Chapter 9: By Any Other Name
After the way Leon had sat in the lush, comfy chairs on the private jet, Piers was surprised to hear the soft huff of relief the man let out when he walked off the plane. He had been draped in his seat in a manner Piers was pretty sure no paranoid secret agent should, but evidently it had been a rouse, which kind of made Piers feel better for feeling so anxious himself. The last time he had been in a jet, it had been to stop a missile from firing at China…
The memory of their failure tasted sore in his mouth.
An elbow in his ribs effectively batted the memory away for him, bringing him back to the present and Leon grinning at him.
"See? I told you it was just a B.S.A.A. wives' tale!"
"Well, you crash enough things and people start talking," Piers said half jokingly, half seriously as he tried to shake the tight, nervous feeling he had been flying with for the past several hours. "This isn't a layover or something, is it? We're actually here?"
"Yes, Agent Nivans," said a female voice from behind him, "We're actually here."
Piers saw Leon grin widely and look at something past his shoulder before he turned around to find a woman with light coffee colored skin standing behind him. Her pencil-neck skirt and professional looking suit added crisp, dark grey lines to her body that accentuated her curves despite the very no-nonsense expression she wore. She held an iPad in her hands and had the little tablet tucked to her chest as she gave the B.S.A.A. agent a curt nod in greeting.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Special Agent Nivans," she said.
"Piers!" Leon said as he clapped the younger man firmly on his right shoulder, "This is the gem of the Secret Service, F.O.S. Agent Ingrid Hunnigan. And Hunnigan! Is that the scarf I got you?"
Piers gave Leon a confused sideways look. He knew the man often worked alone, but the speed with which he jumped from topic to topic threw him off balance. Eager for company, it would seem.
Hunnigan's cheeks darkened very slightly as she delicately adjusted the dark, ashy blue scarf wrapped neatly around her neck. She cleared her throat and turned her eyes to her iPad as she began to swipe at it with quick, efficient fingers.
"Astute as always, Leon. Now let's get back to the matter at hand - the data chip and the kidnapped B.S.A.A. Captain."
Piers stepped out of the hand that was on his shoulder and took another step towards the woman. "An F.O.S. Agent? If you specialize in field support, why are you out here in the field?"
"I'm not." At the young man's unamused face, she gestured to Leon. "Leon, if you'd please?"
"Not a problem." That was when Piers caught a bit of motion out of the corner of his eye and saw the older agent shake a small, glowing cube he was holding lightly in his hand. Piers hadn't noticed him take it out or activate it, which left him with an eerie mixture of awe and unease in his stomach.
When Leon shook the little device, the once crystal clear image of Hunnigan glitched slightly, and a bit of static like a TV screen tuning into a better frequency rolled over her form until the cube settled and she returned to HD clarity once more.
Piers felt his jaw drop. Leon grinned.
"I get the neatest toys, don't I?"
"Boys, focus," Hunnigan said. "We've got a Captain and a chip to find."
"Do you know where Wesker took them?" Piers asked.
"I'm sorry, Agent Nivans, but no. We lost their chopper somewhere along the Maryland/Virginia state line. We haven't been able to catch even a trace of their trail since. We did follow the tracking beacon that was in Captain Redfield's knife, but we found the knife buried down to the hilt in a tree this morning with no sign of the chopper anywhere."
"Then why did we fly here if we don't have a lead?"
"To recruit."
"We could recruit anywhere," Piers said, "We could've done it in Washington, DC!"
She was about to open her mouth to continue with her mission brief when her eyes focused on something beyond Piers and Leon. Both men turned around to see a small group of B.S.A.A. soldiers jogging down the tarmac towards them. The one in the lead waved at them as he jogged, and when he came to a halt in front of them, he already had his hand extended.
"Captain Stone, it's been a long time!" Leon said as he clasped the man's hand in a strong grip. When he let go, he leaned back and gestured to Piers. "Josh, this is Special Agent Piers Nivans. He's apart of Chris' team."
"One of Redfield's, huh?" Josh said with a large, gleaming smile as he shook Piers' hand. "I owe that man more than just my life. We'll do everything we can to ensure he comes home safe."
"I-" Piers said, "That's good to hear."
"Piers," Leon said, "This is Joshua Stone, Co-Branch Commander of the B.S.A.A.'s African branch. I'm sure you've heard of him. He's going to help us find Chris and the chip."
