Downfall: Resident Evil II

Chapter Thirty Eight: Making the Vaccine

Once the lockdown to the rest of the laboratories was lifted, the metal shutter was raised, allowing Claire and Annette to continue down the previously blocked corridor. Turns out that this corridor only went for about another five meters before the next door opened into a stairwell… one that went down even further into lower levels, and ran alongside a massive kind of mutated… beanstalk that could have been compared in size to the pillar that Leon had discovered.

"Things have certainly grown a bit in the past few weeks." Annette commented, still making Claire go first at gunpoint. "William's work was nothing short of astonishing, and if those backstabbing idiots at Umbrella hadn't tried to steal it from him, who knows what else he could have accomplished?"

"Annette, look what this virus is doing to Raccoon City." Claire replied, still trying to reach her. "Look what it's doing to your own daughter… don't you see, something like the T and G Viruses should never have been created."

The young woman had more to say, but was stopped when Annette grabbed her by the hair, pulling her backwards, and then shoving her forward so that Claire had to stumble down the last few stairs before falling over sideways onto the floor at the bottom. Bang! Some of the concrete cracked right next to her leg, and then after a second gunshot, some splintered right next to the young woman's head, making her yelp before getting into a fetal position.

"Understand something, you little tramp." The blonde woman said calmly, keeping the gun aimed at her while reaching the bottom of the stairs. "The only reason you are alive right now is because having two of us down here gives me a better chance of getting the vaccine back to my daughter. Now get up, and keep moving."

Deciding that maybe it was best to simply keep quiet, since Annette on top of being unstable, was hypersensitive to criticism about her husband's work, and besides, the blonde woman wasn't important right now. The little girl back up in the security station was, but once Sherry was better… well, Claire wasn't exactly sure what she was going to do about Annette. Clearly she was no longer fit to take care of a child, but it wasn't like she could just get rid of her… at least without Sherry hating her forever.

The door at the bottom of the stairs led to, surprise, another corridor, but where the young woman was expecting to find more of those plant monsters, the only thing that she found so far were zombies. Without seeing much of them since leaving the RPD, she had almost forgotten about how disturbing and nauseating it was to see them shambling around with glazed over eyes and rotting flesh.

Since she didn't know how much ammunition was left in her electric rifle, Claire decided to use the pistol she had gotten from Chief Irons, and unlike with the eye-monster, it proved more than effective. Bang! Bang! Bang! It surprised the young woman how good she was getting at this, dropping zombie after zombie… but she also felt kind of guilty that although these people had all once been human, it was now barely effecting her to pull the trigger.

Once the small crowd of former-scientists had been dealt with, the two of them rounded a corner, into a place that looked almost like a waiting room or a lobby. In this place were some benches like one would see in a train station, and the only other feature of the room was a large door, similar to the one that led into the cold storage room, and painted above the door were the words:

BOTTOM PLATFORM

"Keep moving, we're almost there." Annette said, pushing her forward when she stopped to look at it. "I think you've done enough sightseeing around my facilities as it is."

Passing several rooms and possible alternate corridors as they continued down this one linear hallway, Annette finally stopped her in front of a sturdy looking door that had a card reader next to the handle, before taking what looked like an identification badge out from around her neck and under her shirt. There was a sharp beep from the reader before the door slid open with a hiss, and now this place was finally starting to look like a real laboratory as they entered.

There was complicated equipment lining the walls, blackboards covered with equations and formulas that Claire couldn't even begin to understand… and then there were the subjects. They were people, or rather, zombies, partially dissected and splayed open across the tables, with numbered pins and labels stuck inside. There were also written notes beside each one, but the young woman found that she didn't want to see the bodies long enough to read the findings.

"Okay, we're here." Annette said, seeming to relax a little. "Now, you're pretty, so that probably means you're an idiot… at least that spy had half a brain. Go over to the exo… oh, what's the use… the fancy machine with the blinking lights in the far corner, and do exactly what I say."

