Chapter 5 Fire And Blood

Jack unloaded his rifle. Hollow points tore through bodies - if they were bodies at all.

Black ichor splattered the walls.

But they didn't stop.

He lit the thermite charges.

"Burn," he growled.

The hallway turned into an inferno. Screams - inhuman - filled the air.

He ran.

The whole mountain shuddered.

Steel groaned.

The facility was waking up.

And it wanted him back.

He reached the core.

It pulsed like a black heart.

Tentacles of light stretched from it - whispering, probing.

It knew him.

Wanted him.

"Finish it," he growled, and armed the last charge.

A tendril wrapped around his arm - not physical, but something deeper.

He saw everything: the experiments, the mimic's birth, his own memories rewritten.

Maybe he'd never been Jack.

Maybe he was always just a vessel.

He screamed and hit the detonator.

When Jack awoke, the facility was gone.

Only rubble and smoke remained.

He crawled out from beneath twisted rebar, coughing blood.

His skin was burned.

His memory... fractured.

But he was alive.

At least, he thought he was.

He staggered toward the treeline.

Then he heard it.

Footsteps behind him.

Soft. Bare.

He turned.

No one.

But on the wind...

"Jack..."