Las Plagas: Resident Evil IV
Chapter Thirty Seven: Las Plagas
"Come on." Leon said to himself, getting ready to make another attempt. "Come on, damn it."
He wasn't sure how much time had passed since the Merchant, er… since Tobias Liquid had trapped him in the locked cell down in Salazar's dungeon, but the Agent wasn't the kind of man to just sit around when there was work to be done. Among the tools in the utility belt that had been left only a few feet from where he could reach it, there was a lock picking set that could hopefully be used to open this damn door, but as mentioned it was out of reach, so Leon had taken off one of his boots, holding it by the laces and trying to hook the boot itself around so it could be pulled toward him.
Unfortunately, this turned out to be a lot harder than expected, especially with how awkward it was to throw the thing from behind the bars, so after a dozen or so attempt he was still trapped, until it happened. Laughing when the toe of the boot actually caught on the part of the belt he was aiming for, the Agent had to control his excitement now, since the slightest shaking in his arm could dislodge the boot when he started pulling it toward him. Sweat was building up on Leon's forehead as he slowly, slowly reeled in the belt, until… yes!
Finally able to reach through the bars and grab it, he reclaimed the belt and his boot, putting both on before he got up into a kneeling position, and now it was time to get out of the cage. His lock picking set wasn't anything special, just one tool for working the tumblers while the other was used for turning the core itself once it was ready, but like retrieving the belt, this was a lot harder than expected since he had to reach around and try to pick the lock backwards, which was a new experience.
Click, finally after he didn't even know how long, the lock opened, and Leon was free from the cage. Making a quick check of his equipment to make sure that the hooded man hadn't taken anything, the Agent was shocked to find that not only was everything there, but that the part that held his few remaining revolver bullets had been completely refilled. Now, why in the hell would Tobias have given him more ammo if he didn't expect him to be able to free himself… or did he expect it? And what was all that stuff about Leon's safety being his highest priority?
Nothing that guy did made any sense at all, but the things the Agent had going for him were that he was free, and now he was fully rearmed… even though it would have been nice to still have that rifle. There was no time to worry about anything else for the moment, since it was only a matter of time before Salazar sent someone down to check on the prisoners, and it was going to be a lot harder to find Ashley once the alarm had been raised. So Leon walked across what remained of the shattered glass, opening the same door that the hooded man had gone through, and then gasping at what he found there.
"So this is what he meant by leaving something for me?" The Agent asked, unable to stop himself from snickering a little. "Have you been like this the whole time?"
It was Luis; lying on his back on the stairs, hogtied, with his ropes attached to the stairway's guardrail so that there was no way he could free himself on his own. Serves him right for breaking the plan and getting those innocent villagers killed, but what was Leon supposed to do, just leave him there? Yes, this thought did cross his mind, but as much as he wanted to leave the dark haired man for Salazar, there was a benefit to keeping him around. Apparently Luis was some kind of specialist when it came to the Plaga, or whatever it was that himself and Ashley were infected with, so if anyone would know how to remove them, it was this guy.
"I'm glad you find my situation so amusing, Leon." The dark haired man said, trying to pull free and failing. "I don't suppose I could trouble you to help me loose?"
"What I outta do I beat your ass." The Agent replied, taking out his knife and starting to cut the ropes. "Thanks to you running off on your own, all three of us got captured, and all those people in the cells… those are on you, Luis."
He wasn't actually gonna shoot the guy or hurt him unless he had to, but Luis seemed to get the idea that he better start making himself more useful, since he immediately started being a bit more open about his experience with the Plaga, as well as the work that had been done there as they started back up the stairs. Apparently Las Plagas were an ancient parasitic lifeform that was native to the mountainous part of Spain, which could infect any form of animal life, and then imitate it almost perfectly once the parasite was in control, using this camouflage to infect more hosts and propagate itself.
At some point a few hundred years ago, the man who owned this land had the parasites sealed away down in the old tunnels far below the castle, although records didn't explain exactly how this was done. The parasites have an aversion to light and heat, meaning that they had to remain completely hidden inside their hosts during daylight hours, or even around strong sources of artificial light, and this was also the case during the warmest months of the year, leaving them at their strongest only during the snow-covered winter months, nearly going dormant in the summer.
