The chains creak as he jerks forward, the iron groaning beneath his weight but refusing to give. His body follows the motion sluggishly, too stiff, too ruined. Something wet gurgles in his throat—a growl, or maybe just rot shifting in his lungs, useless as they are.

His face is frozen in something that might’ve once resembled a sneer—cheeks split wide, skin peeled back in jagged, uneven tears that expose the rotted muscle beneath. His lips have curled back, cracked and shrunken, dried into something more akin to leather than flesh, leaving his teeth bared in a gruesome mockery of his old arrogance. Strings of saliva stretch and snap as his jaws clench, teeth gnashing at empty air, desperate for meat.

His skin is worse.

Gray in places, yellow in others, peeling like cheap wallpaper over a house long abandoned. Where the virus has eaten deepest, his flesh has thinned, stretched tight over decayed muscle, almost translucent in the dim light. Some places have gone soft—like meat left too long in the heat—while others are dry, flaking in dead sheets that drift to the floor with every erratic movement.

And his uniform…

What’s left of it still clings to his ruined body, the old S.T.A.R.S. insignia barely visible beneath grime and dried blood. The fabric hangs in tatters, ripped wide by the Tyrant’s claw when it tore through his torso, leaving a yawning wound that never truly healed. Blackened veins spiderweb out from the damage, the virus desperately holding his body together despite its collapse. The infection is the only thing keeping him moving, wanting, hating. His throat rattles as he bares his teeth—yellowed, broken, but still sharp enough to rend. They do not let him near enough. The chains are too strong, the doors too thick, and that keeps him weak, starving, infuriated.

Then—footsteps.

His head jerks toward the sound, the movement too fast, a sickening crack of vertebrae. His body lurches before the restraints snap him back, forcing him still. He snarls, drool pooling at the corners of his lips, pupils constricting to pinpricks.

He knows this one.

The scent is familiar, a pattern in the endless monotony of rotting filth and cold metal. Not comforting—never comforting—but expected. A presence that stirs something bitter and resentful in what remains of his thoughts. The brain-rot hasn’t taken everything. Not yet.

His lips peel back over jagged teeth.

Not a greeting. Not recognition.

Just hunger.