Watched the E3 demo of Chris' gameplay—Drunk Chris is awesome. I wish...I wish we could play the campaign as drunk Chris. Someone should make a mod for that, somehow...though I suppose the easiest "mod" would really just be getting hammered and then playing RE6.
"Well, so much for that," Annette commented as she leaned over Wesker's shoulder, searching the weapons cache for any sign of useable weapons. They hadn't locked up before leaving, and apparently at least one of the second-floor employees had raided the place. Most of the armaments—all the useful ones, at any rate—had been looted, and one could only wonder where they were now. Ammunition was also noticeably absent, though a minute of careful scrutiny revealed a full magazine of ammo for the rifle tucked behind a trashcan.
There was no sub-machine gun ammunition, and after the elevator incident Wesker was willing to bet that they had about a quarter of the magazine remaining. He was hoping that they would have no cause to use any of their remaining firepower, but if it came to that...it seemed fair to suppose they might be able to drive the subject back into a retreat again, if they were lucky.
If he was wrong about that...well, they wouldn't have long to agonize over it.
Schooling his disappointment behind a mask of casual indifference, Wesker exited the storeroom, fairly bowling over Annette in the process. Given the humiliation of having her pull him to safety, she was due a lot more than that, but it gave him a cheap little thrill to hear her small curse of indignation. He had to content himself with that small victory for now, especially since he couldn't exactly do anything worse to her in front of William. Not that William would particularly notice. Even though his sanity had returned—as much as it ever would, more or less—the man was still flighty, starting at every unexpected sound or touch, and he kept up a constant watch up and down the hall as he rubbed his hands together, mournfully lamenting the loss of his spear/pipe. Between him and the wife that was constantly getting in his way, Wesker was fairly fed up with both of his companions.
Luckily, the nearest stairwell was just around the corner. Once they reached that, it would be easy to climb up the few flights of stairs remaining, regardless of how exhausted they all were. Best of all, so long as the subject remained below them and they stayed in the stairwell, it was unlikely they'd see her again. Then it was just a matter of dropping Umbrella a line and telling them they had a mess to clean up...and everything would be back to normal by Tuesday. Well, all but his shoulder. He'd probably have to shoot William just to make it even.
Unfortunately, things were never so simple.
The minute Wesker rounded the corner he saw that something was wrong with the entrance to the stairs. Apparently it had been locked, and someone or something had tried to force their way into the corridor despite that fact. The entire door bulged outwards into the hall, connected to the frame at only three points—the hinges and the catch of the lock. Despite that, it was still standing, which was surprising. The lab doors were much sturdier. after all, and the subject had torn through those with ease. Apparently her heart hadn't been in it this time.
"Shit," William commented, taking in the damage with wide eyes. "How close is the other stairwell?"
"Other end of the facility," Annette answered. She watched as Wesker warily approached the busted door. "You think we can get past that?"
"The subject has practically done the work for us," Wesker pointed out. "A bit more force and we can probably remove the whole door." He examined the frame critically, trying to peer into the dark depths of the stairwell through the gaping cracks the warped door had created. "However, we do not know how recently she did this. She could still be in the well."
"Do you think she's still trying to get us?" Annette asked. "I mean, is she capable of that much...thought? Or does she only attack what's in front of her?"
"We haven't worked that out yet," Wesker replied, dropping his gun and laying his hand over the door's handle. He gave it an experimental tug, but the door remained resolutely locked in place.
So close. They were so close.
He glanced into the dark gap again. It was easily wide enough for him to fit an arm through. Perhaps the door could be opened by twisting the handle on the inside? It didn't seem likely, but it was probably worth a try. Except he couldn't do it, not with his left arm in the condition it was in.
"Ann—" he began to call out, halting prematurely when a flicker of movement behind the door caught his attention. He had a split second's worth of warning before a thick arm shot through the gap, and that was not nearly enough time for his battered body to react. The large hand fisted in his shirt, knobby knuckles resting right above his heart.