Leon supposed he was lucky to have taken this mission in the autumn, since this meant the infected villagers would have been even tougher in just a couple months, but it also helped him understand how the things had been sealed away in the first place. Luis theorized that the parasites must have retreated down into the old caves where it where it was dark and cold during the summer months, and then it would have been easy for Salazar's ancestor to collapse the entrances and seal them in, where they would have starved to death over time from lack of new hosts.
Fast forward a few hundred years to the current Castalian of these lands, a man who was nowhere near as popular with the people as his father and grandfathers had been… can't imagine why… a lonely little man who had always picked on and shunned by his peers, which made him the perfect target for religious indoctrination. Osmund Saddler had come literally out of nowhere, spouting a bunch of flowery talk about the great Los Iluminados cult, and how Salazar could become a great man by undoing the seal on the Plagas, and restoring the religion to its rightful standing.
It was unknown if the cult ever had anything to do with the parasites back then, but the speech worked, and before long the little man was not only opening the ancient caved underneath the castle, but also bringing in dozens of workers from the villages in order to excavate the old fossils, being that they had so much experience with that gold mine. It was expected that there would be nothing but remains, and that a lengthy genetic program would have to be used to bring them back to life, but then something strange happened: The miners started showing signs of infection.
The spores of the original parasites must have gone into a kind of hibernation, and then infected the miners through the air while they worked, because soon after that a majority of the people became as they were now. As for Saddler and the other leadership of the region, something different happened to them; like the others they became significantly less human acting, but retained their minds and the largest majority of control over themselves, as if the parasites that infected them were more symbiotic than parasites.
Whatever the reason for this difference was, it allowed Saddler, Salazar, and Mendez to not only retain most of their humanity, but also to have complete control over any of the infected villagers that they encountered, sort of like hive Queens over ants, or something like that. However, some of the people remained uninfected, and that was a problem, since they weren't as willing to go along with Saddler's designs as everyone else, resulting in their, uh… disposal.
Luis had been brought in as a specialist in Biology and Chemistry, instructed by Saddler to find any potential weaknesses that the parasites contained so that they could be exploited… however, the purpose of finding these weaknesses was not to cure the people, but to actually make them harder to cure, which was when the dark haired man tried to escape. Like all the others, he was forcibly infected with the Plaga, but thankfully there hadn't been time to report all of his findings before falling out with Saddler, so the robed man didn't know that there was still a way to remove them completely… so long as it was done before they matured.
"You'll know when the egg has hatched." Luis explained as they reached the top of the stairs. "The emersion of the parasite into the central nervous system comes as such a shock to the body that convulsions are common, as is coughing up blood, and brief periods of losing consciousness."
"Yeah… that happened to me back at the lake." Leon replied, a knot forming in his stomach when he realized that the first stage of infection was well underway. "Okay, but you said there's a way to remove the parasites before the mature, so… how do we do that?"
The dark haired man claimed that the science behind it would take long to explain, but that the end result was a really simple one. At his laboratory, which unfortunately wasn't inside the castle, there was a machine that Luis had constructed for just that purpose. The device itself was described as a big goofy looking spaceship thing with a chair in the center, and all an infected person had to do was sit down and hit the button. If the parasites were still eggs of nymphs, then the device offered an efficient, yet painful cure… however, if the parasites had matured and already taken over, the person's head was more likely to explode.
"Wonderful… but we've still got a couple days, right?" The Agent asked, carefully pushing the door open while keeping his revolver ready. "That's what Saddler said."
"Actually, that depends on the host." Luis replied, both of them stepping out into a much wider chamber. "You see, one of the things that the immature parasites feed on is adrenaline, so the more upset and active the host is, the less…
Interrupted in mid-sentence as his words became a startled gasp, Leon turned around to see that the dark haired man was just standing there… with a blade of some kind sticking out the front of his chest, causing a red stain to quickly spread out across the front of his shirt. Oh crap, no, it wasn't a blade… it was more like the stinger at the end of an insect's tail… a long, discolored, segmented tail that led down from Luis's back… and disappeared up into the elaborate robes of Osmund Saddler.