Disclaimer: I do not own any Resident Evil characters or Resident Evil terms but I do own anything else that is original, Kronos virus, everything about the project and much more coming in the next chps.


Chapter Two: Fall into Tartarus


"It's simple, McLenlan."

Simple? Hostia. That man wasn't making it any easy on her.

"Give the boy the serum and I'll let you and your family go back to Raccoon City. I'll even arrange a unit to search for the graves."

It was a lie. She should have declined right there and then.

She should have turned away.

"You have my word."

That wasn't enough. There was no way he'd keep it.

Her mind went on a rampage. What was his motive? He could have done it himself. Take that needle and force it into the vein. Didn't he have a medical PhD himself?

Perhaps, he had no grounds to do the shot himself other than supervision. If anything, this experiment was outside of HELIX's control. It was more suspicious for him to stop the t-Veronica extraction out of the blues.

The reason to revive this host? She could only suspect one outcome - a possible candidate just like him. Someone in the palm of his hand he could probably call "pupil". But that was outrageous. What would he gain from reviving a person who had been dead for two years? Even under heavy cryostatis and with all the technology they had, it didn't guarantee brain matter being intent. For all they knew, the specimen would wake up with amnesia or worse, braindead.

And yet, her body moved on its own. Closer and closer to that frozen pod the redhead was in. Like she was possessed, chained to obey the words of a witch doctor.

Her emotions deluded the thoughts in her head, replacing them with new ones.

This was just a specimen. Just like any other locked up inside.

She didn't know this boy.

Boy?

Was it correct of her to call this specimen a boy?

She still couldn't forget what Prasad said two years ago...

Her head felt awful, her gray matter ramming against the walls of her skull to find a solution out of this problem.

The rational thing to do would be to decline and contact HELIX. The irrational thing to do would be to tell him to do it himself on the spot just to save her own pride.

And yet, she chose neither because of how heavy her heart was

No good. She was letting her feelings get the better of her and distort her thinking.

"What do you have to lose?"

Lose?

Nothing physical. Nothing of possession. But was she really going to gain that one chance she had been hoping for?

With a mind of its own, her hand reached for the jet injector, already filled with the amber liquid. Again, she glanced back at the pod.

Lay out the pieces. What were they, she asked herself.

She didn't know him.

There was no reason for her to feel any remorse.

This wasn't her problem...whether he woke up or not.

Sorry, Kiddo...but she needed this more than ever.

She couldn't lose this chance...

And Iria jabbed that needle without hesitation.

*/*/*/*

NOISE.

It was very much different than the static previously drilled in her skull from stress but it was a noise that was stirring Iria out of the pitch blackness. Wailing above her.

Only now and then, her eyes fluttered weakly, catching glimpses of blinking red light across the elevator tiles. The ringing in her ears deafened the sounds she could barely make up in her lightheaded state: sirens, screams and...fire?

But again, darkness drifted her back down like a dive.

Like she was drowning.

One more time and the last, she opened her eyes.

It was a drowsy start, having felt like she was dropped from a 20-storey building. But as Iria tried to gather her scattered bearings, she noticed something glowing under the red light.

The light from her phone. Cracked at the screen. Somehow, she must have dropped it and the impact forced it open.

She picked it up, but not without some difficulty.

More than thirty minutes past midnight.

Iria had blacked out for thirty minutes. But it most certainly felt like an eternity.

Worse, no signal. She remembered very well there was a full set of bars. But that meant she couldn't contact anyone.

Did the servers from control shut down? Better not. That would mean the whole facility would be disconnected from outside. Everything would be offline.

Unless this was localised...

Standing up with her hand tight on the railing, she examined her surroundings. Yes, she was inside the elevator. Yes, she hadn't moved out of it but things obviously had changed. The emergency alarms were bawling out loud above her.

She laid out the possible answer: something happened. What, how and why, she couldn't answer herself because there were too many most likely reasons for her to pick - one she really hoped was least unlikely. For her own sake.

One thing she knew for sure was that she couldn't stay inside the small box anymore.

She pressed a button.

Nothing.

Again and again, with each hit gaining more velocity.

"Hostia."

Her fingers moved down to the alarm button, frantically smashing into it enough for someone up there to be annoyed.

Nothing but the howls.

Her breathing picked up a pace at the drop of uneasiness. Her heart was pounding heavily. She could feel the spaces crawl closer to her, the oxygen getting thinner...

Calm down. Calm down. Know your moves.

"GAIAN. Open Central Elevator D-4."

"ID S24D1-45O5 X-3781, voice-command accepted." Hearing the AI's robotic voice settled her nerves down. The quicker GAIAN let her out, the faster she could understand what was happening. "Service request...

...Denied."

Her eyes bugged open.

What?

"Emergency shutdown procedure RED has been commenced on 1st, January, 2001, 12:32 AM. Elevators have ceased service until curfew has been lifted."

Iria felt the hairs on her neck stand up. She had just realized she had stopped breathing at the supercomputer's inspection. Did she hear that correct?

