The Brutality of a Tyrant
Alexia was dead. The hive was crumbling. Pretty soon, the entire facility would be a smouldering pile of rubble, and he and Claire would be homeward bound.
Time to go. Time to leave. Let's move.
He jumped the stairs and hit the landing below on his bum leg. It buckled under his weight, almost sending him crashing onto his knees. He grabbed the rail, steadying himself. Then, he was up and moving again, down the second flight, two steps at a time.
The dungeon where he'd left Claire was shaking itself apart. The walls split like hungry mouths. Tongues of fire licked out, scorching the brick. He covered his head, ducking the flames and falling masonry, pulling his uniform shirt up over his mouth. There were shapes ahead, through the smoke.
Claire. And Wesker.
"No, no! You son of a bitch!"
She called his name. Wesker shoved her through an open doorway, keeping her arm clutched at the small of her back. There was nothing he could do but follow.
He skidded at the corner, found his feet, and then darted into a passage he'd never seen before. Wesker was gone, and Claire with him.
A figure lunged out of the shadows. One to the left. Two more to the right. More zombies.
The first was close enough for him to push his Glock to its forehead, close enough for him to be sure he wouldn't miss. He put its useless brain on the wall and spun, dropping the second with a shot through the left eye.
The third had enough time to lunge at him, but by then it was just the two of them. He sidestepped, splitting its skull at the temple with the butt of his pistol. It staggered into the wall and collapsed to its knees, looking up just in time to take a bullet to the forehead.
Claire called for him. Even over the rumbling of the installation's collapse, he heard her.
He cleared the corridor at a sprint, passing crates, a forklift, a dead foreman, and hit the door hard. The world changed. The heat and stench of death vanished, leaving cold, clear air in its place. He'd run out onto a dock. Cranes, cargo and heavy machinery stood at the quayside, flanking a frost-clad submarine waiting in the water.
And there, on the pier, was Wesker, holding his sister by her wrist and a fistful of hair.
"How good of you to join us, Chris."
He ignored him, but kept his Glock trained on his forehead. "You okay, Claire?"
She nodded, as far as his grip would allow. She didn't look it. Her free arm was black from shoulder to elbow. Her clothing was shredded and bloody. A cut in her hairline had turned her features red.
He wrenched back on her scalp. She cried out, struggling against him. Nothing she did had any effect.
The last time they'd spoken, the man behind her had been a hero. Now he was a traitor, a sell-out. And as far as Chris could tell, he wasn't anything close to human.
"I must confess, I had not anticipated this outcome. It would appear I had overestimated Lady Ashford's abilities."
"Alexia's toast. Her and her hive. There's nothing left for you here now."
Wesker's lips split into a smirk. "On the contrary. I have Lady Ashford's patient zero."
Chris didn't know what he was talking about, but it didn't sound good. Claire seemed to understand. It looked like her heart was going to break. "Chris, he's got Steve."
Wesker twisted her arm hard enough to make her legs buckle, but he kept her upright when she staggered.
"My employers went to considerable expense to fund this operation, and expect a return on their investment. To that end, he may prove useful."
He lowered his head so that he was breathing into Claire's ear. Chris felt his jaw tightening.
"Perhaps his death will be no more permanent than my own."
She shuddered, trying to get away, but he was keeping her pinned against him. The look on her face was somewhere between fear and revulsion.
Chris growled. His sister was in the hands of his worst enemy. All he could do was stand there, impotently clinging to his Glock like that would keep her alive. He had to do something, bait him, get Claire away from him. Anything.
"This is between you and me," he said, "and I'm right here. You don't need her, so just ... let her go."
"This moment has been six months in the making, Chris. You will forgive me if I choose to savour it a while longer."
"What the hell are you waiting for? An invitation? Let's go. You and me. Right now. Let's finish what we started."
Not enough. He's not biting.
"You remember, right? The Arklay Mansion? I watched you die. Gutted like a pig. You were pathetic. And I blew that piece of shit ultimate life form of yours to kingdom come."
The words were coming in a snarl now. That mission. It had ruined everything. Almost cost him his life, and Jill's. Killed a dozen good men. Ended his career as a cop.
And he was still feeling the effects. In his body. In his mind. In everything he'd done since he'd gone to ground. It just didn't seem to end.
"You lost, Wesker. You thought we were just lambs to the slaughter, but we beat you. STARS beat you. You failed."