After greeting Hunnigan, Josh then turned back to Leon. "The Branch Commander extends her apologies for not being her to greet you on the tarmac. She's taking care of a small matter at the moment. She'll meet us in the conference room. We'll wait there while the boys fuel up your ride."
"Thanks, Josh."
The soldiers that Josh had brought with him then walked towards the jet, moving with a practiced efficiency as Josh and Leon walked towards the base. Piers didn't immediately follow, his face troubled.
"Something wrong, Agent Nivans?" Hunnigan said, startling him. He had expected her hologram to follow Leon. Evidently the cube had good range.
"We could have just as easily built up a team in Washington, DC. It's not that I don't appreciate their help, but Africa wasn't exactly close."
Hunnigan smiled. "Because DC doesn't have Sheva Alomar, that's why."
Piers' blood stilled. He knew that name just as well as he knew Chris' or any of the other heroes of the B.S.A.A. It excited him to know he would get to meet the woman who had fought beside Chris against Wesker just as much as it terrified him. He didn't know if he could bear to see another one of his heroes for what they really were - human.
But he shoved the selfish thought into a small box in his mind and forced himself to walk forward. Everyone had a right to be human.
It was hard not to get lost in the feeling of being young again. His knees didn't hurt anymore. Sounds that he didn't know had been dull were suddenly so rich. Color was sharp, the air was easier to inhale. Shortly after waking from his third blackout in the kitchen, Wesker sent Chris to an employee/lab locker room to get cleaned up. It was the first thing Chris could claim he was grateful for‒the fact that Wesker hadn't taken it upon himself to clean him while he was in his catatonic-robot state or whatever the hell it was.
His time in the shower had been his first chance to actually pause and reflect upon all the changes the virus had done to him. His toned and slenderer form; his aches, or more accurately, his lack thereof; and his appearance. His face was younger, the wrinkles he had gained from the hard years of his life wiped away as if someone had smoothed them out of his skin with their thumb. And his eyes. He was glad they weren't red and surprised they weren't cat-slitted, but the unearthly way with which they actually glowed unsettled him; a blazing glacial blue that startled him every time he caught them in the mirror. So bright it hurt to look at them.
Then again, a lot of things were too bright to look at. A side effect of the change, Wesker had said. The sensitivity would pass. It would likely be the last real pain he ever felt. That sensitivity, however, was why the blond had picked the location he had picked for the training exercises: dull, dim, dark, dank catacombs nestled somewhere within the belly of the facility Wesker had spirited him away to. A part of him was grateful for it‒it didn't hurt down here in the dark. But another part of him was unsettled by it. The dark was wrong. As the dark did for all things, it made him hyperaware and reliant on his instincts. But his instincts had changed.
He pressed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes as he tried to shake off another wave of foreign impulses. It was like a second heartbeat within him, pulsing and ever-present. If he didn't concentrate, the feelings would catch him off guard here in the dark, sliding through the stone of his mental walls like water. It wasn't as though there was a voice demanding murder in his head. The urges were far more subtle than that. They did not demand blood, they demanded acknowledgment. They demanded he listened, because his way was obsolete. One second he'd be thinking about finding a way to escape, and the next…
He pressed his fingertips to the skin of the water lightly, just barely breaking the surface pressure. He could feel movement in the calf-deep water of the catacombs. Some of it belonged to the pitter patter of the water falling from the ceiling. The sound of their descent sang a concerto through the narrow halls. But some - some did not. Some belonged to the pathetic creatures that Wesker kept here for God knew what reason. He could feel the way they passed through the water, claws scrapping the cement bottom and furrowing out long, deep grooves. They gargled sickly when they breathed; imperfect hosts that succumbed to imperfect viruses. If he closed his eyes and spread out his awareness, he could tell exactly how many there were and where they were just by the slight way the water moved across his legs, and‒
‒Chris snapped back with a horrible gasping flinch and water sloshed loudly around him in response. His chest heaved and he could hear his younger heartbeat thrashing frantically within his ribcage.
"If you keep fighting it, you'll never find me, Christopher," Wesker said simply.
Chris put two shaky fingers to the device in his ear and growled, "I can find you just fine without the virus. I've been doing it for years."
"Yes, that's why I've been waiting here for hours. Because your human instincts are so much more efficient than those of my virus. I apologize for not seeing it myself sooner."
The B.S.A.A. agent scowled, his eyes darting to an opening on his upper left when the sound of sloshing water began to emit from that direction. He lowered his voice.
"I feel so bad for holding up your schedule," he said flatly.
