Chapter Text
The cold is unforgiving and bitter, and the snow fills your boots as you trudge through it. Hound Wolf squad is here—at least, BSAA’s intelligence seems to believe so. Round in or erase the rogue squad, you were told. You nearly laugh out loud at the thought.
“Ace, status update,” a voice crackles through your radio.
“Nothing to report so far,” you respond. It’s a lie—you’ve just found a crashed van, body collapsed outside the open backdoors.
Luckily, Mission Support is as aloof as always, not bothering to ask any questions before ending the transmission. You get to work before they have the chance, rolling up your sleeve and pressing commands onto the screen of your watch. When Charlie first showed you his jamming software a few years back, you never thought you would use it. He’d be so happy to see you now, tapping its tiny green power button. The program works flawlessly—your radio flashes ‘no signal’, and the tracking devices embedded within your weapons make a satisfying winding-down noise.
You’re not surprised. Charlie—Night Howl—is a communications expert, after all. Did he know what was really going on within the BSAA? Is that why he left with Hound Wolf?
You don’t exactly have the time to ponder it.
Not with this mystery-mobile in front of you. The vehicle is completely on its side and the corpse is dressed in siege-style gear. It doesn’t take the conveniently placed mission brief on the ground to tell you that Hound Wolf is involved here, but it’s certainly confirming. From the brief, you discover that Hound Wolf had been in the middle of transporting the Winters family.
“Didn’t go according to plan,” you muse aloud, eyeing footprints leading away from the wreckage. The prints aren’t from the same combat boots as the body, however. They appear to be of men’s dress shoes.
Someone must've lived through the crash. Ethan.
Ethan Winters: one of the Baker incident survivors. All of the BSAA knows his name, but only a few know that Ethan would be dead if it weren’t for Hound Wolf and its leader, Alpha.
God, what a mess the whole Baker incident was—all of it, BSAA’s fault. And now—
You hear snapping branches. Your head whips towards the source, but your flashlight doesn’t reach far in the pitch black. The footprints you saw weren’t old. If they're Ethan's, he could still be close. You slip into the night and quietly head towards the noise.
The path leads to a wooden shack. There's a furniture barricade blocking the door that you manage to climb over without spraining an ankle. Dust plumes with each step inside—this place has been abandoned for a while. Or rather, abandoned until recently, because the floor is streaked with fresh blood. It trails to a gaping hole in the wall and then outside. You squint at the light pouring through.
Sun peaks over the mountains to the east. From here, you can see a village spanning across the plateau below, and even further in the distance, you spot a castle. But between all the houses, trees, and winding roads scattered throughout, you don’t see a single person. Not a soul.
Blood trails, deserted houses, flipped vans.
Something is obviously wrong.
You proceed with extra caution down the hill. At the bottom is a dead horse. No smell and bright blood mean the corpse is relatively new. Inside the antiquated house adjacent, you find evidence of recent activity; hot soup and lights on. There's also evidence of Ethan; open drawers and picked locks—
A gunshot rings out.
Another, and another.
But they don't sound close—no one is shooting at you.
You rush outside, sprinting toward the echoing gunfire. Through a fence, you think you see a blond-haired guy running for his life, and then you see a hoard of men following after. Except, the men are not normal. They’re moving like animals, growling and drooling. The scent is so putrid you can smell it from here.
Shit... That blond-haired guy...
That's Ethan, isn't it?
You spot a house with a ladder and make your way up. You lower into a prone position, hidden from sight by the slopes of the roof. The silencer is on your sniper rifle, your eye is against the scope, and your finger is on the trigger. You press down once you find a target—boom, headshot. One of the creatures falls dead, and the ones behind it abruptly stop to look around.
Are they looking for you? That must mean they have some intelligence if they can tell the difference between who's shooting.
Ethan hasn’t noticed that there are any fewer assailants, though. He’s still running away from the ones that haven’t stopped. You take out a few more, pull away from the scope to grab ammo from your side pouch and reload. When you bring up the scope again, you think you see someone else crouching behind a house.
Is that…?
You hold your breath as you study them—heavy military gear, NV goggles, and computers—
“Freeze,” a voice demands from behind you.
You slowly place your rifle down. The person kicks it away and then roughly yanks at your hands.
“Who are you?” they ask, wasting no time cuffing your wrists and flipping you over onto your back.
It takes a moment for your eyesight to adjust to the bright clouds, and then you see him.
“Alpha,” you guess.
Confusion flashes across his face before he aims a gun at your head.
“Who are you?” Alpha repeats, this time as a threat.
Alpha is exactly how you imagined. Confidence oozes off of him in thick waves. He’s got a stern expression. Deep grey eyes. Brown hair speckled with grey. What you didn’t imagine was the popped-collar peacoat and black turtleneck. They look good on him, but you’re not fooled by the relaxed outfit. You can see the equipment and muscles he’s got stashed underneath.
“Ace,” you answer evenly, refusing to falter under his oppressive glare. “From Raven squad.”
Gunfire is still ringing in the distance. Alpha chuckles dryly. “So, the BSAA sent you to clean up another one of their messes?”
"That's what they sent me here for, but that's not what I'm here to do.”