No.

No, no, no, no! This couldn't have been a lockdown. That meant a specimen had been loose somewhere inside the facility.

"GAIAN. Open Central Elevator D-4."

"Service request, denied. Lockdown curfew has not been lifted."

"Open the doors, GAIAN," she demanded, her tone rising, shaking.

"Negative. For your own safety, please wait until lockdown curfew has been lifted and rescue is dispatched, Director Iria McLenlan."

Was she hearing this right? She was a highly intelligent scientist inside the box and that was the stupidest suggestion out of an AI.

"Like hell I'm sitting here."

Her fingers gripped in between the tiny little gap. It had been the first time she had ever exert all her strength to pry them open. The only thing she had ever picked up in her line of work were a pen and pad.

"Please stand away from the doors and wait for rescue. Estimated time till rescue arrival will be two hours."

Oh, greeeeat! No way was she staying put, especially if a specimen was loose - unpredictable that estimated time would most likely alter.

"I'd...rather be..." she grunted as she pulled harder. "Outside this tin can...than be trapped in here waiting for it to fall!"

A groan echoed from the doors.

A gap. Yes!

Her prying quickly ceased at the whiff of iron and burning.

This was new and she didn't like it.

No, now wasn't the time to hesitate. Whatever was out there, it had to be better than being struck inside a small space.

With enough room between the doors, she slipped her shoulder out to hold one side back. Both hands on the other, she pushed and pushed until finally she heard a click.

The doors stayed apart and she glanced out at the bottom.

Wherever the elevator had stopped, it came at a screeching halt midway of a level. But one quick look, Iria knew exactly where she had stopped.

Level D. The research floor.

There was just one problem and it turned her insides bitter cold.

She had only just left the floor more than thirty minutes ago. But during that period, it had dramatically changed.

It was red.

The red lights spun above constantly within the white halls. No. The halls weren't white anymore. There were splatters everywhere - still wet. Ripped wires and torn metal spurted out violent sparks.

And the floors were littered with corpses.

Dead, motionless bodies.

They were mangled. Throats shredded open, intestines dug out, faces left frozen in a moment of terror.

They had seen something come towards them and before they could react, it was all too late.

Oh god. Oh god...

She didn't have to guess. She made a logical conclusion. This was where the lockdown was.

Her knees weakened like jelly, forcing her to drop. She couldn't tear her eyes away at the gory scene before her until finally, her stomach rebelled against her and the taste of bile hit her tastebuds. Whatever was left from her early dinner had long been digested, leaving nothing but yellow, bubbly liquid to choke out.

"Uagh! Gagh, gah, gak."

A few more heavy gasps and Iria bitterly wiped her mouth with her sleeve. Deep breaths.

Again, she took one more look.

This was no dream and most certainly not a nightmare. She was fully well awake in what could be considered hell on Earth.

Staring at the horrific backdrop wasn't going to change anything. There was no point of staying put.

She had to move. Whatever caused this massacre was surely still around somewhere...

Slowly, quietly and carefully, she crept out of the elevator and dropped onto the floor.

Splosh!

Her whole body tensed up at the feeling of small little droplets on the skin of her feet. With a dreadful, slow start, she stared down to see her shoes dipped in a pool of...

Blood.

Someone's blood.

With a gasp and a skid of a newborn lamb, she wobbled back and put a hand against the wall to steady herself. Not too far was the source, a body wearing greens. The face, however, was unrecognizable. Features - eyes, nose, mouth - were scooped up with something irregular and jagged. Not by human hands or weapons.

Claw marks.

The only indication she could make out who this person was, was by the ID keycard pinned to the breast pocket. John Kloet, a scientist from the biological engineering division and surgeon.

The current surgeon doing Stheno's operation.

Iria had never felt so icy cold. No, that specimen should still be under anaesthetic. Calm down.

Calm down!

This was bad. Her brain was going on overdrive. Admittedly, she had never seen the new specimen up front. Only from the papers filed up on her desk. She hadn't even gone to see the creature in its combat tests - it didn't seemed necessary for her to do so. Moreover, she had never been in a crisis like this before. So how was she supposed to think?

Stop, she told herself. You're going to lose it if you don't do anything. You're in danger and you need to get out of it.

It was hard with the wailing sirens but she tried to narrow down the bundle of thoughts inside her head. This was a lockdown. No way out: central elevators were down, vents were locked tight even to the smallest atom and emergency stairs were shut tight with thick titanium doors.

But she had her keycard. All she needed was to open up a way out and close it back.

It was then that she spotted something shiny on the corpse's open hand.

A scalpel. He must have desperately clutched on that knife as his only weapon. Useless as one but...

With delicate fingers, she picked it up. On a night like this, Iria was carrying light: she had nothing but her keycard, her phone and glasses. Not even lint in the pockets of her coat. So right now, anything as a tool could prove useful.

Still, it would have been nice to have some sort of gun...anything to protect her.