"Hmph. Whether you choose out of your own free will or necessity, it will be the instincts that I gave you that bring you to me. The sooner you accept that, the easier this will be."
And then the line disconnected again. Chris muttered a curse at the man and raised his hands into a loose defensive gesture as he neared the entrance the sound had come from. With the virus' instincts, everything felt one hundred times more intense. Now that he had shoved them back and Wesker had left him in silence, Chris noticed the way that everything seemed darker, muted in comparison to just a moment ago.
When he finally turned around the corner, nothing was there, but he didn't lower his hands.
The catacombs were extensive. Whatever was down here might have gone another direction, but he'd run into it sooner or later. Something whispered innocently in his mind‒if he gave in for just a moment, he'd know where the creature went. Just like that, he would feel it. It would be easy to cross that line quickly and then hop back, but how many times could he do that before the line turned into a blurry mess. Chris clenched his jaw.
Wesker was right. If he didn't find a way out of here, he could be stuck down here for days. With the amount of energy the virus had been consuming in this early stage of his growth, how long did he have before it put him into another catatonic state and made him cross the line? Would it even wait to find Wesker before it tried to eat something. Chris was pretty sure he wouldn't find any steak down here.
The slight clench his hands made from the mere thought of what could happen caused the leather combat gloves Wesker had provided to squeal minutely. The creature that lunged at him in response, Chris was ready for. He dodged beneath the swipe of huge claws and rolled to the side with a nimbleness he hadn't had in years. The movement in turn drenched the solid black combat fatigues he had been given to replace his tattered B.S.A.A. uniform, but he didn't notice the water's added weight.
The creature stared at him with dumb, beady eyes. Chris' heart went from professional to still in a matter of moments as his eyes adjusted and he recognized what had lunged at him. It was a Napad. Like Ben, Carl, and Andy. Like Finn.
He instinctually raised his hands as if aiming a rifle, his human faculties overriding his animalistic ones as the beast stretched its arms out and howled into the catacombs. Answering howls began to rise up from the area, the pressure of their song dislodging loose stone from the ceiling and making the water quiver in its wake.
But Chris stared too long, just as he had when it had been Finn rushing him. The Napad dug its two large hands into the ground and forcefully threw itself toward him before he even realized that the gun he was aiming was just air. And there was no Piers here to cover him this time. No Sheva. No Jill...
Time slowed. Waves pressed against his knees, steadily getting more forceful as the brute tore up the concrete floor to get to him. The sound of its claws ripping through the ground grew dull in his ears as he focused his senses on the Napad's movements. He noted the way it moved, how quickly it was moving, how much space it was taking in the narrow tunnel, and calculated on when the opportune moment would be to slide past the charging beast and run for it.
He lowered his body to a runner's crouch, preparing himself as the creature raised one eerily familiar clawed appendage into the air to strike him with. A blow with that much momentum behind it would surely stun him back into another coma, and Chris had no intention of letting that happen. But he couldn't fight the thing without a weapon, either. As the creature leaned to the right to raise its arm even higher, never slowing in its rush, Chris tensed his muscles to spring forward.
He had timed it perfectly, he was going to make it. He'd slide right under the creature's arm and run away. But before he could even start to run, a second set of claws wrapped around his head and neck, and threw him through a wall. The catacombs shook as he barreled through a non-supporting wall and became embedded in another. A spider web of wet, splintery cracks spread out from him in the concrete in all directions by at least three feet, stone crumbling where the structure was at its weakest. The clenching fear when he realized that being thrown through one wall and into another didn't hurt was quickly overshadowed when he realized that there were not just two Napads. There were many. They were freaking Legion.
As Chris tumbled down from the wall to his knees‒stunned‒he saw more hulking figures looming in the shadows of the new tunnel he had been thrown into, and they were shambling ever steadily nearer. He counted at least ten, with a few shapes further in each direction that could be the telltale sign of more. The one that had thrown him slammed its fists at the hole it had made in the wall until the hole was a gaping entrance in the stonework. It howled and all the others answered.
Even in Edonia, there had never been this many. Close, but then he had had his men beside him (for most of it), a gun in his hands, and open space to work with.
Now he was alone, weaponless, and in a series of narrow, uncooperative catacombs about twice as wide as he was tall.
He rolled to his feet liquidly and lowered himself into another crouch. His eyes darted between all the bulky bodies as they slowly advanced toward him, forming a hard, armored wall of muscles and exoskeleton around him. And then they stopped, each one about two arm lengths away and breathing heavily over top of him as they loomed there, dumb and menacing. His own breathing was louder.
