Uroboros: Resident Evil V
Chapter Thirty Three: Chasing Excella
It took a bit longer than predicted for both BSAA agents to recover from the ordeals that they had both experienced, with Chris passing out for a little while before Sheva woke him up… only for the young woman to hug him tightly while bursting into tears as she tried to process what had happened to her inside that pod. There hadn't been any actual experimentation done on her, at least none she was aware of, but the pressurized gas that sedated her was so hot that it felt like she was being boiled alive, and the feeling of being drowned when the water rose… yeah, he couldn't blame her for needing a few minutes.
Eventually, though, they both knew that it was time to move on, since Excella needed to be captured, but at least now they were armed again. The Agent gave his partner the rifle and all the clips he had gotten from the infected men, while keeping the pistol for himself, and there weren't any more grenades. Chris also told Sheva about what happened with the armed men and Uroboros, not that all the stuff Excella was saying about evolution and a philosopher's stone made much sense to either of them.
This time, though, while walking back down the sterile white corridor, the Agent took the time to peek into some of the closed doors, only to find that all the rooms were empty. Just like with the Umbrella facility upstairs, these small rooms showed signs of having once been offices, but were now picked clean of any files or computers that were possibly useful… and this cleansing must've been pretty recent too, by the freshness of the drag marks and lack of any dust on the metal desks where the computers would have been.
"Looks like Tricell's gonna cut and run like Umbrella." Chris commented as they moved back into the hall. "Come on, we gotta move fast."
Continuing down the hallway and going back into the laboratory where he fought the Uroboros monster, Chris didn't stop to look at the destruction that had been caused to the room, even though he was partially aware of the young woman making a comment about how things seemed to explode whenever the Agent was left on his own for any length of time. Instead he focused on the door his captor had gone through before the experiment, which was surprisingly unlocked. What wasn't surprising about the whole thing was that after climbing up the short staircase into the observation room, Excella was gone.
"I'm sorry, Chris." Sheva said, looking at the chair that the woman had sat on to watch the experiment. "I'm sure you would've caught her if you hadn't had to come back for me."
"Excella can be caught any time." He replied, putting a hand on her shoulder. "But you're my partner, and your life is more important than putting handcuffs on some scumbag terrorist… God, when I get my hands on that woman, I'm gonna…
The Agent stopped talking as he noticed another door at the back of the small observation room, and since Excella hadn't come back into the pod chamber, this was the only way she could have possibly gone. Maybe there was still time to catch her, Chris allowed himself to think as he walked over to the door and turned the latch. Yeah, maybe if they picked up the pace… if Excella got away, it was going to be a lot harder to find her again than it had been to find Irving, given that the woman had a lot more funding and resources that she could use to both run away and disappear.
One thing that was for sure was that he was definitely not going to suggest calling in Tobias Liquid if they needed to track her down, especially after what he had heard happened to Jessica Sherawat after she had vanished during the Queen Zenobia disaster. Apparently one of the many Deputy Directors of the BSAA, none of them would admit to it, decided to have the former detective track down the traitor, and the good news was that he found her in a relatively short amount of time, but… it was awful.
From the unsigned report that had come across Barry Burton's desk, Tobias found her in Paris in less than a day, which was great, but then he had his wife, Gillette infect more than a dozen innocent people with C-Spores so that there would be no witnesses when he burned Jessica to death, along with the entire café that she had been hiding at. Thankfully, all of the infected people had committed suicide by doing a swan dive off the top of the Eifel Tower, so an outbreak was avoided, and the news called it a suicide cult.
Nor was Chris going to mention any of this to Sheva, being that Tobias had killed her parents onboard the Starlight and all that, so instead he returned his attention to the pursuit of Excella. Passing through the unlocked door, and then heading up another long set of concrete stairs, the Agent noticed that the architecture of the hallway changed about halfway up the stairs. Now the sterile white modern walls and lighting had returned to the same decades old construction as the upstairs Umbrella base, as if the Tricell area had been built below the whole thing, and they were no going back up into it.
