Thicker Than Water
Chapter 1
Screaming in anger and in pain, Albert Wesker watched the helicopter he was holding on to with his tentacle-like arm. On board that chopper were his nemesis, the cursed Chris Redfield, and his new friends. And of course, the woman who he had controlled with P30, Jill Valentine was in there too.
Suddenly he saw to rockets been sent to his way, and for a moment he was afraid, of which he chimed himself right away, as he was the man who was to become a god of a new world. He was still wondering if he could survive this. He felt the strength given by Uroboros virus fading away in the heat of the volcano.
And the solution his nemesis had given him, twice, had made him weak by affecting his virus as if it would be poison. But it had been a while ago, and he felt his strength coming back. He only hoped it would be back before the rockets would hit him.
The rockets were the last thing he saw before darkness took him into its cold embrace.
From her hiding place behind stone formations near the place Wesker and his nemesis had fought at, a young woman watched as the rockets hit the one time STARS captain and Umbrella researcher. She wanted to rush in right away, but she couldn't go, not yet. Not the damned chopper being so close. She didn't want the BSAA to know about her. Not yet, at least. She had been observing Wesker ever since he finished the Uroboros, and she had had the feeling she would have to save his skin at some point.
She checked if she had what she needed for rescuing her 'brother'. As soon as she had found out that the bomber was going to crash near or in this volcano, she had chosen the proper gear for the job. Her black, tight fitted suit was cooling her body nicely, even though her neck and area of her chest right below it weren't covered by it. Her boots would keep heat out just long enough for her to do what she was planning to do. Her utility belt was carrying healing items, such as First Aid Sprays and different kind of herbal sprays. It also held a grappling hook in a gun that would send it towards her transport.
Speaking of which… She saw that BSAA chopper was already far enough, so she could call her own to the site. She pressed the little button on her headset's earpiece. "Phoenix to Raven, do you copy?"
A man's voice replied immediately. "Raven here. It's a go?"
She replied to him as she began to move towards Wesker, jumping from floating stone to another. "Yes. Remember to hurry, timing is important."
She got an affirmative and picked up speed. Almost there. She felt the heat of the lava, but kept going. After what felt like an hour, she reached him, and saw that he was very badly hurt. Rockets had apparently hit some of the Uroboros parts, but she knew he wasn't out of danger yet. So, she grabbed him by his mutated arm, and pulled him off the lava.
She jumped to a nearby floating stone, and raised her gaze to see her transport, a chopper no smaller than BSAA one, to move closer. Its pilot lowered it a little, and waves his hand. That was her signal. She grabbed the hook gun, and fired the grappling hook. It hit its target, and she held the wounded man tight, as she allowed the gun's mechanism to pull them both up. As soon as they were close enough to the chopper's open side door, she basically pushed him inside, climbing in herself as soon as he was in the chopper safely.
She slide the door shut and turned to her pilot. "You came just in time, my feet were already burning."
He turned to give her a sheepish smile, before turning his attention to the view in front of him. "Sorry about that, I had a little trouble getting this bay in the air. You're okay?"
She took off her boots. "These things were already starting to melt."
"And him?"
She turned to Wesker, and noticed something odd. "The Uroboros… It's withering away, as if…" She hit her forehead with her palm. "Of course! The virus is weak to fire, so it's dying. After all, this guy was in a volcano, chest deep." She checked him quickly to figure out how badly he is wounded.
To her relief, his own virus was already recovering from the overdose of the solution that stabilizes it. Many of his wounds were already healing, but to help his virus, she grabbed a can of First Aid Spray, and used it on him.
When done, she put the can aside, and turned to her pilot again. "Johnny, what's the ETA?"
He turned his head towards her just a little. "In fifteen minutes. Will he make it?"
She smiled, even though neither man could see it, other looking away already, and the other being unconscious. "His virus recovered faster than expected, and his wounds are already healing. We still will need to put him in a capsule with a revitalizing gel in it."
