*BOOM*
She whirled around and took cover under the table as another explosion rocked the entire building, making loose gravel and dust fall from the ceiling as it shuddered. She came out from under the cover a few moments later, headed out of this small server room, and stepped towards the large floor-to-ceiling windows, making sure to stay in the blind spots of the security system as she did so.
Talia al Ghul watched in stunned silence as explosion after explosion rocked the entire city. "Who is doing this?" She asked aloud, her eyes narrowing in thought.
She ran through all the villains and gangs that called Brockton Bay home, trying to figure out who was doing this. She disqualified the smaller gangs immediately; none of them would be insane enough to risk the attention that doing something like this would put on them. So it had to be either one of the large gangs or one of the newer formed ones, pulling something like this off to make a name for themselves.
It wasn't the Empire, they at least made an attempt to look civil and 'for the people', their obvious Naziisms aside.
It also wasn't the ABB, probably. Lung had been arrested by Armsmaster just a few days ago, and while Oni Lee might be able to pull something like this off, Talia personally doubted it. Lung wasn't there anymore to protect ABB anymore, and they were already at the beginning of a conflict against the E88, and already several minor skirmishes had been reported. Bombing the entire city would just cause the Heroes to focus them down – it just didn't seem like a smart move.
Coil didn't seem likely either. To her, Coil's whole schtick seemed to be that of a Bond villain, with henchmen with military-grade gadgets and tinkertech weaponry and everything that genre entailed. And despite Coil's attempt at having his mercenaries abduct Dinah in such a public manner, her research said that he was normally much more covert. He controlled more than half of downtown, and constantly fought with the Empire.
He didn't even spend much effort in expanding his territory, and seemed content to be on the defensive at all times.
At least, that was what she had found about him through the PHO and the rest of the internet.
*BOOM*
Another explosion went off in the distance, and Talia decided to move. She made her way to a nearby emergency exit before slipping out of it and parkoured her way down – just like she had to get to Vortex in the first place.
Her feet landed on the asphalt ground of the road, and she looked around at the eerily empty and silent streets, her hazel eyes narrowing as she scanned her surroundings.
Talia's eyes swept across the deserted road. The explosions should have drawn people out in a panic. But there was no one here. What happened here?
She studied the empty storefronts and abandoned cars lining the street. There were signs of haste everywhere, but none of the panic she would have expected from a city under attack.
It looked less like people had evacuated and more like they had simply vanished.
Something about the silence set her instincts on edge.
Something suddenly shifted in the shadows, and her sharp gaze tracked that movement right into the darkness of an unlit alley. Talia tensed up, ready to fight if it came to that, and bolt away if it was something she couldn't deal with. Then she heard it: A low, wet groan drifting across the street.
A figure staggered out from between two abandoned cars.
Then another.
And another.
Her eyes narrowed. They looked human at first glance, but only at first glance. Their skin was pale and mottled, hanging loose from their frames. Their clothes were torn and ripped and blood-stained. One of the figure's jaw hung at an unnatural angle, exposing far too many teeth.
They weren't drunk people, nor were they injured.
They just looked wrong.
And for some reason, it really raised her hackles.
One of them suddenly lifted its head, and she tensed as milky white eyes locked onto her. The creature let out a guttural screech, and suddenly every head on the street snapped towards her.
Talia's instincts screamed a warning, and just in time as the entire horde surged forward towards her.
The first creature entered her striking range, but before it could do anything – Talia swung. Her haymaker connected with the side of its jaw, and instead of the bone breaking under her knuckles, she saw the creature's head rip apart from its neck and topple off the ground.
But the creature still kept moving, still shambling forward.
A familiar chill creeped down her spine, and she quickly remembered the last time she'd felt like this before.
The Wendigo.
For the first time since arriving in Brockton Bay, Talia felt genuine alarm.
"What in the hells-"
The headless corpse lunged for her throat.
///
The day had been going well.
She had gotten ahead on her paperwork, completing it all ahead of time and without any issues. Her patrol had been fine and gone by without any major incident. Even the wards had been well behaved today – having spent their day playing video games and not causing any trouble, even Clockblocker.
Everything was well.
At least, it had been, right up until the emergency call that had every Protectorate channel erupting into overlapping chatters.
