Bloody Man

The brothers spent the other half an hour left in the meeting room talking more seriously about what is the best things to do for the mission.

After their time was up they decided to meet up again in four hours to do one last talk over until the mission. Jason went to a small public rest area for M.E.G. members. Jack went with Nick to hang out with friends and brag about their new assignment. As for Harry, he decided to get as many hours of sleep as possible before he has to be on edge all the time.

Four hours later they met again for Jason to make sure everyone had a good understanding of the level they were going to.

Finally, after six hours since the start of the meeting, the group went to the resource department and got a cart full of mostly food supplies and medical supplies. As they were on level 11, all they had to do was get to level 13 through a simple building, then make it to a M.E.G. designated tear that leads directly to level 21 where the real difficulty starts.

Level 11 is a modern city with skyscrapers everywhere being one of the levels that look the most normal ignoring the Facelings and Hounds that live here like regular people and dogs.

Level 13 is a regular apartment building that is only made dangerous by the rare cases where entities are randomly found within the rooms.

After one hour of walking and making it to the tear, the group did one final check on all the supplies and their own body before walking in holding on to each other.

The space warped and twisted until a hotel-looking hallway appeared in front of them. The hallway had purple wallpaper and white doors with gold trim. The lights seemed to be gold and extremely fancy.

"If I saw this fancy of walls every day I wouldn't mind it at all!" Jack was the first to laugh happily at the change of environment.

"At least better than level 13 with the infuriating diamond pattern being brown and creme colored all the time," Harry grumbled quietly.

Before any other talking happened Jason quickly stopped them, "We need to focus up since we can meet anything here. Clickers can be our friends telling us of possible enemies. Let us first get all these supplies to the center before we can talk and joke about it. Ready?"

The group quickly calmed down and prepared to start the exploration of the level.

"Alright, Jack you will go up front and shoot anything you have to, as long as you haven't become rusty having not shot your gun at entities for such a long time. As for Nick, you stay in the back to warn us about all possible enemies coming from behind. Harry and I will stick to the center." Jason quickly reminded everyone of their positions one last time.

"We heard you the first time, so let us just work on what we already know." Jack groaned and got into the specified position to start moving.

So started their slow march to the center of the level. With the medic and leader in the center pulling the cart of supplies, the close quarters swordsmen at the back, and the gunner at the front to deal with anything that needed shoot first ask later.

Half an hour later the first of the clicking started. With a quick look around the corner, the first entity the group encountered was a slithering snake that looked like a Garter snake. The entity was quickly killed by a gun.

Jack spoke up in disdain, "I hate Paralies."

Jason looked at the corpse and spoke, "Paralies. Control the mind. Dangerous if the wanderer is alone since it can only have temporary control over one person at a time to enter the body one person. You should really save more bullets, even if one of us got controlled for a short duration, another one of us could kill it quickly."

Jack didn't say anything and just kept walking. Jason couldn't do anything so he just shook his head and kept walking.

After another half an hour the group had run into two Clickers with only one having an entity around being a regular Hound.

Another hour passed without any eventful entities around with only two small groups of different entities one of them being Wretches and the other being Hounds. While walking a soft clicking sounded and just like usual Jack peeked into the corner.

Suddenly he yelled, "LET'S GO! We need to get moving!" Without a word more, Jack started to sprint forward and disappeared around the corner. The clicking from before had also stopped, but no one had noticed it since they were too distracted by Jack sprinting without warning.

Jason yelled, "Nick get moving and see what he was talking about! I'll stay with the cart here and wait for you guys! Harry, it is your choice whether you want to go with Nick!"

Nick on the other hand didn't hesitate and started to run ahead to see what Jack had seen. Harry on the other hand only paused for a moment before he also began to run past the corner following Nick.

Jason also decided to wait there on the corner, to be able to get a clear view all around. Around the corner was a hallway that looked the same as the hall they had just come from. From the corner, one could see how long the hall was and Jason could see only his two brothers reaching the end of the hall before disappearing around the next corner.

Harry and Nick ran around the corner and still didn't see anything, but just assumed it was because the hall was shorter than the previous hall.

They turned the next corner and saw nothing... then the next... and the next... nothing... next?

Two turns later the out-of-breath brothers finally saw someone! Suddenly excited again they ran to the person in the distance only for him to fall down before they could reach him. As they got closer, the brothers could tell it was definitely not their bother they had just found. When they saw him they still had some hope that they were just seeing their brother strangely, but as they walked they saw knew it wasn't him.

Stopping a few meters away from the man they saw he was heavily injured and had a strange glowing vine in his hand like he was using it like a cane. He had a bow and a quiver without arrows. A sword sheath without a sword, and holding onto a small six-inch dagger. The man was extremely bloody and had bones obviously broken in many places. All of the man's clothes were torn to the point of them being called rags instead. On the man's back was also a bag that was completely torn open revealing a single bottle of water and a small amount of bandages.

After stopping for a moment more Harry spoke up, "He might know what happened to Jack? He will die in an hour at most if he doesn't receive medical treatment. Judging from the blood stains he has been bleeding out for hours and has only done some very basic coverage of the wounds. Should we do anything?"

Nick was silent for a while... after five minutes he finally spoke, "We have no other real option. You are the doctor of our group so you begin to patch him up and just in case I will tie him up with my hoodie. I'll go get Jason to bring the rest of the medical supplies here so you can save him."

Harry nodded, "Hurry I need the supplies here within half an hour to really make a difference. I can tell he will probably live since he is still alive even with all these injuries on him now."