Uroboros: Resident Evil V
Chapter Thirty Two: Last Man Standing
The six remaining infected men were starting to learn how stay alive against this monster, diving underneath and jumping over cover to avoid getting grabbed by its arms, but instead of using their grenades they had gone back to shooting at it with their rifles, probably to conserve their explosives, and also because their combined small arms fire had managed to destroy one of the monster's arms. This didn't do much good, though, since the thing leapt forward immediately after, sailing almost a third of the laboratory's length before landing right on top of one of the survivors.
As it had done before, the Uroboros creature began regenerating even faster after absorbing the latest body, growing until it was almost double its original size, which made it harder for the infected men to avoid it while trying to counterattack. Chris knew that they could never win at this rate, so instead of wasting his own ammo, the Agent went around the room trying to get more supplies. While the monster remained focused on the infected, he made sure to stay on the opposite end of the room, grabbing unused grenades off the belts of the armed men who were still alive.
He couldn't take the ammo or weapons from the monster's victims, since they were all covered by that corrosive black slime, so Chris had to steal from several of them in order to be fully armed as far as his new pistol and grenades. He even managed to recover the rifle and ammo of the first infected man who had been killed, since he had been swatted away and not absorbed. Part of him wanted to start fighting right away while it was distracted by the infected, but the Agent knew that there was no way to win as long as there were more bodies for the thing to absorb.
Either way, the infected didn't last much longer anyway; most of them getting absorbed, while a few of them were swatted away so hard that they were killed upon impact with the wall of the room. One of them was even tossed into one of the empty specimen containers so hard that the glass shattered, allowing the water, or… whatever fluid was inside to spill out all over the floor. The monster was much bigger now, and even more so as it went around the room almost instinctively in order to snatch up all of the bodies, leaving it with no more distractions as it slowly turned toward him.
"Aw, looks like your friends are all dead, Chris." His captor's voice taunted. "Uroboros is the ultimate Bio-weapon, and cannot be defeated, so why don't you save yourself some pain, and shoot yourself in the head?"
During all of this, that bitch Excella just sat up there in the observation room, watching as if this whole thing were a show on Netflix or something. But it wasn't, this was real life, and if Chris didn't find a way to kill this thing, then his was about to be over, so he pulled the pin on a red grenade and tossed it. The monster was huge now and coming right toward him, so aiming the explosive was easy… but the Agent just hoped that the puddle of fluid from the specimen tank that it landed in wouldn't reduce the blast area too much.
FWOOSH! Instead of being reduced, the fluid ignited when the red grenade went off, causing an explosion of flame with such heat and intensity that Chris was knocked off his feet while the monster's whole body was engulfed in flames. The thing roared and shrieked as it flopped around in an attempt to put out the fire, with hundreds of its black tendrils shriveling up into nothing when they fell to the floor, but this wasn't enough. As soon as his vision cleared from the intense light from the blast, the Agent pulled the pin from one of the green grenades and tossed it, however the creature was apparently learning as well.
BOOM! Swinging one of its arms as the grenade flew toward it, the monster swatted the small explosive away just before it exploded. The very end of its arm was still caught in the blast, which wasn't enough to destroy the limb completely, but another specimen tank was also caught by the pieces of flying shrapnel, causing its contents to start spraying out all over the floor. Chris didn't know what that stuff was inside the tanks, but it was certainly flammable, so instead of attacking the creature again once the flames covering its body went out, he aimed his rifle at the other containers.
Ratta-tatta… ratta-tatta! Putting several holes into one tank, and then doing the same to another, most of the floor was soon covered with that clear, flammable chemical, a lot of which was sprayed directly onto the monster as the Agent led it in circles around the laboratory. This was hard because the creature was still fast, even though it was barely regenerating at all now from lack of new bodies, and for this plan to work Chris had to make sure that none of the chemical got on him… or else he would probably get roasted alive.
The monster was starting to anticipate his movements now, where at first it had been easy to make it run around circles to chase him, but now when he tried to run around something, it would try to go around the other way to head him off. Needless to say, the Agent was relieved when most of the flammable chemicals were emptied onto the floor, and then he moved onto one of the last dry areas of the room before pulling the pin on another red grenade. He had needed to sprint hard to get away from the pursuing monster, leaving Chris breathing heavily as he tossed the explosive with the last of his strength, and then there was an incredible flash of light.