"You can choose to willingly utilize the virus or your body will make the decision for you. Either way, the result is the same," Wesker said suddenly in his ear.
"You could call them off," Chris suggested in a low voice. Not low enough, though. It agitated the Napads and they collectively began to take another step forward, eyes glistening and lungs rasping beneath their armor. Chris winced.
"I can't, actually. They are not of my virus. I have just about as much control over them as you do. They are imperfect creatures to be extinguished, which you could do with ease even against so many if you would just accept the inevitable."
"And if I don't?"
"Inevitable by any other name is still as certain and unavoidable, Christopher. It's time you learned that."
And then the static was gone again. Chris cursed in frustration, a hard, huffing word that was carried out with his breath and a jerk from his body. It triggered them, hard bodies lunging at him from all angles. Chris returned the gesture, rushing the one nearest him and throwing it into the wall with a force only moderately stronger than what he was used to. He was on top of it, hands clawing at the exoskeleton, making the thing howl when a fleshy claw hammered him in the ribs and sent him flying into another Napad. The creature's armor was definitely harder than the wall he had crashed through, but still he felt no pain.
He fought wildly, knuckles splitting with the force of his punches against the serrated armor only to heal seconds after pulling away. A burning feeling licked at his stomach, demanding nourishment, but still he fought. There, down in the darkness amongst the writhing, infected bodies of men and women past, Chris fought with every last inch of himself.
And then some more.
[a/n] Sorry it took so long. . BUT I LOVE YOU GUYS! Thanks for your patience!
Sokulski - Don't worry, I don't plan on quitting this story until it's done. So you'll find out. :) And ta-da! He's even in this chapter, lol. Thanks for reading! I'm glad you're enjoying it so far!
Ze110t - Oh wow, I'm so honored! Thank you for doing that, I hope you continue to enjoy the chapters! :D You made my day! 3
Emil Lime - Thanks for checking on that for me, I appreciate it. :) And thank you also for the kind words. I'm really glad you enjoyed the sleep/dream part (I was really worried it out be too weird... haha!) and yeah - Wesker eating. Strange, right? I picture him eating really posh foods, lol. Or super healthy and not enjoyable foods. Haha! I hope you continue to read and enjoy the chapters! I always look forward to reading your opinions about the updates. :)
orangepotato - *glomp* THANK YOU! Your kind words really made my day, just seriously, thanks! I was really worried about the abstract beginning, so it's nice to hear from you and a few others that it went over well! And I'm really glad you commented about Wesker's views - it's actually been my favorite part about writing this story. I really imagine that Wesker believes what he is doing is right. He's not doing it for himself, but for the collective "humanity" and in a weird, warped way, you can kind of understand his logic. As twisted and costly as it may be. And I could honestly see the world coming to a point like this in the future. And I'm really glad you feel he is in character - he is a hard one to pin. He's smarter than me, haha. I'm sorry that you won't get to see Nivanfield in this, but I do hope the other pairings make up for it. ;) and then, of course, Chris and Piers are brothers in arms - so lots of interaction from them to come. Thanks again for the review, I really enjoyed reading it! I would go in more depth as to Wesker's cray-cray-ness, but it would take years (or a fanfiction) for me to finish, lol. Thanks! Hope you continue to read and enjoy it!
Morriganna - ...not sure if by threesome you mean the innocent concept of "they all work together against a common advisory" or in the perverted sense...haha! BUT, no. The three of them (in either scenario) will never work together on the same side. The first of the two would be interesting for another story though -strokes chin and ponders- lol! Either way, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! :D
bloody raptor - Chris is definitely up a creek without a paddle, I agree with ya there. And stay tuned for more about why Jill went crazy. :D Thanks for the review! I'm glad you are still enjoying the story. 3
Ultimolu - Yep. Chris scares himself sometimes when he randomly starts bursting out into evil cackles - haha, but seriously. Guess you'll have to stay tuned and find out. ;) Sorry I haven't gotten to read your story, yet. I have trouble keeping up with internet stuff (like writing this and reading other fanfiction) between work, job hunting, traveling, and sytycv... BUT I read the description and it looks seriously interesting! I'm excited to start reading it, and I plan to come Christmas break! :D
Thanks to all of you for your constant support, your patience, and your excitement. Every review always makes my day, and I love reading your reactions and theories! I hope you all continue to enjoy the story!
