The Ghost Consigliere

CHAPTER 15: Embracing a Friend’s Death

Inside the wooden coffin kept at minus five degrees, Elias’s breath caught for a moment. The frozen air seemed to drive straight through his chest and into his heart. His blood-covered hands gripped the wheels of his chair so tightly his knuckles ached. Sloane’s words had just torn apart the ego that had swelled sky-high only moments ago, shredding it into tiny pieces.

Caleb was gone.

Elias swallowed, his throat full of sharp gravel. He had only known the one-eyed man for a few hours. Caleb had been an arrogant smuggler who charged an insane price for his ventilator, but Caleb had also been the man willing to break through Vancroft security to save Elias’s life. And more than that... Caleb had been the anchor of Sloane’s sanity.

“Sloane.” Elias’s voice trembled through the earpiece. Pure panic replaced his arrogance. “Get away from there. I’ll take over a guard’s corpse downstairs and bring the squad up to you.”

“No need to bother, Boss,” Sloane whispered faintly.

Upstairs, Sloane still sat weakly on the floor of the dim electrical control room. Her shaking hand wiped Caleb’s blood from her face. Her pistol was empty. Her C4 was gone. And now, from the corridor outside, came the marching rhythm of a dozen boots closing in with absolute certainty.

The Vault Master and the remnants of his Spetsnaz unit had surrounded the hallway. They knew the jammer had been destroyed, and they intended to execute the intruder before the “corpse” trick could be used again.

“They’re in the hall. Five meters from my door,” Sloane whispered, staring straight at the corridor where Caleb lay dead, his chest destroyed. “You’ll take too long dragging a puppet up from downstairs. You won’t make it.”

Sloane closed her eyes and let hot tears run down her filthy cheeks. The former paramedic who was usually so rational had lost all combat focus. Caleb’s death had shattered her instincts to run or fight. She was tired of running from her past.

“Thanks for the paycheck, Elias,” Sloane said softly, resigned. “Hope you die peacefully in that freezer.”

Elias’s eyes widened in the darkness.

“SLOANE, DON’T BE INSANE! GET UP!” Elias roared, slamming his fist against the oxygen tank. The black veins in his neck throbbed wildly in response to the surge of adrenaline.

He immediately squeezed his eyes shut. He hurled the reach of his necrotic signal upward in blind desperation, searching the upper floor for the nearest dead source within a hundred-meter radius to possess.

The signal crawled upward through thirty meters of concrete flooring. Elias’s mind scanned the area around Sloane.

One... two Spetsnaz corpses twenty meters away at the far end of the hall. Too far. They would kill Sloane before either corpse could reach her. Elias shifted the signal closer to the control room. He searched frantically.

Zzzzt.

His mental signal stumbled over a dead biometric object lying directly in front of the control room door. The corpse was still warm. Residual static impulses still lingered strongly in its nerves. Perfect for possession. Its position stood directly on the front line between Sloane and the enemy force.

Elias stopped searching. His heart pounded as he realized whose body it was. Caleb.

Elias fell silent. The cold inside the ice coffin was nothing compared to the chill that suddenly froze his conscience solid.

He had killed without hesitation before. He had used enemy corpses as shields, as suicide bombs, and forced them to strangle their own allies. But this was different. This was the body of a comrade. The body of someone who had sacrificed his life to protect Sloane.

If Elias pushed his brainwave signal into Caleb’s corpse, then he would be violating the man’s final peace. He would drag Caleb’s spirit, freshly laid to rest, back into the hell of slaughter. Sloane would watch the friend she had just wept over turn into a broken puppet with white eyes, steered by Elias.

Elias felt sick. His stomach twisted violently. Above him, the Vault Master’s command rang out.

“Break the door down. Leave no one alive.”

The moral dilemma strangled Elias harder than Ghost Rot ever had. He had two seconds before Sloane was executed. He could not save her without desecrating the body of the woman’s only friend. Tears slid from the corners of Elias’s eyes. Silent despair. He realized what he had to do.

This false god had no choice but to become a complete monster in order to protect the only person who cared about him.

“Forgive me, Caleb,” Elias whispered, lips trembling, bowing his head in the dark. “Forgive me.”

Elias drew a long breath, crushed the last remains of his humanity deep inside his cerebral cortex, and fired his necrotic wave at full force straight into Caleb’s corpse.

BLAAARRR!

Extreme nausea and brutal cold slammed into Elias’s gut instantly. Possessing this corpse was a hundred times more painful than usual. He was not entering the body of some anonymous enemy. He was entering a body whose nerves still held the memory of pain and fear.

Elias could feel it. He felt the dozen bullets tearing through Caleb’s intestines. He felt the numb ruin of a shattered stomach. He felt the unbearable burn in Caleb’s lungs moments before the man’s heart stopped. And worst of all, Elias could feel the remnants of Caleb’s emotions left behind in the cells of his brain.

Longing, exhaustion, and fear of leaving Sloane alone. All of those raw emotions slammed into Elias’s prefrontal cortex like cannon fire.

“ARRGGHH!”

Elias’s real body convulsed inside the coffin, fresh blood spraying from his mouth. But he refused to release the connection.

In the hallway above.

Three Spetsnaz guards advanced together toward the control room door. The Vault Master stood behind them, his suppressed rifle aimed at Sloane, who still sat weakly on the floor with her head bowed.

“Fire,” the Vault Master ordered coldly.

The lead guard stepped over Caleb’s corpse and leveled his rifle at Sloane’s face.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

But before the bullet could leave the chamber...

Caleb’s massive blood-soaked hand moved with a speed that shattered every law of biology. It shot upward, seized the rifle barrel in an iron grip, then wrenched the weapon toward the ceiling.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The shots tore into the ceiling, shattering the hallway lights. The guard stumbled back, eyes bulging in disbelief as he stared at the corpse he had just stepped over.

KRAK... KRAK...

The sound of snapping ribs and tearing flesh echoed through the suddenly silent corridor. Caleb’s body slowly rose from the pool of its own blood. His large intestine bulged from the hole in his abdomen, yet the one-eyed man paid it no mind.

Caleb stood upright. His dead eye stared straight at the three enemies before him.

There was no light of life in that single eye.

Only pure darkness, operated by hatred.

Sloane lifted her face.

Her heart stopped for a beat.

The former paramedic stared at Caleb’s back, mouth hanging open.

“Cal?” Sloane whispered in horror. Her tears stopped, replaced by a terror that paralyzed reason itself. “E-Elias... what did you do?!”

Inside Caleb’s body, Elias growled. Caleb’s blood dripped from his lips. Using Caleb’s torn vocal cords, he answered her.

“Saving... your life.”

The hoarse voice echoed through Caleb’s throat, creating a horrifying harmony of Elias and Caleb speaking as one.

“That’s Caleb, Elias! Let go of his body, bastard! Let him go!” Sloane screamed hysterically, trying to rush forward and stop the dead man. But Caleb, or rather Elias, lunged first. He used the ruined body of Sloane’s friend as a weapon of mass destruction.

This was no longer an infiltration. This was the rampage of a monster.