The facility they arrived at was well hidden underground. The area they landed looked like a piece of rock, but in reality, part of the 'rock' began to open, revealing a landing pad that began to descend as soon as their chopper had touched it, and its engines were shut down, and when they were far enough from the opening, the metal plates lowered back to their place to hide the entrance.
As they got off the chopper, they were greeted by the facility's head researcher and a handful of guards. The head researcher, David Stevens, was a tall, stern man, who was feared and respected around the place, even though his balding grey head made him look not much more than an aging man, who would retire any moment.
She didn't fear this man, and only respected him because of his intelligence and knowledge of virology and microbiology. She almost hated him. Even though she had learned to see the good of what he did to her, she had never forgiven him the fact that she didn't give her a chance to choose herself. She thought that the few good things aside, his actions had ripped her off of her humanity, and she could've died back then, as so many of her 'siblings' had.
She glanced at him coldly. "What a nice surprise. The head researcher himself decided to come and greet us."
She knew he wouldn't miss her dry tone. "Hold your tongue, girl. I'm here to see if you really succeeded."
She glared at him. "Of course I did. I wouldn't fail. And could you stop calling me a 'girl'? I might've been youngest of my 'family', and look young, but regardless, I'm not a girl anymore."
He seemed to ignore her, and instead, he motioned the guards. "Take that man to my lab. The gel I invented should help him heal."
The guards took him off of her supporting hold, and to her own surprise, she allowed it. Maybe she just wasn't mood for any more arguing, not today. Besides, she needed to change clothes.
She was drying her blonde hair after a shower and a new set of clothes while watching her own reflection from her tall mirror situated on her closet door. She had chosen to wear light blue shorts and a light purple spaghetti top, with white sandals. The clothes revealed number of reddish burns on her skin, but she didn't care. After all, Wesker wasn't the only one who survived of an injection of experimental virus. Her virus was healing her wounds pretty well.
She left her hair a little wet, and put the towel aside. Meeting her reflection's red gaze, she was once again reminded the virus' effects on her body. Her eyes had been green, now they were red. However she didn't have cat like eyes, like the ones her 'brother' had. She also had increased strength and speed, added with accelerated healing. And unlike her 'brother', she didn't need anything to stabilize her virus, as it had been stable always. But those weren't the only effects. The one she had learned last was that she wouldn't age. She looked now just as she had looked like when she had been given the virus. She wasn't sure if she liked not aging or not. She didn't mind looking young, but the down side was, that many called her a 'girl', even though she was older than they were…
She turned away from the mirror and left her quarters. She shut the door behind her, and started walking towards the medical areas. She wanted to know how her 'brother' was doing. She had so many questions she wanted to ask from him. She just hoped that he would be fit enough to answer them as soon as possible. If he even decided to answer her questions. She knew what kind of person he was, he did what he wanted, and rarely what others wanted him to do, especially after the Mansion Incident. That was when he injected himself with the virus.
A small grin formed on her lips. She wasn't much different. Maybe it was in the 'family'? She had met only few of her 'siblings', and all were like that. Of the rest, she only knew their names and that they were dead now. Well, she knew that only one who was still officially, so in Project's records, alive was Alex. His location, however, was unknown. It also wasn't confirmed that he got the virus.
She arrived at the medical bay, and walked directly to a set of horizontally laid glass tubes, each big enough to hold pretty tall man. Wesker was in the middle one, partially submerged in a pale pink gel. This gel was produced from the same flowers that produce the Progenitor virus. This stuff helped body to repair tissue damage by increasing rate of cell regeneration.
By the containers she saw the head researcher, gazing down at Wesker, and making notes to his papers. She walked closer. "How is he?"
Doctor Stevens didn't even look at her. "Better than expected. His wounds are healing wonderfully, but he's still unconscious." Now he lifted his gaze at her, his eyes checking her arms and legs. "You've got burns."
She shrugged. "They'll heal by tomorrow. When he's going to wake up? Any ideas?"
He checked the screen next to tube. The screen was meant to show the vital signs, including brain activity. "In couple of hours, I think. Why?"
