After several more grueling objectives, the airlock sirens subside and the doors unseal with a hiss, making way to flickering streetlamps beating down on blood and rain. A harsh fog, thick like iron, washes over the woman's sights and shoulders and swallows her whole. The eerie droning of the buzzing lights conceals her footsteps as she clears her line of sight, making out only shadows through the fog. Gurgles begin to sound something akin to laughter as she moves through the dark streets.
"What am I looking for here?" Ritual asks softly. "I can't search every square inch of this fog."
"No need," Mira chimes, "Your objective is glowing."
Before she can ask what the woman means, Ritual is greeted by a familiar churning sound, approaching a shattered glass door to find a Serial Emitter scanning the room. Part of her wanted to roll her eyes.
"You sure you don't want to skip this one?" Ash asks her cautiously, sensing her hesitation. "Once you touch that Emitter, things are going to get loud. Do you have enough ammunition?"
"I can handle this, Liz." Ritual assures.
"We're on a first name basis right now." Ash scolds. Ritual decides to bite her tongue, stifling a chuckle. She carefully feels for the numerous switches on the backside of the emitter, beginning the sequence and quickly looking around for the glowing marker on the ground. The yellow lights down the hall flicker briefly every few seconds, like a flash of lightning through a cloud, beckoning to her through one of the doorways.
"Fully on the landing, Ritual." Mira reminds. The woman groans and steps onto the scanning zone, feeling so exposed despite the thick fog, which didn't hide her from the Archæans. All is strangely quiet for a few seconds.
There is a small growl, hardly audible through Ritual's thick helmet. A Grunt tears through the air with its pointed arms, leaping towards her, to which she swiftly catches it under her arm and silences it with a knife. It melts onto the landing below, smothering the only light in the room.
The scan seems to drag on endlessly with Ritual being the only one on the landing. She has to fight mercilessly to finish each one, dodging and weaving around sharp limbs and projectiles, often slamming a hand or tapping her foot onto the zone simply to keep it from resetting between waves and waves of Archaean havoc. To her, it felt like an awful game of Twister, yet she persists through each one with brute force and a helping heap of athletic prowess.
"Good work." Ash commends as Ritual takes solace in the quiet airlock. "I'm... Proud you made it through that alone."
"Thanks..." Ritual heaves a sigh of relief, still exhausted. She knew better than to say she'd told her so, especially when she knew that Ash already knew it, too. "...Liz."
"Now, now..." Thermite addresses, stopping Ash from saying anything in return. "We've been tailing an Elite Archie for some time since Gunner's been gone." He says Gunner's name tenderly as though it'd set the woman off. "Getting their attention is easy for you."
"Usually." Ritual hums. She wastes no time killing any and every Archaean she finds, loud and brutal in her assault, relentlessly tearing through the swarms in hopes of drawing out the bigger fish.
The numbers in the zone seem to dwindle and dwindle away until there is nothing but the sound of severed live wires buzzing around her. She turns curiously and stops at the edge of the zone.
There is a sudden, loud rumble, taking Ritual's attention. She can feel her feet lock against the ground, turning slowly over her shoulder, bracing.
"There you are." She whispers, holding her breath.
"R-R-Rit-Ritual, wait-ait!" Her headset begins to bug out suddenly, jagged in her ears as the channel makes room for a small click. She winces and sets her eyes on the form in front of her. It looked almost like...
"Gunner?" She doubts her eyes, taking a step forward and reaching yearningly out to him. She faintly hears some Russian coming from him, though unclear, so she cautiously approaches. She could make out the silhouette of his helmet through the harsh, sterile lights beating over his shoulders like angel. "Gunner, it's me... Are you hurt?"
"Ká..." She can hear faintly. He seemed like he was limping.
"Gunner, hold on, I've got you!" She huffs, marching up to him.
"That's not him!" Ash suddenly patches through, screaming into her headset. It was already too late. Ritual finally realizes the spikes coming from the figure's back and head, swirls on its body glowing a threatening red and pulsing idly in tune with the sensor on the woman's wrist. Its spindly fingers reached out to her ominously. She trembled in confusion. "Shoot, Ritual! Shoot!"
Ritual regains control of her thoughts and quickly grasps her rifle, dangling at her side, and fires into the amalgam bearing down on her. The bullets hit the blackened flesh slow, making patches that reveal a stark yellow beneath.
"Is that...?" Thermite squints to see.
"It's foam..." Ritual's eyes widen, immediately taking her finger off of the trigger. "That Protean is him, it's taking him in." She takes small, cautious steps around the figure, watching as the teeming bacteria rushes to patch the gap made in its flesh. The form writhed and tapped away at the foam, trying as desperately to reach the man beneath as Ritual was. "What do I do?"
"Run!" The REACT team was on the same page for the first time. Ritual grasps the hardened shoulder of the Protean and shoves it away from her, watching it stumble past for only a moment before digging her heels into the concrete to keep her gait.
