Winter Schnee, when she was on a top secret mission across their home border not even their government knew about, she didn't expect to find another group was in the restricted area the General managed to enforce after pulling some strings on the Valeian Councils.
The nature of their mission is very sensitive because the criminals they are trying to arrest were formerly scientists of the Atlesian military which defected, allegedly because of the lack of recognition and injustice towards their effort. The research they conduct is mainly toward turning the Grimm to humanity's side. However, for whatever reason, the council and military axed their research and years of hard work to pour all efforts into building more warmachines, especially the Atlesian robots and mechs.
One could argue, had the council and military handled this matter more delicately, they would have the problem of a group of renegade scientists turning Grimm into mutated warmachines of their own to exact revenge on the council and military.
Naturally, because they are former scientists. Winter assumed they would have access to Atlesian military gears. When she sees the person in all black gear which resembles an Atlesian military gear albeit in a different color scheme, she is sure this person is one of the scientists or members of their terrorist group.
Just as she confronted the man and his odd group. Verbally. The man tried to talk his way out.
"Let's not immediately resort to violence. We are on the same side right?" The man said.
Who did he think she is? She isn't that gullible. If the man is surely innocent, why don't he simply surrender then they talk in the interrogation room.
Weiss scoffed and said, "Surrender peacefully or by force." As her subordinates trained their guns and weapons on the three.
"Fucking hard-ass bitch! Go kiss your Daddy Ironwood ass!" The man lashed out with profanity and sounded very frustrated, definitely because he knows there is no way they can survive with just three against 10 well trained Atlesian Specialists.
The man threw a few grenades that he pulled out of nowhere and threw at them before it exploded into a freezing plume of air that instantly froze her flesh and would give her frostbite if not for Aura protection. The man pulled his two teammates down into the hole and fled
"Ice Dust grenade… Not to mention Dust with this strong of an effect. It must be a very high grade Dust. They are definitely using restricted military weapons." Winter continues to misunderstand as she looks over at a few of her subordinates that actually got freezed with a stern eyes. They froze because their Aura isn't strong enough to resist the Ice Dust power.
———
"Now what…?" Adam lamented. It's not the first or the last time he laments the same thoughts.
In front of him is a cavern filled with Zombie incubating pods. If it's the same one from the game. Once he enters its range they will start pumping out infected. With the entire cavern filled with it, they would have to fight through endless hordes of them unless Adam and his companions can destroy all the pods.
Actually, destroying the pods isn't an issue but Adam actually didn't know how far down the mine had been occupied by these pods. After all, Eric only managed to catch a brief glimpse of the cavern before it retreated.
Meanwhile, at the back is the unreasonable mutts of Daddy Ironwood trying to arrest him and throw him into jail for crime he didn't committed at the risk of throwing this goddamn world into a fucking Zombie Apocalypse. Big shit is at stake here and he should be receiving help, not randomly prosecuted the local military forces.
Truly, Adam wants nothing more than to throw them againsts the Zombies instead of him…
"That's it!" Adam reached an epiphany after squatting at a corner and ranting in his mind.
"Did you think of a plan, Master?" Agent were curious and inquired. Alice is uninterested and only awaits orders from her Master to fight.
(So, I made a random roulette with the names I received on the comment and spun it. The name that wins is Alice. G41=Alice now.)
"Are they coming into the tunnel?" Adam didn't tell her yet and instead asked a question which perplexed Agent but she answered regardless. "Yes, they are descending into the tunnel one by one."
"Good. Now, excuse me for a moment because all of you will be entering my Inventory for a while." Adam grinned under his gas mask deviously and smirked as he placed Agent, Alice and Eric into his inventory.
Then he waited. When he heard the footsteps were very close, Adam opened his menu and initiated a Normal Contract before he disappeared from the corner.
———
After checking the hole on the ground which is the obvious path ahead, Winter led her team and inspected the hole for any trap before they all descended. Then, they carefully thread through the tunnel while looking out for any ambush.
Looking like they didn't complete the entire way until the end of the tunnel, Winter and her team didn't find the previous group at all. Instead, they found something even more interesting and equally dangerous.
