The Ghost Consigliere

CHAPTER 16: The Ghost’s Rampage, The Machine’s Tears

Caleb’s massive body launched forward like a machine with no brakes. Blood and bodily fluids sprayed across the concrete floor each time his heavy feet struck the ground.

The Spetsnaz guard whose rifle barrel was still trapped in Caleb’s grip had no time to pull away. Elias, using one hundred percent of the dead muscles’ strength, yanked the rifle downward, dragging the guard toward him at the same time.

BAM!

Elias smashed Caleb’s forehead into the man’s face. The enemy’s tactical visor shattered, slicing open the guard’s skin. The Russian screamed, but Elias gave him no mercy. Caleb released the rifle barrel, then drove a blood-soaked uppercut upward with his right hand.

The guard’s lower jaw shattered instantly. His neck snapped backward, and his body flew into the hallway wall.

“Fall back! Shoot its head!” the Vault Master shouted from the rear line. His normally calm voice now carried panic at the sight of a lifeless corpse moving that fast.

The two remaining guards immediately raised their P90s and pulled the triggers.

Dozens of 5.7mm rounds tore into Caleb’s body again. His work vest was shredded. Flesh from his shoulder and thigh burst open. Black blood and strips of muscle sprayed everywhere.

But the corpse only staggered slightly.

Thirty meters below them, inside the frozen coffin, Elias paid the price for that physical resilience.

“AARRGGGHH!”

His body convulsed violently on the floor of the wooden box. Every bullet piercing Caleb’s flesh felt like a high-voltage shock ripping through Elias’s own nerves. He felt the pain of rounds punching through dead muscle. He felt the vibration of Caleb’s collarbone shattering under gunfire.

Ghost Rot was no longer just burning the left side of his neck. It had crawled upward to his temple and left eye. The blood vessels in that eye had turned completely red, nearly bursting.

Elias fought blindly, savagely, recklessly.

The pain transferred from his host was eroding his sanity. Every movement Caleb made above was accompanied by Elias’s screams below.

This was no longer tactical victory. It was torture of body and soul.

In the upper hallway, Caleb used the last hydraulic strength of his dead muscles to seize the second guard who was still firing at him. Elias grabbed the man’s Kevlar vest, then lifted him high into the air with both hands, ignoring the shriek of Caleb’s arm bones beginning to crack under the strain.

“Let go! Let go, demon!” the guard screamed, kicking helplessly in the air.

Elias slammed him into the concrete floor with crushing force.

BRAKK!

The guard’s spine snapped. Blood burst from his mouth, and he did not move again.

The third guard, witnessing the horror, lost his mind. He threw down his rifle and turned to run for the emergency stairs.

“I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”

But the Vault Master was faster.

The former Spetsnaz instructor shot his own subordinate in the back.

“Coward,” the Vault Master hissed, spitting on the corpse that collapsed face-first to the floor.

His scarred eyes lifted toward Caleb. He spun a thirty-centimeter steel kukri in his right hand.

“So the myth was true. You can hack flesh.”

Caleb stood motionless. His torn intestine swayed gently. His dead white eye stared at the Vault Master. Blood dripped from his fingertips.

Sloane still stood frozen in the doorway of the control room. Tears streamed endlessly down her face as she watched her friend’s body being desecrated to protect her.

“Elias, enough. You’ve destroyed his body. Stop!” Sloane cried through clenched breath. But Elias could not stop.

If he released the connection now, the Vault Master would kill Sloane within seconds.

Caleb’s corpse charged forward.

The Russian instructor did not panic. He sidestepped with agile precision, then slashed his kukri across Caleb’s left arm.

SRAKK!

The heavy blade carved through Caleb’s bicep, severed tendons, and bit into bone.

Caleb’s left arm dropped uselessly.

Below, Elias screamed until his voice turned raw. He felt as though his own arm had been amputated without anesthesia. The paralyzed man writhed on the coffin floor, blood pouring steadily from his nose.

Faster... kill him faster!

