Resident Evil: The Hades Memoirs
Annette Birkin – Devotion
Annette reclined against the metal wall, wearied head resting, hands clasped firmly around the compact semi-automatic pistol. It was a lifeline to her, the last vestige of self-control that remained. With it, she could defend herself, keep herself alive, and do what she had been trained to do - survive. All Umbrella assets received that training; Chief Administrators, like herself, Head Researchers, like her husband - they were all vital to the corporation. And in their perilous line of work, they could not afford to have employees that didn't know how to protect themselves.
Now that the company had forsaken them, she would turn that training against them and live.
With William's transformation having reached the point of no return, with Sherry missing, with the U.R.C facility in utter turmoil, it was all that she had left.
Fatigue made her eyes droop, made her head swim, made her thoughts scatter rebelliously through her disordered mind. She needed focus; she needed discipline. She checked the magazine of her weapon, running through the familiar motions with the efficiency of a well-oiled machine. She couldn't even count the number of times she had repeated those same movements over the course of the last week; they had become habitual, even comforting. Completing them meant that she was prepared, ready for whatever awaited her.
Pushing off from the wall, she turned her thoughts to her next course of action. Central Control would be her destination; retaking command would be her aim. Despite the chaos that had overrun the facility, and the various changes it had undergone since the outbreak, she still knew its layout with unparalleled intimacy. Her goal was not far, though getting there would be dangerous. There were carriers, turned to hungering, shambling corpses by the infection in their blood, and worse stalking the sterile passages.
Restraining her breathing, she used her pain and her frustration as the fire to melt away the frost of exhaustion that was slowing her. Adrenaline was a thing of the past; her body had no more to give her. Instead she could only use determination to salve her weary muscles and restraint to sharpen her reflexes. Her feet thumped rhythmically on the metal floor, her flat-soled shoes practical and unostentatious, much like the rest of her attire.
Her lab coat was tattered, stained with dirtied water; her shirt and trousers were filthy too. Beneath, her pale flesh was bruised, and all of it from the last twenty-four hours, when she had first dared to leave the lab.
A shriek went up behind her, warped and inhuman, the cry of a creature she knew as a Licker. She spun, handgun rising in her grip, eye focused along the barrel, just as she had been instructed, and watched as it appeared. It crawled around the corner on all fours, rigid cups of exposed muscle allowing it to adhere to the ceiling. Across its entire form, bare sinew glistened crimson in the hallway's luminescence, slavering maw loosing thick strings of drool as its elongated tongue flicked between its pointed teeth. Above its gaping mouth, a globe of hardened tissue shielded its primal proto-brain; she had seen the mass atop its skull sustain a shotgun blast at close range with only minor damage.
Filled with animalistic aggression and the beginnings of sentient cunning, it was a formidable, often deadly, foe. Against it, her 9mm was practically worthless.
She fired at it, knowing that the sound would alert it to her presence, if it were not already well aware of where she was. Metal slugs burst on its slick flesh, blood spraying across the corridor, and it let out another ear-splitting roar. It charged towards her, snarling through its fangs, and she tracked its movements with her weapon, some shots thudding into its body, others bouncing ineffectually from the roof. It leapt, twisting smoothly, and landed on the wall, before diving for her, talons outstretched.
Her foot caught on an uneven piece of flooring and she cried out as she fell backwards, a stray bullet exploding a bulb and plunging one section of the corridor into darkness. It sailed over her head, landing in the shadows, its claws scraping sparks from the metal as it turned back to face her, the illumination showing her its vicious features, realised in flickering strobe. She flung herself against the wall, back slamming flush against it, and aimed her gun into the black. It was only then that she noticed the slide sitting back, the chamber empty, her magazine dry.
The creature let out a predatory hiss and began to stalk towards her, its bulky arms emerging first into the light, followed by its grotesque head. It approached, searching for her, and she pulled her legs into her body as quietly as she could, hoping that it would not brush against her as it crawled past. She held her breath, hand creeping to the inner pocket of her coat, where her ammunition was kept.
