Disclaimer: The following story is in no way an attempt to claim ownership of the franchises depicted. Hellsing is the Property of Kouta Hirano, its anime of Gonzo Studios and its OVAs of Geneon Entertainment. The Resident Evil game series is the property of Capcom, and the films derived from them the intellectual property of Paul W.S. Anderson. This story was written solely for entertainment purposes.
Author's note: Well, here it is, the first chapter of the story. For those unfamiliar, this is a rewrite I did of Hellsingfan101's story of the same name; she has since given me control of the story and the write to claim it for my own. Several differences will become apparent from her version for those of you who have read it; this takes place in my own mixed canon. You'll see what I mean in due time; until then, let the show begin.
Chapter 1 – Into the Darkness
Staring out the window of their vehicle, Sir Integra Hellsing's blue eyes fell upon a sign just as they sped past it, finding the description both intriguing and hopelessly boring. "Welcome to Raccoon City… Well, I suppose the Yanks were never known for creative genius at naming things…" Reaching up to her face, she then adjusted her glasses before returning her arms to their crossed state.
Not a single thing about this trip gave Sir Integra any sort of joy. Having told her she was working too hard, the rest of the Convention of Twelve had told her to get away to a place where she could unwind and take her thoughts away from the business of exterminating vampires. "Relax and unwind…? How the bloody hell do they expect me to relax in some backwater town halfway round the world?"
"Perhaps they believe the sheer boredom will lull your mind into the same dormant state as the locals," her servant vampire, Alucard, offered to her from the back of her mind. Sitting in the seat next to her, the vampire had his head down and his hat low over his face while he slept; even in that state, though, his mind remained aware of all that she was thinking, and from his tone he had the same opinion of their surroundings as she did.
Looking back towards their surroundings, Integra found herself eying all the small houses as they sped by them. Indeed, the area did seem quaint and peaceful enough, to which most people would have looked forward. However, the idea of something this still never sat right with her; after all, Cheddar had been a peaceful town before that Vicar had taken up refuge there.
"You have nothing to fear from this flea-bitten place, My Master," Alucard reassured his female superior, his tone now slightly more comforting. "For as long as myself, Walter and the Police Girl are with you, there will be no point at which you are in danger." Listening to his speak, Integra reached into her pocket for one of the cigars she had struggled to get through customs, and put it into her mouth, lighting it with a strike-anywhere match lying on the seat of the rental car.
"I certainly appreciate the sentiment Alucard," she responded, physically turning towards her servant. "However, that doesn't change my hostility towards this place or those idiots back in England one bit. I mean… I understand what they mean by a vacation; but do I really need to be sent away to another continent, and to the United States no less?"
"Perhaps they feared that in a place like Russia, Greece or Ireland, you'd simply try to hunt vampires vigilante-style," the servant offered, sounding amused and in fact creating a small smirk on his master's face. "They don't need you creating a mess for them or potentially harming relations with Iscariot, which we all know are tense enough. The only thing to possibly try and stop in America is prostitutes and meth dealers, which are none of their concern."
"Yes, I suppose that's the last thing any of us need. Too bad for you there's zero chance of getting to tussle with Anderson here. Not that I'm sure you won't get into enough fights with the locals though…" Alucard simply grumbled at this comment, while Integra smiled and looked out the window, rolling it down and enjoying the fresh evening air that rolled in.
"I think we've arrived at our hotel," Walter finally said, turning the van into the parking lot of a small but upscale-looking hotel just off the main drag. Surprisingly to both humans, there seemed to be nobody at all in the parking lot or in the main lobby within line of sight; but Alucard, now awaking slightly, chuckled and said, "Of course. Who'd want to come to a rural town in the Southern United States?"
"Apparently, a bunch of wealthy Britons and a disenfranchised Romanian Count," Walter snarked, opening the door and stepping outside towards the luggage area of the trunk. Stopping outside Alucard's door, he rapped on the window and told him, "I'll need you to get Seras and the Coffins inside." Raising his hat, Alucard then phased through the door and stood up, making his way back towards the trunk with Walter.
