Chapter Seven
"I died today, but I'm still breathing,
Bleeding, for now, I'm broken..."
- "No More Good Guys" – Skindive
"Clear," Jill called from the landing on the stairs. She'd gone ahead of the other women to check the status of the stairwell they were in. Unfortunately, the office next door had been sealed up tighter than a bank safe, so they were now on the search for a working computer terminal. Not only had Steve infected about half of the employees with some unknown agent that caused mutations they'd never seen before, but he also seemed to have spiked them with LSD, or some other agent that not only caused mutation, but also crazed insanity. All the computer terminals they'd found so far had been smashed. One had someone's head right through the monitor, a grotesque smiley face drawn on the monitor case with the victim's blood.
"I'll take point this time," Sherry whispered as they crowded around the door to B4. The doors leading up seemed to be blocked, and Claire refused to go up in any regard. She wouldn't leave without Piers, or at least without making sure he really was dead. It would take a lot to survive what they'd seen so far, and she was sure that there was much worse to come. These weren't the zombies that she was used to seeing. These were mutilated, grotesque creations that had probably been tortured beyond belief before being injected with this hybrid virus that not only seemed cause the pure physical strength and altered reality of an Angel Dust trip, but also seemed to be giving extra appendages and to be contorting their bodies in horrific ways.
"Lights are out," Sherry whispered as quietly as possible when she stepped into the hallway. The stench of blood and death filled her nostrils, and her hackles immediately rose. She knew that they weren't alone in this dark hallway. "Hold there," she whispered again. Her G-Virus enhanced night vision would be helpful here, because she could see fairly well without a flashlight, which could just draw the attention of whatever was giving her that sick feeling.
She checked the left way and right very quietly and slowly, and started to slowly move to the left, since the bad feeling was coming from the right. She'd taken about ten steps when the lights snapped on with a nearly deafening buzz that caused them all to gasp and rear their heads away from the harsh light.
The hallway was then filled with a growling wail that sounded so freakish and inhuman, but could have come from nothing other than a human. All four of them froze, hearing a rapid footfall that definitely sounded human, but had a strange gait.
"Uh..." Rebecca trailed off when the person that made the noise came around the corner, panting and staring at them. "I think we should run."
It was a woman, though she seemed to be becoming less human. She was holding something that might have been a table or chair leg in a bloodied fist with fingers that seemed too elongated to be normal, the skin ripped away as if it had been a very violent, very rapid growth. She was panting and making some horrid noise that seemed mixed between a pained whine and a breathless giggle. Her top had mostly been ripped off, and hung off her shoulders and arms in bloodstained tatters. The skin of her ribcage looked like it had been ripped apart by her fingernails, but the ribcage also seemed to have broken through the skin in sharp, pointed shards. Her neck also seemed much too long, but all those strange mutations were nothing compared to the crazed look in her eyes.
"Shit!" Sherry screeched as the woman ran towards them with superhuman speed, the makeshift club missing Sherry's face by inches, her own enhanced genetics the only thing saving her.
"Come on!" Jill shouted behind them, firing her gun at the woman, who lurched back. The physical injury staggered the diseased woman, but in the true T-Virus and her sister virus's nature, it immediately retaliated against the wound. A heinous cracking noise came from her, and the ribcage poked further out from her chest, the bones growing longer and sharper. Her spine also seemed to be lengthening and bowing forward in an s-like curve.
Jill and Claire fired again, giving Sherry and Rebecca the chance to move away from the woman, who was now more creature than human. The noise from the mutating woman and the gunfire caused other moans and wails to echo through the halls like a grisly chorus. Jill started running backwards, firing as more of the monstrosities filled the hall behind their counterpart. Jill just saw targets, and didn't try to pay attention to how horrible and terrifying the mutations actually looked.
"Shit, come on!" Sherry called as even more infected filled the halls. She dashed back near Jill, Claire and Rebecca firing into the crowd. They killed a few, but the others just shuffled, stuttered, trampled and stepped over the corpses.