Miss Militia's annoyed expression was hidden behind the dark visor of her sunglasses as she slammed her boot onto the accelerator. The Humvee lurched forward, its engine roaring in protest while its tires screeched against the asphalt. Empty streets blurred past as the military vehicle carved through intersections at speeds no sane driver would attempt. A traffic light turned red just as she approached. She didn't so much as ease off the throttle.
The bombings had suddenly started all over the city and had startled everyone back at base, and sent them scrambling. And now here she was, driving towards a location as directed by one of the PRT officers on the other side of the line with several of her colleagues.
Her eyes flicked up at the rearview mirror to see what said colleagues were doing. Rimestar was on her phone, with her helmet on her lap and a worried expression on her face, likely texting her daughter and husband to make sure they were alright. Assault and Battery were softly whispering to themselves, their voices so low that she could not make out what they were saying.
Her radio suddenly crackled.
"Miss Militia, status?" Officer Davidson asked over her comm piece.
"Three minutes out," she replied, keeping one hand on the wheel while the other rested near the confoam launcher leaning against the passenger seat. "Assuming nothing explodes in front of me." The bombings had cleared up the roads, making the route far faster than normal.
There was a pause before the operator hesitantly said, "...Something exploded."
From the backseat, Assault muttered, "You really should stop tempting fate."
Hannah Washington sighed, "Of course it did." She had to resist the urge to rub her forehead as she listened to the updated travel route Davidson provided her, owing to the fact that an entire Highway was shattered beyond repair.
First, Overkill flash-freezing several blocks just a few days ago, and now this? This month was looking like it'd be full of chaos, and not of the good kind.
Then, as if her day hadn't been bad enough, more troubling news arrived, courtesy of their resident Tinker, who had apparently hijacked the entire feed. Another burst of static filled the earpiece before Armsmaster's unmistakably measured voice replaced it. "Miss Militia, take a hard left here and continue straight towards Charring Street."
Though confused, the Heroine quickly pulled the steering wheel to the side, making the Humvee almost skid as it changed directions and veered off into the street on the left. She ignored the protests coming from the ones sitting in the back and placed two fingers on top of the earpiece, "Acknowledged. Armsmaster, what is going on?"
Instead of his voice coming from the earpiece, it was projected through the speakers in the vehicle. "We have new orders. There have been reports about hostile biological entities roaming the streets from emergency services and civilian callers. The Initial assumptions of them being rioting or panicking civilians due to the bombings have been dismissed." A brief pause. "We believe they are the creations of a villainous Biotinker."
His words cut all the distractions happening in the backseat of the vehicle, and all of the heroes turned their attention forward.
"...Biotinker," Rimestar whispered, half in horror, and half in disbelief, and Hannah could tell that she didn't want to believe what she was hearing. It was understandable, considering Rimestar had only been a hero for a little more than a year, and there hadn't been any major crisis during her entire tenure as a hero.
"Yes."
Miss Militia's grip on the steering wheel tightened.
The screen attached to the dashboard suddenly lit up, displaying several still images and videos likely taken from security cameras. The first showed a gaunt figure shambling across a parking lot, its clothes soaked with dried blood and its skin sickly and loosely hanging off its body.
The second was blurrier, caught in the middle of a sprint as it vaulted over the hood of a sedan with disturbing agility.
The third...
The third was a video, which showed one of the creatures with half of its face missing. Despite the catastrophic injury, it was still moving.
"They look like heavily mutated humans," Armsmaster explained. "Pale skin. Significant tissue necrosis. Extensive blood loss. Most display severe skeletal trauma and missing organs that would have killed a normal person." Another video appeared on the screen above the rest. This time, it showed one of these creatures biting through a car window. "They demonstrate no regard for personal injury or preservation. Pain response appears absent."
Battery frowned. "What, like zombies?"
"Not literally," Armsmaster answered immediately. "They are not dead. They're biologically active organisms."
Assault snorted. "Ah. Living zombies. Glad we cleared that up."
Armsmaster ignored him. "They exhibit aggressive pack behaviour and will pursue the nearest living target. Current intelligence suggests they attack civilians indiscriminately."
"Understood, where do they come from?" Militia asked, but a frown of confusion appeared on her face when she didn't hear a reply. "What is it, Colin?"
