Mmm, it's been a productive week for me. I don't think I'll miss an update again, unless some sort of catastrophic event occurs.
The subject landed with a thud and a grunt, the metal grate crackling beneath her weight. Wesker and Annette froze, sharing one brief, wide-eyed glance as the test subject began to take in a few snuffling, gulping breaths; they sounded a bit like sobs. Birkin started to struggle against Annette's hold, apparently oblivious to the danger they were in, and Annette had to clamp a hand over his mouth to keep him from audibly protesting her grip. This did not calm him, and his struggles became even more frantic as he began clawing at her arms, kicking out his legs weakly all the while.
Out in the hall, Wesker could hear the subject's feet slapping over the concrete floor as she slowly zigzagged from one wall of the corridor to the other. Was she looking for something? He couldn't even to begin to fathom what her motivations were, but he knew that if she didn't beat it soon, Birkin was going to blow their cover and then they'd all be dead.
Catching Annette's eye, Wesker pantomimed putting Birkin out of his misery with one well-aimed blow to the head. He was met with a look of consternation.
Are you crazy? Annette mouthed, shaking her head disparagingly.
Wesker just a jabbed a finger towards the subject, not needing to say or mouth anything else. His point was clear.
Annette still wasn't buying it. Clenching her jaw, she stared stubbornly at the back wall of the car as Birkin twisted in her arms and the subject continued to plod around outside, hardly twenty feet from their position. Wesker focused on the back wall as well, his mind whirring. If the subject did realize they were there, what could they do to save themselves?
Nothing, his brain informed him dispassionately, but the survivalist in him argued that there had to be something. There was the gun, for instance...but what were a few more bullets going to do when so many of their brethren had already failed?
A dull metallic thump sounded off from somewhere down the hall, quickly followed by a brittle crash. With a small snort, the subject's footsteps receded; Wesker chanced a glance out the open door of the elevator in time to see a few trailing tentacles disappear into one of the distant labs.
Rolling forward onto the balls of his feet, Wesker scurried over to where Annette was attempting to restrain William. "We need to go," he hissed, "and we need to go now."
"Go where?" Annette shot back through clenched teeth. "She's between us and the stairs, in case you didn't notice! We'll never get past without drawing her attention!"
"We have to go up," Wesker said, pointing towards the hoist way door above them.
Annette shook her head. "Like I said, I can't—"
"You don't have a choice," Wesker growled. "You know how to open the locks now; it should be easier to do it a second time."
"But I can't reach it!"
Letting out a small huff of dissatisfaction, Wesker rolled his shoulders—both of them—experimentally. He was met with instantaneous and blindingly acute resistance from the crippled one, but it was manageable—just barely, but there it was, nonetheless. "I can give you a boost," he stated dully, unenthusiastically. Of all the things he didn't want to do, this was definitely high on the list. But dying was undeniably worse.
Annette gave him a skeptical look. "You sure about that? Your arm looks pretty bad, you know."
"Yes, I am aware," Wesker informed her dryly. "It will be fine. It's worse than it looks."
She did not appear reassured. "You realize that the only way I'll be able to reach the lock is if I'm sitting on your shoulders, right? You're sure you can handle that?"
Wesker gave her a quick appraisal, eyes sweeping coldly from the crown of her head to her toes and back up again. "I should think so," he replied. "You seem to have lost most of that ungainly pregnancy fat now that the brat's been born."
Annette's expression of polite concern immediately dropped into a carefully neutral face; Wesker could tell that wrath was brimming just beneath the surface, and he had to fight to keep the smirk off his own face.
"Okay," she said curtly. "I'm convinced. Take a knee."
Not one to blithely accept orders from those beneath him, Wesker simply gave her a glare instead. When a growl filtered towards them from down the hall, however, he decided to revise his current plan of action. There would be plenty of time to get revenge on her later for this humiliation, and so he knelt down far enough for Annette to clamber onto his shoulders.
It hurt more than he expected, and getting back to his feet took all the strength he could muster. Steadying himself with a hand on the floor indicator at the front of the elevator, he let out a puff of breath. "You're heavier than you look," he blackly commented.