When Wesker spoke, his jaw was rigid.
"As you wish."
He let Claire go. She stumbled forward. Chris's heart gave a leap. She was free.
And then Wesker's gloved fingers burst through the front of her shirt.
Her eyes widened in shock. Her lips cracked and dark blood poured out of her mouth.
"No!" Chris screamed, "no, no, no!"
He threw himself at her, arms outstretched. He'd catch her. He'd save her. She'd be okay.
Wesker ripped his hand free and let her collapse. She slumped to the frozen concrete before he could get to her. He hit his knees and started scrabbling towards her. She had to be okay.
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her into his lap. Her blood was soaking into his pants, but he didn't notice. Her face had gone so pale already. He tried to wipe the red off her chin, but just smeared it instead.
Everything was so cold all of a sudden. His fingers had gone numb. His stomach felt empty, like everything inside him had just dropped out.
Was she dead? Was Claire dead? His sister? His only family? Dead?
He was breathing so hard that his head was starting to ache. Dark spots crackled across his vision. He tried to control himself. Every breath he released turned into a growl that made his windpipe ache.
"No," he spat, like denying it would make her live again, if he could just convince himself this wasn't real, "no!"
He laid her down, trying to stop his hands from shaking.
He looked up. Wesker was staring back, face impassive. Not a single hint of remorse. Not a crease in those features to show that he felt anything.
"Bastard!"
Chris lunged, bellowing obscenities, his fist swinging for Wesker's face. He jerked away, the blow missing him by inches, and then a punch to the stomach doubled him over. A hard knee slammed into his jaw and threw him onto his back, and then a kick sent him skidding away across the floor.
He rolled over, sucking in oxygen and shaking his head, trying to take his clarity back.
His hand was still locked around the Glock. He forced himself up onto his knees, squeezing off shots that speared through the misty air. Wesker sidestepped every bullet, impossibly fast. Then his fingers closed around the barrel.
Chris pushed off with his back foot, fist rising in an uppercut. Wesker intercepted his arm, wrapped a hand around his elbow and met his gaze. They wrestled, arms locked, a tight grimace mirroring absolute passivity.
"I expected more from you, Chris. At the very least, I had hoped for sport."
He wrenched the Glock around, jamming it into Wesker's gut. In the second it took him to pull the trigger, the gun was pointing skywards. He fired, again and again, until the clip ran dry and the slide snapped back.
A stinging blow to the forearm shook the pistol out of his fingers. Then, Wesker's palm slammed into his jaw. He staggered back, struggling just to keep his feet under him, and crashed into a crate sitting at the water's edge.
Scaffold poles rattled to the floor. He grabbed one from the top of the crate and swung for Wesker as he came close, all the anger and frustration rising out of him in a roar. But he missed. The other man stepped out of reach once, then again, then a third time, faster than Chris's eyes could see.
His posture was casual. Not combat ready at all. That just made him angrier.
He swung for the fences, a home run with Wesker's head as the ball. He caught the bat like it was nothing, like the impact wasn't strong enough to shatter his hand. Chris tried to wrench it free, but a boot to the gut threw him into the air and dropped him on his face metres away.
"My failure was merely a necessary step to achieving my goals. Humanity's limitations are no longer a concern to me. A pity that you cannot say the same."
He shook the drone of crazy talk out of his head and pushed himself back to his feet. In a second, Wesker was in front of him, jabbing at his throat. He reeled away, retching as his windpipe convulsed.
A hand balled in his hair, jerking him upright. He swung blindly, fists bouncing against Wesker's chest and jaw. They were both hard as granite and immovable. The blows split his knuckles through his gloves. Then a straight punch to the midriff sent him cannoning back.
He crashed to the floor, tumbled over and over, and then lay, clutching at his gut. A vice had clamped down around his chest, broken ribs winding the pain tight on his lungs. He couldn't catch his breath.
Wesker was laughing somewhere behind him. Laughing.
He gripped the anger like a crutch, letting it bear him up. If he didn't do this, for Claire, for Jill, for Barry and Rebecca and his dead colleagues, it'd kill him every night for the rest of his life.
He threw himself at Wesker, fumbling his combat knife out of the sheath buckled to his shoulder. He'd turned away, distracted by something, maybe the facility's impending destruction. He buried the blade between his ribs, sinking it to the hilt in flesh, through muscle and into his heart. A backhand sent him skidding away. His back hit something soft. It took him a moment to realise it was Claire.