Opening her own door, Integra stood up and stepped outside the car, closing it behind her as she felt the first chill of the approaching night. Stretching her legs, she felt the circulation return after four hours of sitting in the confines of a cube van, even if it had a second row of seating for a larger crew. Hearing Walter and Alucard open the door to reach for their cargo, she walked towards the doors of the hotel and into the lobby.
Inside, she found the desk to be empty, with absolutely nobody there; no receptionist, no guests, no staff. Even the keys to all the rooms hung on the wall, the computers off and filing cabinets left slightly ajar. The only thing present was a sleeping black cat on the desk, half laying on a sheet of legal paper On the sheet, she soon found her explanation; though much was blocked by the cat, she could make out the last line of the text easily:
Due to this inability to pay bills in a timely and consistent fashion, this establishment is hereby put on notice that any further failure to pay will result in foreclosure. –Raccoon City Treasury Department
"Apparently, whoever owns this place decided to cut their losses and just leave; but why would a hotel like this have such difficulty with bills…?" Looking up overhead, she saw that the tubes were still in the ceiling, just not running; and as Alucard stepped in the door with the coffins slung under his arms, she conveyed to him, "It seems we are the only ones here… at all…"
"Really?" he asked, putting down the coffin which contained its fledgling and resting his foot on its lid. "Well… I guess that means exactly three things." Smirking, he started to count off in his right hand. "One: we don't have to pay for our stay at all. Two: we can each have our own room if we want." His face then went sour as he added, "Three, and this is the only bad one: no service."
"It also means that the power is off right now," Integra told him, waiting as Walter came in the door with the rest of the luggage on a cart. "I'll send you down to the basement once we're settled in to turn on the generator, so we have some power." Huffing on her cigar, she then pondered, "It does seem strange, though, that they would leave the doors to this place unlocked if they intended to cut their losses."
"Yes, that does seem rather strange," Walter responded, watching as Alucard put down his own coffin and hopped over the desk, reaching onto the pegboard wall and pulling out four room keys. "Not even those cards; actual room keys, with numbers on them and everything. How quaint." Putting two in his own pocket, he handed one each to Walter and Integra before jumping back over the counter. "You two may as well go and get settled in; the Police Girl and I will go set up the generator and get us some electricity. After all, Master gets cranky when she can't have her bath."
"Hurry up," Integra told her servant, grabbing her own two bags off the cart while she and Walter started off down the hallway. Both of them had keys labelled for the first floor, even in adjacent rooms; but Alucard and Seras had them on the next floor, just as he had planned. Tapping on the coffin lid with his foot, he read the back of the key while he waited for her to get up.
"Hmm… 'Property of the Umbrella Corporation'…They some kind of hospitality service or something?" he thought aloud, he stepped aside, thinking deeply and allowing his fledgling to open the coffin lid. Dressed in a set of street clothes – her orange jacket, red and white stropped shirt and blue jeans – the strawberry blond looked up at Alucard and stepped over to him, which he failed to notice until she tapped him on the shoulder.
"Master Alucard… this is our hotel, isn't it?" she asked innocently, still sounding tired from having just woken up after sleeping all day. When her master turned around, he nodded to her and reached into his sleeve, handing her the remaining key. "But… why is the power off here? And where are the other patrons?"
"Both excellent questions, neither of which I have the answer to," the head vampire answered, concentrating and causing his red fedora and orange sunglasses to phase off of his face. "Come; we have to go down to the basement and start up the generator, so we have some sort of electricity." Handing her the key, Alucard then started to sink straight through the floor of the building.
"Well, I suppose if it needs to be done…" Seras said aloud, following after her master and simply flowing down through the floor to the darkness below.
Getting into her room, Integra was actually not as unimpressed as she expected she would be from the state of the rooms. A King-sized bed, the sheets seemingly freshly washed and folded, sat in the corner of a large, well-furnished room with trimmings not dissimilar to her own living room. Turning to her right, she could see the powder room attached to her room, complete with a bath and shower units, a vanity with dual sinks, and everything else it needed.