"Oh, sorry," Annette responded snidely. "Guess I haven't lost all that pregnancy fat after all." And then she purposefully ground her weight down on his bad shoulder.
Wesker's vision blackened as a bomb went off in his arm; Annette let out a small yelp and buried her fingers into his hair as his knees gave out and they both went plunging towards the floor. He managed to catch himself before they got that far, though he was shaking badly as he latched back onto the elevator wall and straightened. "Do not do that again," he bit out, feeling sick to his stomach and more than just a little disposed towards throwing her down the hall for the test subject's enjoyment.
"Right, right," Annette babbled, refusing to relinquish the death grip she had on his hair even after he'd regained his footing. "Uh, sorry about that."
Wesker dismissed the apology with a grunt. "Just get the door open," he growled.
"I'll try," Annette hazarded, and then the pressure on Wesker's scalp eased as she placed one hand on the elevator's ceiling, steadying herself, and cautiously slid the other into the narrow gap between the top of the elevator and the hoist way door. It was not a comfortable position for her; sitting on his shoulders as she was, she had to hunch down and bend over to avoid smacking her head into the ceiling, all the while extending her arm as far up as it could go. But Wesker was hardly comfortable, either. "Ugh," she commented after an extended eternity of tinkering. "This is harder than I thought it would be."
Wesker didn't comment. All of his attention was currently channeled towards staying conscious and upright, but it was getting harder and harder to do both of those things with each passing second.
"Ow!" she exclaimed tightly, flinching suddenly and sending white-hot crackles of pain down his arm. "Son of a bi—"
"Do hurry up," Wesker urged her, almost desperately. His head was beginning to feel alarmingly light.
"Going as fast as I can," she responded grimly. "I don't think the manufacturers of this device had a scalpel in mind when they were designing the lock."
"You did it before," Wesker reminded her, to which she only let out a small hum of acknowledgement before attacking the lock with a new sense of determination.
Between the clicks and clacks of Annette's frantic struggle with the lock, Wesker noticed that there was nothing but silence coming from William's corner. Well, that wasn't quite true—ragged breathing could still be heard—but the man seemed a lot quieter than he had been before. It was probably too much to hope that he'd regained control of himself, but Wesker tried to engage the man in conversation anyway. Anything to take his mind off the pressure crushing down on his fragmented shoulder.
"How are you holding up, Will? Coherent yet?" Wesker forced out, shifting his weight between his feet in an effort to dispel some of his discomfort. It didn't work, and Annette let out a small sound of protest.
"Urp," was the man's initial reply, followed by a moan and a shaky, "I think I'm going to be sick."
"Just hold it down a little longer," Wesker replied warningly, inwardly surprised that Birkin was already capable of speech. "Once we get out of this wretched box you can vomit to your heart's content."
William didn't reply, but Annette made a small sound of victory. "Ha! Got you, you little bastard," she announced as the lock gave in with a small click. Wesker staggered as Annette suddenly threw her weight forward, seizing the hoist way doors and sliding them apart without warning. The elevator was rapidly flooded with a double-dose of red light as the second-floor corridor became visible.
To Annette, at least. Wesker's face was approximately level with the landing between the floors; he couldn't see much of anything.
"Brace yourself," Annette stated, and then, not bothering to give Wesker any time to realize what she planned to do, she planted her hands onto the floor of the corridor and pulled herself out of the elevator, pushing off of Wesker in the process. Wesker's vision swam with multicolored spots as he backpedaled and collided with the rear wall of the elevator; somewhere near his feet, William let out another moan.
"Well, that wasn't too hard," Annette commented to herself.
For her, maybe. But she'd had the advantage of height. Wesker had detected a certain problem with his own position, though; with only one shoulder working, he was going to have a hell of a time pulling himself up onto the landing. Annette crouched down on the floor, peering down at the trapped inhabitants of the car. "You've got to help me get William up here," she said.