"What are these things…? They look alive and pulsating." One of the specialists looked at the array of incubation pods.
The pods are arranged with a red one in the center and surrounded by green pods that are a few feet apart and connected by a network of vein-like roots on the ground. Inside the green pods is fluid with bones inside and sometimes they found half digested human or animals. As for the red ones, it contains Grimm-like monsters and is significantly bigger than the green pods.
"Gather samples and information. We can send it to the researcher to figure those things out." Winter ordered and her teams quickly spread out and did their task while Winter herself inspected the surroundings trying to find any clue that could be useful.
Winter noticed there isn't much sign of struggle or any mess that indicates there is struggle or panic happening here in the mine. As for the pod… a particular one that she observed. She found an object that sank to the bottom of the green pod. She can't see it clearly because of the low visibility. Winter uses a flashlight to look at the object of her interest and finds it to be a ring. More specifically, a wedding ring.
A horrible realization washed over her. The ring in the green pod and the green pods are hooked to a red pod that looks like it was incubating a Grimm. The green pod is a nutrient dissolver which harvests the nutrient and sends it to the red pod to incubate a Grimm mutant.
"AHHHH! Help!"
"KYAA!"
"H-Help!"
Screams of surprises and cries for help soon reached her ears as Winter immediately turned to look at her teammates which is a bad mistake. She saw green tentacles coming from the green pods attacking her teammates and trying to swallow them.
Before Winter could draw her rapier, green tentacles already lashed at her and tried to tie her body up. But she fell to her back and rolled to evade the tentacles and back to her feet with her rapier drawn, quickly slashed and cut away those offending tentacles.
Few of her mens open fire and start destroying the pods after knowing what it could and would do.
Then all hell broke loose when the red pod suddenly exploded and released the monster it was incubating.
*Grrr*
The mutated Beowolf that is three times larger than its usual kin growled and laid its eyes on the surroundings before stopping at Winter and her team.
"AWOOO!" The monster release an eardrum rupturing howl which temporarily stunned the Atlesian Specialists
Then without any warning, it leaped and pounced on one of the closest prey and immediately sunk its teeth into the human who manages to resist with a layer of Aura which is losing its glow and starting to waver.
"Jake!" Someone rushed forward with a large warhammer and smashed it on to the monster's head which sent it flying and crashed into a pile of crates and barrels.
"Jake! Are you alright?"
"Yeah. Just a scratch. I thought my arm was done for when that bastard bit down on it." Jake smiled and shrugged the injury which isn't life threatening and just a small scratch.
They group up and work together as they pinned down the monster before Winter delivered the coup de grace, decapitated the monster because apparently all Beowolf previous weaknesses do not apply on it other than a decapitation.
However, before they could feel relieved and rest. They heard more beastial snarls ahead.
From the deeper section of the cavern and numerous tunnels, monsters swarm in with rage in their eyes and voice as they sprint toward Winter and her team.
"There are more of them?" Someone shouted in dread while another beside him already faltered and was ready to escape if not for the discipline beaten into him that reigned in his instinct.
"Retreat! Everyone retreated back to the town!" Winter ordered.
Everyone didn't linger any more and quickly retreated back into the tunnel with their tail tucked between their legs, running for their lives.
As Winter and her team of Specialists pulled the aggro away, Adam reappeared from the tunnel into the cavern before bringing out his companions.
"Well, that works well." Adam grinned as he got his sweet revenge and easing up on his mission.
"Master… You do realize Winter Schnee is the older sister of Whitley Schnee, right?" Agent stared at Adam in disbelief before reminding him in case he forgot the identity he was supposed to take over.
"Yeah? So what? I'm not Whitley Schnee. I'm Adam White. We are different people and I use that guy's identity because it's convenient. That's all." Adam shrugged and summoned his rifle out to start shooting at the first red pod that is already starting to incubate new monsters after the previous one is released.
"Come on, let's destroy all these incubation pods before they start pumping more Grimm mutants." Adam said and used Reinforcement to summon 3 Assault Class operators instead of using artillery strike to not alert the monster to their location.