Its eyeless face stared into her own and she knew, with a certainty, that it could sense her. The length of virus-treated muscle that it used as a razor-sharp whip rolled out from its mouth, spilling saliva across the ground and then onto her leg, soaking through her trousers. Its breath was foetid and stank of death, thick with the stench of the rotting meat it had feasted upon, and she would be its next meal.
Before it could pounce, however, a gloved hand emerged from the gloom behind it, holding what looked almost like a crossbow. The string snapped taut and a bolt stabbed through the monster's back, plunging neatly between two ribs and into the heart beyond. It let out a wounded shriek and sagged to the floor, writhing in its death throes, before slumping lifelessly to the ground. Thick, scarlet gore dribbled from its open mouth and a pool began to spread from the puncture wound in its chest, caused by the exiting arrow.
A woman stepped out of the darkness and over the Licker's prone corpse. Her hands worked with trained alacrity at the handle that wound back the bowstring, before she removed another bolt from the harness she was wearing and loaded it. With that, she snapped on the weapon's safety and let it hang from its strap on her back, alongside the grenade gun that rested there. At her right hip was a Browning HiPower, and opposite that was a combat knife buckled into a sheath on her thigh.
She wore a pair of thick, leather trousers, the kind with kneepads sewn into them, typical biker dress, and a black t-shirt beneath her equipment. Her grimy, dark hair was tied back in a simple ponytail, away from her young, slender features.
"Annette! Oh god, I'm so glad to see that someone else made it here," she greeted, offering her hand to the fallen Administrator.
"Thank you," she replied, accepting it and allowing herself to be helped back to her feet, "Claire, wasn't it? Where is my daughter?"
"She's in the security office on the first floor. Annette, she's too sick to move; I found her in the sewers and she seemed fine but now she's complaining of stomach cramps and vomiting. Something's really wrong with her, and I don't know what to do. You've got to help me."
"It would seem that William got to her first," Annette informed her grimly, brushing past her and hurrying on in the direction that she had originally been moving as she reloaded her pistol, "we must give Sherry the antidote before the embryo he implanted in her body pupates, or she will transform and die, just as he has."
Is there an antidote?" the other woman asked her, voice tight with anxiety, following close behind.
"Before he lost his mind completely, William returned to this laboratory and used his own bodily tissue to look for a cure for the G-virus. He knew that, once the transformation was complete, he would search out his own genetic material to bring about G's evolution; he did not want to leave Sherry to the mercy of the infection. We worked tirelessly for a week as the situation both here and in the city above worsened, but we were successful."
"Do you know if it works?"
She didn't answer. In truth, there was no guarantee of the antigen's efficacy. It had neutralised both the mutative and infective nature of G-cells during its trials, but she did not know how it would work within the human body. She believed in William's science, however, enough to entrust the life of her daughter to it. Even in his dying days, he had been brilliant; her genes had granted her a mind that, though not on par with his, could at least appreciate his genius, and genius it had been.
"It will work," she said eventually, all hesitation gone from her voice as they approached Central Control, the automatic door hissing upwards before them as they entered.
The room looked much the same as she had last seen it twenty-four hours ago, when she had left the lab to collect Sherry from the police station. They walked past the immense server banks, humming quietly behind the steel bulkheads that protected them from damage, to the monitoring station. There, dozens of screens displayed images from around the facility, and an intercom network allowed communication with each area. Annette had controlled the U.R.C installation from that chamber.
They walked past the huge terminal, and she spared a moment to search for the feed from the security room, where her daughter was sleeping peacefully. Seeing her now, on the brink of death, she wished that she had acted sooner, and fled the city while the option had been available. But her obligation had been clear; they could not leave humanity unprepared for G. If Umbrella were able to salvage one cell of the virus, and they would surely try, there would need to be safeguards in place.