Flicking on the switch so there would be light when the power came back on, she stepped into the centre of the room and opened the blinds, allowing the last of the day's fading light into the room. Sitting her luggage down on the surprisingly well-kept carpet, she took off her jacket and loosened her collar, allowing her neck and torso to breath.
Suddenly, with a quick flicker, the lights came on in the room, showing that Alucard and Seras had completed their job. Only a moment later, the sound of a phone ringing on the nightstand got her attention and she walked over to it, picking up the receiver. "Are you enjoying your accommodations, Master?" Alucard's voice questioned, allowing Integra a second to answer.
"I much prefer it to the cold darkness, regardless of your preferences," she responded, waiting for him to add something more. The then watched as her own shadow on the floor stretched out and became a writhing mass of eyes, which arose from the floor and solidified into the undead creature.
"Look on the back of your room key," he told his Master, prompting her to check the implement she had been given by her servant. Turning the main key over, she saw the passage which Alucard had pondered over. "In all my years, I have heard the names of many corporations, seen them rise and fall; and never once have I heard of Umbrella."
"Neither have I," she realized, putting the key down and sitting down on the bed. "Bring Walter and the Police Girl to my room, so we can all get our heads around the situation." Once she had given that command, she put down the phone and reached into one of her bags, producing a laptop and turning it on immediately.
Since she had left the device on hibernate, it loaded to its main screen in a few short seconds. Opening an internet browser, she typed the phrase 'Umbrella Corporation' into a search engine. The very first result to appear on the page was a link to the website for 'Umbrella Pharmaceuticals, Inc.' "That sounds like exactly what I'm looking for."
Clicking on the link for the page, she found nothing more than a standard home page for a medicinal company. Still, the idea did not sit well with her. "Why would a simple drug company own portions of a hotel?" Then she noticed a link at the top of the page for website members to log in; a database. Quickly clicking on it, she was brought to a login page which requested no email address, no username, nothing but a password.
Before she could get any further, however, she heard the sound of a knocking on the door, followed by the door creaking open. Turning around, Integra realized that in her focus on this company, she had failed to see or hear Alucard and Seras come into the room. Now, they had let Walter in and the three of them crowded near her bed, where she began to share her news.
"This 'Umbrella Corporation', whoever they are, seems to be a large-selling drug company in both the public and private sector. They supply plenty of information for their public projects, but they seem intent on keeping the public in the dark on the private matters. I'm going to see if I can hack into their databanks."
Nodding his reply, Alucard listened no further and made his way over to the window, where he stopped and glanced out into the waxing night with his arms crossed. For a few seconds, it was as though he had turned to stone, not a sound to be heard; but then, he suddenly asked, "Police girl, come here and tell me what you see…"
Responding quickly, Seras made her way to the window in a couple of seconds, standing beside the master and looking out into the streets. For several seconds her eyes scanned around for something anything, she recognised; moments later, she let out a surprised gasp which prompted Walter to ask, "What is it you two? What do you see?"
"Black vans… lots of them, going up to all the houses," Seras answered, forcing Integra to look up quickly from her laptop. Indeed, in the dimly-lit streets black vehicles pulled up and into the driveways of the local people, all of them with an eight-lobed insignia on their sides. "I think… I think they're from that Umbrella Corporation."
"What could all of this be about?" Alucard questioned, before stepping forwards and simply phasing out through the window. Taken by surprise, Seras' response was to follow her master in moving through the wall; and not wanting to be left behind, the two humans ran to the window as well. Walter then slid the window open and jumped through, waiting on the other side to catch Integra.
Once all four of them were there, a specific exchange caught their eye. A pair of men dressed in black suits and sunglasses were talking to an older man in a wheelchair. Upon getting closer, they could see that the chair in question was high-tech, supporting a laptop; and that the man himself was older, with greying hair, sullen-looking skin, and round-rimmed glasses.
"I'm sorry sir, but there's no other course of action given the situation," the four heard one of the black-clad men state to the paraplegic as they came within a few metres of them. "You have to be evacuated from the area ASAP, for your own safety and for that of others in the area."