Then, as quickly as it had shot out, the arm retracted, carrying Wesker along with it.
Of course, there was no way he was following it back through the crack; the gap was not nearly big enough. Instead his body simply smashed face-first into the door before falling limp in stunned senselessness.
He recovered quickly despite the fresh blood flowing from his traumatized sinuses and began to claw one-handedly at the creature's hold, trying to free his shirt from her grasp. That didn't work, however, and he was just beginning to contemplate wriggling out of his shirt entirely—crippling shoulder injury be damned—when a deafening roar sounded off from right behind the door. It was surprising enough to shock him into brief inactivity, and in that transient moment the subject proved that the door really was no problem for her at all. With a simple thrust of her body it burst into the hall, breaking from its hinges with a few loud pops. The freed door sailed through the air, nearly clipping William in the shoulder before rebounding off the far wall.
The Birkins immediately fell back, dropping behind the corner for cover, and while Wesker could understand their tactic he didn't much like the sense of abandonment it left him with. He didn't have long to contemplate it, though, before the subject gave chase, pulling him along in tow. The most he could do was wrap a hand around her wrist in an attempt to keep himself upright as she raced forward, his feet slipping and sliding over the concrete floor to little effect.
Back in the straight leg of the corridor, there was a small jolt as the subject leaped over the hole in the floor, and then she continued her advance on the Birkins. Annette brought her rifle to bear on the charging creature, striking panic in the subject's captive hostage.
"Don't shoot!" Wesker snapped, all too aware of Annette's dubious accuracy.
With a small grunt, the creature slid to an abrupt halt, apparently only just remembering that she had Wesker in her clutches. She turned her mottled face his way, giving him a decidedly malicious leer before cocking back her arm and roughly flinging him like a rag doll towards the Birkins.
William skittered out of the way in time; Annette was not so lucky. "Oof!" she exclaimed as Wesker collided with her lower half, and they both hit the floor in a tangle.
Wesker shoved Annette aside, pushing himself up in time to get backhanded by the subject. He went rolling into the far wall, his head and neck throbbing with enough pain to rival his shattered shoulder. Letting his head rest against the floor, he half-closed his eyes and waited for the hall to stop spinning around him.
Meanwhile, the subject proceeded to ignore both him and William as she advanced on Annette, who was busy scooting away along the floor. The creature was not dissuaded by her obvious retreat. Cocking her head to the side, she regarded Annette with solemn confusion. "Mother?" she croaked out in heartbreaking tones, for all the world a lost and abandoned child. She might have been pitiable were she not a hulking, mutated, bloodthirsty beast bent on annihilating them all in the most gruesome way possible.
"You have got to be kidding me," Annette choked out, a frown forming on her face as the subject continued to follow her plaintively. When her back collided with the wall she stopped and brought the rifle up, training it on the subject. "Back off," she ordered sternly.
The subject displayed no interest in obeying. With a grunt she surged towards Annette, her other targets long forgotten. William moved, taking half a step in the subject's direction as though to intercept her, before remembering that he was unarmed. He came to an immediate halt, clearly puzzled as to what he should do. Annette was far less confounded on that score, but the subject lunged before she could open fire, and suddenly Annette found herself staring into the black pits of the subject's eyes that hovered only inches from her face. She flinched as the creature's gore-smeared hands came up and cupped her jaw.
"Mother," the subject crooned again.
Annette squeezed her eyes shut. Her hands shaking, she maneuvered the rifle until its muzzle was directly under the creature's jaw. And then, just as the subject attempted to vocalize again, she squeezed the trigger.
With a resounding screech the subject jerked away as though stung, and her eyes widened in obvious confusion as she stared at Annette's furious expression. "Mother," she repeated, this time insistent, almost petulant. Wesker could easily envision her stamping a foot.
This...thing...is an overgrown child.