Jill halted firing and looked upward when she heard some kind of metal rattling. "GET BACK!" She shouted, throwing her arm out to push Sherry away as a metal fire wall came sliding out from the ceiling. Jill and Sherry both fell backwards from the violence of Jill's push, the wall slamming down at a speed that would have easily severed one of their limbs.
"Claire!" Sherry screamed, quickly scrambling to her feet and running to the fire wall. She pounded on it, calling Claire's name again. "Can you hear me?" She pressed her ear to the metal, but couldn't hear anything.
"It's probably really thick," Jill hissed, gently knocking on the divider. She put her hand on Sherry's shoulder. "Rebecca's been trained for this kind of stuff, and Claire's a Redfield. They'll be okay."
"Yeah, what about us?" Sherry asked as they reluctantly turned away from the fire wall. "I know that we split up some of the medical stuff, but Rebecca still has most of it."
"We'll make due." Jill looked up and started to check for cameras. "That fire wall didn't just drop by itself. This is all a big game. We're not going to get out of here without that bastard throwing everything he can at us."
"So, what should we do? He said we were bait. Bait for one of his creations?"
Jill shrugged. "There's something more going on here. I know that Claire wants to find Piers. I do too, but I think we need to go after Steve first," she said quietly, not sure if any of the hidden cameras could pick up a lot of audio.
"With what?" Sherry asked with a dark laugh. "He took our grenades."
"I don't know yet, but if I gave up before in these kinds of situations, I wouldn't be here today. I do know that we need to get to a computer terminal that actually works."
"Maybe we can contact out to Leon. He may be able to help us with some anti-BOW grenades." Sherry took a few silent steps forward, seeing a split staircase. "Up or down?"
"Both options are equally terrible, but a secure connection is going to be down."
Sherry sighed. "God I hope Rebecca and Claire are okay. I feel like we're descending into Hell."
"Descending? We're already there."
Chris gasped as his backwards motion was halted by someone grabbing a handful of the front of his sweater and yanking him forward roughly. He wound up landing hard on the tar with his shoulder, being kneed in the stomach as he and the other person got tangled together in the backwards fall. He could smell Jorge's inexpensive cologne, and immediately started struggling. Chris kneed the nurse in the balls, shimmying out from underneath him. He started to desperately run towards the roof's ledge again. He wouldn't fail this time. He'd get to be with Piers again. He'd get to be with his parents again.
Chris was tackled around the knees by a panting, groaning Jorge, who was now shouting for help. Chris couldn't hear exactly what the nurse was yelling because the blood in his ears was so loud, and he was also moaning and shouting incoherently. He then felt more hands restraining him, but he still kept trying to crawl away. He felt one of his nails break off as he tried to claw his way across the roof.
"Let me go, you fucking asshole!" Chris screamed, letting out a long angry scream as he felt a prick in his left ass cheek. "Why won't you fucking let me die?!"
Even with the drugs now moving through his system, Chris struggled, and he felt three pairs of hands on him now, forcing him into a straight jacket.
"Chris, we're trying to help you!" Jorge insisted.
"Fuck... you..." Chris garbled out as the drugs took effect, his upper body pinned in the thick white material. He slipped into black oblivion, wishing it was the black bottom of the ocean where he'd left Piers behind.
"I can smell you, Chris..." Wesker's voice taunted through the earthen walls and nooks of the underground labyrinth they found themselves in. It was stiflingly hot, and in the distance I could hear Jill and Sheva fighting. Jill...
"Where are you, my pet?"
Despite my fury at Wesker for what he'd done to my best friend, his low, smooth voice still touched a part of me that wouldn't vanish, no matter how hard I tried to ignore or bury it.
I started to try and sneak down the pathway towards another dusty crypt room, away from the sound of Wesker's voice, but he found me, and before I could dash away, he had me slammed up against the wall with such force that all air left my lungs.
I punched him hard enough that his head snapped back and he stumbled, his sunglasses clattering to the floor. He nearly let go of me, but retained his grasp on me, even when he had to regain his footing and I almost fell down with him. I knew the only way I'd get out of his grasp was ripping off my arms.