"What about the Hunt?" She finally found a moment to ask as her boots pelted the concrete like the rain. "If I don't stop that thing, where will it take him?" Her mind raced with her feet. The bitter sting of regret came swift as the team on the other end began to bicker and make sense of the next step. As Ritual made sense of her own, she suddenly turns to face the Protean.
The woman swings her knife from its sheath and lunges at the amalgam, bringing it to the ground. Startled, hindered by its hollow form and in a thrall to her, it can only glance back to watch as she brings her REACT blade down into one of the glowing moons and drags. The black flesh peels away as the monster crawls out from underneath her with an anguished scream, sounding scarily like Gunner.
Ritual reels back and releases the Protean, rattled by the sound. As she anxiously searched her gloves for her husband's blood, it looks back to her in fear, blackened fluid dripping down from its back to reveal the stark yellow wound. She pants raggedly and watches as the mimic of the man draws itself from the ground, glowing brightly as it levitates in the air for only a moment before vanishing.
"No!" Ritual scrambles forward, only to be met with despair. "No, no... He's gone..."
"We're tracking it now, Ritual, just..." Mira huffs, her determined keyboard taps audible. "We'll keep track of your headset range and how long the connection lingers. You just have to keep moving."
With nothing but a grumble from clearing the grief from her throat, Ritual peels herself from the blackened ground and reclaims her dropped knife. Her head hangs weakly, yet she drags her heavy boots through the sprawl and into the sterile airlock. At the cue of another small click, she finally speaks, stepping out of the freshly unsealed doors.
"Just tell me what to do next... I'm running out of island to search."
"Well, there's a Nutrient Node some operators had to abandon last time they were in this AO." Thermite begins. "See if you can finish what they started."
"What made them stop?" Ritual dares herself to ask, seeing the eerie red glow of the Node on the walls of the long hall ahead of her. Surveying the area leads her to what remains of an extraction pad in this zone, drenched in sprawl, yet the foam canisters inside the pod were still of use. She takes one by the handles and clutches the heavy device beneath her arm.
"We're not entirely sure..." Mira hums. "We heard reports of a Smasher here, but it just... Wouldn't go down."
"Proteans, reviving Archaeans, immortal Smashers, ugh..." Ritual groans, but bites her tongue quickly. She was doing this for Gunner, not for REACT. She'd scrub this island down to the core with nothing but her laser if it brought her any closer to that Protean... To him.
"Immortal Smasher..." Mira echoes with a small, amused chime. "That might stick."
Ritual walks with her back against the wall of the endless hallway, one hand firmly around the canister's handle and the other around her pistol, which she draws in a bid to conserve her rounds for the larger fight.
"How many are done?" Thermite asks as the woman leans into the room.
"One." She replies, kneeling beside the open pillar of the Node. Letting it slide carefully over her palm, she threads the canister into the small gap and turns the handle, watching it sputter and clog the roots of the structure. It rumbles loudly, almost covering the large steps pounding towards her. She knows who it is.
"I have an idea..." Ritual chimes and looks around for a moment before swiftly vaulting through a window, ducking into the flanking hallway and going all the way around to retrieve a new canister from the pod, taking it back to the room with the Node.
"Hey, bastard!" She shouts in Russian over the sights of her Makarov, firing a couple of rounds at the armored monster as it turns the corner. It seems confused as it locks onto her once more, marching determinedly towards her. "Get a look at this." The woman takes the foam canister and throws it down the hallway, watching the glass splinter and fall away as it rolls between the Smasher's legs.
She watches it turn and hesitate, drawing in a shaky breath as she bursts into a sprint back towards the Extraction Zone, taking another canister from the pod and delivering it to the Nutrient Node without looking back.
"Goodnight." Ritual briskly turns the handle and clogs the last of the Node, careful not to let her knees touch the ground. Not after last time. As the Node sizzles and grows dark, it emits a dying sound louder than the nests sporadically popping around it, which doesn't go unnoticed. She can hear the Smasher padding up loudly in the hallway outside, where she had to cross to reach the next airlock.
She grips her gun closely to her chest and runs through the door beside her, boots meeting a puddle of sprawl at the intersection of the two hallways. There's a chime, then a roar, as she turns and locks eyes with the Smasher.
"Move, Ritual!" Ash startles her. She tries frantically to turn on the laser mounted to her gun, but her REACT Laser only flickered. The monster seems to move even faster in the sprawl, trudging towards her as she stumbles to the airlock, quickly closing the gap. She turns to look over her shoulder, but it was already too late.
The Smasher bats at the woman, casting her body aside like a pebble into the open airlock. She slams into the wall, feeling her spine rattle and the air squeeze out of her lungs, though not making the scream she intended. As she looks up wearily from the floor, feeling her body creaking and groaning, she can see the monster reeling back to charge through her cloudy eyes. A sudden clarity rushing over her, she scrambles to the scanner and slams her hand to it just in time. The Smasher meets the closed doors and rattles the airlock down to its foundation, rendering the small space pitch black.
Ritual falls slowly down the dented door, whimpering. Crawling along the cold floor, she feels desperately for her gun until her fingers meet it. She grips the flashlight as though it's her lifeline.