They had prepared the anti-virus, both for William's peace of mind, and for the world's salvation. Now, it seemed, it would be the thing to save their daughter also.
"Leon!" Claire exclaimed, drawing Annette's attention to a second screen, this one connected to a maintenance tunnel near the facility's generator room.
The man standing in that passage was familiar to her; in fact, she could see the bloody wound in his shoulder from where she herself had shot him. It had been accidental but, she believed, also justified; anyone who protected the agents of Umbrella after what they had done to her husband deserved to die. He had been injured trying to defend a spy working for the company, an oriental woman wearing a red dress; for all she knew, he too was operating on their behalf, as her partner.
"You know that man?" she asked her own companion, voice terse.
"He's a police officer with the R.P.D, a rookie; he saved my life just after I arrived in town, before I knew what was going on here," the brunette responded, her voice betraying how pleased she was to see the other individual alive, "my radio doesn't work down here; is there anyway to contact him from this room?"
She considered the question. If the man did work for the corporation, she wasn't certain that he could be trusted. On the other hand, from what she had said, he simply seemed to be a victim of circumstance, in the wrong place at entirely the wrong time. Perhaps, then, the same was true of their confrontation in the sewer; perhaps she had been incorrect in her assessment of him. After everything the other woman had done to help her daughter, if he was an ally of Claire's, then he was an ally of hers.
"Here, the public address system," she said, gesturing to the microphone mounted on the desk and the row of switches beside it, before tapping one button in particular, "hold this down and you can speak directly to him. You should be able to hear him through the cameras."
She nodded, leaning forward and clearing her throat compulsively, before calling his name. His reaction was immediate, his shotgun snapping up in his arms instinctively at the loud noise, before he glanced around, searching for her. The blonde leaned forward and punched a switch on the terminal, allowing them to pick up sound from that feed, and immediately his voice emitted from the speakers, tentatively yelling out to her.
"Leon; I'm in the facility's Central Control room," she told him, "I can see you on the monitor. Listen, Sherry's sick; I'm with her mother and we're going to look for a cure together. I need you to get Sherry from the security room by the freight elevator and meet me at the train platform on the lower level; that's how we're going to get out of here, okay?"
"Sounds like you've got this all figured out," he responded, "but the elevator here doesn't have any power running to it."
"You're close to the generator room," Annette said, leaning over to speak into the microphone, "you'll find a way to reroute power to that sector from there."
"That Sherry's mom?"
"Yes; please, help my daughter."
"I'll do my best. Claire, I need to find Ada. Can you see her from where you are?"
The younger female began to search the monitors, and Annette realised that he had been referring to the spy. She considered, again, the possibility that he was more than he seemed, but he didn't seem old, or bitter, enough to be one of Umbrella's hatchet men. It was entirely more likely that he simply was what he seemed to be, a young and naïve police officer, doing his duty to the survivors he had found in what remained of his jurisdiction. He was looking for her under the mistaken pretext that she needed, or deserved, to be saved.
"Don't waste your time on that woman," she said, addressing them both, before turning her attention to Leon, "she isn't what she appears. She was sent by the corporation to steal my husband's research, when their first expedition failed. Trust her, and you won't live to regret it."
"I don't care who she works for; she's hurt and she needs my help. I'll find your daughter, but I'm not going to abandon someone in this madhouse."
"Then all I can do is wish you luck."
"Yeah, stay safe, Leon," Claire added, before releasing the button for the microphone and shooting her an appraising glance, "what was that about?"
"Ada Wong can't be trusted, and your friend is a fool," she said bluntly, "but I admire his resolve and his compassion. I simply hope that his sense of duty doesn't blind him to the truth."
Her partner nodded, none the wiser, but seemingly no longer interested in prying. Time was of the essence; they both knew that. She checked her Glock, ensuring that it was primed and loaded, as the other woman drew her Browning and did the same. They nodded to one another, a nonverbal understanding.
