Uroboros: Resident Evil V
Chapter Thirty Eight: Sheva's Report
Sheva wasn't sure how long she had been passed out in the palace doorway overlooking the port, but the next time she opened her eyes everything was a lot darker. The sun had gone down, and the sky was so cloudy that if the port hadn't had electric lights, she wouldn't have been able to see anything at all, at least not until a searchlight shined down on her from the approaching helicopter. It had been the sound of those approaching rotors that woke her up in the first place, and the young woman had never been as happy to see anyone in her life, as she was when the helicopter landed and Josh Stone came over to get her.
Unfortunately, the withdraw order had not been recalled, meaning that he was the only one who had returned to the Kijuju Autonomous Zone in order to extract her and Chris after Headquarters received her call in the satellite phone, but the Captain was shocked when she told him that he was recovering Jill Valentine instead of her partner. Unfortunately, Sheva was so fatigued from the whole experience, and so sore from the beating she had just taken, that she was in no condition to tell him the whole story right there.
So the young woman was helped over to the waiting vehicle, after which Josh went back into the underground palace to retrieve the unconscious Jill, and then they took off. Chris was gone, having been captured by Wesker, and the trauma of removing that device on her chest had left the blonde woman in a near catatonic state, leaving Sheva as the only one who could tell their superiors what happened between when the Captain left them in that cave in the marshlands and when she had made that distress call.
The debriefing had begun as soon as they landed back at Headquarters, and honestly it felt like an interrogation, since she was so fatigued and sore, but at least the young woman was able to get medical treatment at the same time. This amounted to an IV because of how dehydrated she was, along with some pain killers that didn't do much, and that was it… at least none of her bones had been broken during the fight with Wesker and Jill… even though bruised ones almost felt like a break.
Josh had been able to back her up on everything that happened in Kijuju City and up through that final confrontation with Irving in the marshlands, so Sheva's report began with everything she could remember about the underground city, including how the infected people there had been executing those resistant to the plagas, with focused sunlight weapons. She hadn't really understood the point of those flowers at the decorative fountain, but the young woman described them anyway, including how Umbrella had an interest in them back in the day… which led her into the part about the old facility.
She tried to be as detailed as she could, describing the architecture, the old style of the light fixtures, and even that blind, skinned monster with the long tongue. Licker was the name Excella had used to describe it, and from what the young woman saw it do with that sharpened tongue, this was a pretty accurate description. What surprised her, though, was that her superiors had already heard of such a monster before; the report of Leon Kennedy described him encountering one of those things during the Raccoon City outbreak, and Sheva couldn't help thinking that if this was the same Kennedy that Chris had gotten his plagas information from, that this guy really got around.
Up until this point, the debriefing was going really well, but then she got to the part about the modern Tricell facility that was holding what looked like more than a thousand kidnapped people from all over the world. For some reason her superiors were able to believe everything else, but when the young woman described how Excella Gionne herself had been in charge at this facility, they became skeptical. After all, the woman had donated massive funds to the BSAA, so it was a little hard to believe that she would lock one of their agents inside a pod while the other one had to fight an Uroboros monster.
Thankfully, the ambush that wiped out Alpha Team with a similar monster was already recorded, so they believed her about that part, but became skeptical again when the young woman explained that Excella was not only working with Albert Wesker, but that the blond man was using some kind of robotic device to control Jill's actions, which was why the blonde woman had been assisting Irving in the guise of the plague doctor. The device had been nothing but unrecognizable scrap when the Captain recovered it, and the cargo ship was nowhere to be found, so there was no way to prove any of this or even locate her partner, at least not until Jill woke up.
The blonde woman was in bad shape, unable to stay awake for more than an hour at a time, and her whole body shaking any time she tried to move, kind of like a heroin addict who was in detox; sweating so profusely that the hospital bed she was laying on was soaked, and constantly crying out with pain even with the medication that she was being given. All of the data that they managed to collect on what was left of the device had been sent to a Dr. Rebecca Chambers, who was some kind of advisor to the BSAA, and although there wasn't much, she had been able to figure out that the thing had been some kind of auto-injector.