Iria glanced around. However, whatever chaos had gone through the floor in a matter of thirty minutes, it had turned it upside down. Each hexagonal floor were designed with halls that intertwined but now in front of the south central elevators, most of her paths were blocked by crimson-painted ruin.

"Ok. Ok." She knew the research floor like the back of her hand. Countless times of walking through this place as a virologist in the past and a director in the present. "Need to find the nearest emergency door... Just take it slow and steady. Yeah. Just like chess."

Chess...yeah. A silly way of interpreting her life and death situation...

Still, it would be foolish to rush down the blood-sprayed antechambers just as it would be too quick to move her piece across the chessboard. Didn't matter if the black pieces were in plain sight, she had no idea how to predict her opponent's moves until they made one.

The only difference between a game and her predicament was she had a choice to choose to play chess.

Here, there were no choices.

*/*/*/*

The biochemistry ward had taken the same damage as everywhere else - everything that the remaining staff had carried were dumped at the blink of the crisis while here and there, evidence of something lethal had gone through the halls. But she was a little grateful to trot down towards that area.

The sudden fall in the elevator had kicked the wind out of her, leaving a dent in her head. No external, severe injuries she could see and she most certainly hoped nothing internal.

Still, the bump on the head was proving some difficulty in her search for medicine. In the dimness inside the rooms and the screeching red light out in several halls, it had taken a while for her eyes to adjust, even switching between seeing in light and seeing in darkness. Thankfully, the photoluminescent emergency lightings lit up on the floors and walls, leading her to her destination.

The sight of a few potted plants gave her a sense of relief. So glad for two thing: one, the linked cooperation between the biochemistry division inside and the botany division outside the facility and two, the legendary red, green and blue herbs that grew on the hostile island, Cape Inacio.

It had been a baffling discovery - finding three well-known species widely used in medicine to adapt excellent to the harsh circumstances. Moreover was how little their natural components remained unchanged on an island disconnected from the rest of the world for millions of years - since the prehistoric land broke apart. So of course, it was an opportunity the science staff didn't want to waste.

It was basic knowledge - even a virologist like herself knew how to mix and match.

"That should do it," she uttered to herself and screwed the small canister into the healspray - a authentic easy device for any household across the world, made by HELIX. A squeeze on the trigger and she was hit by the scent of herbs.

There was no such thing as an instant heal but Iria could genuinely feel the throbbing pain on her head lessen.

With that resolved, she walked out - not without two canisters prepared for later and a small little pocket flashlight.

She had very little choices of worming her way carefully through the large floor. Most of the R&D labs had been closed tight by heavy double reinforced doors - another extra safety measure. However, being that it was New Year Eve, many of the employees had already left their workplaces.

That was...a comforting thought. Less number of deaths...

Was that really comforting? The further Iria had explored, the more her near-empty stomach twisted. From what she concluded, the majority of whoever stayed back had scrambled to the central elevators but were easily massacred while the minority, well...three times, she had found a dead person sprawled at their workbench or sitting in front of the black screens.

There had to be a number of deaths a human would come across until it was too much to bear and already, she had gone over the tally.

The only thing to keep her sane was her mind progressing, swiftly noticing something a little suspicious the further she went.

The lack of bodies and yet still many volumes of blood, drag marks snaking about. This was a behaviour, similar to the Erinyes' combat training - the escapee had many surprise attacks, dragging the prey to spots where the eye couldn't watch its meal.

Enough. Driving her head to stop looking at the gore and look for a way out. Maybe even for any sign of life...

It was better than being alone. Because now and then, she could have sworn she heard some muffled inhuman cry far away.

Then at the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow move.

She jerked back, freezing in her place but she then noticed it was going away, deeper into another room.

Another living person! Iria hurried after the silhouette. "Wait-!"

"Get away from me!"

Her whole body tensed at the sight of a barrel and her arms flayed up. A handgun. Luckily, the person didn't fire a warning shot right dead at her.

The light-tanned man, with trembling hands and large, frightened brown eyes, stood there with every intention to fire if necessary. The blue overalls, boots and cap that hid most of his cropped brown-blond hair told her one thing: he worked at security.

And a man trained to go through many kinds of disasters wasn't dealing as well as she was right there. He had seen things, leaving light mental scars that have resulted him to drop protocol.

"Easy. It's just me," Iria muttered softly.

The man took a hard, struggled look at her but eventually, the eyes widened with relief and confusion. "Y-You're the director?"

Iria nodded, assuring him she was no figment of her imagination. "Yes. You can call me Iria."

"Stop!" The gun hung back up, tighter and shakier.

"Ok." Her arms held back up and she stepped back. "I'm not going to hurt you."

It didn't convince him. Now she really wondered what terrified him to go ape crazy.

She had to calm him down...

"You know me. But I don't know you. So tell me your name."

"...L-Lucas," he slurred but the gun still remained.