"For the sake of public safety?" the Protestant Knight questioned, taking the weight of the words at face value. "What could be going on? Who is this man and what could be so important about him that they address him personally?"
"You can't ask me to leave this place without my daughter," the man in the wheelchair responded, looking back at the two men with fiery defiance. "She's everything to me, and I won't let you take me out of here without her."
"I'm sorry sir, but there's no other choice in this matter," the other of the black-clad men told him, grabbing the back of his chair and pushing him towards one of the open vans. The wheelchair's occupant screamed in defiance, telling Integra that something had to be done about this and instantly.
Responding to the concerned tone, Alucard jumped forward from the group and landed directly in front of the two suits, drawing his two massive pistols and pointing them at both men simultaneously. "Maybe it's different down here in the United States," he responded, watching as the two suits pulled out their own pistols and aimed them back at Alucard, "but where I'm from we treat other humans with more decency than to move them like cargo."
"And where is it exactly you're from?" one of the two suits questioned, pointing his gun directly at Alucard's head while the other was aiming his weapon at the vampire's heart. "Those look like some pretty heavy duty equipment. What kind of organization deals out hardware like that?"
"That would be my organization," Integra informed the two men, stepping closer with the other two Hellsing members on either side of her and drawing in their attention. Their guns immediately shifted to aim at her, but as they did so Alucard moved with great speed and silence so that he was between the men, his guns pointed directly at the sides of their heads. "Take one shot at me and my servant will fill your skulls so full of bullets, you'll be magnetic."
"Who the fuck do you think you are?" one of the suits asked, only to grunt as he heard Alucard's grip clench on the trigger of the gun pointed at his head. "Look, I don't know who you are or what you think you and your 'servant' are doing here; but this is a classified matter, and we won't let some stupid little bitch like you fuck it up for us."
"Stupid bitch?" Integra questioned insultingly, now looking as offended and bloodthirsty as her impatient-sounding servant. "How dare you talk to me that way? I am Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, one of the foremost officials in Great Britain. My organization and I deal with creatures on a daily basis that make my servant here look like a cat-petting schoolgirl, so don't talk to me about 'fucking things up for you'."
Suddenly, as it seemed Alucard was going to turn the two men into his latest casualties, the wheelchair-ridden man cleared his throat loudly and rolled himself forward so that he was looking her directly in the eyes. "Please, forgive the ignorance of these men, my dear," he said calmly and respectfully. "You say you are Integra Hellsing… the member of the Convention of Twelve?"
"You know of the Convention?" Integra questioned, pulling a new cigar out of her pocket and placing it in her mouth. Lighting the cigar with another match, she then asked of him, "Then you are no doubt aware of what role we perform for Her Majesty, and of the nature of my servant…" When the man in the wheelchair nodded in reply to her, before he turned to face the men that had grabbed him earlier.
"Gentlemen, I feel that Sir Hellsing is of high enough authority to me made privy to our operations, along with her cohorts," he told the men forcefully, signalling to them that they were to comply without exception. Sensing that the situation was winding down, Alucard lowered his weapons but kept them in his hands, hanging at his sides in case anything else happened.
"But sir…" one of the two men pleaded, both of them likewise lowering their weapons. "Sir… we have very clear orders from the higher-ups not to disclose any information to outside parties, regardless of their dossiers. And quite frankly, I don't see how you can even make that decision of her having just met."
"No gentlemen, I am the leader of this project," the paraplegic retorted, his tone becoming strong and authoritarian. "There is nobody higher up than me with regards to this matter, nobody else you two will answer to. I may be a cripple, but I'm not letting some suits in an office building dictate how I operate God damn it. I'm putting my foot down… so to speak. Now let them into the van and let's get a move on."
Nodding reluctantly, the two suits helped the man into the back of the van, followed by Integra, Seras and Walter closely. Alucard was the last one into the van, walking backwards with both guns outstretched in case anybody else decided to mess with them. As the door closed and the van started off, Integra extended her hand formally to the man and told him, "Thank you for allowing us in on this, Mr…?"
"Ashford," the man told Integra, shaking her hand firmly and making a polite smile. "Dr. Charles Ashford."