bleeding, his skin only looking like some kind of plastic barely stretching enough to hold the insides of this man. His face was sharper, more direct, and his teeth had grown to be sharp. His sclera were black and his eyes red, and two massive horns had sprouted from his forehead.

“I would kill you...but.”

The man crouched down, purposefully letting his manhood rest on Komodo’s face.

“That would be what they want. No, the best thing for me to do would be to help you. Of course, would your boss accept that? Tell me her real name, or I’ll make sure everything in your body is outside before you lose consciousness.”

***

Dark Cobra had her eyes covered by a warm towel when a finger pierced through the side of her mouth and held like a hook. Another hand reached out and grabbed her throat, closing tight enough to pinch her veins shut and cut off her blood flow. She couldn’t even react as this assailant flipped her over and smashed her face first into the ground, busting her nose. This attacker grabbed her from behind and flipped her over, then punched her in the stomach. Then again on her diaphragm. She gasped out, her body unable to logically take so much pain in such a short time. This stimulus was making her unable to act in any meaningful way.

Again, the hands grabbed her, lifted her up, then slammed her on her back. A massive naked body sat itself on top of her chest, keeping her from moving and making it almost impossible to breathe. She blinked rapidly to clear the haze of pain from her eyes, then recognized who it was.

“Y-you…”

“Yes, me,” the attacker said with a hellish american accent. “I’m pleased to meet you, Evelyn Heres. How interesting, I thought you were supposed to be asian, but I guess the mask is slipping. Not your real face. Pathetic, in every sense of the word. If I were a better man, I’d break every bone in your body and make you beg for death before I let the birds pick at you. Unfortunately, I’m not.”

The man stood up and spun her seat around, sitting in it as though he didn’t have a single care in the world. He was casually relaxing as if he owned everything, and crossed his legs as Dark Cobra tried to sit up as best she could. None of her weapons were nearby, and there wasn’t any way she could kill this man without them. The difference is skill was just too great. From those attacks he had made, she could tell this person was the most skilled fighter she had ever seen.

But how was he okay? He should be dead.

“Ah, you’re wondering why I’m not dead, aren’t you?”

“!”

“Haha, that look of surprise on your face is hilarious. You’re really kind of a retard, aren’t you? Well, I guess it’d be hard to predict something like this happening. You didn’t know who you were fighting against, did you?”

“Who...who are you?”

He got out of the chair and grabbed her by the chin, forcing her to look him in the demonic eyes, his nose close enough to brush against hers as his two massive horns cut through her scalp. He smiled wide, and his breath smelled like ash.

“This body is called Lance Gordon. Those pieces of shit call themselves the Herculean Odysseus. Retarded name, huh? I can’t tell whose more stupid; you or them.”

She knew the name. He was an Institute project who had earned his freedom years ago and did detective and bodyguard work. He wasn’t the type to do horrible crimes, and protecting people was a better fit. But this wasn’t Lance Gordon, the shining beacon boy scout. This was someone completely different.

“Yes, that’s right. I’m not Lance Gordon. Lance Gordon is a fake, made by 11 fucking retards that share a body. Share my body. I am the true ruler of this form, and everything before me is just a slave to my desires.”

Was he reading her mind? How?

“No, I’m not reading your mind. I’m just fucking smart. I am a true godlike being. The greatest creation to ever come out of the Institute. The fucking monster to come out. And unlike my shitty slaves, the ones who keep me contained, I don’t play nice or fair. I kill. The world exists only for me to destroy, and the longer I’m held from it, the angrier I get.

“But sadly, destroying you and all of your pathetic underlings would actually help the slaves inside of me. No, I want them to suffer. Their happiness is my pain, and their pain is my happiness. So, for the time being, I’m going to be assisting you. I’ll help you kill Loren Dames, and then I’ll kill all of the people protecting him. Because I know it would cause them unspeakable anguish, I’ll let you live, and I’ll purge all memories of you from our collective databanks so they can’t get revenge. With my help, solely due to me, Loren Dames will be killed. And all I ask for is your disposable men.”

He slapped her face gently, twice, tearing the hole in her face open wider. He didn’t even let her respond to his question, because he knew there wasn’t any answer other than yes.

As he pulled his face away and spun in her chair, he continued his soliloquy.

“Currently, those retards escaped to the Hawk’s Nest. They think that place is safe, because it’s a neutral zone, but who gives a fuck about that? If your men slaughter everyone inside, nobody would be able to tell they did it. I’ll be taking over all operations from here, and I’ll be going into the field as well. You can just sit your useless ass down and make yourself pretty. That’s about all you’re good for, isn’t it?”

She thought her desire to kill someone had never been higher than with the russian earlier today, but this person took the cake. He literally thought nothing of speaking about her like trash with his back turned. If she had a weapon…

“It wouldn’t do anything, bitch,” the man said. “You can’t possibly harm me. I saw you earlier. Both you and that fat retard with the mutton chops wouldn’t be able to touch a single hair on my head. There are only two people I know in the world who could even come close to making me sweat, and neither are in this district. Oh, you need something to call me, right? You need a name to remember, so that every time you lay in bed at night and cry, thinking of my absolute superiority over you, there’s something you can curse, right?”

He grabbed a cigar from a box that had been resting nearby, then spit out a gout of flame from his mouth to light it.

“The real owner of this body is me. Because I own this body, I am in possession of the world. And my name is Cerberus.”