Please enjoy.
12.08.2012 I edited the thoughts to be italicized instead of being indicated by a single apostrophe '...' *
*revised on 23.09.2014
Chapter One: Silly Games
With the felling of the last zombie Lynne collapsed against the wall and brought her bloodied hands to her face, half-restraining and half-supporting her silent screams. Tears of justified hate and loathing flowed from her weary eyes as she was repulsed once more by the terror clutching at her heart... and the fact that it was dying.
Her hands were smeared in desolated flesh as she shook the last bits from the key she'd fought so hard for. Lynee wiped her face with the sleeve of the coat Albert Wesker wrapped her in - white with small frills on the front along the zipper. Lynne stretched her skinny jeans and tapped her insoled flats. They were still a bit tight. And new. She readjusted her breasts, unfamiliar with the laced push-up bra that bore them. He even got the measurements right... Who would bother to take the time for such trivial things? Releasing that from her mind she wiped an absent hand down her tank top. At this moment she must focus on surviving, on playing and winning this ridiculous game. Yes, this little playground will not be the end of her. Shuddering at the last few thoughts of self-pity Lynne resumed - she couldn't rest now: there were four more stages to go through.
Stuffing the extra clip into her coat pocket Lynne firmed her grip on the handgun. "Seven shots left..." she reminded herself out loud. This was the only form of self-soothe she had in her array of tactics of mental survival. It was a good thing, it was key to organizing her thoughts and remembering things that might keep her alive. Alive...
With a turn of the key she retrieved, Lynne lightly pushed open the door intent on finding any monster. Holding her breath she peered through the space and saw one shambling zombie circling a group of desks that had remained fairly intact. Well no, this was all arranged. It was an illusion and yet the wear on the walls were very real and... Distractions. What was the purpose of the room? Distractions! That zombie needed some hard love and she was pressed to give it to him. "What else is in here though...?" she thought solemnly, fearing that Albert should have another... more fearsome creature, perhaps an actual B.O.W. A familiar click-clacking brought a horrible realization. Immediately Lynne reflexively pulled the door completely shut and braced it for two hounds were battering against the door, scratching at it ferociously and she bit fear as the door began to cave in. Shit, shit, shit, shit! Lynne's mind screamed. She was in panic mode again, her hands fumbling with the door and with the handgun. Seven rounds... Seven rounds before I have to reload... The thought soured her expression. "I guess... I don't have much of a choice." Before the door gave way, Lynne braced for one final lunge and ducked out of the way, finger itching.
Click! Click! Click! Four more times. Empty. But it relieved her to keep pulling the trigger, keep hearing this sound.
"Aaaahhhh..." sighed the zombie as it fumbled through the door, tripping over the dogs as its head arched towards Lynne. Faithfully she dug out the last clip and slammed it in, killing the monster in one shot. It wore a t-shirt decorated richly with a band's logo - one that she didn't exactly recognize. It was, by now, tattered full of holes and bloodied almost beyond recognition with a pair of jeans that were falling off of its body, a chain clinking on its side. Humans. They were once human, they once had a life and now... now it had all gone to shit, the world was decaying, the world itself!
"Fuck!" Lynne shouted out, reveling in the sudden outburst. She laughed at herself and removed the key, amazed that it was till intact.
The room was much smaller than she had originally anticipated - the main feature was the group of desks with files and office supplies scattered about, the screens blank or toppled over. Lynne began searching, eyeing the door that had been outfitted with the next task. It only took a moment to inspect it and realize it needed some kind of key card to unlock, one that she currently did not have. As she shuffled through the contents of the desks, file cabinets and through all the papers she was heavily reminded of when she first met Wesker.
Her fingers found something familiar: it was her security clearance, her ID tag from when she worked as a researcher for Umbrella. "I didn't take you for the sentimental type Albert." It was mostly a joke to herself - Albert was in no way sentimental. But how had he gotten a hold of this particular ID? Lynne had lost it multiple times, try as she might to keep it in excellent condition there were a few tell-tale nicks on the corner from she had used it to unlock her door... Which is what gave this one away. "It should have burned..." The memory of the fire blazed across her mind. With one hand she shuffled a view through her fingers, smiling slightly. "It's all in the past, isn't it?" Curious Lynne inspected the lock once more and saw that there had been a few modifications. Rebooting the scanner she flashed her ID tag and to her amusing surprise, the door unlocked.
Lights flickered on to reveal a clean white room and an observation table with an unmutated body resting upon it. "A sick game..." His face looked much like Jon's and perhaps this was Albert's way of keeping up the mind fuck. She took a deep breath and withdrew the sheets, slightly aghast at the number of incisions on the body. Several notable ones were made in just the thorax alone and one down the abdomen, the skin pinned back to reveal the organs hidden underneath the muscular tissue. A tray had been laid out beside the table containing a single tool: a scalpel. "This isn't a Silent Hill game Wesker. Or Saw."