"Yes, Master." x2
Unfortunately, Eric does not have a voice pack or speaker to 'talk'. But Adam can see how enthusiastic it is by taking the lead and beaming down all the pods in its way excitedly as if they all were competing on who would destroy the most pods.
———
"Collapse that hole! Immediately!"
"Yes!"
Someone replied and swung his massive warhammer which hit like a grenade and collapsed the tunnel, stopping the advance of the mutants. However, a few still slipped by.
They all fought hard and killed the three mutant Beowolf before they collapsed to the floor feeling tired.
"Haah… I can't imagine what would happen if just a Beowolf mutant could give us this much trouble."
"Yeah…" Someone nodded and sighed before looking at his teammates. "Wait, Jake? Are you alright? Your face looks very pale."
"Huh? I feel quite cold now that you mention it." Jake freed one hand and checked his own temperature before a teammate with more professional knowledge about medical checked him.
"I don't know what happened to his body without a precise tool to check his body but he seems to have high fever, delirium and sudden increase of strength." The medic-ish Specialist answered to Winter who found the symptoms a little suspicious and the last one a little odd.
"Ma'am, I think it's possible that it's the fog that caused this. Jake is the only one who broke his Aura and inhaled the fog among us and suddenly had such symptoms." The medic-ish Specialist added and mentioned Adam and his group. "Also, don't you find it suspicious why the enemies we encounter wear gas masks?"
"But we do not have the luxury to retreat and prepare ourselves again since we didn't prepare for this scenario…" Winter thought before her eyes landed on one of the crate with a label that says 'Mining Equipment (PPE)'
Winter struts over and rips open the crate and finds exactly what she needed. She threw one respirator each to everyone along with the filters. Even though the filter is not rated for mysterious virus or pathogen in the fog, better than none.
"Jake fainted." Someone alerted and almost everyone looked over to the said person who is pale as paper and breathlessly laying on the ground.
"What should we do Ma'am?" They all look towards their leader for her decision. On such occasions, a fallen Specialist on a mission will need to be erased lest the local government sniffed out their presence and could place Atlas military in a dangerous position.
But before Winter could make her decision, Jake suddenly started twitching as black veins started to appear on his pale skin at a rate visible to eyes. Then the twitching became a full on seizure before it came to a haunting halt.
The medic rushed quickly to check on his teammates only to halt his step when Jake open his milky white eyes that immediately dyed red when blood bleeding out not just from his eyes but also nose and mouth as it snarled and stood up like a drunken man with difficulty to control the body as it sway for a few seconds before lunging at the medic. However, Winter had been watching all this while with wariness immediately used Gravity Dust to force Jake down to the floor that now has a glyph, imprisoning him with the gravitational shackles.
"What the hell was that?!" Someone yelled in distress after seeing such a gruesome and haunting scene of the same person they share food and bed turned into this… whatever it is.
The medic-ish Specialist quickly ran some checks with his specialized Scroll that doubled as a cutting edge technology capable of doing things like diagnosing using Aura.
What he found shocked him to no end as he almost fell and stumbled as the scroll slipped from his hand.
"He… he is still alive. But…"
"But what?" Winter asked with worry hidden under her stern tone.
"But something had hijacked his body. Whatever that did, this hijacked the part of his brain that controlled his body movement but kept Jake alive. He is conscious but his body is now a puppet of this virus' instinct."
With a heavy heart, Winter shut her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath before ordering Jake to be restrained instead of being killed. She argues in her mind that he is worth keeping alive for the scientists to figure out a cure. But her real thoughts remain a mystery as she turned her eyes away and stared at the Grimm mutant corpses that didn't dissipate like normal Grimm.
They barely made any progress toward arresting the traitors and they already suffered a casualty.
"Spread out in pairs and search for another way down." Winter ordered. It's obvious the mutants were the doing of those traitors. So, it's obvious they are down there in the depths of the mine.
—————
(Less focused on Adam because I'm setting up the background and the story. Or I was trying at least. The outbreak will happen as I already said some times ago. But it will not be immediately widespread. And I will also focus on the people's reactions, what the government's reaction and plan to futilely trying to contain the outbreak and etc.
Fishing in muddy water have the best opportunity especially for Adam.)
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