Day 6.
South Gate Perimeter.
Sauget, Illinois.
14:15 Hours.
The rain had turned acidic. It hissed against the corrugated metal of the perimeter fence, smelling of sulfur, burnt hair, and the decaying chemical sludge of the American Bottom.
I jogged through the mud, the Fang .45 heavy in my hand. My head was still throbbing from the User Chill—a cold spike driven into the base of my skull from the Echo usage earlier. Every time I blinked, I saw black maggots writhing in my peripheral vision, ghost data from a timeline where I'd let the rot take me.
Yana was crouching behind a stack of rusted pallets near the South Gate. She was blended so perfectly with the shadows that I almost tripped over her.
"Status," I whispered.
She didn't look at me. She was staring through the chain-link fence at the figure standing in the middle of the cracked asphalt road.
"He's... wrong, Jack," she said softly. "He's not shuffling. He's vibrating."
I peered through the mesh.
It was a man. Maybe thirty. He wore a shredded St. Louis Cardinals windbreaker and jeans that were dark with urine. He wasn't walking toward the gate; he was swaying, his weight shifting violently from foot to foot like a boxer trying to stay upright in the twelfth round.
He was screaming, but it wasn't a cry for help. It was a low, continuous keen of agony, punctuated by wet, hacking coughs that sprayed black phlegm onto the road.
My Decay Sight snapped onto him. The text was jagged, glitching red and orange against the grey rain.
`[TARGET: HUMAN (INFECTED).]`
`[VIRAL LOAD: 98%.]`
`[STATUS: PRE-ANIMATION RAGE.]`
`[VARIANT: ADRENAL PRECURSOR.]`
"He's a Rager," I said, checking the safety on my pistol. "He's not dead yet, but the virus is rewriting his adrenal glands. It's dumping a lethal dose of epinephrine into his system every three seconds."
"So he's fast?" Yana asked, gripping her courier knife.
"He's a time bomb," I said. "Open the gate. Just a crack. We lure him into the kill box."
"Jack, he's crying," Paige's voice came from behind us. She had followed me from the elevator, a pry bar white-knuckled in her hands. Her face was pale, streaked with grime. "Look at him. He's begging."
I looked. The man had fallen to his knees. He was clawing at his own face, his fingernails digging furrows into his cheeks until the skin hung in ribbons.
"Help me," the man gargled. Blood bubbled past his lips. "It burns. The fire... get it out!"
"We can't just shoot him," Paige hissed. "He's sick. We have the serum. Maybe—"
"The serum is for Users," I cut her off. "It kills the virus by rewriting the host. If I gave it to him now, his heart would explode. He's gone, Paige."
I turned to Miller, who was skulking by the guard shack, watching with his good eye. "Sheriff. You want to be useful? Unlock the chain. On my signal, you open it three feet. Then you lock it again."
Miller spat tobacco juice onto the concrete. "You're gonna execute a sick civilian on my watch, Monroe?"
"I'm gonna put down a rabid animal before it eats your other arm," I said. "Do it."
Miller grunted, but he moved to the gate. He unlocked the heavy padlock with a metallic clank.
The sound triggered something in the man.
His head snapped up. His eyes weren't human anymore. The capillaries had burst, turning the whites entirely red. The pupils were blown so wide they swallowed the iris. Veins bulged black against his pale skin, pulsing with a terrifying, rapid-fire rhythm.
"MEAT!" he shrieked.
It wasn't a word. It was a biological imperative screamed through a ruined throat.
"Open!" I roared.
Miller yanked the chain. The gate swung inward.
The Rager didn't run. He launched.
He covered the twenty feet between the road and the gate in a blur of motion that didn't make sense. One second he was on his knees; the next, he was a missile of blood and teeth slamming into the gap.
"Back!" I shouted, shoving Paige aside.
The Rager hit the chain-link with enough force to rattle the entire fence line. He squeezed through the opening, his shoulder dislocating with a wet pop to fit through the gap. He didn't even slow down. His arm hung limp, swinging uselessly, but he kept coming.
He zeroed in on the closest target.
Miller.
"Shit!" Miller scrambled backward, tripping over his own feet. He raised his shotgun one-handed, but he was too slow.
The Rager leaped. He landed on Miller's chest, pinning him to the muddy ground.
"Get off!" Miller screamed, thrashing.
The Rager opened his mouth. His jaw unhinged, the ligaments snapping audibly, allowing him to open wide enough to fit Miller's entire face inside.
I stepped forward. I didn't panic. I let the Administrator guide my hand.
`[TARGET LOCKED. VULNERABILITY: PATELLA.]`
I didn't aim for the head. A Rager on adrenaline could take a brain shot and keep fighting for ten seconds—long enough to tear a throat out.