"These creatures have been tentatively named Ghouls." Another few seconds of silence passed, and Hannah felt her stomach sink. Colin Wallis didn't pause unless the next sentence was going to make everything worse. "It is… unclear… whether they are real people transformed into ghouls, or simply recreations through Biotinkering."
Silence.
Silence settled over the Humvee, broken only by the low growl of its engine. The possibility that every one of those creatures had once been an ordinary person hung over them like a lead weight.
There was no protocol for fighting monsters when they might still be victims, and she couldn't help but wonder – were they travelling to save the people… or to put them down?
The tension hung in the air, and Hannah didn't know how long it lasted, but some time later, Colin continued his report.
The images and videos disappeared from the screen, replaced by a map of Brockton Bay. Four red pins appeared on the map, two of them far apart, and two close to each other, with each numbered 1 through 4.
Marker One sat near the docks, and Marker 3 flashed in downtown. Markers 2 and 4 sat closer, situated near Charring street, the exact area she was driving towards.
"I will handle the cluster at location 1 at the docks. I am approximately 2 minutes away from getting there. Dauntless has already engaged with the ghouls with a PRT squad at location 4." The pins 1 and 4 on the screen turned blue. "Locations Two and Four are within operational distance of one another. Miss Militia, your team will engage both sites. Split into two teams. If either encounters resistance beyond expectations, regroup immediately."
Miss Militia gave a nod, which went unseen by Armsmaster, "Understood."
"Numbers remain unreliable due to inconsistency in reports, but it has been estimated that there can be anywhere from twenty to more than a hundred hostiles at each location."
Rimestar leaned forward in the backseat. "How strong are they?"
"Unknown," Colin's voice was prompt, even as he drove. Beneath his voice, the faint whine of the Armscycle's engine bled through the transmission. Static crackled across the channel for a moment before he continued. "Their strength varies considerably between individual creatures. The weakest possess strength roughly equivalent to that of a physically fit adult male, and the strongest observed ghoul has demonstrated the ability to deform reinforced steel barriers through repeated impacts."
The Humvee bounced violently as Hannah swerved around an abandoned delivery truck. Battery caught herself against the side of the vehicle while Rimestar grabbed the handhold overhead.
Hannah frowned. "Any weak points?"
"Reports indicate significant head trauma is substantially more effective than damage elsewhere." A video appeared on the screen, it was of a woman swinging a Fire extinguisher right at a ghoul, smacking it on the head hard enough to make the head explode like a watermelon. "Destroying the heads of ghouls, or more likely, their brains, seems to permanently end them. Simply severing the heads seems to not work, as the ghouls remain animated even with their necks severed."
Which meant headshots.
Wonderful.
Assault raised a hand. "So... we're actually doing zombies."
"There is another concern," Armsmaster continued as though he hadn't spoken. "The degree of enhancement differs greatly from ghoul to ghoul. Treat every hostile as potentially stronger than the last until proven otherwise."
Battery sighed. "He'll be like this all day."
"Lethal force has been authorized for use." That made everyone inside the Humvee go quiet. "Attempt containment with confoam first. If containment fails, you are authorized to eliminate the hostiles immediately. The risk they pose to civilians outweighs the value of recovering intact biological samples. Be careful, they are capable of overwhelming unpowered civilians in seconds."
"I'll forward updates as they become available."
The transmission ended with a burst of static, and the screen remained lit, the two red markers on Charring Street blinking steadily like warning beacons. Miss Militia glanced at them only once before pressing the accelerator harder. The Humvee surged forward, engine roaring as it sped toward the first infestation.
///
Talia al Ghul was in trouble.
Not that she would ever admit that fact to herself, but in the deepest part of her being – the part that was wholly Daemon, knew it as a fact. The zombies had come out of nowhere and surrounded her. At first there had been only a handful of them and were quite easy to dispatch, but the numbers kept on increasing and increasing, till they threatened to overwhelm even her.
The air escaped her lungs as she ducked down, avoiding a lunging zombie and letting it go over her. She slammed her hands on the coarse asphalt and swung up in a handstand, kicking another zombie right in the chin before falling over and forward and going right back into a crouch, swinging her leg low to fell another particularly fragile zombie, whose legs just exploded at the knees.
She stood up and gave the legless zombie a look before her heel went right through its skull.
Immediately, she sprang to the side to avoid a swipe from another of these creatures that would've shredded her to ribbons, but judging by the searing wave of heat and the intense throbbing pain on her side, she hadn't been exactly successful.
