AUTHOR NOTE: It would seem that this story is not showing up under the "Resident Evil" category, despite insistence that it is. Can any one else find it? If so please tell me - it's very frustrating that I can't "ensnare" hapless new readers to my fantastic, glorious, godly story. I feel sorry for the people whose lives have not been brightened by my creation... ahem
distort-distort-yay
Earlier
The boat trip had been terrifying. The dark of the night made it impossible to predict when the next crashing big swell would come along, heavy waves which would pummel the side of the small boat and send furious flurries of saltwater cascading over the roofs and sides. Chris fought for control valiantly, muscles and tendons straining.
Claire was crouched down under the wheel, at his feet. One hand was wrapped around her stomach and the other clung tightly to the bottom of what she guessed was the boat's equivalent of a dashboard. She doubted a large ferry would have made it through the monstrous waves, let alone a geriatric tugboat.
A swell thrashed against the left – port? - side as she thought this, as if to confirm her fears. She groaned miserably.
Chris leaned back to check on her, and although she was probably a delicate tint of pale green, she managed a weak smile.
When the vessel finally came bumping against a small wooden jetty, the siblings threw themselves out with relief. After a joint effort of lashing the boat to one of the thick staves, they looked around the place they had landed at.
It was dark. The choppy surface of the see reflected the starlight and the pale moon, just enough to show how rough it really was out there. On the other end of the jetty was the island; small, hilly, and covered with forest that ranged from dense to sparse. It was too dark to see anything more than the blackness of the trees and the shadows of scraggly, thorny bushes.
"Where's the building s'posed to be?" Claire asked weakly, still looking a bit sick.
"In a valley." Chris twisted to look at his survival belt and quickly detached a small black maglight.
"Oh, goody."
He turned the torch on. It had a surprisingly strong, clear light for such a small bulb, which reached as far as the trees at the jetty's end. He let the light meander over the fringe of the forest. "We're gonna have to look for it."
"Extra goody."
Sighing, Claire turned her torch on as well, and soon there were two beams illuminating the surroundings. The jetty was old, the wooden planks twisting with years of exposure to sun and salt, shucking off the nails that had bond them. They had been painted once, a reddish brown that now lifted off in thick peels of colour. When the siblings walked, their steps echoed loudly even with the wild water sloshing noisily against the wooden poles beneath them. The occasional banging of the tugboat against the wood could also be heard, and this was comforting to Claire because it meant that their way out was still near by.
They stayed close together. After stepping onto more stable ground, the light of their torches revealed a well-worn track that wound between the trees. It was carpeted generously with pine needles and other leaves, and there were dark impressions that suggested the presence of rocks and large tree roots.
Chris frowned at it, and waved at Claire to get her attention.
"We're gonna have to be careful," he warned, "the pine needles might muffle our approach but it we get spotted they'll work against. Damn slippery, especially as they'll probably be dewy later on."
Claire nodded, carefully avoiding shining the light directly into her brother's face. "You think we should turn off the torches?"
"Yeah, now that we've found a path. Anyone could be waiting for us to approach... after all, they know intruders are about."
Searching the island was nerve-racking and slow-going. Chris was uncomfortably aware that the woods could be crawling with UBCS guys and they wouldn't know until someone gave a cry of alarm and opened fire. They had to creep carefully over every inch.
Claire enjoyed the musky forest sent until they crouched by a small copse of trees, around which the smell of decay lingered – probably due to some unfortunate bush critter. But her brother's words echoed in her mind – if you had leprosy, you were exiled here. Until you died. A shiver of fear trickled down her spine as she thought of how many desperate, despairing people were buried in the soil beneath her feat, and she tried to quickly squash the memory of dead Umbrella prisoners pushing their way out of Rockfort Cemetery.
Despite nerves, the pair concentrated on the steep, uneven, and above all slippery ground beneath them. Tree roots often bulged out of the path and rocks littered the steepest bits like loose teeth. It was not an easy track to follow, least of all in the dark.
Finally, after what had seemed like decades ( - probably only thirty fun-filled minutes in reality, Claire had thought wryly - ) they reached the top of the steepest hill. Nestled at the bottom, in a valley full of trees that met the sea at a sandy beach, shined an electric light.
It was a dusty, old lantern with a modern light bulb inside. Its glass panes were cracked and grimy. It hung on a rusting chain that was festooned with spiderwebs, and attached to an aluminium roof by a large bolt, in such a way that allowed it to swing wildly in the wind. The roof was old, weatherbeaten, and had once been painted green in patches. Some new sheets of unpainted aluminium carpeted older ones. The building attached underneath was also old and green, but wooden. The windows were streaked with dust and dirt.
It looked like an unused warden's hut.