They moved into the adjoining corridor, the one that would lead them to the laboratory, the place where her husband had spent days and many sleepless nights toiling over his creation. In a way, it was easy to view the virus as some form of malicious sentience, reaching out from the primordial ether to enslave his mind and put him to work in its creation, just as it had enslaved his body to ensure its propagation. She realised, suddenly, that she felt anger for it, and at herself for being so ridiculously, illogically emotional.
It wasn't alive in any real sense. Certainly it wasn't sentient enough to create such a Machiavellian scheme, particularly even before its genesis. Only human beings, like those in Umbrella's upper echelon, were capable of such intrigue.
But as she rounded the corner, she saw the hulking shape of the abomination that her beloved William had become under the virus's corrupting influence and her hatred blossomed anew. This time, however, it was not the infection, the unthinking, unreasoning cells that were transforming him, that earned her ire. It was the corporation that had stolen away his life with research and then rewarded his loyalty with death; they had forced that transformation on him and she hated them for it.
They ducked back behind the metal wall, Annette gripping her pistol tightly, Claire swapping her low calibre weapon for the bulky grenade gun. Though her weapons would be more than a match for any zombie, or even the Lickers, but it wouldn't help her against a fully-grown G-form. She seemed to realise that, even as she readied herself.
The beast stood, immense, malformed shoulders rising and falling rapidly, while the ragged form of a ridiculously oversized moth lay twitching at its feet. The vicious bone claws that sprouted from what remained of its right hand glinted in the light, slick with the same putrescence that was oozing from the insect's wounds. The mutation was not yet complete; the monster still retained some of its human form. In fact, some of the clothing that he had worn on the day of his death yet remained, albeit in tattered shreds that hung from his huge frame. The creature's left side had burst them at the seams as it grew to match the part of him that had first been infected.
With it standing between them and their destination, she realised that they would never make it to the lab.
She slid the bulk of the Glock into the harness that she was wearing beneath her lab coat, keeping it hidden beneath the white cloth. With that, she made to move around into the open space beyond where they were hiding, only for her companion to grab her roughly by the arm and jerk her back.
"What the hell are you doing?" she hissed, fingers digging tightly into her flesh through the material of her clothing, "are you crazy?"
"I will lead William away," she whispered sadly, "you must collect the vaccine from the laboratory and save my daughter."
"Annette, no; he'll kill you!"
"Most likely, yes," she confessed, "but I'm tired, Claire; I don't have strength enough to keep fighting. You must be the one to protect Sherry, and ensure that the anti-virus finds its way into the right hands. Umbrella want G, and if they get it they will use it to increase their power through the suffering of others; that was not my husband's intention. They cannot be allowed to have it; do you understand?"
"It doesn't have to be that way," the dark-haired woman insisted, "for god's sake!"
"Please, give me the opportunity to sacrifice my life for a noble cause for once," she pleaded, "if I'm going to die, let me do so for my daughter."
Their eyes locked, the smouldering intensity and certainty of purpose in her own azure gaze locking with the almost wild desperation in those opposite. And then, slowly, the other female uncurled her fingers from where they gripped her sleeve. Silently, Annette thanked her with a nod of her head, before steeling herself and turning back to her grim task.
The monster was still standing over its conquest when she emerged behind it, but it seemed to sense her presence as she approached. It let out an animal grunt, the bulbous eye growing from its shoulder swivelling in search of new prey. She called his name, watching as it turned to face her, and then saw the true extent of its transformation.
William's face remained, the flesh that had once covered his skull warped and stretched across its stomach, while its head had grown into a smooth, chitin dome, narrow eyes glaring dully out from it. As its arms grew, bulging with misshapen muscles and knots of pulsating veins, two more appendages had begun to grow beneath the skin of its midriff. The bony new limbs had almost finished pushing through the epidermal layer and would soon be ambulatory.
