The maintenance corridor my game-addled brain remembered led us straight into the facility's colon. It was a flooded sewer passage that smelled like a zombie's asshole had died, decomposed, and then achieved a sort of foul spiritual rebirth inside another zombie's asshole.
The scummy water sloshed around Rebecca's shins, which meant it barely tickled my paws, but every step sent greasy ripples echoing down the tunnel.
The emergency lights overhead flickered with the enthusiasm of a dying firefly, painting everything in a nauseating palette of yellow and green.
Rebecca moved like a pro, Beretta up, slicing the pie at every corner. I padded along right beside her. And I mean right beside her. My shoulder kept brushing against her thigh, a totally accidental, completely tactical maneuver that had nothing to do with me being a degenerate.
Gotta stay close. For her protection. This has zero to do with the fact that I've spent the last hour getting absolutely blitzed on her scent. It's a purely strategic decision.
Of course, the whole 'Ghosty' persona was a strategic decision, too. I could, if I wanted to, scratch out coherent sentences in the dirt. I could probably play charades. But the moment I revealed true sapience, the game changed. Sapience came with baggage. Morals. Expectations. The responsibility not to be a complete and utter creep.
But a dog? A dog doesn't have morals. A dog can lick a girl's ass and it's just a dog being a weirdo. A dog can get away with anything short of outright murder because it's just a dumb animal. I was weaponizing her perception of me. It was a perfect loophole, a get-out-of-jail-free card for my own degeneracy, and I was going to milk it for all it was worth.
My new Cerberus chassis came with some high-end olfactory hardware, and Rebecca's aroma was a goddamn symphony. Sweat, adrenaline, the cheap lavender shampoo from her last shower, the faint coppery tang of Billy's blood, and underneath it all, a unique signature that my new canine brain had cataloged as 'The Most Interesting Smell in the Known Universe.'
Rebecca glanced down at me, her brow furrowed. "You're, like, really in my personal space right now."
I just wagged my tail and pressed a little closer.
She let out a long, weary sigh and kept moving. My own brain, however, was chewing on a much bigger problem.
Billy was dead. The plot was well and truly fucked.
In the original script, Billy and Rebecca were a tag team. Now? Now it was just Rebecca. An eighteen-year-old rookie medic with some pistol training, thrown into a meat grinder against Umbrella's worst nightmares.
She wasn't going to make it. Not a chance in hell, not without a serious intervention.
That meant I had to become the muscle Billy was supposed to be. To do that, I needed an upgrade.
I pulled up the System interface, the translucent blue screen materializing in my vision as we walked.
[Evolution Points Available: 807 EP]
Time to go shopping. I scrolled through the Evolution Shop, keeping one eye on Rebecca's ass—I mean, on our six. For threats. Obviously.
[Trait: Chitinous Armor Plating] — 300 EP
[Description: Integrates a thin, enhanced keratin-based subdermal layer beneath the host's skin. Functions as organic Kevlar...]
My Cerberus form had two mutation slots. One was for my Novistador invisibility, and the second was now conveniently empty since I'd shut down the Clicker sonar. This was a no-brainer.
I mentally confirmed the purchase.
[Purchase Confirmed: -300 EP.]
[Trait: Chitinous Armor Plating added to inventory.]
[Equip to available Mutation Slot 2?]
Smash that fucking 'Yes' button.
The response was instantaneous, and a thousand times more fucking violent than I could have imagined.
A thousand burning needles under my skin—no, not needles, molten FUCKING steel pouring into every cell—
My entire body seized. The sensation wasn't just pain; it was a biological violation, a cellular rewriting process that felt like being turned inside out and set on fire.
What the hell is this—it's supposed to be an upgrade not a fucking self-immolation—muscles locking up, vision blurring at the edges—shit, shit, losing control, can't stop it—
All across my body, under the skin and over the raw flesh, thick plates of hardened tissue erupted. It was a grotesque, high-speed wave of dark, chitinous plating spreading over me. My exposed ribcage vanished beneath insect-like armor. The growth crawled down my flanks and up my neck with a deeply unsettling speed that my nervous system screamed at me to reject.
I was so lost in the agony that I didn't notice Rebecca had stopped walking until her terrified voice cut through the haze.