She glanced at Wesker. "I've got so many questions I want to ask him."
He shook his head slowly. "You need patience, girl."
She sent a glare at him for using the word 'girl', but couldn't say anything before her cell phone beeped. She took it and saw that she had a message. She opened the message and frowned. It was from Chris Redfield. She had met him for the first time after the Mansion incident. He only knew her first name, and that she worked for Umbrella. Not much else. And he had never seen her red eyes, because she had always, before coming here, wearing either sunglasses or colored contacts.
She remembered their first meeting. The day after the incident she had been at the Raccoon City police station, where she had been actually hoping to meet Wesker, because she had wanted already then to find out more about the Project, and she had heard that the STARS captain was part of it too, even though, as she found out later, she herself was the only 'child' who knew about the Project. She had been hoping then that he would know. But she hadn't been able to talk to him, since he was missing, and suspected being killed during the incident.
As she had been heading out of the station, she had heard how someone had been arguing with one of the higher ranking police officers about Umbrella and its Tyrant project, demanding that the matter had to be investigated. The other man, as she had known, was on Umbrella's payroll, so of course he had denied, claiming that respectable company like Umbrella wouldn't have done things like that.
She had watched as the one who had been demanding the investigation had turned away from the other man, and marched out. She had decided to follow him, wanting to find out how he knew about tyrants. She had tailed him through a few streets, and after following him to a side street, she had almost bumped into him.
She had tried to back off, but he had grabbed her arm. "Who are you? Why were you following me?"
She had glanced around them and finding they were alone, she had pulled her arm free. "I'm Laura. I heard you mentioning tyrant. I wanted to know how you know about it."
He had glanced at her bag. "You're from Umbrella?"
She had nodded. "Yeah, but I'm not a big fan of the company."
He had sighed. "Alright. I know a quiet place nearby, we can talk there."
The quiet place had been a small, very empty café nearby. They had ordered cokes and took the table by the window. Then the man had introduced himself. "I'm Chris Redfield, and I was part of the STARS team that was sent to the Arklay Mountains after we lost contact to other team that had been sent there to investigate those cannibalistic murders. In there we were attacked by creatures that were as if they were walking corpses, but also weird dogs and something… else. There was also this creature that attacked and killed our captain, and then went after Jill, another STARS member. She mentioned that the creature was a Tyrant."
She had felt her eyes widening and she had almost cursed. "So the virus is really out."
He had frown at her then. "Why don't you tell as much as you can?"
She had nodded. "The company is developing viral weaponry. T-virus was supposed to be used at least to create BOW Tyrant. BOW stands for Bio-Organic Weapon. I'm not entirely sure what BOW's are planned for, but I wouldn't be surprised if they would be sold to highest bidder."
He had looked thoughtful. "And the virus? How did it spread? Can we stop it?"
She had sighed. "Someone who hates Umbrella set it free, infecting people at the research facility beneath the Arklay mansion. This was on May. From there, probably via sewers and rats and mice, it spread to parts of Raccoon City, infecting people here. Those who are infected are the ones killing and eating people. As for stopping it, there is an anti-virus, but it must be given early enough to prevent infection."
He had narrowed his eyes. "You're being quite talkative. Aren't you worried that the company will do something to you if they find out?"
She had shrugged. "I'll be okay, I have an influential friend in the company."
After Raccoon City outbreak she had met him again, when he had asked her about Umbrella's facilities elsewhere. He really had wanted to bring the company down, and she hadn't minded helping him. It was, in fact, him who told her that Wesker was alive, and had some superhuman strength. She had guessed that it was because the virus, but she hadn't told him that.
She returned back to the present time, and read the message. He said he wanted to meet her, to discuss of something that had happened recently. She could guess, what the something was. She looked up towards the head researcher. "A friend wants to meet me. Hopefully you won't need me here for a few hours. He's not far from here."
He waved his hand. "Won't matter. Just be back by evening."
She glanced at Wesker one more time before replying to the message, that she wasn't far from the BSAA base right now, and that she would meet him there.