The Ghost Consigliere

CHAPTER 6: An Eye for a Life, A Life for a Life

Time slowed. In Elias’s eyes, every movement of the mercenary unfolded like a film played frame by frame. Dust drifting in the air, beads of sweat on Sloane’s forehead, the soldier’s index finger tightening slowly on the trigger. The red laser dot remained fixed on her brow.

Elias couldn’t breathe. He had dragged Sloane into hell. Yet within that agonizing slow motion, Sloane did not close her eyes. A former combat medic was never taught to die with her eyes shut.

The hand that had been pressing against the gunshot wound in her thigh suddenly moved with lightning speed. She wasn’t applying pressure. She had just pulled a small surgical scalpel from a holster strapped to her ankle.

With the last of her strength and the twist of her shoulder, Sloane hurled the steel blade at the exact moment the enemy pulled the trigger.

Clang, thud.

The scalpel sliced through the air, slipped past the rifle barrel, and buried itself three centimeters deep into the gap of the Kevlar vest at the mercenary’s throat. Straight into the carotid artery.

The soldier choked. His shot veered wildly into the ceiling, shattering an old water pipe that immediately burst, spraying rusted water down in a violent stream.

“Ghhrrk—!”

Fresh blood poured from his mouth and throat like a ruptured valve. He dropped his rifle, both hands clawing at his neck in panic. He staggered back two steps, eyes wide, staring at Sloane. His legs buckled. He collapsed to his knees, then face-first onto the floor with a wet crack.

Dead.

Eight meters from Elias.

Inside Elias’s mind, the faint static hum exploded into the roar of a jet engine. His necrotic signal had found a fresh vessel. The soldier’s nervous system still held residual electrical activity in the instant after death. His brain was not fully gone.

“AARGH!” Elias’s head snapped back, his eyes rolling until only the whites showed.

His real body convulsed violently in the wheelchair. The black veins in his left arm pulsed wildly, as if pumping ink through his body. His nervous system tore past its biological limits, releasing a black surge that lashed into the corpse on the floor.

CRACK!

The mercenary’s body jerked upright. The four remaining soldiers at the base of the stairs froze. They stared at their fallen comrade, who had just collapsed face-down, now rising slowly with limbs twisting at unnatural angles.

“Bravo, you good? Area clear?” the team leader asked from behind his mask, sweeping his rifle across the smoke-filled room.

The corpse didn’t answer. It stood, back turned to them. Blood still streamed from the scalpel lodged in its throat.

“I feel like… throwing up.”

The voice came from the corpse’s mouth. But it wasn’t Bravo’s voice. It was Elias’s, distorted, trembling with a horrific double frequency.

In the corner, Elias’s real body slumped in the wheelchair, breathing shallow and broken. His consciousness had fully shifted. He was inside the soldier now.

Elias looked down at the large, gloved hands that now belonged to him. He felt the warmth of blood flowing from his torn throat. There was no pain from the scalpel, but there was phantom nausea, a violent rejection as his mind struggled to accept control over dead flesh.

“What the hell is that voice?!” the commander barked, raising his rifle toward the corpse. “Hands up!”

Elias grinned. The savage thrill he was beginning to crave surged through him. No physical limitations. No paralysis. He was no longer broken. He was a weapon wrapped in flesh.

He twisted the corpse’s body one hundred eighty degrees in a single jerking motion, the neck cracking audibly. Bloodshot eyes locked onto the four soldiers without blinking.

“My father didn’t pay you enough,” the corpse hissed, perfectly mimicking Elias’s tone.

“That’s not Bravo! Drop him!” the commander shouted.

The four soldiers opened fire instantly. Shots rang out in rapid succession. Dozens of rounds slammed into the corpse’s Kevlar vest. Some tore through its limbs, ripping flesh and spraying blood.

Back in the wheelchair, Elias’s real body convulsed with each impact. Nausea churned violently in his gut, but he endured. He refused to die.

