Uroboros: Resident Evil V
Chapter Thirty One: Uroboros
"As you can see, we are a completely modern research facility." Excella said with a chipper tone as if she were a tour guide. "Some updates had to be made, but I couldn't believe how many valuable materials Umbrella just left here after the company went bust."
It was hard for Chris to see everything with how the infected were keeping him restrained as they left the pod chamber, but so far the rest of the facility was just as high tech. The corridor was sterile white like a hospital, and climate controlled like everywhere else, but what the Agent didn't see were any more people walking around, scientist nor infected. A number of doors lined the halls as they rounded several corners, but each one was closed, and he wasn't exactly in a position to do any exploring.
"Sure, we needed people like Irving to handle some networking on the ground." The woman continued, her high heels making a clop-clop sound against the tile floor. "But in addition to the Licker you saw upstairs, Umbrella left samples of the original T-Virus, which actually saved us a lot of work."
According to Excella, through the various contacts involved in the project, her division of Tricell was able to get viable samples of the G and T-Veronica Viruses, and most recently even an original Control Plaga from Spain, which cost a pretty penny, as she put it. Many of the test subjects were innocent people taken from all over the world, like Sheva thought, with the woman not appearing to give a damn that they were human beings at all, which made Chris worry about what was happening to his new partner.
This long corridor eventually ended at a metal door that slid open with a whooshing sound, and then the Agent was marched into an area that was a lot darker, but much more open than the brilliant white hallway. From the monitoring equipment that beeped and clicked softly along the walls, he could tell that this was some kind of laboratory, complete with specimen tanks and examination tables, although none of them were occupied… except for one that was way in the back.
Instructing the group to wait there for a moment, Excella walked away from them, passing through a door that slid open as she approached, only to beep loudly as it shut and locked itself afterward. The lighting in this room wasn't very good, but the flickering fluorescent tube lights were enough to let the Agent see the test subject a little better now that the group had stopped moving. The man was bald, light skinned and shirtless, with no hair visible anywhere on his body, but there were plenty of marks what almost looked like… small burns?
Poor guy was probably in a lot of pain, and out of it too, with how his head was rolling back and forth while his wrists and ankles were strapped tightly to the frame of the examination chair that he was sitting on. The subject woke up real fast once when some kind of small mechanical appendage extended upward from the chair, making him gasp as some kind of hypodermic needle was stabbed into the side of his neck, and now the poor guy was making some kind of coughing sound as the contents were injected.
"All right, Chris, welcome to today's little experiment." Excella's voice said, now sounding like she was on a PA system. "In his last communication, Irving mentioned that you had been asking about Uroboros, and the good news is that by you participating here, it looks like both of us are going to get what we want… release him."
The Agent was visibly startled when the armed infected men holding him suddenly let go, but not at all surprised when they stepped back in order to aim their rifles once again. As for his captor, Chris needed only to look up in order to see that Excella was now watching the whole thing from behind the really strong looking window of some kind of observation room that looked down on the laboratory from above. There the woman leaned back in the chair, crossing her legs and smiling as if she were about to watch some kind of performance.
"Damn it… what the hell is going on here?! The Agent demanded, looking at the armed men and then back at her. "And what have you done with Jill?!"
"Jill, Jill, Jill." Excella mocked him, rolling her eyes. "You're like a broken record, you know that? I know you like to be the hero, but if I were you I'd worry a little more about myself right now, because that man over there has just been injected with Uroboros."
Gasping as he turned toward the test subject, Chris watched in horror as the man's skin began to bubble a bit, making him groan in pain… just as the restraints holding him to the chair were released. Now the armed man around him started to react, spreading out across the room and appearing to forget about him completely while aiming their rifles at the test subject who was now starting to stand up. The infected were taking covered positions around the laboratory while the man swayed back and forth like he was confused… and then the one infected that remained there with him surprised Chris further by giving him back his flare gun.
"Uroboros is a new type of BOW that adapts to the DNA of its host." The woman explained as the burns on the man's body slowly healed. "It's a philosopher's stone, one that chooses which of us are worthy of evolution… you see, the new world will only accept the best of humanity, and if adaptation is successful, the specimen is endowed with incredible powers."