" Lucas. Lucas Hawkins, right?" That surprised the guard. There was a sheer chance he thought that she possessed some telepathy ability. She did not. "It's my job to remember all employees' names... Look. I want to get out of here just as much as you do. And I can do that."

His eyes lit up instantly at the magic word. Like a rekindled ray of hope. There was a hint of inkling until she willingly shone out her keycard.

"But I'd like it very much if you can put that gun down for me... Ok?"

It seemed like the officer just woke up out his wild trance, glancing back at his raised gun dead aimed at her.

"W-What's to say I won't take that away from you?" he barked frightfully, jerking the gun as if making a point.

Good question. And she had a good answer.

"You could have already killed me and taken the key..."

The weapon still hung high up for three stressed seconds. Then it finally went down.

"Thank you," she offered and finally, dropped her tired arms to her sides. "Shall we go?"

"...Y-Yes." There was a hanging pause. Was he really that scared to budge?

"Lucas. How about we look for an exit?"

"E-Exit, right... We can take the emergency stairs. Past D-Lab 16. W-We'll need to cut through the research office to get there."

Iria stopped herself from uttering that she knew as he took the lead, gun angled down.

"Watch yourself. We can get into all sorts of trouble."

Now that was...peculiar.

All sorts of trouble? What did he mean? This was a lockdown for a loose specimen... However, she held back her questions at once, noticing the small trembles across his fingers. One wrong word and he might just pull the trigger and shoot at the floor.

It was a slow walk and it did nothing to ease the tension. Iria glimpsed around as they 'strolled' on. Smashed glass, trolleys of harmless substances and stored papers toppled over, more evidence that fear took absolute control on the entire floor.

At least it wasn't too critical. Had a part of the facility received drastic damages, then the underwater research building would timber down into the depths.

"This whole place is falling apart," she uttered. "What the hell happened here?"

"You dunno? One minute, everything was fine. The next came that blackout. Everyone waited for the lights to come back on, which it did. Then all of a sudden, GAIAN put everything on lockdown. We thought it was some computer glitch. Computers and drones started acting weird."

Iria recalled the strange digital shifting back in the elevator. Was it some sort of bug? Odd though since control central had just gone through their last scrubbing.

"If that's the case, GAIAN should have handle the problem."

"S-She should have. But..." There was hesitation. "I-I don't know... It happened so fast. Some...some monster. Killed everyone in the halls. Everyone panicked. And..."

Lucas stopped in his track. The trembles intensified from his shoulders as he darted his eyes to the wet walls.

"Ok. The faster we get to an exit, the faster we get out," she tried to reassure the man, which seemed to be working.

Actually, it was more for her part - she needed to remain composed. If the officer were to lose his nerves, his paranoia might latch onto her.

"R-Right." He walked on. "Shit. I should have taken day shift...would have been out watching the fireworks instead."

"Same," she softly uttered, feeling a pinch inside her chest.

Iria wondered. Was this punishment?

She wasn't a religious person but somewhere in the cosmos, someone up there had put down their fist on her. It was a running theme she had noticed in those movies, where an intelligent character in the role of the villain got smitten by a bad case of karma. All with explosions.

Yeah...she couldn't recall the last thing she had sat down and had dinner with Randy and Hannah... Even Christmas, she had to miss it all because of work piled up.

Maybe she deserved this.

No. Don't think that. She couldn't die. Or else those kids would surely follow after her. And that thought gave her the push to pick up the speed in her walking.

Then all of a sudden, Lucas halted.

"What the fuck did Carter go?"

Muttering. Two voices. Male. She heard them soft and quite far away. More people alive?

"Shit!"

Suddenly, she felt her body being pulled down.

What-?

"Get down!" Lucas whispered.

She didn't have much of a choice - Lucas was doing just that for her.

"This is bullshit. We should leave that asshole behind and look for a way out."

"Does it make a difference? All the exits are locked and unless we find a key, we'll just have to wait until lockdown's over."

Carefully, very carefully, Iria peeked at the side of their hiding spot, a pile of containments.

Two men. Armed. Panicking. One digging through the pockets of a corpse while the other stood guard.

HCF guards.

Hostia.

"Hell no! I'm not staying another minute down here with that thing! Have you forgotten what it did to Jack?"

"So? We just shoot the crap out of it. That's just a bug compared to us."

"A bug? A fucking bug! ? That thing supposed to have some new variant of that virus these scientists cooked up! A lot better than the one in us."

"Oh, shut up and keep searching. You're wasting time and worrying too much."

So they were in a pickle as she and Lucas were. Which didn't boat well for them.

Iria had no idea what the origin behind the so-called little militia was, other than these men, fused with the t-virus, had arrived on the island a day after their boss secured a place in the facility. Already, they took the whole place by storm.

Humorous it was that outside on the island, they happily pledged themselves as jungle rescue for the sake of the islanders. Please, these men did nothing but laze around at their bases, shooting at the wildlife. The only time they ever moved a muscle was when a specimen ran out of control and security couldn't stop it - true to their real acronym, Host/Hive Capture Force. Not their fake one, HELIX Command Force.

