Chapter Thirteen
For Now
Claire skidded around a corner, grabbing a doorknob in her fingers and using it to yank herself upright. Mercifully, amazingly, the doorknob twisted, and she plunged into a dark room, slamming the door behind her and leaning against it, breathing heavily. "Not good not good not good not good," she gasped, her own voice restoring a spark of sanity to the situation.
But not much.
She pressed her ear to the door, listening for the licker in the halls, but heard nothing. Reluctant to leave the door unguarded, she fumbled along the walls, hoping for a light switch. For once luck was with her, and a string of flourescents flickered to life, bathing the room in their sickly glow.
A lab. Cautiously, she entered, every sense alert for trouble. But nothing jumped out at her, nothing attacked.
So much for Wesker's abandoned base, she thought bitterly, searching for a piece of usable equipment. The place had been ransacked when its previous owners vacated, however, and she couldn't even find a decent computer, much less some sort of weapon.
Okay, she tried to calm herself. Okay. Wesker said it himself -- he can find you anywhere in the complex. And he will, probably soon. A licker isn't going to pose much of a challenge to him. You'll be all right as long as you keep your head and don't do anything stupid.
Of course, stupid moves seemed to be her trademark lately, but this time she firmly planned on sitting still until Wesker came along to rescue her, and pride be damned. She sank into an uncomfortable metal chair and held her head, forcing herself to breathe steadily, to ignore the cold and the fear. Her own breaths echoed in her ears, terrifyingly reminiscent of the licker's, until she began to imagine a soft echo in the background...
She jerked upright.
Her heart hammering so loudly it almost deafened her, Claire took a breath and held it.
The echo continued, slow and distant, but unmistakable.
She flew across the room and cracked the door, keeping her body weight poised to slam it shut in the event of a sudden attack. But she couldn't hear or see anything in the corridor -- the rattling breath was coming from somewhere behind her.
Carefully she eased the door shut, pressing her back to it once more and casting frantic looks around. Where was the thing? Did she dare risk the hall again? Or would it have a buddy waiting there? They weren't team hunters, were they? She'd seen two together, but she didn't think they'd displayed more than rudimentary intelligence...
The breathing continued to echo through the lab, slightly louder now but still with that faint hollow sound...
Unbidden, her eyes traveled to the ceiling. "You son of a bitch," she whispered, suddenly realizing why she'd mistaken the licker's rasps for an echo. "You're in the vents!"
What now? Run into the hall? The damn thing could track her all the way to -- where? Where could she run? What was she supposed to do?
Well, one thing was for sure: she wasn't about to sit around praying for Wesker to save her. Sure, he'd proven himself slightly more complex than she'd initially credited him with, but that didn't mean he couldn't change back in an instant.
Although he'd saved her life... brought her little luxuries... held her all through the night...
Damn it, Claire, fix your mind on the present!
She didn't have much time. Kicking off her shoes, hoping the licker wouldn't track her footsteps, she tiptoed into the lab, searching for something, anything, that might be of some use to her. But Umbrella had ransacked the place. A few stray tools lingered here and there, as though they'd left in a hurry, but nothing of any use.
Her eyes fell on a scalpel, half-tucked behind a desk as though it had been dropped and forgotten in the evacuation. Without hesitating she snatched it up, knowing even as she did that it probably wouldn't make much of a difference. A three inch knife against one of those creatures? Good luck.
But if she had to go down, she was going down fighting.
She could still her it shuffling through the vent, its hideous breaths rattling all around her. Carefully, she placed her back to a wall and eased herself onto a desk, crouching, fingers trembling around the scalpel. Maybe Wesker would show up after all; maybe she wouldn't have to use it...
With a piercing shriek, the licker crashed through the ceiling, landing on the ground in front of her with its limbs splayed like a spider's. It's tongue snaked lazily forward, probing the distance in front of it, as Claire realized that by some bizarre stroke of luck it had landed with its back to her.
She didn't stop to think. Throwing herself forward, she stabbed the scalpel into the base of what she presumed to be its neck.
The licker screamed and thrashed beneath her, its slimy muscles heaving her to one side. Claire rolled, trying to control an impulse to retch at the smell of the thing, the feel of its membranes sliding over her skin. It continued to thrash, clearly not dead but momentarily distracted by the blade protruding from its neck.
A moment was all she needed. Scrambling to her feet, Claire spun and ran.
She tore blindly through the corridors, praying she wouldn't run into anything else, hoping to find Wesker around every corner. What the hell was taking him so long anyway? But then, if she didn't know where she was, neither did he. He'd find her -- she had little doubt of that -- but every second she kept on the move would make his task more difficult. And she really didn't want to piss him off, not right now.
Find somewhere to hide, she ordered herself, even as the part of her hungry for action, the part that had driven her to search out Wesker, to the island base, to hunt for Chris in the first place, screamed in protest. But there was no room to bargain this time, not without some sort of weapon. She'd lucked out with the scalpel, and now she didn't even have that.
A functioning work station gave off a dim glow in the distance. Claire threw herself over it, stabbing keys on the keyboard at random, searching for some kind of useful information. There -- a facility map. She scanned it for exits, wondering if she could escape on her own, but realized to her dismay that she was about as close to the center of the base as she could get. Any escape route would take her through a maze of tunnels where she would possibly get lost and probably get eaten.