It advanced on her, raising its clawed hand with the intent to rend her to pieces, and she backed away from it, calling out his name as he lumbered forward. She was a woman of science, but in that moment she prayed that there was something of him that remained deep inside, some part of him that remembered her and their love. The beast that he had become did not seem to retain those memories, however, the swollen, hate-filled eyeball growing from the top of its arm focusing its fury on her.
As it pursued her into the passage that led to the mainframe room, she saw Claire emerge from the other corridor where they had been hiding, hurrying quickly to the laboratory's entrance. They shared a glance, each of them stricken with fear and despair, each of them resolved to do their duty.
"William, please," she begged, as her back collided with the wall, "you have to stop. Remember me."
It froze in place, talons poised to cleave her apart, and then something happened that left her stunned. The staring eye rolled in its fleshy socket, folds of skin closing around it like a giant eyelid, clamping down around it. Its arms fell limply at its sides and it stood vacantly before her. Paralysed and trembling with fear, it took her several moments to realise that it had not, in fact, killed her.
She watched as the face that it wore upon its stomach, her husband's death mask, twitched, muscles straining beneath its stretched epidermis, and then its mouth moved. It expelled a breath that stank of rot, a reedy death rattle that its lips transformed into a weak rendition of her name. To her ears, it sounded like the most sweet of symphonies.
"William!" she said, relief rushing through her, before sobriety took over and she stepped towards him, caressing the distended outline of his cheek, "oh William, they have used you to create a monster. Where you saw only progress for all mankind, they saw a money-spinning tool to be used for their own ends. A mind as beautiful as yours was never meant for a world so ugly."
He let out another choked gasp, this time sounding more like a wordless moan of despair than any true sentiments. A drop of dark blood oozed out at the corner of his eye and trailed down his warped features, a single tear for his miserable plight, and she wiped it away for him, smiling despite herself. One last, fleeting moment with her beloved was more than she could have ever hoped for.
But fleeting it was. William's face let out a groan, twisting into an expression of anguish as his body convulsed and the colossal eye rolled out from its fleshy cocoon. It twisted, strings of sticky fluid drooling from its surface, and then turned to focus upon her, the pupil at its centre narrowing. She called his name, panicked, but the second of sentience he had managed to recapture was gone, leaving her alone with the beast once again.
She felt his claws transfix her torso before she had even realised what was transpiring, spears of bone impaling her through the stomach and chest, pinning her to the wall. The pain stole her breath and, for a moment, there was silence between them. Then, he withdrew his arm, letting her slump limply to the ground, hands clutching at the wounds in her sternum that soaked her front in blood. Tears beaded in her eyes, as much from the misery as from the agony.
He let out a roar, his malformed head falling back, bellowing skywards, even as the face on its belly let out a cry of its own, the two of them screaming in unison. And then it turned tail and fled, charging back through the door to Central Control, its body wracked with the spasms of further transformation as it did.
Annette lay bleeding, unable to move, unable to even breath. She realised that it was very possible that one of the talons had pierced a lung; either way, she knew with a certainty that she was dying, struck down by the abomination that her husband had become. Thoughts bubbled up through the anguish, surfacing in her tormented mind. There were so many things she wished to say, to Claire, to Sherry, before the end, wisdoms and affections that she wished she had shared sooner.
With nothing more to do, she turned her eyes to the laboratory's doors and waited for her companion to return, hoping that it would not be too late.
And she was still watching and waiting when the dark-haired woman returned to the corridor, clutching her Browning in one hand and a vial of translucent fluid in the other. Seeing what had happened, she ran to the fallen administrator, kneeling down beside her.
"Annette; I've got it," she said, smiling broadly, obviously proud of her achievement, and happy that Sherry, the one they had come together to save, would live, "I got the anti-virus."
But when the blonde did not respond, she realised the truth and her face fell.
"I'll let your daughter know that you loved her," she continued, reaching up to close her eyes, "I'll let her know what a good mother you were."
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