I aimed for the mechanics.
BANG.
The first round took the Rager's right knee. The hollow-point round mushroomed on impact, shattering the kneecap and severing the tendon.
The leg folded backward. The Rager collapsed to the side, howling.
BANG.
The second round vaporized the left knee.
Now he was just a torso dragging useless meat.
"Yana!" I barked. "Finish it!"
Yana moved. She stepped out of the shadow of the pallets, her courier blade flashing in the grey light. She didn't hesitate. She stepped onto the Rager's back, grabbed a handful of his bloody hair, and drove the knife into the base of his skull.
She twisted. Severed the brain stem.
The Rager went limp instantly. The screaming stopped. The only sound was Miller's frantic, wheezing breath and the hiss of the acid rain.
`[THREAT ELIMINATED.]`
`[BIOMASS: 75KG (CONTAMINATED).]`
`[ROOT: WASTEFUL. HE HAD SPIRIT.]`
I walked over to Miller. He was covered in the Rager's black blood. He stared up at me, his eyes wide with terror and hate.
"You used me as bait," he rasped.
"You were the doorstop, Sheriff," I said, offering him a hand. "There's a difference."
He didn't take my hand. He scrambled up on his own, wiping the slime from his uniform.
"He's leaking," Paige whispered. She was staring at the corpse.
The body wasn't just bleeding. It was dissolving. The skin was bubbling, sloughing off the bone in grey, wet sheets. A cloud of visible spores puffed into the air as the chest cavity collapsed.
"Back!" Helen's voice cracked like a whip.
She was standing at the entrance to the factory floor, wearing a full-face respirator and holding a pump sprayer marked BLEACH.
"Nobody breathes!" she shouted. "That's a viral bloom! Get away from the body!"
We scrambled back.
Helen advanced on the corpse like a riot cop. She pumped the sprayer handle and unleashed a stream of concentrated industrial bleach onto the body.
HISS.
The chemical reaction was violent. White smoke billowed up as the bleach hit the infected biomass. The smell was blinding—chlorine and cooking meat.
"Decon!" Helen ordered, her voice muffled by the mask. "Everyone who was within ten feet. Mudroom. Now. Clothes off, incinerator cycle. If you breathed that mist, you have twelve hours before you start coughing."
"I didn't touch him!" Miller protested. "I'm the victim here!"
"You're a vector!" Helen screamed, spraying him directly in the face with the bleach mist. Miller sputtered, blindingly wiping his eyes. "Move your ass, Miller, or I'll have Jack shoot you in the parking lot!"
Miller ran for the Mudroom. Paige followed, looking green.
I stayed where I was, watching the body dissolve into a puddle of sterile sludge.
Yana stood beside me. She wiped her knife on her pant leg. Her hands were steady.
"That wasn't a zombie," she said quietly.
"No," I said. "That was a Runner Precursor. The flu speeds up the metabolism until the body burns out. Then it reanimates."
"He was fast, Jack. Too fast."
"Tier 2," I said. "They're evolving. The System isn't waiting for the timer."
I looked at the puddle of goo that used to be a man in a Cardinals jacket.
`[ADMINISTRATOR: CONTAGION CONTAINED. SANITATION BONUS: +50 PTS.]`
"We need to clear the factory floor," I said. "If one got this close, there are more. And if they get inside... we're dead."
"The factory floor is huge," Yana said, looking at the massive, dark warehouse behind us. "It's a maze of machinery and shadows. Perfect for them."
"Exactly," I said. "That's why we're going to purge it."
I turned to the open bay doors of the main plant. It was a cavernous space, filled with rusting assembly lines, overhead cranes, and deep, dark pits where the chemical vats used to be.
My Decay Sight flickered.
Inside the darkness of the factory, I saw them.
Not one ping. Not two.
Dozens.
`[THREAT DETECTED: DORMANT CLUSTER.]`
`[LOCATION: ASSEMBLY LINE B.]`
`[COUNT: 40+.]`
They were sleeping. Or incubating. Huddled together in the dark like bats.
"Yana," I said, my voice low. "Go get the flamethrower blueprint."
She looked at me. "We don't have a flamethrower."
"I have 500 points from the arbitrage and the sanitation bonus," I said. "I'm buying it. We're not hunting them one by one. We're burning the nest."
I walked toward the Command Deck. The maggots in my wrist were itching again, but I ignored them.
The Factory Floor was about to get hot.
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 6
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) ████░░░░░░ 4/10 Nodes
FACTORY FLOOR: BREACHED
Threat: Rager Nest (40+ Dormant)
New Asset: Viral Sample (Destroyed)
Next Event: The Wake-Up Call