Lynne ignored it for the moment being and decided to inspect the two other doors. One was sealed shut, requiring some sort of key card yet again and the other was so sorely impacted that it probably wouldn't have opened without some show of brute force. "Force I don't possess." Sighing she wondered if anything in particular had been hidden inside the body and that's why the scalpel was there. "Of course it is." What the hell was Lynne supposed to do? Carve it up until she found some sort of key?
A horrible screech filled her ears. "What the...?" She had never heard it before and the ground began to shake every few seconds. "What the hell is that?" Thud! Thud! Pulling up her sleeves Lynne decided now wasn't a good time to be shy and had at the body, tackling it from all sorts of directions unsure of what to think of the previous display. All she knew was those footsteps were creeping ever so close and she hoped that she wasn't around to witness the cause of them.
"What the fuck is this?" It was a small vial with a needle attached to it. Automatic delivery upon injection - what was the name for this again... A roar brought her back to reality and she set it off to the side hoping it wasn't what she thought it was. Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Albert... There was something shining underneath the sternum, something slick and made of plastic. Breaking a few ribs, Lynne reached underneath and grasped the card which had been smuggled into the heart. "Yeah yeah, jokes aside let's get the fuck out of here." Grabbing the vial, Lynne checked her handgun and thrust the key card into the lock. There wasn't any time for the door to open as the humanoid creature burst through the opposing door, metal scraping her arm.
It's skin was a hideously pale grey with visor like sunglasses edged onto its nose and plastic colored trench coat sheltering its massive figure. It looked directly at her. At her... Cautiously it walked with some sort of cruel intention - was she imagining it?
"Fuck..." Without so much as thinking Lynne dived into the next room, hoping there wasn't anything to fear when she fell upon a zombie. It was apparently as shocked as she was but began to react normally when it smelled the blood dripping down her arm. Lynne swiftly dealt a killing blow, popping it in the chest with one round and jumping up just enough to see her only chance of escaping: the cliché air vent just beyond her reach. "Ahh!" she yelped, falling to the ground as a punch scraped the air above her scalp. 'Shit, that was close!' Lynne doubled back around the room, running back past the observation table and into the containment bay that she had started in, hoping the creature would follow. It came in bursts of charges - often Lynne would narrowly dodge the creature's lunging grabs, its talons grazing her head. This phase of her plan worked but the other part, the getting-out-alive part, was still in progress.
The creature roared and brought a punishing blow, thankfully, into the wall behind Lynne. His hand made so severe an impact he might have been the last bit that wall could take, a chalky residue floating up into the air. Wait a minute... Was this stupid enough to work? Lynne stayed in close quarters with the creature, dancing around it and leading it back to that very spot. Maybe... just maybe the movies will have taught me something and he might... She raised the handgun and emptied the rest of the clip into the creature hoping it would piss it off and give it a bit more oomph. 'Three... Two... One!' Lynne dove, the skin on her back jumping with goosebumps as she rolled and recovered, hazily breathing from exhaustion and adrenaline. Her goal was the vent - if she could just get to the damn vent!
The creature's footsteps were following her about a minute after, right when Lynne finished prying off the rusted gate. She mentally cursed a storm, ducking inside and breaking her joints against the shaft walls as she crawled for her life. This is pathetic! she screamed in her head, panting, sobbing, and in pain. I'm going to kill Albert Wesker one day! she vowed solemnly in her head though she knew it to be farce - she could never kill that man let alone muster enough courage to bring a gun to his face. He frightened her but these last circling thoughts were what kept her going, what kept her trucking on until a fatal creak interrupted her internal speech and the shaft gave way.
Lynne screamed in surprise.
Her head hurt so much...
Earlier she'd been dangling above the containment bay. Just before passing out completely she pictured how devastated she was to find herself in another script authored by Wesker. He had locked her into that cage, suspended her above the ground and given her a handgun - the means with which to earn her salvation this round. His voice sounded calm and smooth as it greeted her with a "Hello Lynne, it's been quite a while hasn't it?" and finishing with "Please do survive my dear - I do enjoy seeing you struggle on." Such an ass... Albert had equipped her with an empty gun, attaching the clips to one of the zombies' head he let loose about the floor taking care to sever their legs. He had so enjoyed this thought of her digging into the flesh of the decayed crawlers, of watching her writhe in torment in having to secure her freedom with her bare hands - but he did leave her the archaic option of using the debris lying around the damaged facility. Oh yes, he had been so kind to choose a location such as this.
Lynne wondered... would she die if she closed her eyes? Just for a moment? "Who knows what else is roaming around here... plus that monster..." she moaned when two very able hands brought her to rest against them. "Maybe... I can..." she thought out loud.