The Agent was about to ask what happened when it wasn't successful, but stopped when the test subject began to slowly walk toward the nearest infected man… but then he groaned again while stopping in place. The man's skin was bubbling again, this time looking like something… actually, a bunch of somethings were slithering their way around underneath his skin like snakes. Beginning where the burns used to be and then branching out, Chris's mouth ran dry when he saw the black snake like tendrils burst their way out of the host.
"Ah… too bad." The woman sighed as if disappointed. "Unfortunately, Uroboros is very discriminatory, and only about fifteen percent of the subjects are successful… but we still need combat data from even the failures, and well… that's where you come in."
Grabbing his bald head and screaming in pain as more and more black tendrils shot out from his body, the test subject tried to scream for help, but was gagged when more black tendrils shot out of his mouth. Fwoosh-BOOM! With only the pink flare gun to defend himself with, the Agent aimed at the poor bastard and pulled the trigger, causing the other half of the laboratory to light up with red fire when it hit the subject in the chest. Several of the black tendrils fell to the floor, drying up almost instantly upon being separated from the main body as the light faded, and… and holy shit, this thing was starting to look a lot like the monster that took out Alpha Team.
By the time the light from the flare faded completely, there was visibly nothing left of the test subject, leaving only a twisting mass of black snake like tendrils that were trying to form arms and legs. Yeah, this was another of those monsters that killed DeChant, only it was a lot bigger and more ferocious looking as it turned and went for the nearest infected man. The beast was too fast for him, swinging one of its newly formed arms, and causing that foul smelling black slime to splatter all over the nearest wall as the armed man was sent flying.
Ratta-tatta-ratta-tatta! In reaction to being attacked, all of the armed men aimed their rifles, and soon the whole laboratory was being lit up by rapid flashes of light and noise. Hundreds of those snake like tendrils were sent falling from the main body as the hail of bullets struck its target, drying up into dust as soon as they hit the floor, but… but more and more tendrils grew back to replace the ones that had been lost, and now the monster was advancing again.
Instead of swatting the next infected man away like it had done to the first one, one of the arms grabbed him, with the tendrils immediately wrapping around him, consuming the infected man's entire body as it was pulled into the center of the creature, and then the whole thing began to increase in size. Chris didn't understand much about Uroboros, but it was like it fed on the original host in order to begin growing, and then increased in both size and power with each new body that was added into the mix, like how the first creature did with the BSAA agent's corpse back in the old recycling center.
"You have to burn it!" The Agent yelled to the infected man next to him. "These things are sensitive to heat, use your grenades!"
The infected man ignored him as he and the others continued shooting the monster, and even though they managed to destroy one of its main arms, causing the monster to fall onto the floor, the limb was beginning to regenerate in a matter of seconds. Not about to just stand there and do nothing, Chris reached out and took the pistol from the armed man's belt, grabbing all of his extra clips, and even the grenades… and the only thing the infected man did in reaction was reload his rifle. Like Irving, Excella must have had a Control Plaga in her possession, and what… had she ordered these guys to not attack him during the experiment?
Either way, at least he was armed again, so the Agent pulled the pin out of one of the red grenades, and tossed it. The monster didn't react to the small explosive at all when it bounced off the main body and fell to the floor, but then it went off, and the creature shrieked as its body was engulfed in flames. Now he pulled the pin on the green one and tossed it as well, and in the monster's weakened condition, the resulting explosion was enough to completely destroy its arm and leg on the left side.
Maybe the infected men had ignored him about using fire because they didn't speak English, but that changed as soon as they saw what the grenades had done to the monster. Unfortunately, even though the infected men who remained were moving closer in order to use their own explosives, the monster was already starting to recover. One of the infected men used a green grenade, and although the explosion did some visible damage, it wasn't nearly as effective without the creature being burned first, and now it was advancing again.
"Look out!" Chris yelled to the ones who were closest to it. "Don't let it grab you!"
It was weird that he was actually concerned for the wellbeing of the infected men, but at the same time they were his only hope of survival against the Uroboros monster… and it was about to grab another one of them. Like all the others who were infected with Type 2 Plagas, these men had the ability to fight and learn, while being a lot tougher than normal humans, but… but they were no match for this kind of creature in a fair fight, and as it wrapped itself around another of them to become even stronger, the Agent wasn't sure how he was going to get out of this one.