Chapter 11:
Shadows
(REBECCA)
Rebecca didn't like it, but it was becoming clear they had only one choice. She looked over at Richard, realizing he'd come to the same conclusion, but didn't want to say anything. Clearly he didn't like the idea any more than she did.
"We have to do it" she said finally. "We have to split up. It's the only way we're gonna find Chris."
"But what good does that do?" Richard replied. "Even if we find him, we'd still have to go looking for each other. We'd loose whatever time we might've gained by finding him alone."
Rebecca nodded. "But we need to find him quickly. The longer he's out there alone, the more likely it is something could happen to him."
"But the same goes for us" Richard answered. "If we're alone, we're at least twice as vulnerable, and we'd still have to go looking for each other."
"Not necessarily" Rebecca said, after thinking for a moment. "Not if we agreed to meet up back in the music room after a certain length of time."
"How long?" Richard asked, after a moment. Clearly he still wasn't happy, but knew he wasn't going to be able to talk her out of it.
"Say, an hour?"
"Too long."
"Okay" said Rebecca irritably. "Thirty minutes."
"Fine" said Richard. He paused, digging something out of his front pocket. "Here, take this" he said, handing Rebecca the shield key.
"Why are you giving me this?" she asked.
Richard shrugged. "I dunno. Just a feeling that you'll need it more than me."
Rebecca slid the key into one of her vest pockets. When she did so, her fingers brushed across the photograph she'd taken from the Ecliptic Express. A look must've passed over her face, because Richard sent her a concerned look.
"Everything okay?" he asked.
Rebecca nodded. "Yeah. Just…thinking about something I'm going to have to do after we get out of this." There was no name on the back of the photo, but Rebecca figured she wouldn't have any trouble finding out the conductor's name. Then she could find his family and apologize for robbing them of their husband and father.
"Okay" she said, straightening her face. "I'll go that way," she pointed down the hall in one direction, "and you can go the other way. We meet back in the music room in half an hour."
Richard nodded. "Sounds good. See you in a little while."
Later…
Rebecca found some strange things as she wondered the mansion, looking for her wayward fellow officer.
She found a pair of dead dogs, one with several knife wounds on its body, while the other had three bullet wounds, the last a clean shot through its eye. She found a lonely box of shotgun shells, which she stuffed in a pocket, planning to hand them over to Richard when she saw him again. She found various scraps of paper left over by the Umbrella researchers and staff that had once lived here; although none of it was as incriminating as the diary she'd taken from Marcus's study at the Management Training Center, she took them nonetheless.
The most bizarre (and frightening) thing she saw was the gaping hole in one wall, up on the second floor, where something had apparently leapt down to the courtyard below. Peering out over the edge, Rebecca thought she saw a large, dark shape shambling along below her, and could have sworn she heard the faint rattle of chains. She left in a hurry, before she managed to scare herself more than she already was…or before whatever had made the hole came back.
When she found the zombies, it was almost a relief. There were two of them, each with a neat hole through the forehead, and a pair of 9mm shell casings. That didn't necessarily mean she was one Chris's trail, but it was a good sign.
Rebecca found she could follow the trail of deceased undead. Most had been killed with a handgun, although she found one whose head had been twisted completely around, and another had a short knife impaled on its forehead. If she wasn't following Chris, she was following someone coldly competent.
Finally she came around a corner and found a pair of large, wooden double doors. The trail ended here, meaning Chris (or whoever it is I've been following Rebecca thought) had to be on the other side. Drawing her Samurai Edge just to be safe, and squaring her shoulders, Rebecca stepped forward and pushed the doors open.
The room was large, with big marble floor tiles. Some of those tiles were raised, creating short trenches, the object apparently being to guide the large suits of armor mounted on pedestals into a specific configuration. Rebecca remembered the puzzle in Marcus's study that had gained them the diary; it had involved a chessboard, but the idea was the same.
Rebecca took all of it in in a few seconds. Because standing in the center of the room was an unfamiliar man, one hand stretched out to take a mask from a pillar that had apparently dropped down from the ceiling. Rebecca idly noticed the mask looked like a normal face, except that it was missing its mouth.
Then she realized the man was wearing a STARS uniform, and she called out to him. "Chris?"
The figure tensed, and Rebecca realized her mistake. Clearly this wasn't Chris, this was someone else. Someone who clearly didn't want to be disturbed.
The figure pulled a handgun from a hip holster. It looked like a Samurai Edge, except it had a long, black, cylinder attached to the barrel. Without fully turning to face her, the figure leveled the weapon.