The overgrown child surged forward again, hands extended towards Annette with an intent that may or may not have been malicious. Either way, the woman wasn't taking any chances. She leaped to her feet and immediately scuttled away, a few pops of the rifle punctuating each step she took.
While Annette dodged the creature's advances and counterattacked whenever the opportunity presented itself, William dashed into the nearest lab. Wesker was inclined to believe it to be an act of cowardice, but was proven wrong when the man reappeared hardly a minute later, arms filled with small metal instrumentation and glass containers of all sizes. He immediately began to fling them, one by one, at the subject with impunity. As weapons they were all rather poor choices, but as far as annoyances went, they were on par with the bullet barrage. Given Annette's steady retreat from the subject's advances, the creature found William to be a much easier target. With a small shriek, she pounced, launching herself his way with surprising speed.
He dropped the lab equipment, but that was all the action he could manage before she reached him. His thin frame folded under her weight when she tackled him, sending both predator and prey to the floor. At first he kicked out with his legs, trying to knock her off of him, but she was unaffected by his weak blows. Then, with a desperate, fear filled cry, he tried to push her face away from his with his hands. The tentacles caught him then, twisting around his arms and wrenching them out of her way. William struggled against them fruitlessly, but it was her hands he should have been more concerned about. Rocking her weight back onto her heels, she slapped both palms over his cheeks and wrapped her fingers around his skull, her thumbs dangerously close to gouging out his eyes.
Her position greatly alarmed Annette, who screamed out William's name before rapidly altering course from a retreat to a full-throttle offensive. Flare bursts spat from the end of the rifle, accompanied by the death rattle of firing shells, but the subject was unmoved. While Annette watched helplessly, the monster lifted William's head from the floor—not far, less than a foot, though he groaned terribly in protest—before smashing it back down mercilessly against the concrete.
"Let—him—go—you—ugly—bitch!" Annette screamed out between wild bursts of breath, eyes wide with rage as she flung the useless rifle aside and threw herself towards the subject. Wesker was in the middle of clambering to his feet, and though he wasn't sure what Annette planned to do, he knew he didn't have enough time to stop her, nor could he stop the subject from bashing William's head against the floor a second time. Gritting his teeth, Wesker slammed his palm against the floor. He was not accustomed to being so useless; the foreign feeling of insignificance swirled unpalatably in his belly.
Annette collided with the subject just as the beast was lifting William's head for a third encounter with the floor. The young woman tackled the monster around her pronounced back, one arm wrapping around her neck while the other twisted over her forehead, and despite her smaller size, Annette's momentum was enough to send the subject stumbling forward, one large foot nearly crushing William's head in the process. The subject was otherwise completely oblivious to her earlier victim, and her tentacles slid from his limp limbs and moved to the woman assaulting her back. Wesker took the opportunity to dart past the subject, pausing only to grab Birkin by his arm and drag him to relative safety.
The scientist was distressingly limp as Wesker manhandled him away from the subject's stomping feet, and as soon as he had put some distance between the subject and them, Wesker leaned down and searched frantically for a pulse. Birkin's eyes shot open before he could get an accurate reading, however, and for a moment he struggled against empty air before realizing that the subject was no longer holding him down. A hand tentatively went to the back of his head, and he winced as he met Wesker's eyes. "Well—" he started to say, only to be interrupted by an indignant howl from the subject.
Both men whirled—Birkin far more haphazardly than Wesker—and saw Annette still perched on the subject's hunched spine, the arm around the monster's forehead the only thing keeping her up. The other arm was trapped in the grip of the subject's tentacles, but Annette still seemed to have plenty of control over it. If anything, the creature seemed far more confused than it did angry or murderous, and that was most likely the only reason Annette hadn't been sent flying yet. As they watched, the young woman struck out with her tentacle-ensnared arm, a glint of silver flashing at the end of her hand. Wesker realized she was trying to use the scalpel against the subject, but he'd had enough experience with that in the past to know that the creature's hide was thick enough to repel their standard blades and needles. Indeed, Annette wasn't drawing any blood.