Crying out when the heat from the explosion burned his face and arms, the Agent was thrown backwards into the wall by the force of the blast, forced to cover his stinging eyes with his hands in an attempt to stop the pain, which did… nothing at all. The smoke and heat made it even harder to open them again, but when he did he saw that the creature was having an even worse time than he was. Boom! Another specimen holding tank that was still mostly full of chemical exploded right next to the thing, burning its legs into nothing as it fell down onto the still burning floor.
Not wanting to give it even a moment to recover, Chris started throwing every grenade that he had, blasting large pieces out of its body with the green ones and then burning it even more with the remaining red ones. With fires burning all around it, and no more bodies within range to feed off of, Excella's ultimate Bio-weapon could no longer regenerate as fast as it was being damaged… God, without those tanks being full of a flammable chemical, the Agent might very well be dead right now.
Ratta-tatta-ratta-tatta! With no more explosives, and the Uroboros monster still moving, Chris began to shoot it in the back with his rifle, aiming for what remained of the joints for its limbs so that they couldn't grow back. Each time the creature tried to get up, a few more shots would send it back down into the flames, where less of it still remained with each new attempt until… until it stopped moving altogether. Good thing too, since most of the fires around the room had gone out… and now there was only his captor, herself to deal with.
"Not bad, Mr. Redfield, not bad at all." Excella's voice said over the PA as she slowly clapped for him. "But don't think that just because you survived my little experiment, that you have the upper hand here."
Ignoring her words as he walked over to the door she had gone through earlier, he found it securely locked when he pulled on the latch. Reloading the rifle, Chris was about to try shooting the thing until it opened, but then his captor caught his attention by saying that she was going to offer him a choice that involved the two buttons on the control panel in front of her. The first one would unlock the door back to the pod chamber where his partner was being held, while the second one would immediately move Sheva's pod to the front of the line to be infected with a Type 2 Plaga.
"I'm sure you could eventually open this door, and get to me." The woman continued. "But I doubt it would be before that little brat wakes up to a nasty surprise… make your choice."
"Fine… open the door." The Agent grumbled, not willing to risk the young woman's life. "But I promise you, Excella… if Sheva is harmed in any way, you're gonna pay for it."
Clearly not taking his threat seriously, the woman smiles and blew his a kiss before pushing the button that unlocked the door behind him. As much as he wanted to storm into the observation room and pistol-whip the hell out of that smug little bitch, right now his partner's life was the most important thing, so Chris turned away and sprinted across the laboratory. Going so fast that he nearly ran into it while it was sliding open, the Agent had to squint his eyes in order to get used to the sterile white illumination of the main corridor again.
The facility was still deserted, allowing him to move unobstructed back down the hallway and into the central chamber, where the pod Sheva had been locked inside was still sitting there at the edge of the platform. The system was still unlocked, so with the same sequence that he had used to open it while they were searching for Jill, the seal was broken with a loud hiss of pressurized gasses. Water poured out as the main hatch lifted upward, revealing that the young woman was still in restraints, although her clothes were soaking wet from being completely submerged in fluid… and she wasn't moving.
Removing the restraints from her wrists and ankles, the Agent picked up the unresponsive young woman, and laid her down on the platform. Sheva wasn't breathing, but she still had a pulse when he put his finger against the side of her neck… God damn that bitch, Excella, just leaving the young woman in there to drown… he was gonna kill her. However, Chris wasn't about to give up on his partner just yet, so he tilted her head back, took a deep breath, and started to give her mouth to mouth resuscitation.
Doing CPR wasn't like in the movies; it was actually pretty time consuming, and only had a small chance to bring someone back on its own, but the Agent kept it up. Rotating back and forth between chest compressions and mouth to mouth, it didn't take long before he was starting to get tired… but then he gasped and ended up choking a little himself when his partner suddenly spit a bunch of water up into his mouth. Sheva rolled over onto her side, gasping and coughing while Chris spit out the remainder of the water.
His partner was alive! Now all they had to do was go after Excella, but… now the fatigue of that last battle was catching up to him, and… maybe just a few minutes rest first… yeah… just a few…