Project X 5

Chapter 1 : Captured

Faced with immediate death, surrounded by the dead bodies as pieces of a flaming helicopter rained down from the skies, all Salvador Perez, could think about was that girl. That. And getting the hell out of the way.

He dove for cover behind an unmarked tombstone as the small cemetery rumbled and shook. With a shattering metal sound of high impact, a massive chunk of smoking 'copter crashed into the far corner of the yard, spraying the nearest rotting soldiers and prisoners with burning fuel. Bright, oily streamers of it splattered across the ground like sticky lava-

-and when Salvador hit the dirt, he felt a tremendous bolt of pain in his gut, two of his ribs cracking against a weed, buried slab of dark marble. The pain was sudden and terrible, paralyzing, but he's somehow managed not to pass out. He couldn't afford to.

A rotor blade knifed into the dirt two feet from him, spraying sandy earth into the evening sky. A new sound of wordless moans reached his ears, the virus carriers protesting the rain of fire. An infected guard shambled by, his hair blazing like a torch, his eyes sightless and searching.

They can't feel anything, Salvador desperately reminded himself, concentrating on his breathing, afraid to move as the pain edge from his shrieking to mere shouting. 

The air was think with dizzying fumes and the smells of rapid decay and burning flesh. He heard a few gunshots coming from somewhere else within the prison compound, but only a few; the battle was over and they had lost. Salvador had closed his eyes for as long as he dared, fairly certain that he would never see another sunrise. 

Talk about having a crappy day.

It had started ten days before, in Berlin. The woman had infiltrated the HQ Admin, and had put up one hell of a vicious fight before Salvador himself gotten the draw on her. The truth was, he'd been very lucky- she pulled her piece quicker but she was empty.

Salvador: I got real lucky.

If he'd known what the immediate future was going to hold, he might have reloaded on her.

The reward for capturing her alive, a chance to take his elite security unit through their paces with real, leaving viral carriers out in the Cauldron facility, the compound on a remote island in the Southern Atlantic. The girl they captured was going to be very valuable to them. 

He later found out her name was Yumiko Imagawa. She was one of the failed experiments from the Project X programme. Creating the ultimate super soldiers. How that blew up in Derek White's face. He heard about the Hong Kong outbreak, and how Derek had ultimately died. Three of the Soldier's from Project X had killed him and disappeared Yumiko was one of the three soldiers who was there. It was funny how his secret weapons had turned against him and killed him.

But Salvador recalled that the boss of the facility said he had plans for Yumiko. For what plans they were he did not know all he was told was do not question what the boss said. He didn't question any further when he showed Yumiko to him. 

At least eighteen people had been seriously injured by Yumiko's dance in the HQ in Berlin, five were confirmed dead. Most of them we're sleazy suits; Salvador didn't give a shit about them, but catching the woman meant he could get a big bonus. He couldn't care what they did to her.

Lucky again, it seemed. He had ten days to ready his troops, ten days while the interrogators unsuccessfully questioned the woman. The journey from Berlin to Cape Town to the Cauldron had been a piece of cake- the pilots were all top notch and Yumiko had been silent throughout the entire journey, a wise decision on her part. All of his men were psyched for this opportunity, the mood high as they touched down and started to prep for the first drills.