DEATH SQUAD

CORPSE

Corpse had seen terrible things.

Nobody knows where he got that name, perhaps not even Corpse himself, but it's stuck with him consistently. Biologically defective from birth, he was entirely mute. He could not speak, or perhaps he simply chose not to do so for his entire existence. Regardless of the reasoning behind his silence, it still made him unsuitable for a position of any authority, but it also meant that no matter where they assigned him, he would never complain. And so, two decades after being born, there he stood in the humid, vile smelling sewers of the Rat Race.

His job at the time was to guard this particular avenue of the subterranean tunnel network for hours on end. He simply stood there, and waited, with his Necro-rifle at the ready. Any other sort of Darktrooper might not be able to endure such monotony. The Silver Dragons, VIPs and Jackals were far too hyperactive and would never be able to stay put for so long. The Chemtroopers and Kaltsoldats were too volatile and would more than likely grow to resent their commanders. The Crossbones and Nightmares were too cerebral and their intellects were always needed elsewhere more urgently. But Corpse? He was a Pestilenz, a Dead Man Walking. Entropy gripped his soul and freed him from the ever present weaknesses of organic life. Hunger, sickness, fatigue, boredom, fear, pain, these meant nothing to the half-undead Pestilenz.

Corpse wasn't completely alike other Pestilenz. He didn't share their hatred of mortal lifeforms, nor did he have the desire to spread plague and sickness to the furthest corners of reality. In truth, well, nobody exactly knows what he wants. He simply is. He exists of himself and nothing else.

Perpetually in a state of decay yet notoriously almost unkillable, Pestilenz were unbothered by the sewers of the Rat Race. Neither the ancient, diseased filth that surrounded them nor the soul crushing, monotonous routines they were forced to occupy themselves with meant much at all to them, least of all Corpse. He was already used to being alone, an unusual trait in a Darktrooper, but seemingly every squad they put him in would invariably perish outside of combat with Corpse himself as the lone survivor, every time. The overwhelming majority of Darktrooper casualties are suffered on the battlefield, not off it, but whenever the Ministry Satanica assigned him a new squad, one by one they would all slowly die of relatively natural causes. An accident, a gas explosion, an aneurysm, anything other than an enemy soldier's bullet. Corpse obviously wasn't just any typical Darktrooper, and these "accidents" clearly were not a series of coincidences either.

It's a curse

At least, that's what a classified digital note from his commander said in regards to the deaths. It also said; "Ensure he's alone at all costs, or kill him, I don't care."

The Curse of Corpse they called it. The first resort his unit had in mind was just discreetly executing him, but each time some sort of complication took place. An overloaded plasma battery in the assassin's gun, causing it to fatally backfire. A mixup in MRE rations, causing another Darktrooper to receive the highly toxic poison (designed specifically to kill Pestilenz) intended for Corpse. With each failed attempt, someone who wasn't the target died. The Curse of Corpse strikes again. Eventually they relented and decided to let him live, but keep him isolated. Though he was an exceptional sniper, he could never be placed on a squad, detachment or kill-team without his brothers slowly dying off like maggots. It's been said that the Pestilenz left death in their wake, but Corpse did so to a much higher degree without even really doing anything at all.

Of course, he was indifferent, or at least he didn't express any particular feelings of loneliness. Corpse was a sniper on the battlefield, patiently, silently waiting like a spider for his targets to reveal themselves, at which point his Necro-rifle would send a bullet the length of a pencil straight through their flesh, laden with the weaponized plagues and contagions that made the Pestilenz so deadly. Even those lucky enough to escape his incredibly precise shots would only spread the virus further.