Chapter 24: The Choices of Barry Burton
(BARRY)
He stood outside for a grand total of ten minutes, the cold, early morning air biting at his sweaty skin. The sun was just starting to come up over the mountains, and the world was taking on the blue half-darkness it did at this time of day. Around the mansion, nothing stirred, but he kept his Samurai Edge ready, just in case.
After ten minutes of standing at the mansion's front door, thinking about what Wesker had had him doing, he came to a decision.
"To hell with it" he said firmly. He hoped God would take care of his family. He hoped his team (especially Jill) could someday come to forgive him for what he'd done. But he could still make things right…
"I have a score to settle" he said, turning around and opening the large, wooden door.
He headed back down, into the mausoleum he and Jill had discovered earlier, where they'd battled the strange monster Wesker had called Lisa. She was still gone; presumably her head first dive into the abyss had been the end of the hideous walking tank.
He headed down the narrow steps below Jessica Trevor's final resting place, deeper and deeper beneath the mansion.
He heard voices around the corner, inside the lab he'd last seen Wesker in. He paused, checking his weapons. The Samurai Edge was still fully loaded, and, having not fired the weapon for most of the night, he still had two magazines left for the burst-fire magnum. As for the Silver Serpent, he only had what was loaded in: six .44 magnum cartridges. Sighing, he holstered the revolver and gripped the Samurai Edge with both hands. He preferred the gun he'd built himself, but there it was too slow, anyway. He suspected he'd need to have a decent rate of fire if he intended to take Wesker down.
He heard the sound of breaking glass, followed by a pair of gunshots (shotgun he realized) from the lab and hurried forward, rounding a corner…and realizing he was farther away than he thought he'd been. There had been an equipment room on the way to the lab, a maze of loaded down tables full of all manner of unknown machines. He'd need to navigate it if he was going to get to the lab.
He heard another blast from the shotgun, followed shortly thereafter by unintelligible shouting. A few seconds after that, he heard a long burst of weapons fire (submachine gun, I don't know what make). After that, silence.
Oh shit Barry swore at himself. I'm too late.
He hurried toward the lab even still, ready to burst in and relieve Wesker of his head. He could hear talking from inside, two men talking, followed by a third voice. He could only hear the faint sounds; the lab door was too thick for him to make out any words…until he flung the it open, Samurai Edge at the ready.
"-get the hell out of here" Chris was saying, and for a moment Barry thought the STARS marksman was talking to him. Great, they know you're a traitor. Now what? Then he noticed the puzzled looks on Chris, Chambers, and Dawson's faces, and realized he'd succeeded in taking the room by surprise.
"Funny" Chris said, a grin spreading across his face. "We were just talking about you, Barry."
"Where's Wesker?" he demanded, scanning the room. His eyes fell on the stiff, disgusting looking creature lying on the floor near some broken glass cylinders. He recognized it as having been inside the tube behind Wesker the last time he'd been inside the lab, but whatever the thing had been in life, it was dead now.
"That…thing killed him" Chris explained, pointing to where the STARS captain was slumped in a corner, blood pooling around his still body. "It would've gotten me too, if it hadn't been for Dawson."
The SWAT kid grinned sheepishly and looked down at the floor. "Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that. You probably could've taken it down without my help. I just got lucky, is all."
Barry only listened with half an ear. He approached the dead STARS captain slowly, in a daze. It's…it's over he realized after a minute. Deciding to kill Wesker and actually seeing his body weren't the same thing, he realized. Wesker's dead, which means your family…No. There was still a chance.
He hurried forward, kneeling down beside Wesker's dead body, patting him down. He found spare magazines for the Samurai Edge, as well as a silencer and a silver colored mag he assumed carried the necessary subsonic rounds. He also found a pair of small, collapsible knives, with thin, wickedly sharp blades, and a single flash-bang grenade. He shoved that into the pocket of his vest, figuring it would come in handy later.
But there was no radio, at least not with one that could reach all the way back to Raccoon City. Which meant either Wesker had been calling out using the mansion's nonexistent phones…Or you got majorly played he realized, angrily. Wesker had manipulated him so easily, using him to do his own dirty work. Damn you!
"Barry, you okay?" Chris asked, sounding concerned. Barry turned to see him stepping forward, Chambers and Dawson standing a little ways back, watching him warily. They're scared of me he realized. They don't know what exactly has happened, but they know something isn't right here.