Talia let out a hiss of pain as she gently placed a hand on her side, where three wide gashes marred the usually flawless skin.
She'd quickly realized that each of these creatures were different. Some of them were so fragile that even a half-hearted punch would shatter their bones, but some of them were much, much tougher. One zombie in particular had been strong enough that she just wasn't able to damage it, no matter what she did.
She'd had to trick the hulking brute into trapping itself inside a sedan. Even now, it hurled itself against the doors and windshield with enough force to buckle the metal. Every impact sent another groan through the car.
The moment her attention lingered on the trapped brute, another ghoul crashed into her from the side.
She couldn't help the sudden pained gasp that escaped her lips before she quickly twisted with the impact, letting the momentum carry her into a roll before springing back onto her feet. Yellowed teeth snapped shut where her throat had been a heartbeat earlier. She drove an elbow into its temple, caved in half its skull, then immediately ducked as a second pair of rotted, claw-like fingers whistled overhead.
Her eyes rapidly flicked from side to side, staying on each of the zombies of barely a fraction of a moment.
There were too many of them.
Every corpse she dropped seemed to be replaced by two more stumbling out of alleys, storefronts, and abandoned vehicles. Their groans echoed between the buildings until it became impossible to tell where they were coming from.
Talia's jaw tightened.
Killing them wasn't accomplishing anything.
Every corpse she dropped was replaced before it hit the ground.
She needed to get out of the street.
She exploded into action before the ring of zombies closing in on her could tighten any more.
A spinning kick shattered one zombie's jaw clean off, the force carried into a second that folded over the hood of a nearby Audi. She didn't wait to see if either of them stayed down and slipped through the narrow opening she'd created, weaving between the swiping hands trying to claw at her with inches to spare.
A claw stabbed through the sleeve of her catsuit.
She tore free, letting the flesh part and the blood pour before driving a palm into the creature's nose hard enough to collapse its face inward. It crumpled to the ground, twitching.
Three more took its place.
"Damn it." She cursed under her breath.
These zombies might have been mindless, but as a horde, they possessed a terrifying instinctive coordination – closing every gap the instant she made one as another zombie lurched forward to fill it. They didn't feel fear or hesitation, nor did they possess any instinct for self-preservation. They simply kept moving forward, climbing over their own fallen kin just to get to her.
One ghoul threw itself at her legs while another lunged for her throat.
She ducked beneath the first, seized the second by the shoulder, and deliberately used its momentum to vault onto the roof of a nearby Mercedes, the metal of its roof groaning as it dented and buckled as she landed on top of it.
Higher ground.
It wasn't safety, but it gave her a second to think.
It bought her exactly one second before a half a dozen zombies hurled themselves against the vehicle from every direction. Rotten fingers clawed over the windows and she could hear the suspension groan as the entire car rocked violently beneath the combined weight of the undead trying to climb their way up to her.
Then, as if things weren't already bad enough, A deafening crash split the street.
Across the road, the sedan she'd imprisoned the brute inside finally gave way. The driver's door tore free from its hinges as the hulking monster forced its way out.
It fixed its lifeless gaze on her.
Then it charged.
The Mercedes shuddered violently as the brute slammed into its side. The vehicle lurched under her feet. It had been so sudden that she had almost lost her balance and tripped off the roof of the car and into the horde of zombies hungering for her flesh.
An amateur mistake, she admonished herself.
But before she had the chance to do anything else, a pair of cold hands seized her ankle. She looked down at the zombie holding her before swinging her other leg in a powerful kick. Its face crumpled into his head as it was launched backwards, the clawed hand grabbing her ankle tearing out a strip of fabric from the pants of her catsuit, as well as raking a shallow slice across her skin as it was forced to release its hold.
She took a step backwards, but being on top of a car, there wasn't really anywhere to go. Three more of those creatures were already trying to climb the car to get to her.
"They don't stop..."
She drove her heel into the nearest skull, caving it in, but the instant it fell, another replaced it. Then another.
A fist crashed into her shoulder, sending her stumbling sideways before claws raked across her forearm. Blood welled up immediately, gushing out of this wound like it was from all others.
Talia retaliated with a vicious elbow that crushed the face of the zombie, but a third reached the roof.
Then a fourth.