Chris shone the beam of his torch through one of the dirty windows, peering inside cautiously. "No one's home," he whispered, "let's go take a look."
The door was unlocked, but on stiff hinges. Chris had to put his shoulder up against it and push with all his strength before it even began to move. With lots of effort, it finally opened in painful grating bursts. When the gap was big enough for both of them to slip through, Chris went inside and leaned against a wall, panting.
"I would close it," he said, whispering once again, "so we'd know if someone else tried to follow us inside, but I don't know if I'd be able to open it again."
Claire looked around the interior. The torch-beam showed desks with neat stacks of paper, filing cabinets, office chairs, and an old communications radio.
"Hey," she called softly, "There's a light switch here. Should I turn it on?"
Chris considered. "We, I don't think anyone else is on this island, or we'd have been found by now. Judging by that door, this place isn't used that often. So. Let's shine some light on the problem, shall we?"
Claire dutifully turned the switch. Flourescent lights flickered into life overhead, their sudden clinical brightness hurting the Redfield's eyes. Despite Chris's assertion that the place must be more-or-less deserted, the desks looked tidy and well-used. It seemed just like any other office.
Chris came to stand behind her shoulder, attaching her torch back on his belt rather absently as he contemplated the desks. He looked toward the window and ran a finger over the glass. He checked his fingertip and then shrugged. "Window's are only dirty on the outside. Guess this place is used more often than we thought. That would explain why it didn't smell so dusty in here." He moved over to a desk, flicking through the pile of neatly stacked paper on top.
Claire remained looking at the window he'd touched, then turned to look at the door. She panned her view around the entire inside of the building. It appeared to be all one room. She frowned slightly, shaking her head.
'What is it?" asked Chris.
"It's nothing.
"Nothing's nothing," he replied cryptically, "So what is it?"
"Well," Claire began, feeling foolish, "this place doesn't make sense. Although, now that I say it aloud, I think it's beginning to make more sense, but it doesn't make proper sense."
Chris gave her a long-suffering look. "Well. I'm delighted for you. Truly. But you're confusing me, so, could you just say it, whatever it is? Please?"
"Uh, okay. But, uh, humour me. When you looked through the window oustide, you saw... what?"
He gestured to the room, shrugging. "Desk, chair, office-y stuff."
This time, it was Claire's turn to give a long-suffering look. "Come on, Chris. Think. Throw me a bone here."
"Okay, okay." Chris closed his eyes and tried to recapture the scene. "There was... a desk. I didn't see anything on it, though. And... a pot plant, on top of a filing cabinet. No chair, at least as far as I could tell... Something in the corner, though, and... a poster..."
"What was on it?" Claire prompted.
"Something... red..." He opened one eye to look at her, eyebrow raised. "So, how did I do?"
Claire gestured around them, "You tell me."
Chris followed her advice, looking at the room once more. There was no potplant, and no posters, if you excluded the wall-planner between two work stations. He turned his head sharply to look at her, smiling. "Point well made, little sister."
She inclined her head. "Thank you. But the reason I even began to think about how the dimensions seemed wrong was because this place is obviously well used, but the door is still as old as... well, as old as..."
"Elton John?" Chris suggested.
"Well, old anyway. So, I thought, there had to be another way in, a way that was used all the time."
Chris' proud smile grew. "I knew it was a good idea to bring you with me. You can be my sidekick."
Claire made a face. "Don't crack out the champagne just yet, though. I have no idea how to get into this "hidden room"."
"Umbrella does like their obscure secret entrances," he agreed.
As one entity, they moved towards the wall they had suspected had a room on the other side, and began a thorough and systematic examination of every inch of it.
Chris paused in checking the wall. He turned slightly towards her. "I have a theory. Can I run it by you?"
Claire shrugged. "Sure."
"Okay, the town. Small, out of the way. Dying, 'cos no one needs to travel through it anymore. But rich, somehow. Just like Raccoon City. Nearly everyone in a position of power – from business owners to the chief of police – are bought off, paid not to notice anything strange. That's how the town keeps running. The counterfeiting, yeah?"
Claire nodded. "Yeah."
"Exact same thing must've been happening in Raccoon. It's a miracle it took so long to figure out. I mean, some of the businesses that were up and running hadn't seen any new customers for years."
She nodded again. "Could be. I mean, you hadn't been there very long. Maybe as soon as someone who lived in Raccoon City got interested in the mansion, they had two choices; take the bribe and keep quiet, or end up a zombie by morning. But then too many people found out at once about the 'murders' so they had to... take steps..."
"This place is the new Raccoon City. The investors we're trying to scare off... must be in charge of the counterfeiting. Taking the fake money to places where they can leak it, letting Umbrella use the real stuff to pay the townspeople. Can't have a government investigation about it here. They'd find Umbrella hidden. In return, the counterfeiters get all the chemicals and stuff they need."