He just stared at me with those fiery, malevolent eyes, moving his arm so that he was pinning my throat under the pressure of both his forearm and my own. Even though it still hurt to look in his eyes, and my gut reaction was to look away from the unnaturalness of them, I didn't break the gaze, even when my vision dimmed from lack of oxygen.
He stared at me, studying me. I couldn't begin to guess what he was thinking, this man I thought I'd known so well, this man whom I'd loved deeply, and still did love despite all his actions and all my best efforts to completely hate him. Oh, I hated him too, but it warred with the love I'd had for his alter-ego, and for the desire I had for him, even as a monster.
Then his lips were on mine, his full body now pinning me to the rough wall. I tried to struggle away, but really... I didn't try too hard. My body arched to his, molding itself against the planes that I knew so well. I could feel that this wasn't just him playing with me and torturing me (thought it did... it so fucking did), and that he wanted it, too. He was hard, and pressed his groin to mine with such firmness that it skirted that line between pleasurable and genuine pain.
I wanted to believe he was hard because he really did feel something for me aside from his desire to hurt me. I wanted to believe that his tongue moved so gently into my mouth because he simply wanted to kiss me, because he missed kissing me. Because he missed me. I couldn't believe it, though. There was nothing but lies right to the core of Albert Wesker.
And yet I kissed him back. My tongue moved with his with such familiarity. Our bodies knew each other, and moved of their own accord. God, even with Sheva and Jill ready to kill each other, I moaned into his mouth, my breath hitching when his gloved hand fumbled with the fly of my pants. It made my heart constrict in my chest when he quietly moaned into my mouth. It made me think of all the times that I thought he'd actually meant it. I tortured myself with those thoughts, playing them over and over again in my mind for all the years since I found out that Wesker had completely lied to me.
It didn't take long for Wesker's hand to bring me to orgasm, my semen splattering over his black leather glove. He laughed quietly into my ear and I let out a defeated noise between a groan and a whimper, turning my face away from his in shame.
"I enjoy that you still know exactly where your loyalties are, my pet."
I couldn't help but turn my face back to the source of Wesker's voice, my nose filled with the scent of the other man, which didn't change even when everything else about him had. My face suddenly became so hot that the flesh seemed to be burning right off it. I was looking at Wesker's familiar face, ruined by mutation and burns. We were falling into the lava, Jill and Sheva screaming after me.
My body crunched and turned to burnt ashes and cinders against Wesker's, his deformed arm slipping through the blackened, bubbling shell of my skin, touching me on the inside.
"Captain..." Piers whispered in my ear. "Just let yourself fall, sweetheart. I'll catch you."
I opened my mouth to let the burning lava in, but it turned into cold, salty water, burning my lungs with the sheer chill. I let myself fall, my body now burning and jerking from electricity rather than fire. I knew that Piers had caught me, and we were finally together again...
Chris snorted and jerked awake, his whole body heavy and sore from the drugs and restraint. He was still tied up in the straight jacket, and was motion. "What...?"
"Shut up!" a voice hissed behind him. Everything was really dark, and he could feel himself being lifted. He jammed his restrained elbow on something and cursed, and was shushed again. He groggily saw that he was being put into the passenger seat of a car, and when he tried to focus, he saw a male nurse pushing away a wheelchair into some bushes.
A wave of fear went through Chris, wondering what was happening, and hating that he was still half-drugged and in a fucking straight jacket. There would be no way to protect himself. The nurse jumped in behind the steering wheel and leaned over to buckle the seatbelt around Chris. Chris found himself staring at the sharp and painfully familiar profile of Jake Muller.
"What the hell is this?" he asked, words still slurring.
"So what did you do this time to make them put you in a straight jacket?" Jake asked as he drove the car at a normal pace, at least until they got away from the hospital.
"Tried to jump off the roof."
"You're just a laugh a minute." Jake casually pulled the car into a mostly deserted parking lot outside a bank. He then undid the seatbelt and started to unfasten the straight jacket. "I had to psycho-nap you because Claire's the only one who can sign your crazy ass out of the hospital right now, and she's kind of in big shit trouble."