Caleb swung his right hand, trying to punch the Vault Master. But the Russian was too quick. The Vault Master ducked low, then drove the kukri straight into Caleb’s already hollowed abdomen, twisting the blade deeper to destroy whatever organs remained.

“Die, you corpse bastard!” the Vault Master snarled.

But Elias did not care about the pain in Caleb’s stomach.

He deliberately let the blade stay there.

The moment the Vault Master tried to pull the knife free, Caleb’s right hand shot forward and clamped around the former Spetsnaz instructor’s throat with lethal force.

“Hhk...!”

The Vault Master choked, eyes widening as he realized his mistake. He clawed at Caleb’s hand, trying to pry it loose, but the corpse’s grip was as unforgiving as a steel vise.

Caleb’s ruined face slowly leaned closer to the Russian’s.

Blood and bile dripped onto the man’s cheek.

“You... bleed... the same... as us,” Elias hissed through Caleb’s torn mouth. The voice sounded like cracking bones and broken breath fused together.

With the last strength left in the corpse’s muscles, Elias yanked the Vault Master’s neck forward and grabbed the small combat knife lodged in Caleb’s shoulder.

Without hesitation, the corpse drove the short steel blade straight through the Vault Master’s throat.

Fresh blood erupted like a fountain, soaking Caleb’s face.

The Vault Master convulsed, eyes bulging, hands flailing for air. But his lungs were already drowning in his own blood. A few seconds later, the heavily built Russian instructor stopped resisting gravity. He collapsed to the floor. Dead.

Silence.

The only sounds left in the blood-soaked hallway were the faint drip of rain through the factory roof vents, and the thick patter of blood striking concrete. Every enemy on the upper floor was dead. The battle was over.

Inside his coffin, Elias breathed in broken gasps. He could sever the connection now.

He should have severed it immediately, so the burden of pain from Caleb’s brain would stop burning through his nerves. But something held him there.

The remnants of Caleb’s emotions, longing and protectiveness toward Sloane, still lingered in the cells of his brain. And Elias allowed himself to sink into the feelings of the man he had just used as a murder weapon.

In the upper hallway, Caleb’s corpse stood leaning forward. His blood-covered hand slowly released the grip around the Vault Master’s throat.

The giant body turned with painful stiffness and began walking toward Sloane, who still wept in the doorway.

Sloane looked up.

She saw the ruined body of her old friend towering before her.

There was no threat left in the corpse’s posture.

Only absolute exhaustion.

Caleb’s corpse knelt jerkily in front of Sloane.

She stifled a sob, her wet eyes fixed on Caleb’s single whitened eye.

Elias, controlling the body from below, raised Caleb’s trembling right hand.

The arm covered in wounds and blood lifted slowly, then those cold rough fingers touched Sloane’s cheek, wet with tears and blood.

The touch was incredibly gentle.

Completely at odds with the brutal slaughter that had just taken place.

“Cal...” Sloane whispered.

She placed her own hand over Caleb’s cold one, closed her eyes, and cried without sound.

“He says... he’s sorry.”

Elias’s hoarse voice whispered through Caleb’s lips, before Caleb’s final fictional breath was exhaled.

Elias gently severed the connection.

Zzzt... click.

Instantly, Caleb’s hand slipped from Sloane’s cheek.

The ruined giant body lost all strength, sagged forward, and collapsed into her lap, his head landing there softly.

This time, Caleb had truly come to rest. His corpse would never rise again.

Sloane embraced the cold, blood-soaked body in her lap, buried her face in Caleb’s torn shoulder, and screamed her grief into the dead silence of the factory.

The cry of a soldier who had lost everything once more.

Underground, inside the frozen coffin. Elias lay helpless. His eyes were wide open, staring at the coffin ceiling without seeing anything. The pain in his head was fading, but it was being replaced by a strangling emptiness. A warm liquid slid down from his temple. Not blood. It was a tear. A tear that was not his own. It was the last remnant of Caleb’s emotions, forced out through the eyes of the flesh hacker.

Elias had never felt so filthy, so vile, so cruel in his life.The false god now understood that the price of his power was not only Ghost Rot burning through his flesh. It was the death of his own conscience.