New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤
✦
Chris hated admitting it, but the operation had gone off the rails almost from the beginning.
Aside from the first ambush in the warehouse, every fight after that had veered away from the plan.
Now Adrian’s condition was unknown, T-Lilith had mutated, and Norman had fled without a trace.
Suitor lifted T-Lilith high on the claws of its left arm.
Her blood poured down the monster’s forearm like water from a broken pipe.
She thrashed and screamed, the sound raw and animal.
Chris knew he had no more time to hesitate.
He hauled Adrian up and tried to drag him away from the battlefield.
T-Lilith saw Adrian being taken away.
Hanging from Suitor’s claws, she howled.
It sounded like a beast desperate to tear into its prey, and also like someone sobbing.
Chris clenched his teeth and did not look back.
No matter how badly the situation had collapsed, he had to get Adrian out.
Maybe the monster had grown bored.
Maybe it was venting.
Suitor swung its left arm and slammed T-Lilith into the cold concrete again and again.
Blood splattered in every direction.
At last, the silent woman let out a scream that sounded as if it had been torn out of her chest.
She cried out from the pain, and from something worse than pain.
“Forgive me,” Chris whispered.
Then a bloodstained hand crept up Chris’s back and clamped onto the strap across his shoulder.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Chris turned and stared at Adrian in shock.
Half of Adrian’s body was slumped against him.
His face was pale, his strength almost gone, but his eyes looked like something that had clawed its way out of hell.
Under that stare, even Chris Redfield felt a stab of guilt he could not explain.
“You’re awake?”
“I asked,” Adrian said, each word forced through his teeth, “where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“The situation is out of control.
I need to get you clear.
BSAA and U.N.
support forces will be here soon.
They’ll handle the aftermath.”
“Like hell they will!”
Adrian roared in Chris’s face with a fury that did not belong in a dying man.
Blood spattered across Chris’s cheek.
“Can’t you hear her calling me?”
Clutching his wounded abdomen, Adrian shoved Chris away.
He staggered so badly he nearly fell.
Chris reached to support him, but Adrian somehow forced himself upright.
He swayed as he turned toward T-Lilith, still hanging from Suitor’s claws.
She had gone quiet.
Blood covered her.
One leg bent at an unnatural angle.
Her silver hair was matted with blood and grime.
The mutated claw had broken and hung limp.
Only the faint red glow pulsing beneath her torn clothes proved that she was still alive.
“T-Lilith…
T-Lilith…
wait for me.
I’m coming…
I’ll save you…”
Gritting his teeth, Adrian took one step after another toward her.
Blood dripped steadily onto the floor.
“Are you out of your damn mind?” Chris finally snapped.
“Open your eyes!
That isn’t T-Lilith anymore!
That’s a B.O.W.!
A Bio Organic Weapon!
A monster!”
He reached to grab Adrian, but one glance from him froze Chris’s hand in midair.
That look was cold and hollow, with murder in it, like the stare of a corpse that refused to stay down.
For one terrible second, Chris wondered if Adrian had already died, and the thing in front of him was only a body moved by obsession.
“Damn it,” Chris muttered.
“Fine.”
Chris raised his weapon and opened fire.
Suitor was already at the edge of collapse.
The fight with T-Lilith had done too much damage, and the virus inside it could no longer sustain full regeneration.
The pain of the bullets tearing into its muscle made the creature howl and fling its left arm.
T-Lilith flew free and hit the ground.
The swollen veins across her body slowly settled.
Her altered claw shrank, bit by bit, until it became a slender hand again.
Blood spread beneath her on the cold concrete.
Suitor tried to grab her again, but Chris’s fire kept shredding its ruined body.
The rounds were nowhere near enough to destroy the monster, but they slowed it.
On the other side, Adrian limped forward.
He bent with difficulty, picked up the dropped Glock, and fired at Suitor one shot at a time as he moved toward T-Lilith.
The pain was fading.
All that remained was cold.
But Adrian could not stop.
His mind drifted back to that cramped room, to the silver-haired woman who never wore an expression, and to the sweet smile that had once bloomed on her face.
‘That smile…
even if I have to crawl back from the grave, I will protect it.’
The pistol clicked empty.
Dazed, Adrian stopped in front of T-Lilith.
He smiled as he turned and faced the monster blocking his path.
“You think you can touch my woman?”
The life had almost left his face, yet that wild grin returned.
The Mad Dog of Loplers would bare his teeth at anything foolish enough to stand in front of him, even at death’s door.
“I’ll kill you for that.”
Chris’s weapon ran dry.
He reached for his belt on instinct and found nothing.
He was out of ammunition.
“Don’t just stand there!
I’m dry!
Run!”
Adrian did not seem to hear him.