“Yeah? What are you here to do, then?"
You arch your hip towards Alpha, gesturing to him the phone in your pocket. "The BSAA's begun experimenting. They plan on using controllable B.O.W.s as infantrymen.”
Alpha’s confusion grows into full-blown suspicion. His grip tightens as he reaches for the device, and the screen comes to life once it's in his hands. Your phone shows him photo evidence; hundreds of glass pods housing B.O.W.s. Grey skin, irises white, and a damning BSAA emblem on the wall behind them all.
“I’m not sure if they’re using a parasite like Las Plagas, or Uroboros,” you continue. “Or if it’s another new virus altogether—”
“Where did you get this picture?” Alpha interrupts.
“I took it. Did you know that the European HQ has a secret lab in their basement?"
Disbelief and disgust. Alpha's feeling the exact same way as you did when you found out. He takes one last look at the photo before shaking his head and stuffing the phone in his jacket.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” he says finally. “What are you here to do?”
You’ve been asking yourself the same thing ever since accepting this mission.
Fighting B.O.W.s has never been easy. You’ve seen your friends die—you've killed turned friends. The pay’s shit. The hours are worse.
In the end, fighting to make the world a better place was always worth it. The BSAA helped you do that.
Yet, at some point, they changed.
Secret labs don't pop up overnight.
The decision to cover up messes and hide deaths...
Those aren't made on a whim.
“I’m here to defect,” you answer confidently. “The BSAA’s gone too far, and I’m not about to stand by and watch it happen. Let me join Hound Wolf.”
Alpha lowers his weapon. Just enough so that his eyes meet yours.
He's gauging you. Reading you. Staring right through you.
But no matter how long he scrutinizes, you won't buckle under the weight of his gaze.
He opens his mouth to respond.
And then suddenly he glances beyond you.
"Goddammit," Alpha curses, turning the aim of his gun to the massive human-figured creature leaping through the sky. It lands on the same roof and the impact is too much for the structure to bear. Your stomach hangs in your throat as you collapse into the house below. Intentional or not, Alpha breaks your fall.
He groans beneath you, only taking a second to regain himself. “We can’t stay here,” he grabs you roughly by the waist and throws you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“Put me down, now—“
“I’m taking you with me,” Alpha says in an ‘end-of-discussion’ sort of tone, “and I sure as hell don’t trust you enough to take my sight off you.”
You let out a shaky breath. You understand where he’s coming from—the BSAA sent you to 'erase' him, after all.
“Fine, okay,” you reluctantly agree, “my rifle, though...“
“What?” Alpha asks, almost incredulously. Some of the monsters that were chasing Ethan have come to investigate the crash. Alpha’s shooting them with one hand, using the other to keep you from sliding off.
You point a leg to where the rifle is sticking out of the rubble. “I would grab it, but my hands are cuffed, so—“
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Alpha sighs. But he still runs and grabs it for you.
The two of you make it to a small clearing just outside the village. Looks like those monsters have given up on you for now, and it seems Alpha's realized the same because he tosses you off his shoulder and into the first pile of leaves he sees.
“Thank you so much for at least throwing me on some leaves,” you hiss as you struggle to sit up. “Yeah, setting me down gently is too hard, I know—“
“Hey,” Alpha barks. He pauses, reeling his irritation back in with another sigh. “Be grateful you got the leaves.”
You glare at him. “I know you don’t trust me, but—“
“You’re right, I don’t trust you. Don’t trust you as far as I can throw you.”
“Hah! With those arms? You should really use a different analogy.”
Alpha doesn’t say anything back to that, he just rubs his face tiredly. You almost feel bad, but then your back aches from being tossed on the ground, and the feeling's gone.
Well, this is going terribly. Somehow you thought Hound Wolf would be eager for your help. What's the saying? Assuming makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’? You’re not mad. If you were in Alpha’s position, you would have handcuffed yourself, too. Winning him over will take some work.
You do start feeling bad again though when Alpha takes his phone out of his pocket and a bunch of powdered concrete comes along with it. The phone’s vibration is making a little dust cloud around the device.
"At least it's not broken," you offer.
"At least," he says, turning away to answer his phone.
You take advantage of his distracted state, using it as an opportunity to become a little less helpless. You stealthily slide your hands under your butt and then move your arms under your legs.
"Someone wants—" Alpha looks back and catches you mid-way. He frowns. He knows it's his fault for turning away. "Someone wants to talk to you.”
You smile expectantly, hands now sitting happily on your lap. "Who?"
“Hey, Ace,” a familiar voice says through the phone's speaker. You recognize it instantly.
“Charlie! I was just thinking about you!”
“Of course you were. Thought I wouldn’t notice my own jamming software being used in the area?”
“On the contrary, I was hoping you would.” You glance up at Alpha. His expression is as stoic as ever. “The BSAA sent me here, but—“
“I know, I know. Cap's filled me in. Why don’t we all meet up at base camp? Seems like you’ve got a lot to explain.”
“Sure.” You nod. “Speaking of, don’t suppose there’s any way you could convince your captain to take the cuffs off me in the meanwhile?”
Alpha hangs up the call before Charlie can answer. “Nope.”