The whistle echoed again, closer now. A sound that cut through the air like a knife through flesh.
Marcus felt the S9 mark throb in response, like a poisoned second heart. The claw wounds left by the Hollowed were sealing themselves as if they'd never been there. As if not a single drop of blood had fallen.
"We can't stay here," Kain yanked him by the arm, throwing a backpack at him with brute force. "If the Hunter's on our tail, the area's already surrounded."
"How the hell do we escape?" Marcus swallowed the metallic taste filling his mouth. Blood. His or others', it didn't matter anymore.
Kain didn't answer. He kicked open a back door, revealing a dark corridor full of rusted pipes. The stench of mold and burnt chemicals nearly made Marcus gag.
"This way. Fast."
They plunged into darkness, with only the flickering light from a rusted flashlight Kain pulled from his pocket. The walls were covered in old graffiti - symbols scratched in anger, messages from desperate survivors, arrows pointing to unknown paths.
Marcus tripped over something soft.
A body.
Fresh.
The neck still bled from a surgical cut.
"He's already been through here," Kain stopped, fingers tightening on his holster. "Shit."
"Who is this Hunter?"
"Mercenaries hired by the Pure. Not infected. Worse." Kain looked at Marcus, his blue eyes almost glowing in the dark. "They were made for this. Like you."
Before Marcus could process it, a metallic sound echoed from the end of the corridor.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Like boots stepping on glass.
"Run."
They threw themselves through an opening in the wall, entering a narrow service tunnel. Marcus felt the rusted metal scraping his arms, the mark on his chest burning hotter.
The whistle sounded again.
So close.
"He's cornering us!" Marcus shouted, panic rising in his throat.
"No." Kain suddenly stopped, turning with a smile that didn't reach his eyes while clutching something in his pocket. "You're being cornered."
Then Marcus understood.
The trap.
The tunnel ended at a precipice - a ten-meter drop straight into the sewers.
"Jump," Kain ordered.
"Are you insane?!"
"JUMP, DAMMIT!"
A bright beam crossed the narrow tunnel, whizzing past Marcus's ear. The first shot nearly took his head off.
He threw himself into the dark.
The fall seemed to last centuries.
When he hit the foul water, something cracked in his chest - not bone, not muscle.
The mark.
Then, in the dark depths, Marcus heard.
His body twisted unnaturally, the impact awakening an overwhelming force that propelled his body through the canal to the bank.
Out of control, leaving grooves in the ground until he crashed into an old, twisted black tree. Hitting it head-on. The concussion knocked Marcus out instantly as his body stilled. A black, viscous liquid oozed from the tree.
Kain came right after, in shock.
The silence hung heavy, broken only by the sound of dry leaves crushed under boots.
Marcus was still on his knees, head throbbing, when he felt - a presence approaching.
Not Kain.
The Hunter emerged from the mist like a specter, his combat suit fitted to an athletic body, the gas mask's dark lenses reflecting the dim light. He didn't make a single sound.
"Marcus..." Kain whispered, stepping back. "Don't move."
But it was too late.
The Hunter spun his gun with supernatural precision, aiming straight at Marcus's forehead.
Then the pain exploded.
The mark on his chest burned like fire, and Marcus screamed as the tree's black sap reacted. His eyes turned white, his mind clouded... as if he wasn't even there anymore.
The viscous liquid gushed from the ground, snaking toward him like drawn by a magnet. It enveloped his arms, his legs, climbed his face like a mask - and then...
He understood.
The sap was part of him.
His body rose without his command, muscles swollen with brute power. The black sap covered his skin like a second layer, forming sharp claws on his fingers.
The Hunter fired.
Marcus moved without thinking.
The bullet passed where his head had been a second before, and then he attacked.
The two collided like beasts, the Hunter dodging with genetically enhanced reflexes. His movements were perfect - every kick, every strike calculated to kill.
Marcus, on the other hand, fought like a cornered animal.
Every cut and stab Marcus received healed in seconds.
The black sap responded to his impulses, shaping into spikes, into blades, but uncontrollably. A twisted branch sprouted from his shoulder, stabbing the ground when he missed a strike.
"Control it, Marcus!" Kain shouted, but his voice seemed to come from another world.
The Hunter drew a serrated knife and plunged it into Marcus's chest.
The pain went beyond flesh.
It was as if something inside him had been hit.
The S9 mark pulsed, and then...
The Hunter froze.
For a second, his eyes - visible through the cracked mask - showed recognition.
"Nine..." he whispered, as if remembering something.
Then, a whistle cut through the air.
This time, it didn't come from the forest.
It came from inside the Hunter's mask.
His eyes rolled back, and as if something else spoke through him with an ambiguously distorted voice:
"Hello Subject NINE, I hope you've lived comfortably in this time..."
Marcus's body trembled at the voice, as some lucidity returned to him, flashes passing through his memory. Images of a laboratory and doctors surrounding him.
"We want you back... And we'll do everything to reunite all of you again..."
Like an outburst, Marcus's body moved. The layer of black liquid covering his arm formed a blade and tore off the Hunter's head. Silencing the voice.
Kain ran to Marcus, pulling him away from the body.
"Shit. They've managed to control all these experiments."
Marcus fell to his knees, the black sap receding from his body like a retreating tide. The mark on his chest now throbbed in a strange rhythm, absorbing all that strange, invasive organic matter.
And then he realized.
"What did they do to me?"