A three-year-old attempt at changing words around from a dictionary...

"We'll have to go around them," Lucas murmured to Iria. "Follow me."

A change of plans, Iria didn't object and trailed after the officer down another hall.

"When you said all sorts of trouble, you meant them, didn't you?"

"The moment everything went to hell, HCF guards suddenly started killing people. It was every man for themselves." Lucas grounded his teeth, fighting every urge to slam his fist into the wall. "Those bastards... They shot down Captain Bentley...my captain, just to get his key. Then one of them killed two scientists just for fun. Fucking monsters..."

Now she understood... It had to be tough on the young officer.

So now she had to worry about the HCF guards and the loose specimen. Ranks and positions were out the window and not even rules could stop those creeps. They were free of any consequences and their actions would be deemed as "accident" or "it just happened".

Their superior would surely sweep all of this under the rug, along with the dead.

Right now, they were their enemies and like hell was she going to come out into the light just for them to gun her down.

"There," Lucas uttered, climbing onto his feet.

Beyond a set of doors was one of the many emergency stairs, however locked down by procedure. All she needed to do was slip her keycard across the scanner and she'd be brawling her way up the stairs.

Almost she could her feet skip with joy. Freedom was just a click away-

"Don't move."

The back of her head felt unusually heavy, feeling heat brush against her scalp. Recently fired. She didn't have to turn to figure out what was behind her.

Iria had never been held at gunpoint.

"Shit-"

"You take a step and I'll shoot her right in the head," the voice warned Lucas. Iria could feel the eyes dance up and down on her.

A hand latched onto her shoulder and spun her around. The barrel drove pointed at her chest, the assailer grinning at her.

"Well, well. If it ain't the director."

Of course. What luck they had to cross paths with a HCF guard.

"Which means you have the keycard. Hand it over."

She took a quick glance at the name stitched on his breast pocket. Carter Trent. His eyes searched for the hanging card around her neck - which luckily was hidden behind her coat.

"Hey! Are you listening?" The gun jumped up to her temple. "Hand it over!"

She swallowed tensely. Shaking. One wrong move and she and officer Lucas would be dead as a doorknob.

Then she took the risk.

"Go ahead. You're only put yourself in a deeper hole."

Lucas glanced at her, stunned - "Are you mad?" was what said from them silently.

"What did you say?"

Iria bit down hard to stop herself from hissing or even twitching back, feeling a slight heat as the circular hole of the gun touched skin.

It was a gamble. Just as she'd put a piece out in the open on the chessboard.

"Have you lose a few braincells during this lockdown?" she taunted calmly. "Or have you forgotten GAIAN needs both voice command and ID?"

Carter grounded his teeth. Good, so he wasn't all just muscles.

"You need us alive. Or else you'll kiss your only key goodbye."

The guard cocked up an eyebrow. Suddenly, the gun was on Lucas. "Oh really? This guy's just security. What's to say I won't shoot him?"

Lucas swallowed. The barrel was very much close aimed right at the bridge of his nose. Of course, he was a nobody right now, easy to be wiped out in a blink of an eye. If given any other situation, a man trained in close combat would quickly disarm his attacker.

But he wasn't stupid enough to go against a HCF guard. Iria couldn't blame him.

But she remained still. Indifferent.

Like the threat was barely a scratch.

Perhaps because to Iria, he was nothing but an annoying pest to her, only backed up by that virus swimming in his bloodstreams. Perhaps, the stress doubled by her new state of affairs had finally pushed her to stand up against someone like him.

"Kill him and I'll break my card."

Both pairs of eyes filleted wide.

"Y-You wouldn't-!"

Yes. She wouldn't. She had too much to risk if she ended up dead.

But if she were to pick her allies, Lucas was her best choice, not a mutant in human clothing.

In a split second, she did find it amusing - she had been scared shitless in a matter of twenty minutes until she encountered Lucas, a living person. And she was no heartless bitch, as some employees spat behind her back.

Honestly, she didn't want to be alone in her escape. She had no other reason to bail out on Lucas.

Already, Iria reached into her coat and slipped out the card.

She bent it lightly in front of Carter's red eyes.

"Stop!"

Carter leapt one step forth but no more, all too powerless to stop her. A man enough to be called a god, his boss called them. At his pleading face, Iria ceased her twisting of the card.

Hmph. Just goes to show, she thought, his men were still as spineless and cowardly as every normal human were inside this facility. Reminded her how close to the tale of Icarus, flying too close to the sun.

"...Shit!" he cursed. "Fine. Turn around!"

Ok. That should buy her enough time to think of a solution. Obediently, she did as she was told.

"You! Up front! No funny business!"

Lucas stepped a foot ahead of Iria and with a shove by Carter, they were shepherded closer to their way out.

An exit to where the emergency stairs were. No doubt beyond that, the flight of stairs were also barricaded. Very little room for her to do anything.

Except for the door. Which moved forwards, not backwards.

