The Deadman

Kato clicked on the safety of his gun. He took aim at the center head of the humanoid monster and emptied a magazine. Unsurprisingly, that only left scratches on the monster’s skin.

“Got a situation here.”

He slung the SMG across his back and took his pistol out instead. Strato’s team entered the bunker the moment they saw the three-headed monster. They immediately took aim and started firing on its head.

“What’s this monster?”

Kato made a hand seal with his left hand. He produced binding strings on the tip of his fingers and tied the tiny arm of the monster. The monster pulled him over and tried to slam him with the club it was holding.

He twisted his body, landed on the ground, recovered, and sprang on the back of the creature tying a garrote of light around the neck and then pulling hard.

Kato was grabbed by the other arm and was thrown aside. He tucked his legs in and vaulted on the ground before taking his gun out and using all his senses at once to slow his perception of time at the cost of losing all colors.

He pulled the trigger of his pistol. The shot landed on one of the eyes of the monster. The silver bullet went through the eye.

The color returned to him. He shook his head and signaled to aim for the head. They didn’t need it seeing that the silver bullet worked. They changed mags and started tearing the monster apart with precise shots on the head.

But its leathery skin was hard. The monster itself moved faster after recognizing their threat, bringing its club down on them, and swinging it around with reckless abandon.

Kato backed off. He focused all of his senses at once and saw that the weakness of the monster was right around the legs. He had not noticed it before, but he could tell that what he thought was important was being highlighted to him in colors. Around the ribs and the gap between the arms were the weakness of the monster.

“Rib and armpit. Shoot there instead of just the head.”

“Got it! You heard him!”

Strato and his team tore the ribs of the monsters with their silver bullets. Pinning the monster down with concentrated fire. Kato saw Smoke lobbing a grenade at the monster’s innards.

Kato made for cover and watched as the grenade blew the sides of the monsters. It didn’t go down. It raged harder and tried to crush Smoke with its weapon.

Kato clapped his hands together and lassoed a rope made of binding light on the center neck, and pulled hard with his feet jammed to the floor. He yanked hard and wrested the monster flat on its back. Strato, Sloth, and Vermin pointed the muzzle of their guns on the exposed chest of the monster and started blasting until all thirty rounds of their assault rifle were emptied out. 

With the casings rolling on the ground. Strato strode in front of Kato and demanded.

“What the fuck is that?”

Kato walked next to the monster and examined it closely.

“It’s a balachko, I think.”

“We used two mags just to kill this son of a bitch.”

“It’s weakened,” Kato said. “It didn’t breathe fire or wind so it must have been a stray offspring.”

“This is weakened?”

“Unfortunately it is. We’re lucky that this isn’t a true balachko.”

“I keep hearing lesser monsters and true monsters. What’s the difference?”

“One is the original and the lesser are the offspring that these monsters created by breeding anything.”

“Anything?”

“So I heard. They probably heard us fighting. There might be more of these monsters up ahead. That reminds me. Do you feel any suppressing feeling at all? Anything?”

Strato examined himself, then turned to his team.

“None.”

“Then the seal was working.”

Kato did feel a suppressing feeling, but he found it underwhelming compared to the devil’s voice or what he felt meeting Lesnik. 

“Let’s move then.”

Strato urged his team to move forward. Kato remained in the rear, clearing the rooms with Strato’s team. Arriving in the center of the bunker, they found enemies preparing to tear them apart.

“That’s a lot of them.”

Strato looked around.

“Any other places we can get in it?”

“None. I think there’s a wall here. We might be able to breach it, but it’d take time.”

Strato turned towards Kato.

“Can you do anything about it?”

Kato used his all-sense at the wall. There were structural weaknesses that he could probably use one slot of his elemental spells to slice through. He thought about how he had forgotten to use them while fighting. He wasn’t really used to using them and with what Lesnik did. He could only use five wind bullets, five balls of explosions, and five water blades.

“I can probably cut through here.”

Kato made a weave in the air and did a slashing motion at the wall. The water blade cut through the weak wall. Giving them enough to push down the wall and enter through it. With five of them pushing, they sneaked around on the side of the right flank. Strato stopped them from moving. Kato used his senses all at once again and scanned the room. He counted twenty glowing red outlined and two positioned on the catwalk. From the looks of it, the room was full of containers. He could also feel this freezer-temperature cold coming from somewhere.

Kato looked up and focused his senses. One of the struts holding the ceiling on the floor was failing. If he could cut through it with a water blade and finish it off with a ball of explosion. He could probably rattle the enemies on the ground.

“Got something in mind. Cover me.”

Strato’s brows met, but he allowed Kato to get out of cover. Kato made a weave and threw the rest of his water blades on the strut and then finished it off with two balls of explosions that brought down some of the ceilings on them.