All the lights in the old 60's style fixtures still worked, allowing them to see the bare concrete floor and cinder block walls that awaited them at the top of the stairs, but this place looked more like a maintenance area than a lab. There were grated metal catwalks above them, with very large pipes and conduits running between them like a makeshift ceiling between floors… and there were certainly a lot of floors in this one rectangular chamber that went up… and up… and up.
"That is a, uh… lot of stairs." Sheva commented, looking up as high as she could. "You don't see an elevator or anything around here, do you?"
"No, I don't." Chris replied, turning around one more time in the hopes of finding one. "But if this is the only way up, then Excella had to go this way too, and she was in heels, so she can't be too far ahead."
The young woman sighed deeply, following the Agent as he started up the stairs, and for a while the two of them kept up a pretty good pace as they went around the room, going up… and around… and up… and around… and up… and around. They had started off running full speed, which gradually became a brisk pace, which gradually turned into a slow walk… which gradually became a hobble while leaning heavily on the guardrail… and then a crawl that lasted about three more steps before Chris had to stop. He was dripping sweat while huffing and puffing, leaning past the guard rail to check on how his partner was doing… but his answer came from the level below, where the young woman was leaning over the guard rail so that she could vomit over the side.
"Hey… Sheva… you… all right?" He called in between short, labored breaths while lying on his back on the stairs. "Doing… okay… back… there?"
"Kutomba… haya… ngazi." She replied, breathing just as heavily as him. "Njoo… chini… na… nibeba… mimi."
Great, so she was doing just as good as he was, and… holy shit, how had a spoiled brat pencil-pusher like Excella Gionne made it all the way up these stairs, while a couple of battle hardened BSAA agents were literally losing their lunch over the effort? No, come on, Chris, he mentally told himself while trying to roll over to continue… can't let Excella get away… gotta keep going. Sheva continued to say things to him in Swahili, but the two of them kept going, literally crawling their way up the stairs, but then he saw it.
After turning one last corner and crawling up one last flight of stairs, there was a door… and no more stairs after it. A light fixture was mounted on the wall just above it, the door itself was a faded yellow color as if an old signal that this was the entrance/exit to the facility's maintenance area, and now… if only Chris had the strength left to walk over there and open it. A few minutes later Sheva appeared, crawling her way up that last flight of stairs, and then leaning on the Agent as she sat next to him.
"Just… a… couple… minutes." The young woman panted. "Need… to… catch… my… breath."
"No argument here." Chris replied, since he was only just starting to catch his own. "Just take your time; in through the nose, out through the mouth."
At least Sheva didn't throw up again, like she had done a few levels down, and after a few minutes of this her own breathing returned to normal as well. Both of them were still a little sore, and well fatigued from… everything that had happened since the mission started in Kijuju City, but once this was all over the Agent planned on taking a little vacation time. Vacation time that involved a big comfortable bed, a beautiful woman, and a part of the world that didn't completely suck in every way possible.
The young woman was on her feet first this time, offering her hand and then helping Chris to get up as well, and then after a deep breath the two of them headed toward the yellow door. The latch turned with a hard click, followed by a rusty squeak, opening up into the rocky walls and ceiling of a cave. The concrete floor ended a few feet after the door, replaced by uneven natural stone… and across the chamber there was another carved wall like what had been seen down in the ancient city.
"We're still in the ruins?" He asked, looking at the wall in front of them. "Just how big is this place?"
Like the entrance to the city, the wall was elaborately carved, but also had upper walkways and support pillars as if this were more like the entrance to a mansion or a palace, than the gate to another city, while between them and the palace wall, there was a lot of really old looking construction equipment. There were forklifts, stacks of bags of concrete, tools and rubbish bins, all of which were both heavily rusted and bearing the Umbrella Corporation logo on the side, as if the company had still been working on this part of their facility when funding had run out.
Like everywhere else they had seen since entering the facility, this area was deserted, and again, the large stone door on the palace wall was the only way forward. Chris didn't understand why, but he got a strong feeling of dread as he looked at the carved wall, promoting him to check to make sure that his pistol was fully loaded, before he and Sheva carefully started making their way toward the stone door.