The corpse staggered under the barrage but did not fall. There was no pain to slow it. With full force, Elias drove the dead legs forward, charging like a raging beast.

He slammed into the first soldier. One hand seized the rifle barrel, while the other smashed into the soldier’s helmet.

CRACK!

The visor shattered. Glass shards drove into the man’s eyes. He screamed. Elias didn’t stop. He forced his gloved fingers into the man’s eye sockets, crushing through bone into the brain.

The man died instantly, his body flung aside.

“Damn it! He’s bulletproof!” another soldier shouted, panic rising as he kept firing into the corpse’s chest.

The Kevlar vest shredded. Flesh tore open, exposing fractured ribs. Still, Elias advanced.

He turned toward two soldiers taking cover behind a bookshelf. He realized something. This body would not last. The leg was already failing, the knee joint shattered by gunfire.

“Then we go down together,” Elias muttered inside the corpse.

With what remained of its strength, the corpse leapt over a pile of burning books and crashed into both soldiers, pinning them against the wall.

“Get off me! Get off, you bastard!” one shouted, smashing the corpse’s face with his rifle butt, breaking its nose and teeth.

Elias laughed through the corpse’s throat, a wet, choking sound. Blood sprayed with every breath. The corpse’s right hand reached for its own tactical belt.

A fragmentation grenade.

The trapped commander’s eyes widened in terror. “No! Don’t!”

Elias pulled the pin with his teeth, then wrapped both soldiers in a crushing embrace, locking them in place like a bear trap.

“Give my regards to my father,” the corpse whispered into their ears.

Three seconds.

Two seconds.

Sloane, still crawling across the blood-slick floor, stared in horror. She understood instantly. “Elias, don’t! The backlash will fry your brain!”

Too late.

BOOM!

The explosion tore through the basement corner. The shockwave hurled books, splintered wood, and human flesh in every direction. Flames erupted, burning bright through the smoke. Three bodies were obliterated within the blast radius, leaving only a circular stain of blood across the concrete walls.

A fraction of a second later, the connection snapped violently. Elias’s link was severed by the complete destruction of his host body.

The sensation of tearing flesh, shattering bone, and explosive heat struck his brain all at once.

Zzzt, BLARR!

In the dark corner, Elias’s real body was thrown backward, slamming into a bookshelf and overturning his wheelchair. He hit the floor hard.

“A-ARGGHH!”

He vomited thick black blood, far more than before. It poured from his mouth, nose, even his ears. His eyes rolled upward. The black veins in his arm swelled grotesquely, spreading further up into his neck, burning into his skin like a mark from hell.

Ghost Rot Level Two. His nervous system had overloaded.

His chest rose and fell rapidly… then stopped.

No breath.

No heartbeat.

“Elias!”

Sloane dragged herself forward, ignoring the agony in her wounded leg, ignoring the gore-strewn floor. She crawled as fast as she could toward the pale body lying near the collapsed shelf.

“Hey! Elias! Don’t you die on me now, you bastard! You still owe me!” She flipped him onto his back.

His face was corpse-white. His lips tinged blue. The blackened veins along his neck stood out starkly against his cold skin. Sloane pressed her fingers to his throat.

No pulse.

Her medical instincts took over completely. She clasped her hands together and drove them into his chest in hard, rhythmic compressions.

One, two, three, four!

“Wake up, you crippled bastard! Don’t let Vancroft win this easily!” Sloane shouted, pressing down with all her strength.

Each compression made his ribs crack, but she didn’t stop. She forced air into his lungs, tasting blood and acid, then resumed the compressions.

Outside, the acid rain still fell.

Inside the basement, death had come to collect its due from the Ghost.

“Wake up, Elias… please, wake up,” Sloane whispered, her voice beginning to shake. Her hands, slick with her own blood, stained his pale chest. “This world isn’t done suffering because of us yet.”