TWO YEARS BEFORE THE OUTBREAK...

The floor around Ares was smudged red by his own blood, along with his pants and arms. Long scars covered the area where Bennington slit his wrists, one scar cleaner than the other. When he woke up, he was still strapped to a chair in the infirmary, but Schaefer and Bennington were nowhere to be found. Not even the laptop he was talking to Sarah through was there. Just two security guards watching over Ares like a hawk.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" Ares growled.

"Probably the worst father in England," one of the guards replied. "You do realize what Schaefer has done to your daughter, right?"

"What?!"

Feedback blared through the speakers in the room and the hall outside. Then came the sound of someone tapping on whatever was being used to record what was going.

Everyone in the room winced as soon as the screams of a girl exploded out of the speakers.

"Shut up, bitch!" Bennington yelled. "We haven't even done anything yet!"

"DADDY! HELP ME!"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" The sound of a gunshot followed the statement, but luckily no one died. It was only used to shut her up.

"Sarah..." Ares whispered.

"So that's her name," one of the guards added.

Out of nowhere, Ares began squirming around in his chair as he attempted to rip free of his straps. His muscles bulged out of his arms, and a vein popped out of his forehead as he put everything into escaping. And once the sound of ripping occurred from the strap tying down his right arm, one of the guards ran to stop him.

"Hey, what the bloody hell?!" he shouted. "Just make my job easier and stay put!"

"Let me see my daughter now or else!" Ares hissed, ripping the strap off the chair. His right arm was now free.

"Or else what, old man? Do your worst."

Hearing Sarah's cries through the speakers was motivation enough. Noticing that the guard had a switchblade in his pocket, he quickly jerked up and snatched it away from him. He then sliced through the other straps and jumped up from his seat.

"Why'd you let him take your knife?!" the other guard said.

The previous guard proceeded to charge at Ares. "You motherf—"

The guard was silenced after Ares jabbed his own knife through his throat before throwing him to the ground, leaving him to bleed out of the new hole in his neck.

"Where is she?" Ares asked, aiming the bloody switchblade at the other guard.

"I'm not scared of you, arsehole," the guard replied.

Ares looked down at the previous guard, who was now unconscious as blood gurgled in his mouth. He noticed a gun holstered in his pocket.

"You people are fucking idiots," Ares groaned as he casually leaned down and retrieved the gun from the corpse's pocket. He then opened fire on the guard, shooting him three times in non-lethal places.

Once the guard had slumped to the floor, Ares slowly approached him and pressed the barrel of the gun against his head. "So...where are they holding my daughter?"

"Go to hell," the guard groaned in pain.

"I'll let you do the honors of going first." Ares pulled the trigger.

Now armed with a gun and a knife, Ares ran out of the infirmary and sped down the hallway. He shot every guard he came across and took their ammo for his gun. The only human life that mattered to him now was Sarah's. Not even his own life meant much to him anymore.

"Where's my father?" Sarah asked, her voice bellowing out of the speakers through the halls of the facility.

"Knowing him, he's probably coming for you right now," Schaefer replied. "Let's just hope he finds his daughter and not just her lifeless corpse."

"What are you going to do?!"

"I'm afraid Bennington left his scalpel back in the infirmary. So I'm afraid we're gonna need to get our hands dirty."

"Wait! Please stay back!" The sound of a chair falling over was heard.

Ares approached the stairs. A scientist and a security guard waited at the entrance. He pulled out his gun and aimed it at the guard.

"Where is Schaefer?" he asked.

"How the hell would I—"

Ares pulled the trigger, and the guard collapsed to the floor with a bullet hole in his skull. He then aimed the gun at the scientist and repeated the same question with more hostility. "Tell me where Schaefer is or I'll blow your fucking brains out!"

"They're in the sleeping quarters!" she shouted.

"Which fucking quarters?!"

"Room 217!"

Ares holstered the gun and ran up the stairs, leaving the woman to her own devices. But he started losing hope as the sounds of something being pounded mercilessly echoed through the halls out of the speakers, along with the anguish present in his daughter's screams.