"Wesker lied to me" Barry said calmly, remembering what the STARS captain had said to him earlier. You'll find I do that from time to time. Bastard. "He said he had people outside my house. People with guns. If I didn't help him, he'd-they'd…" His voice trailed off after a moment. Even after everything that had happened, the conclusion was still too real for him to talk about. "But he lied. There was no way for him to contact his people. No way for him to tell them to go through with his plan, or to call them off. It was all a scam. He took advantage of my one weakness and used it to make me a traitor just like him."
"No, you're not like him at all" Chambers said, compassion in her voice. "Captain Wesker took advantage of your love for your family. If he hadn't, he would never have been able to use you against us. And even still, you saved my life when he tried to kill me."
"And you came bursting in here looking like you had a score to settle" Chris added. "Even knowing what it might cost you, you were ready to risk it for your friends." He smiled and stuck out his hand. "As far as I'm concerned, you're no traitor."
Barry took Chris's hand. "Thank you" he said softly. "Thank you for understanding." He looked up, back in control. "Now, what's our plan?"
"Oddly enough, about a third of it was completed when you burst in here" Chris replied. "Now we just need to find Jill, signal Brad, and then we can be out of here for good."
"I know where Jill is" Barry and Dawson said at roughly the same time. He paused and looked at the kid from SWAT in confusion.
"How do you know?" he asked.
"I ran past her cell on the way here" Dawson replied. He turned to Chris. "She's locked up in some sort of jail cell down here in these tunnels. But the lock is electronic. I couldn't figure out how to open it."
"A jail cell?" Chris repeated. "How'd she get there?"
"I had to knock her out" Barry said uncomfortably. "It was the only way I could think of to keep Wesker from killing her. It was the only place I knew she'd be safe. Wesker didn't care where she was, so long as she was out of the way. Said he'd let us go so long as we didn't interfere."
"That's not true" Chris replied. "Wesker was planning to blow the entire mansion up."
"What?" Again, Barry and Dawson spoke in unison.
Chris nodded. "He said there was a self-destruct sequence inside the labs. Probably some sort of fail-safe. He was going to take what he needed to make himself rich, then blow the whole place sky-high, along with all of us."
Dawson whistled softly. "Jeez. We came that close." He looked over at Chris. "I may not have been able to open Jill's cell, but I'll bet the special shotgun shell I gave you could do the job easily enough."
Chris nodded, pulling a green shotgun shell out of his pocket. "You know, you might be onto something there. Why don't we give it a try?"
Dawson had been right about knowing where Jill was locked away. They followed him down the dark corridors of the underground, eyes alert for any sign of movement. Just because none of Umbrella's freak-show horrors had made their presence known didn't mean they weren't out there, waiting…
"Jill? Are you still there?" Dawson called out as he and Chris stepped toward one of the long rows of cells. Barry and Chambers stepped back, still watching for trouble.
"Mat?" Jill called back. "Is that you? What happened?"
"It's a long story" Chris answered, motioning to Dawson. "Now, if you'd be so kind as to step back, we can get you out of there."
"Chris!" Jill exclaimed. "You're alive!"
"Sure enough" he replied. "Now, will you please-?"
"Right."
Chris worked the pump on Richard's shotgun, clearing the internal magazine. Then he loaded in the green shell from Dawson, wracked the pump, and raised the weapon to his shoulder. "Ready?" he called out.
"Ready" Jill replied.
Chris fired the shotgun at the lock on the door, blasting it apart with a loud BANG. He slung the weapon back into the holster built into the back of his uniform, then nodded to Dawson. Together, they kicked the cell door down.
"Chris!" Jill exclaimed, stepping forward, taking the STARS marksman's hand. "I'm so glad to see you! I thought you'd died back in the forest!" She turned to Mat. "And I assume you led him here? Thanks. Without your help, I'd still be stuck down here." She looked out the newly open cell door. "Barry?"
He nodded. "Sorry, Jill. I-I didn't have a choice, like I told you. But everything I did, I thought I was doing for the right reasons." He paused, then met her eyes. "Can you forgive me?"
Jill smiled. "You came back for me. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing to forgive." She turned to Chambers. "And who are you?"