"Ghosty? What's wrong with you? What's happening to your body?!"
I blinked, trying to clear the static from my vision. She'd scrambled backward, her hand clamped on the grip of her Beretta, her face a mask of pure horror. This wasn't the look of someone seeing a familiar pattern; this was the look of someone watching the fundamental laws of biology get curb-stomped in a sewer.
Her eyes were locked on the chitinous plates solidifying over my body. "It's—it's growing—what the hell is that?"
I could see the terror in her eyes. The one constant in this nightmare had been that the dead were the dead and the living were the living. But what she was seeing now was something else entirely. Something was changing, warping, rewriting itself in front of her, and she had no frame of reference for it beyond 'unholy' and 'wrong.'
Her thumb flicked the Beretta's safety off with an audible click.
Fuck fuck fuck, abort! She thinks I'm turning into a goddamn Cronenberg monster! Deploy tactical patheticness! NOW!
With a monumental effort of will, I shoved the pain down and forced my seizing muscles into submission. I immediately dropped the intimidating monster posture and went full goddamn puppy mode. My tail started wagging furiously, my head tilted to the side, and my tongue lolled out of my mouth like I'd just spotted a squirrel made of bacon.
Please don't shoot me, please don't shoot me, I'm still a good boy, I swear, I just bought some DLC armor and the installation process is a bitch.
The burning sensation faded as the last plate settled into place. The mutation was complete.
Rebecca stared at me for a long, tense moment, the barrel of her gun unwavering.
I wagged harder, adding a small, desperate whine for good measure.
Her posture finally, mercifully, relaxed by a fraction. The hand drifted away from her weapon, though she didn't re-engage the safety. "What... what in God's name was that?"
I sat my newly-armored ass down and started scratching behind my ear with a hind leg, leaning heavily into the "harmless dog" routine.
She approached me with the caution of someone stepping into a cage with a tiger that might be napping, or might be faking it. "Did you just... grow armor?"
Her hand reached out, hesitated for a second, then touched the new plating on my shoulder. Her fingers traced the hard, smooth surface where exposed muscle had been just moments before. The chitin had a segmented, almost scale-like texture, but it flexed organically as I shifted my weight.
"Huh." She ran her hand down my side, her touch a strange mix of clinical curiosity and sheer disbelief. "Well... at least you look less disgusting now."
That was my cue.
I lunged forward and delivered one massive, all-encompassing lick straight up her face, from chin to forehead.
"UGHHH!" she shrieked, stumbling backward and wiping at her face with frantic, useless motions. "Damn you! I take it back! You're still the most disgusting thing I have ever met!"
I wagged my tail, thoroughly pleased with myself. Mission accomplished.
She scrubbed at her face with a saturated sleeve, muttering a steady stream of creative innocent words meant to be profanities that would have given her drill instructors a massive erection. "Why do you keep doing that? What is fundamentally wrong with your brain?"
Everything. The answer is absolutely everything.
She eventually surrendered to her fate as the designated biohazard sponge and dropped her arm with a heavy sigh. "Come on. Let's keep moving before something worse shows up."
We waded through the knee-deep sewer sludge in total silence. I stayed glued to her hip. This served the dual purpose of acting as a furry meat-shield and keeping me perfectly positioned to huff her pheromones like a degenerate glue-sniffer.
Speaking of degenerate habits.
[Evolution Points Available: 507 EP]
I could be a responsible adult. I could save up for a massive, game-changing form and guarantee our survival through meticulous planning.
Or I could feed my raging gacha addiction and see what kind of multiversal bullshit the Roulette Wheel wanted to spit into my face today.
The wheel had already blessed me with Clicker sonar and Novistador active camouflage. The RNG gods were clearly in my corner.
I mentally smashed the spin button.
[LOTTERY ACTIVATED - 100 EP] [Remaining EP: 407]
The neon-blue interface exploded across my retinas. The holographic wheel spun at blinding speed, blurring a chaotic mess of vague, incomprehensible symbols. Claws, fangs, unidentifiable genitalia—it was completely impossible to tell what any of the prizes actually were until the dial locked in.
The wheel ticked to a halt on a small, curled-up icon.
