Rico looked at his grapple. He looked at the peaceful town below. He looked at the countdown timer now permanently etched into the corner of his vision.
His HUD flickered. A new message appeared, written in the same darknet font as the Lazarus Vector. just cause 3 zombie mod
The tethers hummed with a low, electric threnody as Rico Rodriguez stood atop the crumbling spire of the Cathedral of St. Gregorio, watching the sun bleed out over the azure waters of Medici. Below, the postcard-perfect town of Manaea was burning. Not from the Black Hand’s incendiary shells, nor from the Demons’ cluster bombs. It was burning from the inside out. Rico looked at his grapple
The tendril pulled. Rico fired.
He drew his revolver. Not the standard issue—this one was modded, too. The “Exorcist’s Farewell,” a single-shot pistol that fired a compressed fragment of a game save . One bullet, if it hit a critical node, could roll back a zombie to its original state. Kill the code, save the soul. His HUD flickered
Rico had one grapple charge left, a single parachute, and a Rebel Drop beacon that was sparking and spitting nonsense signals. The horde below was climbing the cathedral’s walls, using each other as ladders, their tethered grapples sinking into the stone.
Rico’s grapple shot out, sinking into the fuselage of a derelict cargo plane wedged into the cathedral’s bell tower. He yanked, propelling himself across the smoky chasm. Below, the streets were a moving carpet of the wretched. Farmers with pitchforks, their skin sloughing off like wet clay. Soldiers with half their faces missing, still clutching rifles that fired ghost bullets. And worst of all—the tether zombies .