And suddenly, there wasn't enough room anymore. One finally caught her around the waist, and pulled her off the Mercedes.
They crashed onto the asphalt together, the zombie landing beneath her with its arms still locked around her waist. Her eyes widened as she landed atop the zombie and attacked.
The creature didn't care that she'd shattered its ribs, and it just held on as tight as it could.
Another zombie reached her.
Then another.
A claw suddenly scraped across her back, drawing out a hiss – more in surprise rather than pain. This form, Talia al Ghul, was extremely hardened against pain, and had been conditioned since childhood to not react overtly to it.
She twisted violently, breaking one zombie's grip on her and hurling it into the others, buying herself barely enough room to breathe before the horde surged forward again.
Lightly panting, she stared at the approaching horde, her hazel eyes sharp and cold as she tried to find a way out of this mess.
She really should have just stayed in today.
A guttural screech erupted from directly behind her.
Talia spun around, but it was too late. The zombie brute's massive hand shot forward and its fingers closed around her wrist, the monster's grip feeling like she'd been grabbed by a steel vice-grip.
Talia's eyes widened in pain before she twisted and drove an elbow right into its forearm. She'd not expected much, not from a zombie with this kind of size and strength, but she at least expected to make it stumble enough to loosen its grip enough for her to slip her hand out.
What she didn't expect was her brutal attack to just not work. It didn't just flinched, it just yanked.
She couldn't help the yelp that escaped her lips as she stumbled forward, the force of the pull powerful enough to nearly dislocate her shoulder. Before she could recover, three more zombies surged in from either side, and in an eerie coordination, one of them latched onto her left arm while a second wrapped its skeletal fingers around her ankles. The third wrapped its arms around her waist, heedless of the elbows she drove into its face. Bone splintered beneath the strikes, but it simply refused to let go.
They're holding me...
She twisted violently, wrenching her grabbed arm free before smashing the nearest zombie's skull apart with a backfist.
Another zombie immediately seized the arm she'd just freed, while a second wrapped itself around her leg.
They weren't trying to tear her apart.
They were pinning her down.
Holding her...
Waiting.
The brute let out a fierce roar as it charged at her on all fours.
Talia's eyes widened, and all thoughts of killing and strategy disappeared from her mind, replaced by just one thought - Escape.
She swung her knee upwards, slamming it into one of the zombies holding at her, but failed to make it budge.
The brute swung at her, and she ducked to avoid the massive fist, but a second swing coming from the shadow of the first caught her straight in the ribs. A gasp tore from her throat as the air left her lungs, and pain exploded through her side as she was launched several metres across the street, crashing shoulder-first into the side of an abandoned taxi hard enough to leave a crater in the door.
The gravity pulled her out of the side of the taxi and she fell onto the floor. The Horde was upon her before she could do anything.
Cold hands grabbed at her arms.
Her legs.
Her hair.
A zombie threw itself onto her chest, jaws snapping inches from her face, but she pushed it away before its teeth could connect.
Another zombie took its place, and a large clawed hand wrapped around her throat. The brute lumbered closer, and she could make out the faint, muffled gurgling and grunting coming out of its chest. The loose asphalt of the road trembled with each step it took.
An enormous shadow fell upon her and it leaned down and opened its maw wide, and Talia's vision was covered by a foul, decay-like smell and the vision of rows upon rows of jagged, yellow teeth.
Its rancid breath washed over her face, and it didn't take a genius to realize what was going on.
It wasn't trying to claw her.
It was going straight for her throat.
She planted her feet onto the ground with all the strength she possessed, her muscles screaming in protest and the veins in her neck popping out as she dug herself in, trying to free herself from the hold, but to no avail.
Its rancid breath washed over her face.
Too close.
She swung her head back before slamming it forward, right into the zombie's nose. She heard the sound of bone cracking as the monster's head rocked back.
For a moment, nothing happened.
For a moment, hope surged in her, before she heard a cracking sound, and its head snapped back into place again.
Its face was a mess, with blood and pus dripping down the shattered nose. But other than the cosmetic damage that this zombie clearly couldn't feel, it was just fine. It opened its jaws incredibly wide and started approaching her again.
"...Damn." The word barely escaped her lips.
Really should've just listened to Annette.
Cause she didn't think she was getting out of this one.
Not before –
A deafening crack suddenly echoed through the night sky.