Time for Plan B.
So where would Wesker be most likely to find her? She scanned the facility layout, then jabbed at it with her finger. There -- a security substation nearby. Security meant heavy doors, computer monitors and, she hoped and prayed, weaponry -- although the way this base had been cleared out, she knew it wasn't likely. Still, it was her best bet. She took note of its position and set off at a dead run.
Something shuffled down a corridor to her left. Claire ignored it, bending her head and running for all she was worth, every second anticipating the feel of claws in her neck. Zombies she could deal with, or at least a zombie. Lickers, hunters, tyrants... that was another story.
She reached the security station without incident, slamming and bolting the door behind her as she dropped to the cement floor and sucked huge gasps of air into her burning lungs. Too late, she realized there might be creatures in the station with her, but when she forced herself to her feet she found nothing obvious lurking around any corners.
At last she sank into a chair and took note of her surroundings. It was a long, curving room with a series of empty weapons lockers (of course), a shelf of training manuals and procedure descriptions, and a huge wall of monitors, some displaying only static, others revealing empty corridors. On one she saw a creature she didn't recognize lying half-asleep on a metal grate. It was curled up in a way that almost made it resemble a puppy, if you turned the puppy inside out and gave it a tail of spiky red spears.
She spent a few moments catching her breath, then forced herself to inspect the monitors more closely. Much of the computer equipment was indecipherable to her; like most of her generation, Claire was a fair hand with electronic media, but Umbrella's technology was simply beyond her. More to keep herself occupied than anything else, she found a manual on the bookshelf, flipped to the index, and scanned for anything of use.
A heading caught her eye -- Outside Communications.
Heart thudding, she turned to the referenced page. 82, 84, 88... Damn! Someone -- I wonder who that could be -- had torn the relevant page from the manual.
She tossed it across the room in frustration, then crossed to the monitors and began stabbing buttons at random. Nothing much happened, although a few monitors changed their views, and one went entirely black. She didn't see Wesker on any of them.
A small silver disc lay nearby. Claire picked it up, looking for some sort of label, but it was blank. She scanned the equipment, found a slot that looked like it might fit the disc, and slid it home.
One of the dark screens leaped to life, displaying the word LOADING. A moment later, it offered her the option to resume play from the beginning. Shrugging, Claire hit enter.
Her jaw dropped as the screen resolved itself into an image of herself in Wesker's arms. My God, he'd videotaped them? What? And how?
And more to the point, why?
A sickening knot formed in her stomach as she began cycling through the monitors, working them to the best of her ability until she found one that reflected her prison, the bed rumpled as she'd left it, a heap of her clothes on the floor.
He'd been watching her?
No. Not necessarily. Umbrella monitored everything; just because there was a camera in her room didn't mean Wesker was using it...
But he certainly knew about it. She ejected the disc and turned it over in her hand. Why copy this little moment of intimacy to a disc? Why keep it at all? Unless...
"Ah, Miss Redfield." The voice came from behind her, familiar and mocking, the trace of gentleness that had so lately begun to infuse it vanished. She spun to find Wesker watching her, an amused expression on his face as he focused on the disc in her hands.
"I had to run," she explained quickly, her heart in her throat. Something was wrong here, very very wrong, and she hadn't quite put the pieces together... "There was a creature... You said this base was empty!"
"I was mistaken. It doesn't happen often, but I am only human."
Her heart twisted, almost choking her. Slowly, she raised the disc. "And this?"
"Did you watch it?"
Was there any point in lying? "Yes."
"So you know." A slow smile spread across his face. "Well, that does make things easier. No more amusing communications for your brother, unfortunately, but nonetheless..."
"Wait a minute. You sent this to my brother?"
His expression turned almost pitying. "Poor Claire. Haven't you figured it out yet?" In a flash he was at her side, the disc in his hand, her wrist crushed in his grip. She cried out and he forced her arm further down, his face inches from her own. "I told you once before you were nothing but a pawn in this game. You should have listened."
"You son of a bitch," she growled, unable to stop the tears spilling over her lashes.
He laughed at her, fueling her rage. "Yes. And now Miss Redfield, I suggest we leave this place, before any more of Umbrella's little freakshow escapes to make our lives more interesting. Unless you'd prefer me to leave you?"
She glared at him, wishing she could give the answer she wanted, refusing to give him any satisfaction. He laughed at her again, then shoved her towards the exit. "Get dressed, dear heart. It's cold outside."
A coat and heavy gloves lay in a heap on a bench, a pair of boots nearby. She glared at him again, but didn't dare disobey.
Not yet, anyway.
You idiot, she cursed herself as she pulled the bulky clothes over her sweater. How could you let him deceive you? And Chris! My God, what must he think of me?
"Time to go," Wesker announced, and she found herself being dragged down the hall, almost losing one of the gloves as it fell from her hand. She managed to snatch it up and stumble after him, fuming inside.
For now, she was dependent on him. For now, he had the power, the control. She had to do what he said or die trying to escape -- if he was kind enough to kill her. For now, Wesker was her only hope of survival, even as he remained her captor, dominating her with more ruthlessness than she'd believed even him capable of.
For now.