"Mother, mother, mother!" the subject wailed, voice hysterical as her tentacles tried to gently dislodge Annette from her back. Birkin's wife was having none of it, though; in fact, she seemed to have grown rather fed up with the title entirely.
"I am NOT your mother!" she snarled out through bared teeth, swinging the scalpel-equipped arm up in a rage-fueled thrust. The surgical blade caught the subject mid-moan, disappearing into her mouth and sinking into the aptly named soft palate with little difficulty.
The subject's lament morphed into a horrendous, ear-splitting scream, which only left her open to additional attacks. Annette took full advantage, her arm flashing as she repeatedly jammed the blade into the monster's throat. Blood began to flow, pouring down the subject's neck and splattering to the floor in thick, dark droplets. With a strangled cough and a rough shake of her shoulders the subject dislodged Annette. For a moment she simply stood there stunned, tentacles and arms slack as blood ran from between her crooked lips, eyes flat and black as she stared through the three scientists. Then, with a choked sound of rage, she knocked Annette aside and charged the other two researchers.
Caught off guard by her sudden change in strategy, there was little either man could do to defend himself. Wesker tried to roll aside, only to land on his bad shoulder and lock up in pain. He wasn't sure what Birkin did, and he didn't have any time to find out. A large foot slammed into the concrete mere inches from his head, and then the subject's hand descended, closing over his throat like a vise.
Not again.
Wesker writhed, but her goal wasn't strangulation this time. Instead she jerked him onto his back and screamed into his face, clots of brackish blood spattering over his exposed flesh. He hadn't worried about it much before, but now he found himself definitely hoping that she wasn't carrying anything infectious in her system. Before he could become too concerned with that, however, she wrenched her arm up, lifting him easily from the ground, and then threw him forward with what he suspected was all the strength she could muster.
Which, as it happened, was a lot of force. Wesker went flying down the hall, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to arrest his impromptu flight. Then he realized that he was headed straight for the open elevator shaft, and he had enough presence of mind to be alarmed about that. However, he met the ground first, luckily enough.
Unluckily, his momentum was more than sufficient to send him sliding the remaining distance between him and the shaft. He reached out and scrabbled at the edge of the landing with his good hand, but it wasn't nearly enough to make a difference. In a matter of seconds he pitched over the edge and toppled back into the elevator, the car rocking slightly as he slammed into the sticky floor.
With a groan Wesker rolled off his good shoulder and tried to collect himself. He was less than thrilled to be back in the damn elevator—getting out of it the last time had been more than enough excitement to last him a lifetime. It did, however, offer him some protection. As the subject rapidly approached, her feet thumping distinctly over the concrete above, Wesker took comfort in the fact that she couldn't reach him through the narrow gap. Of course, if she realized she could simply drop through the hole where the grate used to be to reach his floor, he was a dead man.
The thundering footsteps above suddenly went silent, and Wesker had a split second to notice the anomaly before a massive force smashed down on top of the elevator.
She was on the roof of the car.
What the hell is she doing up there?
And then the car began to creak and rock in protest as the subject started hopping up and down and mauling the roof, screaming out her frustration all the while. Wesker had no idea why she was taking out her fury on him, but he did know that he felt a lot less safe than he had a second ago. That feeling of unease increased exponentially when the subject began to slam her fists into the roof, visibly denting the metal all the way through to the ceiling.
There was a metallic shriek, and the entire car shuddered ominously. Wesker decided that he'd rather not be in the car any longer, so long as the subject was acting out her tantrum on top of it, and he tried to get his battered body to make some semblance of movement towards the third floor corridor.
