Raven kicked open the hatchery office door, her Beretta still in hand, Neil's half-crippled body trailing behind her like garbage being hauled to the curb. Blood smeared in a jagged arc across the linoleum floor, tracing their entry. The air inside was stale and too clean, as though someone had tried too hard to scrub something awful away.
She hauled him across the threshold and let go. Neil collapsed in a heap beside a battered filing cabinet, gasping and groaning. Raven stepped forward, eyes already scanning the room.
On the far wall was a bank of monitors. At first glance, they looked like standard security feeds—black-and-white, low resolution—but then she noticed something that made her stop.
Every single feed was from the same place.
The basement.
She narrowed her eyes. Not a single camera pointed at the tanks. None aimed outside. Nothing watching the parking lot. Only the basement.
Her jaw tightened.
A door creaked open to her left.
She turned.
A man emerged from a grimy side bathroom, still adjusting his belt. He paused mid-step, eyes going wide as they landed on Neil, then flicked to Raven.
He was disgusting. Mid-forties. Skin pale and clammy like uncooked meat. Hair slicked into a thin comb-over, so greasy it looked painted on. The stench of cheap cologne couldn't hide his fucking smell from her the smell of a predator.
"What the hell—who the fuck are you?"
Raven raised the Beretta.
"Your executioner."
Three shots.
Two to the chest.
And one to the head to make sure you're dead no zombie afterlife for you.
The man crumpled backward, dead before he even finished gasping. His body fell into the bathroom he'd just exited, the door swinging lazily shut behind him until it stopped halfway. His corpse slumped awkwardly over the toilet, jaw slack, eyes glassy.
Neil screamed.
"You bitch! You killed Ted!"
Raven didn't look away from the bathroom.
"Oh. That was his name?" she asked, flatly. "He's a dead man now so who give a fuck."
She turned back to Neil, her tone turning sharp.
"So why don't you tell me what's in your basement?"
She motioned with the barrel of her pistol toward the monitors. "Seems like you and your buddy enjoyed watching whatever's down there all day."
Neil's face twisted with rage and fear. He jerked upright slightly and spat. The saliva missed her by a mile.
"Fuck you, bitch! I'm not telling you shit!"
She walked forward without a word and brought the butt of her Beretta down against his jaw.
There was a sickening crunch as bone cracked and teeth scattered across the floor like broken glass.
Neil shrieked, grabbing his mouth with both hands. Blood poured through his fingers.
"That's no way to talk to a lady," Raven said calmly.
Then, she aimed her Beretta again.
Pop.
His left kneecap shattered.
Pop. Pop.
Both elbows. Blown out.
Neil collapsed in a tangled, bleeding heap, screaming, sobbing, unable to support his own body. Blood pooled beneath him, his limbs twitching, ruined.
She stepped back and looked down at him.
"Try not to bleed out before I come back to deal with you."
Neil's voice rasped, barely a whisper through the pain.
"You bitch… you won't make it far… when my brothers get ahold of you… you'll wish you had died here…"
Raven gave a slow, icy smile.
"I'm looking forward to it."
She turned away.
Her boots echoed across the blood-slick tile as she moved past the monitors, down the hallway to her right. The corridor was short, barely lit, the walls lined with cheap wood paneling that looked like it belonged in a condemned motel. At the end stood a thick steel door marked: Storage Access – Authorized Personnel Only.
The same door she'd seen on the security feeds.
Raven reached for the handle, pressed down, and pulled.
It groaned open an inch—and that was all it took.
A wave of rot hit her in the face.
Thick. Wet. Sweet and rancid all at once. The scent of decay and mold and something deeper. Something wrong.
She didn't flinch.
"That smell…" she whispered.
She knew it too well.
The smell of men who prey on women she is all to familiar with the stench of lust and sex from her last life.
The stairs beyond the door led down into darkness as she decended into it.
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