Not wasting time, Strato’s team made a move and gunned down everyone.

 

***

 

The ones that weren’t executed got questioned. Kato went to explore the bunker, searching for any information. They were keeping a data server in the bunker. Kato extracted the files from them.

Most of them were spreadsheets, ledges, and forms. The paper trail they left was quite detailed. Did they think that no one would be able to enter their base?

He combed through their hard drive. Found a list of locations that they were operating. Strato came closer to take a look.

“Lots of targets. Anything that might point out where Guzman is?”

“Let me check their email.”

He switched to their email and found it unprotected. They were exchanging emails anonymously. Reading through the emails. Kato noticed that they were constantly mentioning a compound and a guy named AG.

“Could be Guzman’s initials.”

“Let me run a keyword search.”

Kato ran a search matching AG case. After minutes of searching the emails, there were about forty mentions out of the five hundred twenty-seven emails about a compound, AG, and the product they were looking for.

“Boss, you need to see this.”

“Got it pried?”

Strato followed Vermin back to the cargo area where they were storing something. Kato continued searching through the emails. After copy-pasting them into a readable file. He searched their desk for any burnable CDs and found two of them.

He burned the files, got a rucksack, and threw the files in them. While the CD was being burned, he went to where Strato’s team was and found them looking grimly at the contents of the container bin.

Most of them were coolers covered in ice. Sloth opened one of the coolers and groaned at the sight of organs. The kidney, pancreas, liver, heart, and lungs were stored. There were even some eyeballs.

“They are still beating.”

Strato said while looking at the heart inside the cooler. It was making a heartbeat and it was still beating. They should have been only viable for six hours, and yet they were able to keep the heart fresh.

Kato inspected the heart closet. He found small writings on the heart. He didn’t know how to read them so he took a picture with his recon camera. He wrote something in the air and sealed the heart. The writing on the heart was erased and the heart slowly stopped beating.

“Containers here are blood packs.”

They opened the containers and found blood packs of all types. The markers on the side showed the price range for them as if they were consumable goods.

“Soulless fucks,” Vermin said hatefully. There was a raging fire in the man’s eyes. One that wanted to burn down this whole bunker.

“Let’s gather evidence. Build up a case so we can have the authorization to smite these fuckers to the grave. You got what you need from that computer, Kato?”

“I’d get the copy. You can have the hard drive.”

“Hustle up people! They’d be sending reinforcements here soon. We need to get all the evidence we need. Ford, do you copy? We got a stash of evidence here. Contact some of our friends to pick them up. We got organs, drugs, and contraband here.”

“Copy that. I’ll be sending some of our associates there.”

Kato went back to the computer and took the CDs with him. He dialed Juliana’s number.

“We found a bunker here in the tenth. The door was guarded by a three-headed monster, I believed it was a balachko.”

“Seeing that you’re alive. It must have been a lesser one?”

“It is. It wasn’t able to breathe fire or wind. The body’s still around. Should we recover it?”

“We can use the materials. I’ll be sending the Cleaners to recover them. Make sure that our friends don’t touch or burn it.”

“I think we did a lot of damage to it.”

“The bones of a balachko can be used to create regents. Its insides can be used to create charms as well. Can you check on its testicles?”

“Sure.”

Kato went to check on the corpse. He searched the lower area of the monster and found its testicle sunken inside its crotch.

“It’s intact.”

“Good. It may sound strange, but they have potent properties that could even semi-restore a climb.”

Kato took a glance at the monster’s crotch and sighed. He checked the open torso of the three-headed monster and saw that its heart was still intact.

“Its heart is still around. Shot with silver bullets, but it’s still around.”

“Are some of its skin usable?”

“Depends on what you think is usable. Only the main body is torn apart because of the silver bullets.”

“The Cleaners should be on their way. I’ll contact Anna Ford so we’d have no misunderstandings.”

The call ended. Kato pocketed his phone and went back to the cargo area where Strato and his team were opening the containers, and taking pictures. As they opened one of the containers.

“We got children here.”

Kato got close to the container and found children around five and ten years of age cowering. Emaciated and malnourished with their eyes almost falling apart. Then it came to them that they were eating boiled and salted corn and drinking from a water container.

They were shivering and cowering at the sight of them. One of them however stood up in front of the kids and blocked their way. Strato, who had remained stone-faced even when facing a monster, broke.

He took one knee and called out to the kid. “We’re the good guys here, kiddo. Do you understand me? We came here to rescue you all.”

The kid looked at them without any trust. Kato could understand and walked away and watched from the side. Persuading the kid to trust them and allow them to take them away from this place.

After that, they opened four more containers that had kids in them. Most of them have stitches on their stomach. Seeing all of that, Kato was sure that they just lit a fire in these guys to bring Guzman and Ferric down.