"DADDY! THEY'RE HURTING ME!" she cried.

"I'm coming, Sarah!" Ares shouted, still running up the stairs. Two more guards awaited him at the top of the stairs. He shot both of them, killing the first one and leaving the first one to bleed out.

Running faster than he's ever run before, he looked at the room numbers of each sleeping quarters until he found the right one.

222...220...218...

Directly on the opposite side of 218 was his final destination. Room 217. He kicked the door open and aimed the gun in.

The announcements on the speakers concluded with a long shrill scream of agony from Sarah before abruptly stopping with a click. And that's when he realized something. Schaefer and Bennington weren't in the room.

Sarah was dead and alone the whole time.

Her body lay in the bed on the opposite end of the room. Bruises and scratches were scattered all over her face and neck, and dry blood seeped out of her nostrils. Her skin was already pale and her eyelids barely closed over her eyes, covering only the top half of her irises. And the worse part was the fact her head was leaning to her right, which meant her cold dead eyes were staring directly into her father's.

"Sarah..." Ares croaked, finally breaking. He no longer cared about holding back the tears.

His emotional pain was only worsened by the physical pain that was a machete stabbing directly through his chest. The tip of the blade had penetrated underneath his sternum, and he could feel his blood drifting down his clothes.

But he no longer cared. Without Sarah, he felt cold and empty.

Schaefer pulled the blade back out and let Ares collapse to the floor. Alongside him stood Bennington, who held a hunting knife in one hand and a tape recorder in the other. Both of them flashed crazed grins.

"Sarah...I..." Ares attempted to speak. The energy and air in his body was escaping him. "How long...was she..."

Bennington clicked the play button on his recorder, giving Ares a quick preview of Sarah's fate. It was actually the same thing he heard earlier when he woke up in the infirmary: her cries for help and Bennington telling her to shut up.

"We killed her an hour ago," Schaefer replied, swinging the machete down by his side. "As soon as you blacked out, I made Poseidon go back to Lancaster, kill your sister, and kidnap your daughter. They were both crying when they came back. Even Artemis shed a tear."

"And before you ask, no," Bennington chimed in. "We didn't rape her. Just beat and choked the life out of her. She died a virgin."

"You...fucking..." Ares tried lunging at them but fell back to the floor in pain. The coolness of death overtaking him made him feel like he had frozen to the surface of the floor.

"Don't feel too bad," Schaefer continued. "Everyone who's part of this project is gonna die anyway. Your buddies Atlas and Hermes went down the garbage chute with the rest of the test subjects earlier."

"Why..." A single tear strolled down Ares's face.

"Honestly, it's not even because of the project anymore," Bennington replied. He kneeled down to the floor, holding the knife above Ares's chest. "Now it's because no one will be around to mourn you."

He proceeded to stab Ares all over his chest. Ares was already in too much pain to scream anymore. He couldn't tell if the coldness overtaking him was his disregard for his own life or the fact Schaefer stabbed him through his spine. All he felt now was the knife entering and exiting his body repeatedly, taking out more and more pints of blood with every stab.

I've been feeling dead even before this, he thought to himself.

After one more stab to his chest, Bennington looked back up at Schaefer. "Should we dump the two of them down the garbage chute with the others?"

"Nah, mate," Schaefer replied. "I honestly think it'd be more sentimental if we left them together. Plus, once the rest of them have been killed off, we'll ditch the place and head back to London."

"You're just gonna abandon a large facility like this?"

"Of course not. We'll be back with extra firepower."

The two of them made their way out of the room, leaving Ares behind to die in a pool of his own blood. Schaefer grabbed the door and slowly proceeded to close it.

"I'll kill you," Ares wheezed.

Schaefer raised his eyebrow. "What?"

"I'll...kill..." He couldn't finish. His last breath had finally left his lungs. His head slumped back to the floor and his eyelids slowly slid shut.

Schaefer chuckled. "Good luck with that."

And with that, he closed the door, leaving behind the corpses of a father and his daughter. Both dead on the same day and both killed without remorse or reason.