Wesker didn't much appreciate her giving him orders, but since William was now moaning sickly in the corner, he didn't really want to be stuck in the small space with Birkin any longer, either. With a small sneer in Annette's direction—which she either ignored or didn't see—he sauntered over to where his friend was crouched and seized him by the arm, tugging him forcefully to his feet. Propelling him forward, he had to just as quickly tug him back when the man threatened to walk right out of the car and into the third floor corridor. "Pay attention," Wesker growled, though he could feel William's arm trembling wildly beneath his lab coat. He seemed to be in shock, though Wesker couldn't even begin to fathom why it had happened now, of all times.
Annette reached down into the car, and at her urging the young man lifted his hands and let her grab hold. From there Wesker had to seize the man by a leg and lift him as best as he could. It was hardly efficient or ideal for anyone, but eventually William's weight disappeared from his shoulder as Annette pulled him over the threshold of the landing. After she'd disposed of him somewhere, she returned to give Wesker a critical, appraising glance. "Need help getting out of there?" Her eyes were locked knowingly onto his bad shoulder.
Meeting her eyes, Wesker shook his head slowly, defiantly. Annette shrugged.
"Fine. But you should probably pass those guns up before you leave. It wouldn't be wise to leave them behind."
Wesker scowled at her tone, but he couldn't deny that she was right. He tossed his machine gun up first, then followed it with the rifle, which looked no worse the wear for its brief stint as a leverage device.
And then it was his turn. Setting his mouth into a grim line, Wesker began to pace at the edge of the car's opening, painfully aware of the height of the landing. There was no way he could get up it without utilizing his upper body in some manner, with or without Annette's help. It was going to be hell no matter how he proceeded.
Just as he was reaching up towards the landing with his good arm, movement down the hall caught his attention.
It was her.
The test subject.
At the worst possible moment she appeared, striding nonchalantly out of the lab as though she owned the place. She'd changed since they'd seen her last—not physically, there hadn't been any new mutations. Rather, her appearance was considerably more blood spattered and gore-smeared than before, suggesting she'd been doing more than just scuttling around the ventilation shafts while they'd been trapped in the elevator. Worst of all was the human arm she held in one hand; as Wesker watched, frozen in horrified fascination, she put it to her mouth and began to gnaw gently at the soft skin on the underside of the limb.
She just as quickly paused, however, when she noticed him standing there, exposed in the open elevator. The subject shambled to a halt, removed the limb from her mouth, and let it slap wetly to the floor. She cocked her head to the side, vacant eyes locking onto Wesker with an unnerving sense of recognition. The bridge of her nose wrinkled as she drew back her bloodstained lips, baring her teeth in a feral snarl.
That was all the prompting Wesker needed. Leaning forward, he seized first one hoist door, then the other, and slid them both shut even as the subject let out a scream. They moved easily, which was the only reason he was capable of moving them at all, but the lock did not reengage when he slammed them together. He had no way of keeping the subject from throwing them wide open again. He realized that at the same moment that the subject smashed her weight into the hoist way doors, which shuddered thunderously upon impact. Tentacles wormed their way between the seam, and all Wesker could do was quickly push himself up against the button panel, his good arm dragging the headless, crumpled corpse at the back of the car toward the doors.
If she wanted a body, she could have that one.
He flinched as the subject threw the doors open, and almost immediately her tentacles seized his offering and jerked it out of the car. From there he was treated to a vast array of wet tearing sounds as the subject went to town on the cooling body—either she thought it was him, or she didn't really care whom she was mauling. All the while he could only press himself up against the wall of the elevator, doing his best impression of stainless steel and hoping the subject didn't actually try to enter the elevator.
Glancing above himself once, he noticed Annette looking down at him from the second floor corridor, one hand held out halfheartedly in a beckoning gesture. Her eyes were wide with barely-concealed panic, and Wesker was pretty sure his expression wasn't much different. Still, her offering was suicide. So long as the subject was less than an arm's length away, any attempt to climb onto the second floor from the elevator was only going to result in a violent end for him.