"Makes sense."
"Perfect location. Middle of nowhere. St. Augstine's. No one will have even heard of it. Main attraction is the church. But there's no isolated mansion here, right? Nowhere you can hide the entrance to a base. Nowhere you can hide the construction of one. Except, there is this convenient little island. Why not make that the entrance? Few people are going to stumble across it there. Trouble is, you can't hide construction workers and their materials if they have to use boats to get over all the time. You can pay the townsfolk to look the other way, but you don't want them to know too much. So. You make a tunnel, right? From your mainland base to here."
"Then no one can see the scientists and builders came across the island. That'd be the first thing they'd make, I guess."
'Yeah. But they need a place to come up at. A place no one's gonna look, should some bored tourist or kids be running around. So they choose this old warden's hut. See these papers? Building quotes. Progress reports. The tunnel's been built, and now they're making the damn labs underneath us. This building isn't only a hiding place though, it's also a place for builders and architects to collaborate. My guess is in another couple of months this building won't be here. No one would ever know that there really is a fucking hell under their very feet.
"And, of course, Umbrella would have to know that a building on the island would make people curious. So they didn't pretty it up. Left it old, dusty. The builder's will probably have some sort of cover story, and if some kid came looking for trouble all they'd see would be a decreipit shack. The real entrance to the underground labs is hidden inside a hidden room?"
"Yeah. Guess so."
"Then why aren't there security guys running around? Survellience?"
"My guess is that after we get into this hidden room, we'll be on tape. The security will be at the mainland base now, looking for us. Thinking we're in our bolt-hole with those ghastly pink-starred curtains. Just a few back up guys round the island, I guess. Must've been lucky and got past them. Or maybe they're waiting for backup. We'll just have enough time to reach the files, nick 'em, and get the hell out."
Claire let out a shaky breath.
Sounds like fun times are ahead.
"We gotta get those files," she said breathily. "We'll just have to be damn quick. Hope we can find the way in to the room, eh?"
"Already got it.
"Where? What is it?"
"A finger-pull behind the wallplanner. The join of the door and wall is hidden by the two filing cabinets on either side." He sounded vaguely disappointed.
"Well, that's not imaginative," Claire said in mock disgust.
"I know. I feel guilty just standing next to it." Chris hooked his finger through the small metal ring. He looked at her, completely serious. "You sure you wanna do this? With the information on counterfeiting and some of the viral reports we have, there's more than enough information to warren a full-scale investigation. We don't have to go in, and hope we're faster than security."
Claire shrugged. "If we don't, the main guys will just go to ground again, right?"
"Might be that the counterfeiting catches them."
She considered half-heartedly. She couldn't imagine meeting up with the rest of the Raccoon City survivors and telling them, "Yeah, we had the opportunity to find out everyone who was involved in the creation of the new Umbrella. But then, we didn't want to risk getting hurt. So we came back."
"We need to get everyone," she decided, "Every snivelling little lab rat who started experimenting on people because their daddy didn't love them enough. Otherwise Umbrella or something like it will just sprout up again. Every single part of it needs to be taken down."
Any other brother would have asked if she was sure. Would've explained that she didn't have to be macho. But Chris was different. For one, he planned to go down anyway. For another, he didn't particularly want to leave his sister alone and 'vulnerable'. And lastly, he thought that by now Claire was mature enough to know her own mind.
He nodded to her, and readied himself. He twisted the small metal ring clockwise, and pulled open the hidden door
AUTHOR COMMENTARY: no, this isn't what Chris is feeling guilty about. In fact, what Chris is feeling guilty about has gone under many, many revisions. I'm not yet sure which one I'm going to go for... it depends on what I do with Claire's hallucinations, and they're so much fun to do that I haven't quite decided upon what one to follow. Like I said before, Wesker wasn't going to appear but having "doped" Wesker, as I affectionately refer to him, is far too much fun to be a one-off, so he might appear in the future too... Actually ues... ahahaha
The island mentioned does exist. Its name is Quail Island, and it is horrible to be in at night, redeemed only by that fact that when you wake in the morning the sea is right there for an early morning freeze-your-bollocks-off swim. It was originally used as a quarantine area for people suffering leprosy, and there is a small ramshackle cemetry that is simply mounds of earth and twisting bramble enclosed in a picket-square
also, just to repeat what I said at the top, this isn't showing up on the resident evil page for me, despite the fact that the story manager says that's where it is. Can anyone else see it? If not, can you notify? I did before, but they still haven't done anything about it... that makes me a sad panda.
Sorry this took so long to update... I have been housesitting with no internet connection! Ahh! And thanks to everyone who reviewed or PMed me
FEED THE PLOT BUNNIES, BELOW!