Rebecca's training kicked in and she threw herself flat, even as she noticed the stranger wasn't aiming his weapon at her, but up at the ceiling.
Rebecca saw rather than heard the weapon fire, had enough time to realize the device attached to the barrel was a silencer, and then everything went dark as the stranger shot out the lights.
After a moment of discombobulation, Rebecca managed to activate her weapon's flashlight. She jerked it frantically about the room, as the sound of running feet got closer and closer.
"RPD!" she shouted. "Freeze!"
The stranger ignored her warning. Suddenly the Samurai Edge was jerked from her grasp and hurled across the room. An open hand slapped her across the face, and she staggered backwards, hitting the wall and sliding to the floor. She tasted blood in her mouth.
She heard the door swing open and turned just in time to see someone's back as they fled the room. Sparing a minute to find the handgun, Rebecca followed…only to find the stranger had locked the door behind him.
Great she thought. Locked up, and no one knows where I am. She shrugged mentally. It could be worse. At least there aren't any monsters.
That was when she heard a soft hissing, and smelled a faint, bitter odor in the air.
Gas.
(CHRIS)
Chris only encountered one zombie on his trek, a single decaying soul so far gone he was only barely recognizable as a human being.
The creature staggered forward, mouth open, arms stretched out to grab him. Without even breaking stride Chris pulled out his knife and jabbed it into the zombie's eye, then quickly pulled it back out. With a soft groan, the dead man sank back to the floor and was still.
Aside from that unfortunate individual, there was no sign of any recent habitation in this part of the mansion. The entire place looked old and neglected, but this area even more so.
That all changed when he headed down a flight of stairs and found a large, metal door hanging partially open, light spilling out from the other side.
"Huh" he said, stepping inside for a look. "I wonder this is."
The hallway he found himself in was obviously a more recent addition. It was what Chris imagined the interior of a submarine looked like, albeit on a larger scale.
The walls were a dull grey and lined with pipes, some of which gurgled with fluid. There were various gauges and valves at random increments, often with words like EMERGENCY SHUT OFF or PRESSURE GAUGE. In the distance, Chris was sure he heard the faint sound of water, like a large swimming pool.
Most of the doors he found were locked, the valves used to open them removed, as if they had been sealed from the outside. One had water leaking out from underneath it, and when Chris bent down to examine it, he heard something slam itself against the other side. Something big.
The last door he came to still had the large red wheel needed to open it. OBSERVATION was printed just above that in large red letters. Chris had no idea what was being observed, but he guessed it was worth a shot.
The door swung open with a loud groan and Chris stepped inside, taking a quick look around.
There were several shelves of books in one corner, with titles such as Ancient Sea Creatures, Monsters of the Deep, and Anatomy of a Killer: Great White Sharks. In another corner was a computer, but judging by the fire axe sticking out of the tower, it wasn't going to be of any use anytime soon. Toward the back of the room was a rust colored ladder, leading up to the floor above, Chris assumed.
But his eyes were drawn back to the wall in front of him, because it wasn't a wall at all, but the viewing window for the largest (and dirtiest) aquarium he'd ever seen.
The glass was smudged and filthy, which forced Chris to put his face up against it in order to see what was inside. Even then, he couldn't see much: a few small shapes drifting on the other end, a large black object at the center of the room, and-
"Oh God!" Chris exclaimed, jumping back from the glass as a severed human hand drifted past, leaving a thin stream of blood in the water as it made its way to the surface.
A second later, a huge, grey colored shape the size of a van swam up the glass, after the hand, and Chris took another step back.
"Time to go" he said softly, making his way back to the door…only to find it closed, and sealed tightly, the wheel needed to open it from his side missing. "Shit" he muttered. "Guess I'll have to try the ladder."
He turned back around…and stopped.
Stationary in front of the glass was the largest shark he'd ever seen, its mouth open in the shark's parody of a grin. He remembered a cartoon his little cousins liked to watch, something about dinosaurs living in a big valley. "Sharp Tooth" he said softly, remembering the main nemesis of one movie. "Sharp Tooth that swims."
The shark swam back a little way, and Chris dared to hope it had gotten tired of watching him.
Then, with all the inherent force of the proverbial van driving at full speed, the shark returned, slamming itself into the glass of the aquarium. A spider web of cracks began to spread across the surface, a small waterfall forming.
"Oh shit" Chris said again, watching in horror as the shark struck again.
