Chapter 11: Gear Master Hunk
Umbrella Corporation. Manhattan Division. Underground Level Twenty-Five.
Hunk arrived at the training floor at exactly the agreed time, fully kitted out as always. He had picked up the salary increase the day before and had used part of the afternoon to stop by the company's equipment division, where he had replaced his gear. New everything, though calling it new was somewhat loose, since he had purchased the exact same items he had been using before, just without the wear.
The gas mask in particular. He had bought three of the same model. Backup units, for whenever the current one needed to be rotated out. Anyone watching might have concluded he had a strong attachment to the design, and they would have been right.
He stepped off the elevator and stopped.
The training floor was already active. Gunfire, measured and consistent was coming from inside.
This was new. In fifteen-plus days of training, the sequence had never changed: Hunk arrived, and eventually Matthew showed up. Matthew had never been there first.
What Hunk did not know was that the T-Virus had made sleep largely irrelevant. Matthew still went through the motions out of habit, but the need was gone. A night that would have required eight hours of recovery now required nothing. He was simply awake, and there was nothing else to do, and training was as good a use of the time as anything else.
"You're here," Matthew said, without turning from the range.
Hunk answered with a brief sound of acknowledgment, crossed to a position, and began shooting his own warm-up drills without further comment.
The floor filled with gunfire.
Through the drills, Hunk's eyes returned to Matthew at intervals. Two seconds, then away. Two seconds, then away. He was doing it without quite deciding to.
Something was different today. He could not identify what.
After years of contract work in places where not noticing things was how you ended up in someone's after-action report, Hunk's ability to read environmental change had been refined past the point of conscious effort. He felt the difference before he could name it.
He tried moving closer during a magazine change, a natural reason to shift position. At distance, he could not pin it down. Closer would help.
He took one step.
The hair on his forearm stood up.
All of it. Instantly. His hand found the knife on his belt before the conscious decision arrived, and he stopped moving.
He stood still, looking at Matthew's back.
The feeling was coming from Matthew. From someone who was standing relaxed at a shooting position with their back to the room, apparently paying no attention to anything behind them.
Hunk put the knife back. He did it slowly, in case it looked like what it had been.
"Something wrong, Hunk?"
"Nothing," Hunk said. He walked up to a position and started shooting. "Sir, I think your real-world combat experience is still the weak point. Worth running some more scenarios today if you have time."
Matthew's rifle clicked on empty. He set it down and checked his watch.
Thirteen hours until the board meeting. Enough room.
"Sure. Let's work." He looked over at Hunk. "Go all out this time."
Hunk nodded. He reloaded his submachine gun with a fresh magazine, then reached into the equipment locker and removed two flashbang grenades. He clipped them to his rig without comment.
Gear Master Hunk. The equipment spoke for itself.
Matthew picked up an M4, stepped back two paces, and reached into his pocket.
A remote control. He pressed the button.
The floor went dark.
Every light cut simultaneously. The space, which had been uniformly bright without a shadow anywhere, was now the kind of dark that had weight to it.
Matthew had already lowered his helmet's night vision before pressing the button. He moved immediately — low, quiet, angling away from his last known position. In the dark he was difficult to track by sound.
Hunk's gas mask was not standard commercial equipment. It was a purpose-built piece of Umbrella military hardware that included oxygen filtration, ballistic protection, and integrated low-light optics. The night vision was functional. It was also considerably less capable than the advanced four-lens unit Matthew was using, narrower field of view, more noise, less resolution. At distance, anything more than a few meters away blurred into shapes and shadow.
In a night engagement, Hunk was at a genuine disadvantage.
He found a cement pillar and pressed against it. His ears were all he had at reliable range, so he gave them his full attention.
The floor was silent in the way that spaces only get when something is being actively done to keep them that way.
No one was going to turn a light on. Doing so gave away your position and invited everything the other person had.
Time passed in the dark. Hunk tracked each second.
Then, from somewhere ahead, a sound. Faint. A small sharp click, like the edge of a shoe sole on loose grit. Or a weapon shifting.
It didn't matter what it was.
Hunk did not deliberate. The principle he had operated on for most of his career was simple: sudden, speed, and violence. He came out from behind the pillar far enough to bring the submachine gun up and fired toward the source of the sound.
Three rounds. The muzzle flash lit the space for a fraction of a second.
Long enough to see what he had fired at.
A shell casing. Sitting on the floor.
He pulled back and was already reaching for the flashbang before the thought finished forming. He had fired, which meant he had revealed himself, which meant he needed to change the geometry of the situation immediately.
He threw the grenade out from behind cover.
The detonation hit the space hard even through the mask — the light and concussive sound filtered down to something manageable, but still enough to send a spike through his senses. His night vision bloomed out and needed a moment to recover.
In that moment, gunfire came from a direction entirely different from where he had last placed Matthew.
Rounds passed close. He felt the displaced air.
In the dark, Matthew registered that all three shots had missed and allowed himself a brief, private frustration. The flashbang had degraded his own aim at the critical moment. Without that interference, the grouping would have been on Hunk's chest.
Hunk did not wait. He laid down suppressing fire toward Matthew's new position, his body already moving in a tight zigzag, making himself a moving target, breaking any line the other man had established. Casings rang off the floor.
The magazine ran dry.
Hunk did not reach for a fresh one.
He let the submachine gun drop on its sling, drew his knife, and flattened himself against the edge of the cover position. He made himself still.
He was gambling. He had taught Matthew a specific sequence for approaching a suppressed or potentially disabled target position. He was betting Matthew would follow it.
Footsteps. Coming from the left. Fast.
He had bet correctly.
The moment Matthew came around the edge of the cover position, Hunk moved. One hand came up and met the muzzle of the M4, redirecting it away. The other hand went to work with the speed that came from having done the same motion under pressure more times than he had counted, the magazine stripped and gone, and then, in the same motion, the round in the chamber cycled out and dropped to the floor.
The weapon was empty before Matthew had registered what was happening.
Matthew looked at it. Then at Hunk.
Experience wins out. Every time.
He dropped the M4.
The engagement shifted from room-clearing to close quarters, and the two of them moved into it without needing to say so.