"Ritual!" Thermite calls out to her. "Ritual, can you hear us?"
"I'm..." The woman groans, crawling forward a little more. A ragged breath escapes her.
"Use your pen." Mira urges softly. Ritual rolls onto her back, stifling a groan of pain and reaching for the Revive pen stuffed into her boot pouch. She wraps her fingers around it tightly and stabs it into her thigh. It only takes a few seconds before the rush hits her, making her gasp and look somewhat frantically around the room. She brings herself to her hands and knees, then to her feet.
"You gonna make the next one?" Thermite asks after a small silence. "I know you'll say no anyway, but... It's not too late to forage a rescue team."
"I have to..." She stumbles on towards the next scanner, panting heavily, her flashlight shaky as she grips her rifle. The small screen flashes and blinks as she presses her trembling palm to it. "I have to."
Stumbling through the gas lapping at her boots and into the next area, Ritual is met with a harsh streetlight. She squints her eyes to it and presses determinedly through the hole in the wooden wall before her. The roof above her had caved in and the doors were all broken. Dried blood caked the pavement, so much so that she could follow it like a dirt road.
"What's in this sub-zone?" Ritual comms softly, sweeping over her shoulder. There was a stark lack of Archaeans here.
"We're not sure..." Mira hums, sounding slightly confused. Ritual could hear her shuffling around for a moment. She continues through the blinking lights inside the torn down building, avoiding the massive carapace constructs. She glazes every surface with her blacklight, searching for any signs of the Parasite, finger firm on the trigger.
"Elena?" Ritual whispers, hearing a faint droning sound from the next room. She peers around the corner, seeing small pulses of light. As she enters, never lowering her weapon, she approaches a marbled gray orb strung into a web of Aberrations. She steps slowly, not letting the glass crunch beneath her heavy boots as she comes closer, yet closer, a large crimson tear painting a ghastly smile across the slick surface of the orb. "What is...?" She starts, hesitantly pressing her fingertips to the scanner before her. Something suddenly clicks in her ears.
"Ritual, don't--"
"Wait!" Ritual stops, looking around frantically and removing her hand. "Did anyone hear that? My headset paired again!" She exclaims, looking around anxiously. "Mira, update that map!"
"Okay, we're on it." She affirms. They are all silent for a moment. Ritual paces, impatiently tapping the side of her phone. "Kámá, I've got good news and bad news."
"W-What?" She stops pacing. She could feel her heart in her throat. "How bad is the bad news?"
"Well, Gunner's biometric sensor is still active, so he's safe." Mira assures, a sigh of relief cueing her to continue. "The bad news is that the radius on the map is all places you've been already. We don't see anything... It's just you and the Singularity."
"Don't..." Ritual gulps. "Don't tell me."
"Yes." Mira confirms her fears. "The Protean pulled him through."
"Okay..." Ritual whispers, turning to look through the hole in the ceiling overhead. She gazes at the black pillars rising from the ground, clashing against sinister blue slowly being engulfed by a thralling black. She lifts her visor, worried eyes scanning the last of the smothered, dying horizon. "Where... Where will it take me?"
"We don't know." Thermite replies softly. "I know you've been through this protocol, but--"
"No no, no." Ash suddenly inserts herself in for the first time in a while. "You cannot go in there, Ritual--Why are you all talking like you're about to let her go? She doesn't have any of her gear, we don't have any safety protocols in place-" Ash rambles on angrily.
"Well, she is the only operator who's made it through multiple Maelstrom incursions solo..." Thermite bargains, speaking over her.
"-Do not touch that scanner, Kámámê. You're done." Ash orders. "We'll send out backup, organize a rescue team, we'll--"
"Eliza." Ritual stops her, taking off her bodycam and holding it in front of her face. Her eyes were glossed with her usual cold demeanor, but they could tell deep down that she was scared. "I am so close now. The White Masks are gone, the White Shield is alive, almost all of my wrongs have been righted." The woman lifts her visor, a lone tear slipping down her cheek and vanishing into her helmet. "I have nearly everything I've wanted since this started. I'm so close to proving everyone who ever scorned me wrong, please... I just need him."
The silence that came next made her heart sting, so she lowers her gaze for a moment. Despite everything she'd been through until now, her eyes were still so bright when she spoke about him. She could almost feel him when she touched the scanner, like the pixelated hand on the screen was his. She thought of lacing her fingers into it, her back to his chest to feel his heart beat opposite of hers, creating a balance on each other's skin. She would sacrifice everything to have that again.
"It's going to be a dark night, Ritual." Thermite speaks up at last, his soft voice issuing a stern warning.
"No, Jordan..." She whispers, clenching her fists at her side after returning her bodycam to her chest once more. She felt the folder in her bag as she grasped it close. Everything she'd planned when she stepped out of that helicopter was clear, it was all coming to fruition. She turns around to face the red gash in the Singularity, feeling a slight familiarity as though it was her own scar, and affirms her final decision. "It's going to be my darkest night so far."