"A rock?" asks Joe.
"Yeah, about the size of a basketball," describes Marko.
"Is it just pitch black? Glassy? Like some sort of crystal?" Joe gives out a ton of description-related queries.
"It kinda is, yeah," looking closer into the object, Marko confirms.
"Shit."
"Why?" asks Marko. "You know what this is?"
"That's not a rock, it's a meteorite. Or, at least, I'm assuming."
"A meteorite IS a rock, it's a literal space rock," Cade butts in, now walking towards the shrine after dispatching the zombie remnants.
"Well, meteorite sounds better," says Joe.
"From your description and confirmation, I'd say that's a Void meteorite," he explains.
"A void meteorite??" Marko repeats, solely for confirmation.
"Yeah, and I probably shouldn't have mentioned that," Joe elbows a rushing zombie coming from the side on its chest, stunning it, and grabbing its arms and using it to stab the victim on its own heart. "That is information above your paygrade, forget I said it."
Joe stops for a second, realizing something. "Shit."
"What?" asks Marko.
"Crowe didn't set foot in this island to use the tribe as test subjects. He's after the meteorite!"
"So he's really here?" asks Marko.
"Who's here?" Cade and Marko hear another voice from behind them — Crowe who has just exited his own void portal which was still open right behind him.
"Hello, agents," the mad scientist greets.
Joe faintly hears the familiar voice through the call and immediately runs away from the settlement him and Ghost were in to head for Crowe. "Ghost, you handle this!!"
Cade wastes no time uttering a word. He immediately steps in towards the wanted scientist, sword in hand.
Crowe was just looking at him, not moving an inch. His entire body starts emanating faint, black, mist. Standing perfectly still, showing no signs of fear for the agent rushing him at blinding speed. His only movement was clicking on the small device he uses to activate his artificial portal.
A swift horizontal slash directed at the scientist's neck lands but on Crowe's apparent mist-transformed body. Cade cuts nothing but mist in the form of Crowe. Both him and Marko were stunned.
"My, my," the intangible, misty Crowe speaks. "You should never go for the kill on important subjects and potential informants."
Unfazed, Cade slashes again, this time on Crowe's body, attempting to slice him in half.
Same result. It was like cutting smoke.
"Futile, Agent Vanderwood."
Marko joins the action, jumping at Crowe with the full weight of Shelly. A smash attack so strong even Cade jumped back to not get caught in the radius of the impact.
A loud thud resulting from Shelly decimating the muddy, damp ground. Marko raises Shelly from the island soil she just made her mark in, revealing some of the faint mist still on the ground. The mist gradually gets stronger and bigger, materializing into Crowe's form again.
"I have to say, I am extremely disappointed of Agent Isaac's absence. Shame."
"Don't worry about him," says Marko. "You have your hands full with us."
Crowe bursts out laughing.
"Ahhh. I love jokes."
"You kill and zombify an entire island and you're standing here laughing?" Marko was disgusted at the scientist.
"Kill? Oh, no, no, no. I did not kill anyone, Agent Pius. They did that themselves," Crowe explains.
"What?"
"Oh, yes. I simply 'zombified' them, as you said. As for the group who had emerged victorious from their tiny, primitive scuffle, I simply gifted with immortality. They were very receptive, as soon as I stepped out of my Void passage, they kept mumbling with each other and knelt."
"Poor people must have thought I was some sort of god," he laughs.
"In any way, I have taken not a single soul. In this island, at least," Crowe adds.
"If anyone has killed anyone here, it is YOU two," he says, pointing at Cade and Marko with two fingers.
Not giving up, the two rush Crowe again. But before their weapons could reach the scientist, he opens his portal again, opening one directly below him and disappearing in it.
Crowe's location prior to using the portal was a considerable distance away from the shrine. The two realized this too late.
Crowe appears, falling down a short distance in the air, right in front of the black meteorite which he promptly picks up.
"OH NO, YOU DON'T," jumping from the thicket of trees is Joe, both fists together, veins glowing and hands emanating a bright blue glow.
"Farewell, General," says Crowe, portal opening under him.
BOOM
The loudest explosion that the island has heard the entire night. The dust clears revealing the shrine and the ground smoking, like a bomb was dropped on it. Joe standing over where Crowe warped out, face painted with frustration, and no signs of the scientist. His explosive ground pound hit nothing but island nothing. The slippery doctor escapes yet again.
"Goddamn it."
Frustrated, Joe calls HQ to update their status.
"We made contact with Crowe. He escaped with a void meteorite. I'll explain the details when I get back."
"We tried," Marko explains and defends their apprehension failure.
"I saw," Joe completely understanding. "That fucking asshole has way too much up his sleeve."
"But mission's not over," despite the apparent failure in apprehending Crowe, Joe still remains level-headed. "Our main goal in the island is exterminating the zombies and that's what we'll do."
"There's no news yet from HQ but in the meantime, we find the remaining on our own."
Meanwhile, Ghost is having the time of his life wiping the settlement him and Joe found of any life, and almost effortlessly. Ghost revels in these types of missions. Man, woman, child, if it has a pulse, Ghost makes sure it stops.
Surrounded by three tribesmen, he ducks slightly, spins around, both of his blades reaching outward, ripping open every single one of their guts. He quickly turns to the two of them standing beside each other, grabs both intestines with each hand and pulls it down, making the two zombies crash into each other. He then proceeds to slice the Sentinelese sandwich in one swing, right at their upper chest, where the heart is.
He turns around to the other one and stabs it in the left chest, halting any sort of movement. With his other blade, he rips its chest wide open, revealing the blue heart which he stabs and takes out along with his blade. He turns back around to another speared hunter. He hurls the blue heart still stuck on its blade right at the approaching zombie's face. With the impact he threw it with, the flying organ bursts on the hunter's face, covering its eyes with its fellow tribemate's blood. As soon as it got to see again, it was face to face with the black masked-killer who stabs both its eyes first before going for the heart.
Ghost throws the violated zombie corpse on the ground and feels something grabbing and tugging on his leg, a child zombie looking up at him. He returns the look and pauses his frenzy for a short second before plunging his blade right on its forehead. He lifts it up and does the same thing again with his other blade except on the other side of its forehead, and slides it down to its heart. As if that's not enough, he uses what remained of its body as a shield to block an incoming arrow.
With HQ reporting that there were no longer any settlement and zombies left aside from the one Ghost is massacring, they decide to rendezvous and meet him there.
The three agents are greeted with the sight of Ghost stabbing the back of, unknowingly to him, the corpse of the already dead female Sentinelese shielding and protecting what looked like her children. It took him a few seconds before noticing this and throws the corpse to the side and stabbed what it was protecting instead.
"Is no one gonna stop him?" Marko asks his fellow agents.
"Ghost!" Joe shouts at him.
"It's done!" he says, thumbs up with both arms. "Good job!"
Ghost, turning back and facing the rest of the unit, reciprocates the gesture. He faces forward again down to the corpse he was violating, stabs it one last time, then stands up to join his comrades.
"Pops is gonna chew me up real good for this," says Joe.
"That goes for all of us," Marko adds.