She wondered if she was quick enough to slip out and use the door to smash on his firing hand. But she couldn't risk Lucas' life.

"Alright! Now open it!"

Time to test that. Carefully, Iria grabbed for the hanging keycard around her neck and slipped it right down the device.

However, the keycard reader displayed out a very different word that she had never once gotten.

"Denied."

In the milliseconds inside her head, that came as a shock to her.

She was denied?

Just as quickly as her brain rushed for an answer, it drew her back to the more crucial situation. And just in time to hear the man behind her gasp, eyes bugged out wide.

"What-?" He also hadn't expected that outcome.

But that also meant that Carter's guard was lowered.

*/*/*/*

"Hold your arm up like this and cup your hand in the other," he explained, doing the same demonstration as his explanation. Didn't matter if he was doing all that in the open college grounds. He was well set on teaching them the basics. "Just think of this like a pulled coil. Push back with everything you got. You'll be able to stun them long enough to make a break for it."

*/*/*/*

Now was agood opportunity to do just that.

Rolled-up fist in her other free hand and elbow right up, Iria drove it right at Carter's face.

"UGH!" The HCF guard recoiled back, his gun lowered while he reached up for his battered nose.

"Run!" she cried out to Lucas.

They made a dash.

"Rrrgh! You fucking bitch!"

BANG! BANG!

Misses but she kept balling her way through the room. Her eyes were fixed on her one exit.

Like hitting the fragile white ribbon at the end of a race, she bolted out of the exit but not without a spinning skid and a hand immediately lashed on a bar. Right in front of her face was a big red button under a small glass case - every door of each lab fitted with its own emergency lock inside and out.

She flipped open the case and slammed on the button.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

It was already too late. Sliding down from the roof of the door frame was the heavy reinforced gate, metal and glass. For a superhuman underling of that one supervisor, he was too focused on shooting to keep a full sprint to the door.

It made a loud final clunk.

"Open up, you bitch!" Carter hollered and hammered his fist. Harder and harder. "Let me out!"

Crack!

Right before them, the colour of blood smeared across those frenzied eyes, stirred up by the t-Virus and thirsty for Iria's neck. The strength warped by the virus in a being once human, she and Lucas were seeing it for the first time - every whack into the thick glass forming shallow lines and fuelled by anger. It terrified her, two timid steps back. If this was what a HCF guard could do off his leash, she couldn't imagine the capabilities of their leader...

The only thing that assured them he wouldn't be widening a jagged hole and frantically squeeze through was how very thick the protective glass was.

"I'm gonna kill you both when I get out!"

I'd like to see you try. But Iria kept those words in.

She was about to turn when she faintly saw something stir in the darkness, behind Carter.

He must have noticed her gaze. Both their gazes. Or perhaps he heard something. Because Carter ceased his banging and slowly wheeled around.

Iria couldn't see what exactly behind him. Whatever Carter saw, she couldn't see the expression.

Only the long bony fingers spidered out of the shadows and quickly wrapped them on his head.

She had expected Carter to shoot. Heck, even use his superhuman strength to fight. But in a swift move, he was pulled back into the darkness. All came out was his scream, higher and higher.

SLOOOSH!

Red. The colour of red spattered across the glass.

Iria's legs folded underneath her, her whole body dropping to the floor, eyes unable to tear away from the dripping curtain.

"No! Get up!" Lucas barked. "We can't stay!"

"H-He got killed," she whimpered. Although the play had been obscured behind the door, she had just seen a living being be ripped apart. Torn easily like an insect. "I-I let him die-"

Iria felt Lucas grab at her coat and pulled her up onto her feet. "It was either him or us! " His hands tightened on the director's arms, shaking at her to get a grip. "You had to so we could survive!"

She did?

To survive?

As much as she hated that guard, especially the fact that HCF were untouchable, walking throughout the facility with heads held high, she...couldn't feel as if her actions was justified.

Was she daft, she hollered at herself. That wasn't a human anymore, killed by another monster. She shouldn't feel remorse. If anything, that man deserved it.

And yet all that blood...

"Now come on!" Lucas hissed, one hand still gripping her arm as he led the baffled director away.

They needed to be far away.

"Tell me!" he snapped softly. "Why is your card not working? Were you lying before?"

Iria glanced back at the keycard in her shaking hand. A cold shiver ran down her spine and the thick fear rushing the adrenaline through her body hadn't made her forgotten that one word.

Denied.

She was denied access to leave the floor during a lockdown.

No, no. That was impossible. There was no way access would be rejected using the six-level cards.

"N-No," she whispered. "It should have worked..."

The officer steered back at her, expecting it to be a lie. That she was pulling his leg about her having a way out so he wouldn't put lead into her.

But he stopped himself from snapping, from losing control. One look at her face and Lucas could easily read that she also didn't expect that outcome. She had honestly expected them to scram right out into the stairs without any problems.

Was something wrong with the card?

No. Impossible. Had to be that glitch. Or the scanner could have coincidentally been broken. Anything could have happened. They just needed to try again.

