Mud sucked at the soles of his boots like the whole country was trying to keep him here. HUNK ducked beneath a rusted archway wrapped in half-dead vines, rifle at the ready, visor scanning the dark for anything with too many limbs. Luis Sera's corpse hadn't even cooled when he found it. Leaned up against a metal grate underground the massive castle like a broken mannequin.

Objective: Retrieve Luis Sera. Status: Man's in pieces.

"Every time," HUNK said aloud, his voice muffled under the mask. Not like anyone was around to hear it unless he counted the Plagas cattle lurching around a mile out. Every infected farmhand, zealot and butcher's boy in this province wanted a piece of something warm and screaming. And he was just the right temperature.

His shoulder throbbed as he moved—bruise from a crossbow bolt earlier. Didn't matter, pain was just rent for being alive.

He leaned against the rough beam of a half-collapsed barn, checking the timer on his wrist. Extraction window was toast. Satellite showed escalating activity eastward—likely B.O.W. deployment. Someone else wanted the mess Luis was carrying. Too bad now all they were gonna find was ruined meat.

Second time. Second fucking time the target's dead before he got there.

Birkin had bled out from 6 bullet holes from his incompetent partner and now Sera. What was it with Umbrella scientists and dying just before HUNK could drag them out of their mess and into his?

Grim Reaper, they called him. Yeah. Pretty fucking ironic, wasn't it? Everyone dropped dead right before he showed up. Like fate didn't want to give him the satisfaction.

He kicked a metal bucket aside, letting it clatter uselessly. Didn't care about noise now, the job was blown, the client would spin this however they wanted—call it sabotage, call it hostile interference, maybe even try to pin it on him. Wouldn't be the first time.

Now he had to get the hell outta here. What a waste of fucking time.