Last Command: Special Forces Against The Dead

"Sir, we're receiving reports from St. Catherine's Hospital. Mass casualties. Something's wrong with the patients." Commander Ethan Cross didn't look up from the tactical map spread across the Raven Base operations table. His steel-grey eyes traced supply lines with clinical precision. "Define 'wrong,'" he said quietly. The communications officer, Jensen, hesitated. His hand trembled slightly as he adjusted the radio headset. "They're attacking the staff. Biting. Tearing flesh. The hospital director says it's a riot, but the descriptions don't match standard civil unrest, sir. He's requesting military support." Ethan exchanged a glance with Captain Aurora Kane. She stood with her arms crossed, emerald eyes fixed on the same map, her jaw already tightening. Three years of working together meant she understood his silences better than most understood words. "How many casualties?" Aurora asked. "Unknown. Communications went dark forty seconds ago." The room fell silent. Twenty-three soldiers of Shadow Legion stopped their work—checking weapons, reviewing protocols, preparing for whatever came next. Uncertainty hung heavier than ammunition. Ethan straightened. "Get me a live feed from any available news station." Jensen's fingers flew across the keyboard. The main screen flickered to life—a news anchor sat rigidly in the studio, her professional composure cracking at the edges. "—multiple emergency calls flooding 999 services across the city. Hospital staff report that patients admitted early this morning with flu-like symptoms have become aggressive and violent. Police are responding to the scene. We're warning citizens to avoid the St. Catherine's area until further notice. Authorities say it's likely an outbreak of a new strain of flu, possibly hysteria amplified by—" "Hysteria," Aurora muttered. "That's what they're calling it." The news feed switched to a chaotic street scene. Emergency vehicles surrounded the hospital's main entrance. Police officers in riot gear formed barricades. But it was what they were barricading against that made Ethan's breath catch. A figure stumbled out of the hospital doors, moving wrong—joints bending at angles they shouldn't. The figure's skin was mottled grey, lips pulled back from teeth. It screamed, a sound that didn't match anything human, and lunged at the nearest officer. The officer fell. Blood sprayed across the concrete. "Jesus Christ," Mason Reed breathed from across the room. The heavy weapons specialist had gone pale. "What the hell is that?" The news feed was cut to black. Static filled the speakers. Ethan felt Aurora step closer, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. Her voice, when she spoke, was steady as a sniper's breath. "That wasn't hysteria." Jensen's hands shook as he scrambled for alternative feeds. "Switching to BBC News, Sky News, local cameras—" Every channel showed the same story. Different hospitals. Different cities. All reporting the same thing: patients becoming violent. People dying from injuries that made no sense. Authorities denying everything and blaming panic. One feed showed a woman attacking her own daughter. Another showed a man with a chunk of his shoulder missing, still moving, still hunting. A third showed a military truck speeding away from the hospital district, leaving civilians behind. "Get me General Hammond," Ethan commanded. "He's not responding, sir. All command lines are—" Jensen looked up, his face ghastly. "All command lines are routing through the Joint Task Force. It's taking a while." "How long?" "They're... they're asking what you want to report, sir." Ethan's jaw clenched. He'd served under Hammond for eight years. The man picked up his phone within seconds of Shadow Legion calling. Unless he was being blocked. "Tell them we've received multiple civilian distress calls from hospital districts across Blackstone City. Tell them we're requesting permission to mobilize rescue teams." Aurora moved before Jensen relayed the message. She was already pulling up the armory status on her tablet, fingers working with the economy of motion that meant she'd predicted his orders three steps ahead. "Sir," Jensen said carefully, "the response is... General Hammond says to stand by. Says there's no confirmed threat level yet. Authorities are handling it." "Authorities are ten minutes from being overrun," Aurora said flatly. Ethan watched another feed. A police barricade collapsed as dozens of the infected poured through. Officers firing at point-blank range, rounds hitting target after target, and still they came. Still they moved. Still they hunted. "What are they?" Noah Brooks, the team's medic, had moved to stand beside Ethan. His voice carried the clinical detachment of a man trained to process horror. "I've never seen trauma responses like that. The joint flexibility, the movement patterns—" "Doesn't matter what they are," Aurora interrupted. "They're spreading. Look." She'd switched one of the screens to a city map with emergency call data overlaid. Red dots represented incidents. There had been twelve when this started. Now there were forty-seven. And they were spreading outward. "Lena," Ethan turned to their drone operator and communications specialist, "access the hospital security feeds. I want to know how this started." Lena was already typing. Her fingers moved in a blur across two keyboards simultaneously—a skill that should've been impossible but wasn't. "On it. Pulling hospital records now. Dr. Chen's group were brought in overnight. All admitted with respiratory symptoms. All from the same location." "What location?" "Classified facility. North Industrial District. No civilian records. Military designation." Lena's eyes widened. "Sir, these patients weren't civilians. They were experimental subjects." The room froze. Aurora's hand found the hilt of the tactical axe at her belt—a habit when tension spiked. "Project Lazarus?" No one answered. Because no one was supposed to know about Project Lazarus. It was a black-ops program, off the books, compartmentalized beyond compartmentalized. And now it was walking through the streets of Blackstone City, hunting civilians. Ethan's tactical mind spun through scenarios, calculating response times and resource allocation and casualty projections. Every number was wrong. Every variable was catastrophic. "Jensen," he said quietly, "call General Hammond again. Tell him Shadow Legion is mobilizing for civilian rescue operations in the hospital district. We're moving now." "Sir, he specifically said to stand by—" "I heard what he said." Aurora was already moving toward the armory, gathering her team with sharp hand signals. Mason checked his machine guns. Noah triple-checked his medical kit. Victor and Hayes were suiting up, loading demolition charges and tactical gear with the synchronization of soldiers who'd practiced this exact scenario a hundred times. Ethan watched the screens one more time. The infected moving through the city streets, growing in number, growing in coordination. And somewhere, buried deep in the data, General Hammond's silence—which was answer enough. This was bigger than a containment failure. This was intentional. The radio crackled. "Shadow Legion," a voice came through, calm and measured and absolutely wrong, "stand down immediately. This is a direct order from Joint Task Force Command. Return to barracks. Do not engage. Await further instructions." It wasn't Hammond's voice. Aurora looked at Ethan across the operations room. And Ethan made the choice that would change everything. "Negative, Command," he said into the comm. "Shadow Legion is mobilizing rescue operations. Those civilians need help." The radio went dead. Thirty seconds of silence stretched like infinity. Then the alarm system began to wail.