"What are you talking about?" Chris asked, wincing as Jake roughly yanked his arm out of the jacket.
"I got a phone message that I know you got too, but you were too unconscious to check your phone."
"They confiscated it because..." Chris stopped himself. Because I would stare at it for hours and look at my pictures of Piers – the only thing I have left of him. Why didn't they just let me fall so I can be with you again?
"Well, anyway. They didn't go to fucking Florida," Jake grunted as he finally got Chris out of the straight jacket. The older man flexed his fingers and arms to get the blood flowing properly again. "They're being held captive in Edonia by Steve Burnside."
"Steve Burnside...?" Chris echoed, frowning at Jake in the limited light.
"Yeah. I guess he's another one of my father's legacies. Thanks Dad," Jake muttered sarcastically, looking at Chris long and hard. In this light, he looked even worse than he had laying trussed up in his hospital bed. He questioned whether it was a good idea to even bring him along for this obvious trap, but at the same time... it was Chris Fucking Redfield. He was the boogeyman as far as BOWs were concerned. He was the monster under the bed of the monsters. He'd gone up against some of the worst that biological evolution had to offer and come out on top. It wasn't the BOWs that had destroyed him – it was the loss that they caused. The loss of the men under his command, the loss of Jake's own father, despite the dysfunction of their relationship, and the loss of his great love.
Jake knew that even if Chris looked like complete shit, he'd done the right thing by stealing him from the loony bin. Even if he couldn't fight anymore and must have been at least 50 pounds lighter than he'd been before Piers died, Chris would serve as a future portrait of what Jake could become if something happened to Sherry.
"Here." Jake reached into a small pack that had been hidden at the small of his back under the scrubs. "I brought your pills." He also pulled out his cell phone. "We'll pick up supplies in Edonia. It's so a trap, but I don't care. I'm going to kill that fucker." He handed Chris the phone, hitting play on the video message.
"Hello Mr. Muller, Mr. Redfield. I've never had the pleasure of meeting either of you, but that shall change soon," a voice said over the image of Claire, Jill, Sherry and Rebecca tied up in a bright white room. "But, we've been close a couple times, Chris. And I knew your father very well, Jake." The image shook and shifted to close in on the face of an extremely attractive man with red hair and a slow and sexy smile. Before Piers, he would have been just Chris's type, except for the glimmering red eyes that were filled with unbalanced evil. They curdled Chris's blood as he remembered them watching over him at his first failed suicide attempt. "This message is to extend you an invitation to Edonia. The same facility where you had your little hissy fit, Chris. You can't even slit your wrists right. I don't know what Albert saw in you." Steve shook his head, grinning fully enough to now show his vampire-like fangs. "This time I will leave the door open for you, so you don't have to start crying again. But you better hurry. I'm giving the ladies a fighting chance, and they are tough. But they are only human, so I don't know how long they'll last against my employees. So, please hurry. I may also have a few surprises up my sleeve for you. See you soon."
"So... you're in, right? You do want to help save your sister, right?" the redhead asked after Chris had been silent for a long time.
Chris stared at Steve's paused face, his mind working slowly. His thought processes were still sluggish from the drugs wearing off in his system. "Why didn't Jill get BSAA backup besides Rebecca?" he wondered out loud.
"Probably because a whole army of your soldiers would spook this freak?"
"They should have found something at that facility after we were there..." Chris shook his head, stomach dropping. "Unless there's a mole." He hated the idea that anyone in the BSAA could be compromised, but money did talk, and could make even the most honest seeming person turn tail.
"Well, shit..." Jake trailed off. "I know where we can get guns in Edonia. Lots of them." He frowned at the older man. "Am I going to be able to even let you have a gun?"
"Until Claire is safe, you don't have to worry about me. But, once this is over, don't try to stop me."
Jake shrugged. "If you're that keen to die, I'll put the gun in your hand myself."