This was one of those times that Claire wanted to tell the old bitch what she could do with her snide, condescending comments, but she didn't for two reasons: One, she didn't want to get shot, and two… she really didn't have a single clue how to operate or even understand anything in this room. So she simply turned her brain off, going to her station and blindly following Annette's instructions… sort of like she had done for her professor in Biology class, and before she knew it, something was happening.

"Set the pressure at two hundred." Annette ordered, messing with her own machine at the same time. "You're only creating the base, but like I said, this has never been done before, and you still need to do precision work."

"Yes, Dr. Frankenstein." Claire grumbled under her breath. "Thank you for reminding me why I hate school so much."

For several minutes they worked, and since it appeared that all of the individual components were already assembled, it did not take long before the strange liquid she was boiling turned blue, a signal that the blonde woman told her would mean that the base was complete. At the same time, the machine that Annette was working on let out a shrill beep, and the blonde woman let out a short triumphant laugh when the liquid she was working on, what she called the medium, turned red.

"Bring the base over here, quickly." The blonde woman ordered, walking over to a machine in the center of the room. "We have to combine the base and the medium inside the centrifuge."

Again following her instructions, Claire brought over the base, and once both liquids were combined, Annette turned on the centrifuge, spinning the concoction at incredibly high speeds. With the timer set to two minutes, the young woman felt like the process was taking forever, especially since she didn't know how long Sherry had left. Soon, however, the machine came to a stop, and there, almost glowing with a pretty purple color, was the G-Virus Vaccine.

"We've done it." Annette said, sighing with relief. "Take the cartridge, and load it into a syringe, quickly."

Without hesitation, Claire took the cartridge out of the centrifuge, and loaded it into a kind of hypodermic syringe, but just as she was showing the finished product to Annette, they both gasped as one of the large ventilation ducts burst above them… as something jumped down to the floor. As the dust cleared, and the young woman coughed, she was able to see that it was the eye-monster, still porting its recent improvements… that had landed right in front of the blonde woman.

"W… William?" Annette asked in disbelief as its regenerated yellow eye opened. "You're…

But her words were cut off as the monster rushed forward, cutting off her scream when it began tearing into her flesh with its claws. Blood sprayed over the walls and machines as its two bottom arms picked up the gurgling woman, and its top claws continued to slice into her, but among the blood and remains… her id card flew off as well, landing right next to Claire, and Sherry's pendent landed closer to the door. There was no time to think; the young woman picking up the card, and with the vaccine in her hand, running back to the door, stopping only to pick up the pendent.

The eye-monster was just finishing with Annette when the card allowed her to open the door, and then it cast her aside, sprinting toward the young woman as she left the room, and leaving a deep impression in the door after it slammed shut in its face. Her only goal now was to get the vaccine back to Sherry, and knowing that creature, the door wouldn't hold it for long, so she ran… back down the hallways, which were thankfully still zombie free, and back up the stairs just as the whole facility started to rumble.

Well, actually, it rumbled, stopped, rumbled more intensely, stopped again, and repeat… as if something was going wrong, and something else was trying to stop it. Thankfully, nothing else tried to stop her as she sprinted up the stairs… nothing besides the stairs, themselves, since Claire had never been a big fan of the Stairmaster, and soon she was back at the catwalks that would lead back to Sherry.

"Almost there." The young woman said to herself as her legs got even more tired. "Almost there… come on, Claire… Sherry needs you."

Huffing and puffing her way past the fuse box, and moving back down the final catwalk, Claire stumbled her way back into the front lobby of the facility, feeling even more fatigue when she saw the entrance to the security station up ahead… and then screaming when she ran into something that was stumbling its way around the corner at the same time. Wait, not something… it was Leon.

"Oh, Claire, I'm so glad you're okay." He said, with them embracing for a quick hug. "I didn't find a cure, but I fought that giant… but something else happened, and you're probably not gonna like it."

"Don't worry, Leon, I've got the vaccine… Annette helped me." She explained, showing him the syringe once the hug was over. "So let's help Sherry, and then whatever else happened up there, we can deal with…

"The self-destruct sequence has been activated." A booming pre-recorded voice seemed to say from everywhere at once. "Repeat, the self-destruct sequence has been activated; this sequence cannot be aborted. All employees proceed to the emergency car at the bottom platform."