His heart thumping wildly in his chest, Wesker lowered his gaze onto the rear wall of the elevator and waited for the subject's next move. It was a long time in coming; her preoccupation with the body was total. Wesker wasn't entirely certain as to what she was doing with it, but the sounds he could make out left little to the imagination. It shouldn't have been disturbing—some of their infected had shown a particular predisposition towards cannibalism—but for some reason his feelings on the matter were entirely different when it was all happening less than three feet away. One wrong step on his part and he'd be changing places with that body, after all.
Eventually the wet slurps and fleshy ripping sounds tapered off, and for a moment all he could hear was the subject breathing, roughly snorting in air through her crushed-in nose. Belatedly he realized she was sniffing the air, trying to scent out more prey like a dog.
How acute is her sense of smell?
He'd never thought about it before, but it suddenly struck him as being very important. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the subject's jaw and the upturned tip of her nose as she thrust the lower half of her face into the elevator. Silently sucking in a long breath, Wesker flattened himself against the wall as well as he could, the buttons pressing painfully into his spine. He waited for the subject to poke her head in fully, for her to notice him, but she didn't go that far. With a small grunt, the crooked jaw withdrew, and then he listened as the subject's heavy footfalls retreated back the way she'd come. Leaning to the side, Wesker risked a quick glance into the hall. Well beyond the pulpy remains of the body she'd just savaged, the subject was returning to where she'd dropped the arm earlier. Once she'd replaced the appendage in her mouth, she waltzed back into the far lab.
There was no telling how long he had before she came back out, but Wesker didn't care. He wasn't spending another second there on the floor with her. He looked up, and this time Annette didn't bother asking, just jabbed her hands down to him, and Wesker didn't even try to protest. Still, he knew she wasn't going to be able to haul up his weight alone—he'd need to help. To do that, he'd need to brace himself with his good arm, leaving Annette with few handholds, save for his bad arm.
That probably wouldn't go well, he rationalized.
Waving her hands away, he slapped his good palm down onto the cold concrete of the landing and pitched his weight forward, kicking off the floor with his feet at the same moment.
It wasn't enough; his injured body just wasn't strong enough. Gravity almost immediately reasserted itself, and it did so viciously, tugging him back towards the floor of the car with undisguised zeal. Wesker clawed at the concrete, which was useless—it had no grip to offer him—and then slammed his good elbow down in an attempt to pin himself in place. He stopped sliding backwards, but his position was precarious at best—one wrong move and he'd topple back into the car.
With a small frown of intense concentration, Wesker leaned over the landing, trying to bring his bad arm up. If he could just get his other elbow up to brace himself, the shoulder itself wouldn't matter—
Nope. The wounded mass of bone and muscle locked up, and he found extending his arm at all to be a complete impossibility. Almost as impossible as clinging to the concrete floor, for his good elbow was steadily sliding free from where he'd slapped it down.
Annette wasn't waiting for him to request her assistance. As he struggled with the floor, her hands fell onto his shoulders, searching for a hold on his lab coat. When she tugged at it, however, it did little to arrest his own progress backwards and did a lot more towards undressing him. Sensing the failure of that tactic, her hands fluttered about fretfully at the edges of his vision, uncertain as to where to land.
"No," Wesker spat out through clenched teeth. He knew what she was considering, just as much as he knew that it was probably the unavoidable course of action. He kicked his legs out into space, tying to propel his full weight up onto the landing, but it was useless.
"Look," she sighed in exasperation, flicking a wild strand of blood-slicked hair behind her ear. "Just suck it up. The faster we get you up, the faster we can get out of here."
Wesker didn't respond, being very much unable to, even had he wished to do so. Almost all of his weight had shifted back towards the elevator instead of the corridor floor, and as his hand slid closer to the edge, he could feel himself about to fall. He tried to brace a foot against something, anything in the elevator, but there was nothing there for it to catch against. It kicked out pointlessly; if only the subject hadn't thrown the hoist way doors open.
There was a sudden scream, and it hadn't come from him. Hadn't come from any of them.