"Rebecca Chambers. I'm the medic for STARS Bravo team."
Jill nodded. "That's right! You're the new girl. Well, I wish we were meeting under better circumstances…"
"Speaking of which" Dawson said. "I assume you have some sort of plan for getting us out of here. I mean, this is a nice place to visit and all, but I don't want to live here."
Chris nodded. "Now that we've got Jill, we can signal Brad and have him fly back and pick us up."
"More helicopters?" Mat groaned.
"That's a great idea" Jill said, apparently ignoring him. "How are we going to signal Brad?"
"Well, we could use my radio…" Chris began, then looked down at the smashed piece of equipment on his hip.
"You know, at the rate we're going through those stupid things, Radio Shack is gonna love us" Mat commented wryly.
Chris turned to Jill. "We could use yours."
She shook her head. "Sorry. Satan's houseplant put an end to that for me."
Chris turned to Dawson and Chambers. "What about you two?"
"I already told you, I lost mine in the forest" Chambers answered.
"Mat?"
The SWAT officer grinned sheepishly. "Funny you should mention that…"He held up the radio. "Mine's old one got smashed, but I came across another one last night."
"Great!" Chris replied. "We can use his radio to-"
"Unfortunately, the battery was almost dead when I got it" Dawson continued. "It had enough juice to tell you where Wesker was, but that was the end of it."
Jill swore irritably. "Does anyone have a functioning radio?" She looked over at Barry. "I heard you on your earlier. Tell me it still-"
Sadly, he shook his head. "No. Sorry. The transmitter's all screwy. It can't send a clear message."
"Great" Chris said. "So, how are we supposed to tell Brad where we are? Build a fire?"
Suddenly an idea occurred to Barry. It was distasteful, but… "I think I might know where we can get some flares. Follow me."
He led them back upstairs, to the quiet corner where he'd tucked Kenneth's body away. Chambers gasped when she saw what had happened to her former teammate. Chris made a face as well.
"Funny" said Jill. "This is where it all began…" She looked over at Barry. "Now, what's your plan?"
Barry knelt down beside Kenneth and began to rummage through his pockets. At last, he pulled out what he was looking for: a large, orange colored gun. "This was Kenneth's flare gun" he explained. "It has a couple shots left. If we can get high enough above the trees, we can get his attention."
"Then let's get to the roof" said Chris. "We can signal Brad from there, and be home within the hour."
"Hold on" said Chambers. They all turned to look at her.
"Rebecca?" Chris asked. "Something to add?"
"Captain Wesker was going to blow this place up" she replied. "I was thinking…maybe that's not such a bad idea."
"But this place is evidence of what Umbrella's been doing" Jill protested. "Without this place, we have no proof of what's been going on."
"That's not true" Chambers replied, pulling a small, leather bound book out of her pocket. "We-I found this inside another Umbrella facility. It details human and animal tests dating back before I was even born. There's enough in here to implicate them in everything that's been going on." She put the book back in her pocket, then continued. "Besides, this is where the infection started. This is where the forest murderers came from. If we can destroy this place-"
"We'll have completed our mission!" Dawson exclaimed. He turned to Chris, Jill, and Barry. "Think about it. Wesker knew how important this data was to Umbrella. We can put an end to this nightmare here and now. What do you say?"
"Let's do it" said Jill after a moment's consideration. Then she paused and looked over at Chris. "Unless you have something else in mind."
That's right Barry realized. With Wesker dead, Chris earned a nice little field promotion.
Chris nodded. "Let's do this" he said after a moment.
"Great" said Chambers. "I'll go back down and-"
"Not alone, you won't" said Dawson. "This may have been your idea, but I'm going with you, whether you like it or not."
"But, you're hurt-" Chambers protested.
"Not so much anymore" Dawson replied. "You patched me up well enough I feel like I could keep going for a couple more hours, at least. Let's take this place down."
"Okay" said Chris. "Rebecca and Mat will arm the mansion's self-destruct system. We'll work our way up to the roof and see if we can get in contact with Brad." He paused, then looked over at Chambers. "Try to give us enough time to get away before the whole building goes up."
She smiled. "I'll do my best." Then she and Dawson turned and headed back toward the passage to the lab.
Chris turned to Jill and Barry. "C'mon" he said. "We've got a flight to arrange."