The air throughout the facility had turned putrid, enough to make any living thing turn up their nose at the stench; blood, burned metal and something oddly-sickly sweet.

Alone stood amidst the wreckage, all six arms coated in crimson, not all it's own. The creature's heavy breathes cutting through the silence left in it's wake. While two pairs of working eyes flicker around the massacre that had took place at it's hands. Walls painted with the remnants of the men who had made the beast.

Four men having walked into the facility on a mission to shut down the twisted operation inside. One creature coming out the other side.

In a fashion, Alone supposed that it had completed the mission. Even if not quite as intended. Even if it, he, they, were different now...

He remembered it all. Mission going south, being apprehended, the blinding pain. But worst were the screams, his own and theirs, until they finally became one. One voice, one body, one being. Finding a new forbidden strength in a form that wasn't entirely human anymore, breaking free from his containment and surviving on instincts alone. A rightfully brewed storm of agony, rage and despair.

However, now that rage had subsided, and with the mission finally complete there was a long walk home ahead of them.

Yet, when Alone reached base, the reaction was immediate. Guns raised, orders barked and fear thick in the air.

They may have returned home after being MIA nearly three months, but it appeared home no longer wanted them.

Alone's three heads turned, the two working pairs of eyes scanning the faces of the soldiers they once knew. Friends and brothers-in-arms. Now staring at them as if they were a monster. Which they supposed they were now.

And as the creature took a step forward, the humans took a step back.

"Stand down, no need for that," Alone rasped, their voice... wrong, somehow. Like four voices mashed together at once. The head with the broken jaw slurring its speech. All six hands clenching when not a single soldier lowered their weapons. After all, why would they when facing an unknown threat? So, Alone tried again. "It's us. Price, Ghost, Soap, Gaz... what's left anyway."

The chuckle that followed was bitter and humourless.

But, at the familiar names spoken, a single figure pushed out from behind the armed wall.

You.

The rookie of the 141 Task Force, the one left behind on that particular mission after it was deemed you needed more training. You had potential and the squad had taken to you fondly.

Who could have known that one decision to leave you behind had saved your life? If you'd have gone with them, you'd have been just another soul trapped in an already overflowing body.

You could scarcely believe your own eyes. Your team who'd long since been presumed KIA, the men you'd trained with and considered family, stood before you as a horrifying being. Four men mutilated and twisted into one creature.

But... it was still them, right?