They'd cleared the outer perimeter together—Luke, Riven, and Skadi working as a unit. But when they reached the main building, Luke had stopped them.
"Let me take this one solo."
Riven's expression flickered. "Luke—"
"I need to know how much I've improved." He gestured at the research center looming before them. "This is a perfect test. Contained environment, limited enemies, no civilians once we clear the lobby. If I can't handle this alone, I need to know now—before we face something actually dangerous."
It wasn't arrogance. His strength had grown exponentially since absorbing the Sparda bloodline. Two weeks of Riven's brutal training had honed his reflexes, sharpened his combat instincts. He needed to test himself against real enemies, not just sparring sessions where his partner refused to actually hurt him.
Riven and Skadi exchanged a look. Then they'd nodded, apparently accepting his decision.
They'd also immediately followed him the moment he entered the building.
As if either of them would actually let Luke walk into a vampire nest alone. They knew him well enough by now to understand that "I want to do this myself" meant "I'm going to do something stupid and potentially die." The compromise was simple: let him think he was solo, but stay close enough to intervene if things went sideways.
Luke would probably be annoyed when he found out.
They'd deal with that later.
The Hematology Research Center was exactly what Luke expected—a corporate facade hiding a vampire operation. The building looked legitimate from the outside. Professional. Clean. The kind of place that processed insurance claims and hosted quarterly meetings about synergy.
The inside was a different story.
Luke moved through the front entrance with his pistol drawn, silver rounds loaded. The first floor was staffed entirely by humans—regular employees who had no idea their paychecks came from creatures that drank blood. They weren't even familiars, just people doing a job.
He let them go. Pointed his gun at the ceiling, fired once, and watched them scatter like roaches when the lights came on. No point killing civilians who didn't know what they were working for.
The vampires knew he was coming now. Good.
Luke found a defensible position on the third floor—a corner office with reinforced walls and good sight lines. Then he pulled out his favorite toy.
The Barrett sniper rifle gleamed under the fluorescent lights. But this wasn't any ordinary Barrett. This was the "Origin: Destruction" skin from Crossfire—a weapon whose stats had been tweaked by game developers who clearly didn't understand the concept of "balance."
In the game, this thing could punch through a heavy tank's reactive armor. In real life, courtesy of Luke's drop system, it could do the same thing.
Thank God for pay-to-win mechanics, Luke thought as he settled into position. All those years of whaling finally paying off.
The vampires came in force. Full tactical gear—body armor, helmets, the works. They moved like professionals, clearing corners, covering each other's advances. Some of them were carrying weapons that normal humans couldn't handle: handheld miniguns, grenade launchers, the kind of hardware that required superhuman strength to operate.
They thought they were prepared.
BOOM.
The first shot took a vampire through his helmet, body armor, and the concrete pillar he'd been using for cover. The silver round didn't just kill him—it vaporized everything in its path. One moment there was a tactical vampire; the next, a cloud of ash and pulverized building material.
The others froze.
BOOM.
Another vampire, this one hiding behind a massive steel container, learned that "cover" was a relative concept when your opponent had anti-tank capabilities. The round punched through the metal like it was tissue paper, caught him center mass, and reduced him to dust.
Panic set in fast.
The vampires scattered, trying to find shelter that could actually stop whatever the hell was shooting at them. Some ran for the stairwells. Others dove behind structural columns. A few brave—or stupid—ones tried to return fire.
Luke had already relocated.
His old position now held a parting gift: a block of C4 wrapped in three layers of silver-coated steel balls. He'd seen the technique in a movie once and decided it was too beautiful not to recreate.
When the vampires converged on where they thought he was, weapons blazing, they found only a timer counting down to zero.
"Oh, shi—"
BOOM.
The explosion turned the third floor into a meat grinder. Silver-coated projectiles shredded everything in their path—vampires dissolved into ash, the familiars among them simply... came apart. The blast wave shattered every window in the building, sent a column of smoke and fire punching toward the sky.
Luke watched from two floors up, ears ringing despite the distance.
Not bad, he thought. Not bad at—
Something hit him from behind.
The attack came so fast that his conscious mind didn't register it. But his body—his new, demon-enhanced body—reacted on pure instinct. The Sparda bloodline came with combat instincts honed over millennia, reflexes that moved faster than thought.
Luke twisted, dodging what would have been a killing blow.
Instead of dying instantly, he only got sent flying through a reinforced security door.
The impact was... educational. Luke learned several things in rapid succession: that security doors hurt, that his demon physiology could survive impacts that would have killed a normal human, and that something very bad had just dropped into his life.
He looked up from the rubble, vision swimming, and saw the creature.
It was massive. Easily eight feet tall, built like a nightmare made flesh. Four limbs moved with predatory grace as it prowled toward him on all fours, muscles rippling beneath skin that looked wrong—too smooth, too pale, like something that had never seen sunlight.
Luke knew exactly what it was.
"A Hunter? Are you kidding me?"
The creature from Prototype. One of the Blacklight virus's more terrifying mutations—a bioweapon that could tear through tanks, shrug off conventional weapons, and spread a plague that had nearly consumed Manhattan in the game's timeline.
And his drop system had just spawned one.
As an enemy.
Oh, Luke realized with dawning horror. Oh, that's a problem.
He'd assumed everything that dropped was automatically allied to him. Riven and Skadi had appeared loyal, devoted, ready to follow his commands. It hadn't occurred to him that some drops might be hostile—that killing enemies could spawn other enemies.
The Hunter lunged.
Luke tried to dodge. He was faster now, stronger, enhanced by demonic blood and weeks of training. Against a normal opponent, he might have managed it.
The Hunter wasn't normal.
Its clawed hand caught him across the chest, sent him spinning through another wall. Luke felt ribs crack, felt blood in his mouth, felt consciousness trying to slip away.
Riven, he thought desperately. Skadi...
The world went dark.
The Hunter stood over its prey, ready to finish the kill.
Then it stopped.
Something was approaching. Something that made every survival instinct in its mutated brain scream danger. The Hunter turned toward the entrance, letting out a roar that shook dust from the ceiling.
Two figures stepped through the smoke.
"I'll handle the monster," Skadi said, her massive sword already in hand. "You check on Doctor."
Riven was already moving. "Be careful."
"Always."
The Hunter watched the white-haired woman approach. In its limited intelligence, it recognized a predator—something like itself, something dangerous. The instinct to fight warred with the instinct to flee.
Fight won.
The Hunter charged.
Skadi raised her blade.