"Let's go then," Chris said, as if it was nothing. As if his sister wasn't facing certain death. As if this was something he had to face every day. But really... it was. In his mind, he'd never left hell. He was still walking through it, and this was just a change of scenery. And after he saved Claire, he would finally end it.
Piers panted as he fell out of the air duct like some sort of liquid. His whole body ached, and some of his seams had ripped open so he'd left a thin, smeary trail of blood through the air ducts, along with an even bigger trail of sweat that was leading the wailing creature right to him.
Piers still hadn't seen the thing, but just from the sounds it made, not only from its wailing, but from the strange clacking, wet noise it made as it moved through the ducts behind him, he didn't want to. He panted heavily to catch his breath, coughing as a horrid stench entered his nose. He looked around the room, covering his nose and mouth when he saw the bodies piled up around him. They all looked like they'd been dead for a while, and they were all rank. Maggots, flies and other insects crawled over some of the tangled limbs, the bodies piled on top of each other on metallic slabs, like they were garbage. Like they were nothing.
Piers tried to ignore the sad, terrible scene around him, tried to ignore that a lot of these bodies had missing arms and legs, and had large patches of skin removed. Just like the injuries that he'd suffered at Steve's hands. He crept around the tables, not forgetting that the creature chasing him was still in the air ducts somewhere. He still hadn't seen it, and he didn't want to.
As he moved across the room, he passed by some sort of metal cabinet where the surface was highly reflective. He couldn't help but stop and look at himself and the distorted reflection. He felt like an intruder in his own body, but he still visualized himself in his mind as he'd always been. The metal cabinet didn't give him a perfect vision of himself, but it gave enough detail that it disconcerted Piers. He touched his stomach and turned slightly, shocked at how skinny he actually looked. He'd always been a chubby kid, and had lost all that baby fat once joining the army, so to be this small seemed alien.
His ever-perceptive eyes saw a small, dirty mirror over a sink, and he went over despite heavy reservations. He didn't know if he wanted to see the full extent of the damage Steve had done to him, but Piers had never been one to back away from the truth. He had to rear away from the sink once he got close, swallowing down pure bile since there was no food in his stomach. There was a small amount of stagnant fluid stopped up, the sink's drain clogged up with what looked like putrefying bits of flesh. It stunk so bad that it made Piers's eyes water, but he still leaned forward to look at his own face for the first time in months.
His face actually looked familiar to him, but not because it was his own. It was because he looked like one of the poor, starved and haunted refugees that he'd helped throughout his career in the army and the BSAA. His cheekbones were hard angles, there were deep purple smudges under his eyes, and his eyes themselves had a burning, tortured look to them. The splits on his face where his human flesh had began to rip away to reveal monstrous mutations had actually healed fairly well through Steve's horrible electrical baths. There were still obvious seams, but they were pale and slightly shiny, like burn marks. As he tilted his face, they got more or less visible, depending on how the dim fluorescent light hit it. A few of the deeper ones were pink and he knew he'd have them forever. The deep pink scars got darker and deeper moving down the side of his neck, like the wax of a melted candle, disappearing underneath the lab coat he'd stolen from the locker.
Piers pulled back the coat, revealing his bare chest and shoulder. His collarbone, breastbone and ribs pressed hard against his skin. The scarring got thicker as it moved to his shoulder where he'd originally lost his arm. He sighed as he looked at the obvious seam where the regenerated arm joined the rest of his body. The skin texture was papery, and it looked ugly and gnarled. There was also heavy scarring on his now protruding ribcage, where his ribs had exploded through his skin. The scar still ached as if the broken bones were piercing through his skin even now.
A tear slid down his cheek, and not from the stench of the blocked sink. Piers had never really been vain, though he knew he was considered attractive. However, his appearance now left a lot to be desired, especially the grotesque arm. He covered himself back up with the lab coat, wondering what Chris would say when if he saw it. Piers wanted to be optimistic about seeing Chris again, but he had always been a realist, and knew it wasn't going to be easy to get out of here, and that Steve wouldn't just let him wander off scot free.