Wesker's eyes widened and small, involuntary gasp escaped his lips as his hold finally gave out and gravity took over, jerking his body downwards. His good hand scrabbled uselessly at the floor as the rest of him slipped inexorably towards the car, nothing there to stop his imminent descent—
Save for Annette, who lunged forward at the first sign of panic in his eyes. Her splayed hands did not seek out the arm he had thrust out over the floor, nor did they go for his coat again. Instead, they wrapped around the wrist held close to his chest, and in a singular flare of agony wrenched his left arm forward.
It hurt. It hurt a lot. Blood flooded Wesker's mouth as his jaw closed on his tongue, and it took everything he had just to keep himself from verbalizing the scream resonating within the confines of his skull. Her decision had been the wisest course of action, of course—he knew that, even if only dimly—as to take his good arm would have forced Annette to somehow hold up all of his dead weight, but at the moment it was a struggle not to angrily and reflexively jerk his arm back and consign them both to the clutches of the subject.
And she was coming. He could hear her feet slapping out an enraged rhythm as she raced towards his legs, which still dangled down into the open car. He kicked them out manically, trying to propel himself to safety or at least keep her tentacles at bay, but they contacted only empty air.
"Pull, pull, pull," he chanted to Annette, voice hoarse with desperation and terribly, pathetically weak. His own good arm struck out against the concrete, doing what it could to pull him forward. But progress was too little and too slow. Something coiled around his ankle—not something, of course he knew what it was—and yanked him down. The only reason he stayed where he was, more or less, was because of Annette's hold on his arm.
The second his bad shoulder became the focal point of the tug-of-war between the subject and Annette, his forehead crashed into the concrete as his awareness dissolved into bright lights, black spots, and piercing pain the likes of which he'd never felt before. That was all there was. At some point—it might have been only a few seconds later, it might've been ten years—Annette released him, and the ground whipped by as the subject gleefully reeled him in. Wesker let it happen, he didn't even have the presence of mind to struggle.
Before he got too far, however, Annette returned—though not gently. One knee came down and crushed the back of his hand, while the other landed on his elbow, effectively pinning him in place. He might have shouted, he wasn't really sure, and either way his cry would've been drowned out by a metallic rattle as Annette shoved the sub-machine gun between him and the elevator and fired it down into the face of the subject. The monster shrieked—at least, he imagined as much; the gunfire was deafening—and the tentacle wrapped around his ankle spasmed once, twice, before slipping loose.
Annette tossed the gun aside, rolled off of him, and immediately resumed her attempts at pulling him to safety, but it was slow going. "William, help me!" she cried, casting a desperate glance over her shoulder towards her husband, but Birkin was absolutely useless to them. His face was as white as the walls behind him would have been, under more normal circumstances, and all he seemed capable of doing was staring at them with wide, glassy eyes. With a furious curse Annette returned all her focus to tugging on Wesker's arm, and somehow even he was able to assist, his good arm weakly but relentlessly sliding him forward as his mind actively courted unconsciousness.
Eventually his center of gravity shifted as the bulk of his body made it up onto the landing; from there, Annette's job became much easier. Trapped in the car below, the subject was spitting mad. Though her tentacles and arms began to claw at the floor of the hall, the gap between the ceiling of the elevator and the floor was too narrow for her twisted form to get through. Once Wesker's feet were clear of danger from the subject's numerous appendages, Annette released his arm and sat, panting wildly.
With a strangled groan Wesker let his forehead fall to the mercifully cool floor, gentler, this time—there was a bruise there now.
The next thing he knew, Annette was shaking him awake.
"Come on," she urged him. "I know this sucks but we've got to do something before she finds a way up here."
Wesker blinked once, twice, then slowly, painfully looked over his shoulder towards the stalled elevator, where part of the subject's leering, enraged face could be seen. As soon as eye contact was established, the creature let out a furious scream, blood-flecked spittle spraying the concrete around the landing. The entire elevator rocked and groaned as she tried to barrel her way through the too-small gap.
"Out of sight," Wesker mumbled, then found his voice and tried again. "We have to get out of sight," he repeated, louder and more authoritative. "She'll lose interest." He pushed himself up tentatively, expecting trouble, but his shoulder had filled with a strange, icy numbness and at the moment wasn't giving him too much grief. He pointed to the nearest lab—already open, since the subject had apparently savaged the floor while they'd been in the elevator—and fought to get to his feet. "That will do."