"Lucas...you're bleeding."

That surprised him, following Iria's stiff gaze. There was a burning sensation at his side that he hadn't felt before. Or maybe the urgency in his mind dulled it out. His fingers reached down, feeling them damp and when he brought them back up, they told him the story.

Blood.

Somewhere in his dart for safety, that guard managed to nick him.

The wound wasn't deep. Ok. That was reassuring. "It's a graze. Don't worry about me."

She didn't move. Was she traumatised? No good.

He didn't let go of her. He couldn't.

He could have. She was going to slow him down. There was all that talk about the director being very unresponsive towards her work, even to some of her employees.

So? That was just talk he heard passing the coffee break room. In a matter of their time sneaking around, he learned the kind of person the director was.

He owed her for risking her life for him. No way was he going to be in debt.

"Ok," Lucas uttered, some wretched attempt at assuring both of them. "There's another set of stairs at the other end. Maybe the reader was busted."

He hoped that. He deeply prayed that was the case. It had to.

"A-And if it's not working..." His mind raced. Come on! Always have a backup plan! "W-We'll go to comms. Call for help and barricade ourselves until help arrives."

Those two leads seemed to help Iria back to focus. Just a bit. Good, better than nothing, Lucas told himself and finally released her.

"We can do this-"

A shuffling sound brought both of them to a halt.

"Did you hear that?"

Lucas lifted up his handgun as he searched for the source. His other hand still on Iria's arm, he herded her behind his back. He was the only one with a weapon, the only one who could protect both of them.

"Stay behind me," he softly ordered. "We're almost there-"

Out of the blues, just as he wheeled away from the frightened director, there were two things that happened. First, he felt something wet. A drop on his cheek. And before he could even reach up to touch it, he found himself staring up front at what looked like thin branches brushing against his face.

No. There was no trees down here.

But it was all too late. The slender talons wrapped all over his head.

"URRGH!"

It was a horrendous scream, his body dragged up into an opened hole in the ceiling and dangling in midair. Part of it was from whatever had grabbed him while the rest was from the vertebrates in his neck stretching by his weight and gravity.

Iria could do nothing. She was seeing herself being pulled up as well because Lucas' grip was still tight around her arm.

"ARRRGH!"

Hastily, she pried the fingers off her and she plummeted down hard. Pain ricocheted through her bottom but her mind was all too preoccupied to take notice, hands moving on their own to scramble away.

"No!" she hollered, all drowned out by Lucas' last shriek.

And exploded out from the hole was nothing but red. Raining down.

Drip. Only the sound of dripping.

Please. Stop this.

Wake me up from this nightmare.

Then shuffling again.

It was moving through the vents.

No matter how much Iria hoped, she wasn't going to wake up. She was struck here.

She had to get out.

Move, she told her legs.

Move!

She mustered every strength to crawl away and once she felt her hands on the wall behind her, she hurriedly stood up, eyes still fixed on the bloody hole. Slowly, she felt her way across the wall for another door. Thankfully, her hands felt from solid to nothingness.

Rumbling and clanking from above rushed her gaze to the ceiling. Terror hit down on her like a nail and she scrambled as quickly and quietly as possible into the room behind her, shutting the door.

As much as she could, she squeezed herself into the dimness, wall tight to her back. Did everything she could to be small and invisible - that was what she hoped but a small part of her deduced she had little to no chance of survival.

THUD!

It was loud, the sound of something heavy falling from grace and landing on the floor thunderously. And she heard it outside.

Like a shark lurking, its shadow rose across the squares of light streamed through the glass and across the tiles.

It was looking for her now.

Shit. SHIT!

Immediately, she clamped hands onto her mouth - hard enough to feel the nails dig into the skin. She couldn't gasp, couldn't speak, all too afraid that if she made a single small sound, she'd be found.

Iria stared fixated and terrified at the shadow. The head slowly swung left to right and right to left. It was looking. Smelling. Searching, whatever it was doing, it was hunting for her.

She must have done a good job at being unseen because eventually, the shadow dispersed away. Even after seconds passed, she still wouldn't removed her hands off her mouth.

The burning sensation in her lungs told her to stop and at last, she breathed with a sigh of relief.

No. Now wasn't the time.

With a shaky start, she climbed back up. Another exit. She had to try looking for another way out.

Eventually, her eyes lit up at the sight of an identical exit. She fought every fibre to bolt towards the door and bang the card through the device, terrified that noise would only draw the infected escapee after her.

Iria was scared... Was she going to get denied again?

Although she wanted to be possibly sure, Iria had to fight that urge to check until she reached up to the card reader. Nothing of external damage she could see and the screen was functioning well, reading out the word, lockdown in bold letters.

The first reader was busted. Yeah, Lucas said that. It had to be.

She waved the keycard against the scanner.

Denied.

"No," she whined. And tried again.

Same message. Denied.

"No, no, no! God dammit!"