He only stared at the monster, the corners of his mouth pulling into a grin that looked ready to split his face.
Suitor could not understand why Adrian, who should have fallen, now stood in its path.
But its mission had not changed.
Recover T-Lilith.
A monster without blood or tears did not need to think.
It only needed to complete the mission.
Anything in the way would be destroyed.
Suitor charged.
Chris stared in disbelief as Adrian ran straight toward it, laughing like a madman.
Suitor swung its mutated arm in a brutal horizontal sweep.
Chris could barely stand to watch.
Adrian suddenly dropped flat, sliding under the blow.
He surged up close.
Suitor felt pain tear through the wound T-Lilith had opened in its chest and roared.
Broken tentacles, still not fully regenerated, whipped out and hurled Adrian away.
He crashed to the ground, rolled hard, and ended up sprawled there like a dead man.
Suitor could not understand what that suicidal charge had achieved.
It started to turn.
Then Adrian lifted his head and smiled at it.
His blood-covered hand rose slowly.
A trembling finger held up a small shining metal ring.
His grin was full of mockery.
“Boom, you bastard.”
The words landed like a death sentence.
The fragmentation grenade Adrian had shoved into the monster’s chest detonated.
Blood and shredded meat blasted out through the wound and out of Suitor’s warped mouth.
The creature had no time to scream.
It staggered once, then crashed to the ground.
“He…
he killed it?” Chris could hardly believe what he had seen.
The mercenary had a hole through his abdomen and was barely alive, yet for the sake of a woman who was not fully human, he had dragged out enough strength for one last gamble and turned it into a kill.
The Mad Dog of Loplers had earned the name.
On the other side of the battlefield, Adrian, who could no longer stand, dragged himself toward T-Lilith and left a trail of blood behind him.
When he reached her, he used every last bit of strength to sit up and pull her gently into his arms.
“T-Lilith…”
He called her name.
As if she heard him, the woman in his arms trembled.
A faint voice slipped from her lips. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
“Adrian…
Adrian?
Is that Adrian…?”
“It’s me, T-Lilith.
It’s me.”
“Good…
that’s good…”
She struggled to open her eyes.
Tears spilled from their corners and ran down her face.
She tried to lift her hand and touch him.
Adrian caught it and pressed her palm softly against his cheek.
“T-Lilith…
hurts…
hurts so much…” she whispered.
“But Adrian is alive.
So it does not hurt anymore…”
She looked at his pale smile and the tenderness in his eyes, and she smiled back.
Chris glanced at the two of them leaning against the container, then began reporting to the BSAA.
The Nemesis-type B.O.W.
had been neutralized.
With help from local mercenaries, he had resolved another biohazard incident.
There were wounded on site, and they needed immediate medical evacuation.
In the end, the promised backup had not arrived in time for the fight.
It would be arriving as cleanup.
Then Suitor’s corpse moved.
Its body convulsed violently.
Blood blisters swelled across it.
Its mutated arms and lower body began to slough away in wet masses.
A thin, shrill sound came from its warped mouth.
It had lost the last trace of control it possessed as a B.O.W.
and become nothing but a mindless thing driven by the urge to kill.
“Watch out!” Chris shouted toward Adrian and T-Lilith.
They saw it too.
Adrian, weak and still bleeding, frowned.
“You really don’t know how to read a room, do you?”
T-Lilith reached toward her waist.
The Desert Eagle Adrian had given her was still there.
But she was too weak even to hold the gun steady.
A large hand covered hers.
T-Lilith lifted her head and saw Adrian smiling down at her.
They looked at each other.
Together, they raised the pistol and aimed at the struggling monster on the ground.
Suitor opened its warped mouth toward them.
Flesh shifted inside.
Several limp tentacles stretched out and waved weakly at Adrian and T-Lilith.
Adrian held T-Lilith’s hand around the gun.
He took a breath and shouted.
“Stay.
The hell.
Down!”
The Desert Eagle thundered.
The recoil knocked both exhausted bodies onto their backs.
The round tore through Suitor’s open mouth and punched out through the back of its head in a burst of blood and gore.
Suitor shrieked.
White vapor hissed from its body.
Blood poured from every wound as if the pressure holding it in had vanished.
Its flesh shriveled at a visible speed until it collapsed into a heap of rotten meat in a dark pool.
This time, Suitor’s life signs were gone for good.
“Are you two all right?”
Chris hurried over.
When he reached them, Adrian and T-Lilith were lying on the floor in each other’s arms.
Their hands were still clasped around the gun as if they had simply fallen asleep together.
Chris let out a long breath.
✦
✦
✦
Want to keep going?
I hope this chapter gave you another reason to stay with the story.
There’s still plenty ahead, and things are only starting to unfold.