Piers closed his eyes, resting his forehead against the mirror, thinking of Chris. He knew that Chris definitely wasn't the shallow type, but Piers still wanted to be desirable to him, and right now he was so very far from desirable. He couldn't help the tears, feeling so lost and helpless and broken. God, he just wanted Chris's arms around him, to hold him and make him feel safe and loved. They'd spent so much of their time together apart that Piers briefly wondered if they weren't meant to be.
"No," he told himself, looking back up in the mirror and angrily wiping away his tears as if also wiping away doubt. Nothing had ever felt more right than when he and Chris had been together, when their hearts had beat together as one. "You may never be able to fire a sniper rifle again because of your fucking mummy gimp arm, and you may look like Freddy Krueger's assistant, but you're no fucking quitter, Nivans. Chris needs you." He stared at his reflection hard. "Your captain needs you, soldier."
He yelped and jumped back when a caterwauling wail filled his ears as his pursuer came out of the air ducts, landing with a ticking of nails and the soft plop of flesh. Piers was frozen in fear and horror when he finally saw the thing. He tried to look away because this monster wasn't something he wanted to scrutinize, but his mind had always paid attention to every detail, and it wouldn't ignore what it was seeing.
The creature still looked definitely human and definitely wrong. She'd once been a woman, but Piers didn't know if he could still call her that. She had the same mummified looking skin that Piers had on his own arm, but it was across most of her body. She walked on all fours, her relatively small breasts hanging down with blackened, diseased looking nipples nearly brushing the floor because of the extreme bow of her stretched back. Her arms had also been stretched beyond normal proportions, but still looked human enough to be unsettling and grotesque. Her fingers had also stretched into long, spindly grippers with sharp talon-like nails at the end. They clicked on the floor like a dog's nails as she reared her head and turned in each direction.
Piers couldn't help the noise that escaped him when he looked at her face. She immediately turned towards him and let out that blood curdling moan. The skin had been stretched back from her face by nails and rivets that held a metal helmet on her head, covering the upper half of her head and down over her eyes with holes for her ears. Her nose, ears and lips had been removed, making her look even more like a mummy. Her teeth had been sharpened and glinted with metallic edges, a mixture of mutation and torture. Her wail sounded like pure pity and pain, but Piers couldn't feel sorry for her because she was now coming towards him with surprising speed.
He started moving backwards and slammed into one of the metal tables hard enough that it skidded across the floor with a loud bang, a few stinking bodies falling on the floor. Piers stepped on a soft, squishy arm that was so rotten that it burst under his foot and caused him to slide and yelp loudly, tumbling into the twist of dead bodies. The creature wailed again, rushing towards the pile. Her sharp nails sliced through the corpses, trying to get at Piers. The noise it made was dreadful, and Piers had to scuttle away to avoid getting his leg severed. He wound up kicking the table, which immediately caused her to rear her terrible head towards the sound.
Piers gulped down his panting breath, trying not to make a noise as he skirted around the perimeter of the room. Because of the tables, he still was very close to the hellish creature. He worried that even the smallest breath would direct her attention away from the bodies at her feet that her elongated arms were now elbow-deep in. A loud scream and crash from outside caused both Piers and the mutated woman jerked their heads towards the noise. With the distraction, Piers made a break back towards the air ducts, not knowing if what made that cacophony in the hallway would be worse than what he was already facing.
As he tried to silently rush to the air ducts, he tripped over a tangle of stained, stinking fabric, banging into the wall. It caused him to involuntarily grunt and disrupt a table with metal instruments and containers on it.
The woman reared her metallic and flesh head towards the sound, lunging with odd, disturbing grace. Piers pursed his lips to bite back a curse when he realized that he was backed into a corner. She sniffed around, panting and groaning as she moved closer and closer to Piers. He closed her eyes, wanting to think of Chris's earnest, honest eyes as he died, instead of looking into the woman's terrible face.
I'm sorry Captain. I wish I could have been there to protect you a little longer, baby. I hope you know how much I love you, he thought to himself as he braced himself for the end once more, knowing facing death would be harder this time without knowing Chris would be safe.