The subject began to jump up and down again, snorting every time her feet collided with the metal elevator. The car itself began to jerk in time with her blows, moving more and more each time. It was practically even with the third floor now; Wesker couldn't even see any part of the second floor any longer. He raised himself on his good elbow and took some weight up on his knees, but his back protested furiously when he tried to pick himself up off the ground.
Groaning, he sank back down to the floor of the elevator, splayed fingers sliding through congealed, gummy blood. All around him the elevator echoed his sentiments, stainless steel crying out in agony as it gave way under the monster's barrage.
Where the hell were Annette and William? What were they doing?
A little assistance would be greatly appreciated.
There was a rapid series of sounds then—sudden, cacophonous, and nigh deafening. Wesker was able to differentiate a number of pops and snaps, rolls of thunder, something that sounded like a rake being dragged over concrete, magnified a thousand times, and over it all the dying screech of rendering metal. The third corridor shook in front of him, then rose halfway out of sight—and then vanished entirely as Wesker's stomach rose into his throat. His weight disappeared from the floor and he realized he was entering free-fall; the subject had apparently destroyed the cables and managed to overwhelm the old car's already-dubious safety brakes, and now he and the car were sliding uncontrollably down the shaft.
Shit. This is going to hurt.
There wasn't much time to panic about it, however—the shaft wasn't all that deep. Good for his chances of survival, but terrible in every other regard. The elevator struck the bottom of the shaft and stopped with a concussive bang; Wesker slammed down at the same time with enough force to leave him dazed, momentarily paralyzed, and choking on blood.
He'd bitten his tongue—or cheek—again. At least, he hoped that was all it was. He really couldn't deal with ruptured organs at the moment.
It was pitch black in the elevator, and for a moment it was completely silent save for the involuntary sounds of distress leaking from between his bloodied lips. Wesker wondered if the subject had jumped back onto the landing to maul the Birkins or had ridden down with him on the death car.
The ceiling above him creaked and he listened as a mass of flesh and muscle moved from one side of the car to the other. There was snuffling snort, followed by half a dry sob.
Well, that satisfied Wesker's curiosity. Confident that she posed little threat to him at the moment, the battered researcher decided to ignore the subject and focus on getting a move on. It struck him as extremely unlikely that either Birkin would come for him, after all. He would simply have to save himself.
Rolling back onto his elbows, Wesker let out a moan as his entire body flared with pain. Above him the subject stopped her pacing and growled, low and deep, but made no other moves. Wesker pressed forward, crawling on his elbow and knees as best as he could. His bad shoulder burned and crackled, but the sensation was hardly any different from the pounding in his skull and the sense of tight stiffness in his spine, and for once it seemed utterly manageable.
He reached out into the darkness, unable to see even the vague outline of his fingers, and searched blindly for resistance. He expected the hoist way doors to bar his way, but he soon realized that the force of impact had blasted them open and apart; his hand dropped to the floor and landed on cold, gritty concrete. Wesker pulled himself forward, out of the car.
There was no illumination outside the elevator, not even a single emergency light to show him the way. He was not on the fourth floor; he was somewhere far less convenient.
Behind him metal was ripped apart very much against its will, and weak red light filtered down into the car. It was not enough to reveal his surroundings, but it was enough for him to spy the misshapen silhouette of the subject's head as she thrust it through the theorized escape hatch. Crimson specks of light gleamed off her bared teeth and sparkled in her eye sockets as she snarled at him. There was a small, wet splatter near his feet as blood or saliva rained from her open maw to the floor below.
Wesker just met her black gaze numbly, too tired, too beat to try to move or even muster up concern. It was obvious that she wasn't getting her massive shoulders through the hatch; to get him, she'd have to take the whole roof of the car off. He figured he had some time to spare.
With a strained sigh, his head fell to his hands as he collapsed fully onto the floor.
He blacked out.
I must admit that the movie Speed made me ridiculously terrified of elevators for an embarrassing amount of time. Not buses, though, oddly enough. Just elevators.
Anyways, that's all for now. Have a good week, folks.