"You're just another one of Umbrella's pet freaks. Just an experiment," he growled.
Wesker glared at him, hand moving to his back where the knife was lodged.
"I am more than that, Chris," he said. Then, without a moment of hesitation, he pulled it out. He bled like a human. The steel came away crimson-slicked. But he didn't even wobble. The wound should have killed him. Instead, it was like a splinter. "So much more."
No! What do I have to do?
He stood up again. He wouldn't be beaten. Wesker had to die. This battle couldn't end any other way. Or he'd keep killing, keep destroying lives. It was on him, like it had been since the beginning. He had to finish this.
Wesker appeared before him again. He swung, but lost his fists in two powerful hands that began, slowly, to crush them. He struggled, kicking at the other man's legs. A low roundhouse caught him hard in the weak knee. The joint popped. He clamped his teeth around the scream as his leg folded under him and he hit the floor.
Wesker let him fall. He landed in a pool of blood next to his sister.
"A decidedly sub-par effort, Chris," he said, "I hope for your sake that next time is different."
His eyes widened. He was walking away. Leaving.
The fight wasn't over. Not so long as they were both still breathing. He started dragging himself along the floor after him.
"Get back here ... you son of a bitch. Don't ... walk away from me. This isn't ... finished ... yet!"
He rolled over, knowing he'd need to fix the leg dragging limp behind him. He wrapped his hands around the cap, jutting out from his knee at an angle, and then twisted it back into place atop his leg. He stifled the cry for as long as possible, but in the end it forced its way past his teeth, filling the room. It popped into place with a jolt of pain so fierce it sent him crashing onto his back, shaking from head to toe.
Then he was on his front, dragging himself up onto his feet. It hurt, but held.
Wesker was almost at the sub. He didn't even turn to see Chris hobbling after him.
"I'm not done! I'll find you! You hear me! I'll find you!"
Now he turned, eyebrow raised, lips curled in a subtle sneer.
The room shook. Something exploded in a chamber next door. Chris clamped his hands over his ears and Wesker did the same, mouth opening in a cry that was lost in the overlapping thunder of detonations. His powers were turning on him, his improved senses his new worst enemy.
The wall of the dock split open. One of the facility's cooling towers crashed into the room, splitting apart as it fell. Too close. He backed away in the split second he had before it exploded across the deck, cutting their battleground in half with a wall of flaming debris.
The heat hit him full in the face and he crashed to the floor, rolling over and over. Then a wave of hot, choking grit washed over him.
He gasped for breath, struggling through the pain and the thickness of the air. He could feel his skin bubbling and blistering across his cheeks and forehead. His jacket and shirt were clinging to his chest, burned on, hot as a branding iron. They'd been flash-fused into his flesh.
He pushed himself onto his knees. There, beyond the curtain of flame, was Wesker, his image distorted by a ripple of heat haze. His eyes glowed, brighter than the fire reflected in them.
And then he vanished. Out of the picture. Out of his head.
He saw Claire, an island of gore-soaked serenity amid the anarchy erupting all around him. He had to get her out. He wasn't going to let this be her resting place. Not here, with the monsters and the psychos.
He picked her up. Threw her over his shoulder. Then, he started running, as fast as the fatigue and the pain and the burden would allow. He bared cracked teeth as he raced back through the dungeon.
I'll kill you, you bastard.
Her blood seeped through the material of his shirt, mingling with the sweat on his back. He could feel it creeping over his skin like a hand, sending a shiver shooting up his spine.
I'll find you.
He clung tight to her still-warm body. She hung, limp, an empty shell that had once contained his sister. Sobs started to rasp out between his lips, his chest convulsing painfully with each gasp of air he took. He ached, inside and out.
I'll kill you.
He snarled. "I'll kill you."
-x-x-x-x-x-
A/N: Not that I have anything against Claire, you understand. It's just that Wesker letting her go has always been one of those areas where his character failed. Shak has always thought so, and so she asked me (when I asked her if there was anything she wanted to see me write from Resident Evil) to write the ending of Code Veronica as it should have been. She also helped me tune up the ending for publishing. I think it's a lot better now. Let me know what you think. Wesker as a brutal and ruthless sociopath? You like?