[Reward Acquired: Item — Undead Fetus (Fresh)] [Description: A premature, partially-digested meat-jelly bean forcefully evicted from its rotting duplex. Comes pre-marinated in a thick, amniotic sludge.]
A tiny, slimy, grey lump of aborted nightmare plopped directly onto the concrete walkway near my paw. It was completely coated in a foul, gelatinous membrane. As I stared at it in sheer horror, the little mutant raisin actually twitched, let out a pathetic, wet uggguuhhh groan, and then went completely limp.
What the actual, timeline-fucking fuck is this?!
Before I could even process the psychological damage, Rebecca stopped dead in her tracks.
"W-what was that?" she whispered, her Beretta coming up instantly.
She swept her flashlight beam directly toward the ground. I reacted on pure instinct. I subtly side-kicked the grotesque little meat-nugget straight into the murky sewer water before the light could catch it. It sank beneath the scum with a depressing plop.
When the beam illuminated the walkway, I was just sitting there on my armored haunches, head tilted, tail giving a slow, rhythmic wag. Just a totally innocent, goofy dog. No dead mutant babies here, officer.
Rebecca let out a shaky breath, keeping the flashlight sweeping the dark corners. "I could have sworn I heard something groaning right next to us."
Must have been the pipes, babe.
She shook her head and started walking again. I trailed right behind her, my mind racing. I absolutely refused to end my gambling streak on a dead zombie fetus. That was terrible karma. I needed to wash that spiritual filth out of my aura with a real prize.
[LOTTERY ACTIVATED - 100 EP] [Remaining EP: 307]
The wheel spun again. More blurry, cryptic symbols flashed by, mocking my terrible financial decisions. The dial clicked slower, slower, and finally landed on a stretched, translucent icon.
[Reward Acquired: Item — Used Condom of Unknown Origin] [Description: A heavy, stretched rubber tube tied off at the base. Currently sweating condensation and filled to the brim with warm, highly suspicious baby-batter.]
I read the prompt and my brain instantly went into tactical overdrive. Knowing exactly how this system delivered its physical rewards, I violently yanked my paw backward just as the air above the concrete shimmered.
A thick, milky-white balloon slapped onto the wet stone exactly where my foot had been a millisecond prior.
Oh, Jesus fucking Christ!
It was literally steaming in the cool sewer air. A discarded, overfilled rubber from some unknown interdimensional coomer. I stared at the bulging monstrosity with a thousand-yard stare, completely traumatized by the absolute filth this system was conjuring into reality.
System, what the fuck! Is there no goddamn inventory?! Why are you just dropping used sex toys and dead babies directly onto the floor like a cracked-out stork?!
A cheerful chime rang in my head.
[Notice: The Spatial Inventory module is currently disabled by default to save mental bandwidth. Would you like to enable it? Note: Only items acquired via the Lottery can be stored within this subspace.]
Yes! Enable it, you sadistic digital fuck! Turn the goddamn inventory on before I get a restraining order against my own UI!
[Inventory Enabled.]
I mentally shoved the cursed rubber into the void, making it vanish from the concrete before Rebecca could turn around and question why her bio-weapon guard dog was carrying around a loaded prophylactic.
My inner gambling demon was completely unhinged now. I was down two hundred points. If I stopped now, I had essentially paid two hundred evolution points for a dead meat-bean and a stranger's nut sack balloon. That was the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals. Statistically speaking, ninety percent of gamblers quit right before they hit the jackpot. I had to spin again to balance out the karma.
[LOTTERY ACTIVATED - 100 EP] [Remaining EP: 207]
Third time's the charm. Give me a fucking laser beam or a chainsaw tail. Come on.
The wheel whirred into a frenzy and finally clamped down on a symbol depicting a thorny vine wrapped around a blooming flower.
A high-definition hologram popped up in my vision, displaying a beautiful, impossibly sultry woman constructed entirely of vines and exotic flora. Her skin possessed a lush, green tint, and her glowing eyes stared suggestively from behind a veil of pollen and vibrant red petals. She looked like Mother Nature had decided to start an OnlyFans account.
Holy guacamole, what the fuck is this?
[To be Continued]