As far as Rebecca could tell, the legs had been injecting some kind of chemical into her nerves, which was possibly making the blonde woman able to be controlled, but like was mentioned, the device was pretty well wrecked thanks to Sheva. As the next few days went on, however, Jill managed to stay conscious for long enough at a time to start giving them some answers, beginning with how Wesker had captured her after they had both fallen out the window during the mission to find Spencer.
She remembered falling, and then waking up strapped down to an examination table in that Tricell facility, where the blond man had taken her blood and injected her with several different chemicals before putting her inside one of those pods, where it felt like she was drowning. Then the day came when the device was attached, with the blonde woman remembering just starting to wake up after being removed from the pod to discover that her hair had changed color, and then being strapped down while that thing painfully drilled its legs underneath her skin.
After that, Jill had been unable to control any of her actions, with Wesker making her do and say degrading, unspeakable things just to test how well the device was working, and it was functioning perfectly. The worst part about the whole experience was that although she had been unable to control what she did, the blonde woman had been completely aware the whole time, and it made her start crying when she recalled that Wesker had basically made her into his pet for the last couple years. No one pressed her for the details of what happened between them, since this already seemed painful enough, but there was a single good thing about Jill being as aware as she was.
Being completely aware of her surroundings had allowed the blonde woman to listen in on all of the plans being made between Wesker, Excella, and Irving, including what the plan was for that cargo ship, and more importantly… the transponder code that was needed in order to track its location. All she could tell them about the ship itself was that not only was it fully manned by people who were infected with Type 2 Plagas, but also that there was a massive supply of Uroboros onboard… she didn't know how he was going to pull it off, but apparently Wesker wanted to achieve what he referred to as Complete Global Saturation… which didn't sound good at all.
With Jill's testimony to back hers up, Headquarters had no choice but to cancel the withdraw order, but since the outbreak around Kijuju was so widespread, there was no way to dedicate all the BSAA's forces to going after the cargo ship. A majority of the remaining teams were needed to keep the city's infected district quarantined while others began trying to contain the unstable Type 3 Plagas in the marshlands village, plus there was the ancient city and the facility inside it… after that not much was left.
During the mission briefing that followed, it was suggested that they simply sink the ship with missile fire from several helicopters, but Sheva informed them that this was not a good idea, since so far the only thing they knew that could hurt Uroboros monsters was fire, so it was possible that it could spread throughout the water even if the ship was sunk. This left an armed assault by the remaining teams as the only option, although the agents were going to have to be extremely careful, since the infected could use firearms just as good as any human.
On top of the dangers of the armed infected and Uroboros, there was also the matter of Albert Wesker, who was the most dangerous threat involved. Fortunately, Jill was able to provide one last piece of Intel, and it was a doozey, since up until that point everyone believed that the blond man was simply invincible thanks to his virus-induced powers. While all of this was true, what the blonde woman was able to tell them was that this virus had been a prototype, and therefore unstable, requiring that Wesker received daily injections of that same virus in order to keep him stable.
He had once specifically told Excella that he had to have one of those shots every day, no more and no less, or else things could become problematic for him, but that was all Jill knew. But he had told this to Excella because she was basically the one doing the injections for him, and that she usually kept the injectors inside of a small metal briefcase that she always kept close. That meant that if the team could somehow capture her without getting killed by Wesker in the process, that they would be able to get a hold of a weapon that could hurt him… or at least destabilize him, whatever that really meant.
As much as Jill wanted to go on the mission to save Chris, she was in no condition to do so, meaning that Captain Stone and his new team would accompany Sheva during the assault on the cargo ship. The team was bigger this time, about twice the size of the original Delta Team, and they were given a handful of helicopters, which was all that could be spared, but one thing was for sure… it was better than taking on an entire underground city with nothing but a spear and a flare gun.
So the mission was quickly approved, and once the helicopters were fueled up, the new team loaded up… but there were a couple of problems that would have to be resolved in the field. The first one was that no one knew the details of Wesker's plan, so there was no way of knowing how much time was left to prevent the spread of Uroboros, while the second one was that there was no way to locate Chris on the ship without doing a room to room search… if he had even managed to stay alive during the three days that had passed since his capture.