BAM! Frustrated, she hit the reader but that did nothing to change the word, denied to unlock. Her eyes watered at the corners. She was at the brink of hopelessness.

Iria stopped herself, desperately calming herself down. There were still other ways. There had to be.

Lucas' words repeated in her head.

"The surface... I need to contact the surface." She put out the cards mentally. Her phone was dead so that was out. If that was the case, there was no point of trying any of the phonelines in R&D labs. She'd get the same result.

Going to central was out of the question. That was the most important place of the entire facility - three times heavily protected than any of the four sectors on the research floor. If she couldn't get out, there'd be no way she could gain access to GAIAN's core. She wasn't even sure if any of the night shift techs had made the same fate as the rest of the people.

"Security room."

On each floor were stationed a security room, the top levels lighter on the safety measures and the lower levels heavier on the firearms. More importantly, regardless of any procedure or lockdown, computers and radio should still be connected.

That had been Lucas' goal. And it still was.

It wasn't over yet!

With determination fuelled, she turned tail. Eastward, that was where she had to go. Her only choices were to go back the way she came, hitting at the central elevators or go to the westward and then down towards the opposite. After all, all of the floors were easily interconnected.

"Dammit! How the fuck this happened?"

"Why are you asking me for?"

The familiar voices froze Iria in place for a second and as looming shadows grew larger on the wall, Iria quickly took another second to duck into another room, turning off her pocket flashlight.

But she soon realized she was in a tight corner, no way out.

She was too afraid to take a peek. Try to sneak down a more careful path without being seen.

A glimpse of something shiny caught her eye. A broken compact mirror, spilled out by someone's personal bag. Like a mouse, Iria reached for it and rose it high up.

The two HCF guards from before... Dammit, and they were looking for the magic key.

They'd obviously shoot her down and rip off her useless card...

Right now, she was on her own. All she had was a knife and that was pointless. If she was even going to make it out alive and in one piece, then she had to improvise.

One quick exanimation in the room and she went to work. Her hands swiftly moved to the laid out components she spotted on a table. Yes, simple chemistry and an empty test tube with cord.

A little decoy bottle easily made in thirty seconds.

She knew BOWs. She knew the viruses. And there was one thing she also knew - how hypersensitive t-virus infected guards' noses were.

And once she was done, charily, she tiptoed towards the edge of the door, pulled as far back her arm as possible and threw the narrow bottle out.

Crack!

"What the fuck was that! ?"

"Shit! What is that smell?"

Like hornets drawn to a smelly prey, the two guards with their rifles up high followed after the sound. Iria slipped out carefully and down the opposite way.

Looked like she had no choice. Guess she was taking the long way around, to the westward.

Then she heard it from behind. The rattling of bullets. Followed by two cursing and then dying screams.

Iria ran. She had already having guessed the fate of the two guards.


Vickie: HEYA ALL! I've finished my next chapter! :D And god took a while cause I was trying to figure out the gameplay. :P

Basically, it's a little like CODE: Kronos gameplay but as I said, mainly stealth and that you are only doing one class: interference (please refer to CODE: Kronos to learn about classes btw). Basically, that class is mostly in distracting and disorientating enemies away from the team. That is what Iria's class is: solely, you as a player are using every way possible to keep enemies far away from you as you progress with little sound and visibility. So kinda like the Last of Us and Alien Isolation.

Because you'd be dead instantly if you go trigger happy. And this is where the horror is at its gold, something Capcom should have tried. Like how they did for RE2 and RE3 with the main bosses and RE4 with the Regenerator.

Btw, while most of the recent monster designs in the last few games are awesome, those in RE5 and 6...meh. Didn't scare me much in the horror factor, like I was really scared. Now the ooze and that fawking revenant, SWEEEEET MOTHER OF GRACE, those were freaky.

Anyway back to topic, Iria is not a fully-trained fighter. Yes, she has learned some moves (this is something you'll learn about her backstory) but she's not that powerful like Chris Redfield. All you have is your wits. That's it. :)

Also, I enjoyed writing this chapter because I was getting ideas one after the other. Never knew how many dark turns I took here. :D

I'll be taking a while longer for the next chapters - mainly because the next one has to do with the enemy's final reveal (I think) but...uh...I've not decided the concept yet. And here's the thing, that BOW type will appear in CODE: Kronos in like Episode Six but I've yet to think of what they look like. So I wanna tackle this problem first before I continue. That being said, I may go back to CODE: Kronos for a bit to figure out that (unless you guys have some ideas, I'm really clueless at the moment other than this is based on the gorgons myth). Also, I am already planning out my next fic too. So it may be a while till I come back to this fic.

That does not mean this is the end. There are A LOT OF THINGS I want to write down in this short fic (should be about as equal to 3 episodes of my CODE: Kronos so probably 12 chapters only or less?) and I don't intend to leave it aside. So I hope you all will be patient until I figure out Stheno's design.

Anyhow, thank you very much for your support and happy enjoying reading this. Please review too and feedback is welcomed!