"I hope you're right about that," Annette said warily, but she complied, moving to William's side and urging him up. He didn't move, hardly even reacted to her presence. "William," she tried again, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. "Snap out of it."
"Just...drag him," Wesker ordered, shambling awkwardly over to the Birkins. He grabbed William by one shoulder with his good arm and motioned for Annette to do the same; the man offered up no resistance as they pulled him into the nearest lab.
It was mercifully clean, having apparently been unoccupied when the subject paid it a visit. They pulled him to a clear spot on the floor and propped him up against the lab benches; outside the subject's furious roars were tapering off into feral snarls.
"He's in some sort of shock," Wesker declared, somewhat annoyed. If anyone was to go into shock, it should be him. No one else had taken the hits he had. "Get him water," Wesker ordered, looking to Annette.
She pursed her lips at the command, but seemed to realize that now was not the time for arguing. She twisted on her heel and made for the nearest sink while Wesker eased himself down onto a nearby stool. The world had begun to sway around him again, the ground beneath him rolling like ocean swells caught in a storm. Grimacing, he pressed the heel of his hand into the bridge of his nose and tried to will the lightheadedness away. His mind cleared somewhat, though whether it was due to his efforts or his change in position, Wesker could not be sure.
After a moment Annette returned with a glass beaker filled nearly to the brim with clear water; she offered it to Birkin, but the man wasn't having any of it. He was still off in another world entirely. With a discontented grumble, Wesker pushed himself off the stool and staggered over to Annette, swiping the beaker out of her hands. And then, before she could stop him, he dashed the beaker's icy contents straight into Birkin's face.
That elicited a reaction. With a startled gasp, Birkin recoiled violently into the bench, water streaming in rivulets down his face and neck. "I—wha—why?" he choked out, streaking his face with blood as he dragged a hand over his eyes to clear them.
"It's time to go," Wesker said flatly, tossing the beaker to the side. It shattered in a small tinkle of glass, the sound echoing eerily throughout the lifeless lab. "We're only two floors down. You can freak out once we get to the surface."
"Uh." Birkin shook his head once, scattering water droplets, before fixing Annette with a sheepish, apologetic grin. "Sorry. I didn't mean to lose it like that," he offered quietly, eyes falling to the floor.
Annette gave him a pat on the arm. "I know how you get about elevators and small spaces," she said with an understanding sigh that set Wesker's teeth on edge. Birkin's little phobia had rendered him completely useless and undependable in their situation, the very situation he'd forced all of them into. Annette should have been biting his head off, not consoling him.
With a furious scowl, Wesker shouldered past the couple. "Let's go. The subject's too close for comfort."
As soon as the words left his lips, they were all startled by a thunderous crash from the hall. The three blonds froze and shared a wary look; Wesker and Annette then crept to the doorway while William pulled himself shakily to his feet. As he peered out cautiously into the corridor, Wesker noted that it was still rather quiet—no subject to be seen, since she'd vanished from the elevator—and despite the scattered and infrequent bloodstains, everything looked relatively normal.
Letting out the breath he didn't know he was holding, Wesker ducked back into the lab. "It must have come from the third floor," he stated, and that was the most likely possibility. With the open elevator connecting the two floors and the hole in the middle of the corridor where the subject had broken through the grate, sound carried easily between the floors. Still, it meant that she was on the move in some way or another, and they had better do the same.
"We're taking the stairs this time, right?" William piped up, face dripping with water and fear.
Wesker gave him a flat stare. "Well, with the power out, we don't have much else in the way of options, now do we?" he responded, voice remarkably dry considering how badly he wanted to punch the younger man in the face. It was, after all, impossible to ignore that everything that had recently happened was his fault—he had no right to be whining.
Annette was looking at the sub-machine gun in her hands. "I just wish we had more ammunition," she sighed. "I think I used up pretty much everything back when she grabbed onto you."
Wesker paused, and then looked back down the empty hall thoughtfully.
"That can be arranged..."