Uroboros: Resident Evil V
Chapter Forty Two: Fire from the Sky
"I'm sorry, you are going to have your wife do what?!" Sheva exclaimed as quietly as possible. "Have you completely lost your mind?!"
"If you have a better plan, now's the time to speak up." Chris replied, nervously looking up as another tendril slid across the heavily darkened window. "Besides, it's no crazier than you risking your life to get Excella's briefcase… why did you want that thing so bad, anyway?"
Since there was nothing the two BSAA agents could do except lay there in the shadows for the moment, the young woman took that time to briefly explain what Jill had told her about the virus that gave Wesker his enhanced abilities. Once that was finished, she tried to muffle the sound of the latches popping open, in case the gigantic Uroboros monster outside operated on sound, in order to inspect the contents. The case was heavily padded on the inside, with several slots for what looked like injectors… all of which were empty except for the very last one in the row.
The Agent figured that the blond man must've thought all the syringes of… whatever the hell Formula AW was were gone, hence why the blond man finally decided to get rid of Excella. Even though the woman had been mentally deranged, and honestly he was glad to be rid of her, Chris couldn't help feel bad… remembering how hard it hit him when Wesker first revealed his true colors to him way back in the summer of 1998. Well, if this injector was the key to finally giving that bastard what was coming to him, then so be it, and for now the syringe was going to stay tucked away safely in one of Sheva's pouches.
As for the Agent's plan for getting them out of this, honestly it was almost as likely to get them killed as waiting to be discovered by the still growing Uroboros. A few years ago, there had been a terrorist attack on the prototype city of Terragrigia, resulting in an outbreak that the combined forces of the BSAA and the FBC were unable to contain. As a last resort, the city's solar energy generating satellite, Regia SOLIS, was aimed at the city, and in the span of only a few minutes, the whole place was destroyed by the fury of the sun.
It had been a disaster that was talked about throughout the world, but the good news for this situation was that Chris's wife, Amelia, had designed and built both the city and the solar energy satellite. The plan was for her to bring it online, and then aim the focused heat of the sun right on top of the spreading monster, but only for long enough to burn up the monster without destroying the cargo ship itself. Was it dangerous? Yes. Was this possibly the dumbest thing that the Agent ever came up with? Yes… but he wasn't about to let this thing somehow reach the mainland.
Now the satellite phone was vibrating, since he had turned off the ringer, again to stop the monster outside from hearing them, and upon answering it Chris smiled. Not only had Amelia still been able to access the long abandoned satellite, but all diagnostic tests reported green status as Regia SOLIS moved into position. This same strategy had once been used in an attempt to destroy evidence of wrongdoing, with Jill and the Queen Zenobia just barely managing to avoid getting vaporized… hopefully, Amelia would be a little more surgical in her operating of the controls.
Of course, now Wesker's words were echoing in his mind as the minutes went by, forcing him to consider the possibility that Amelia Ashland, the girl he had fallen in love with in Terragrigia… had really been Alexia Ashford, the girl he had fallen in love with in Antarctica… the whole time. Amelia was gorgeous and so was Alexia, Amelia had a ridiculous amount of money and so did Alexia, Amelia was smart and spoke several languages… and so did Alexia. He didn't want to believe it, but their faces and bodies were exactly the same, and it wasn't hard for a woman to dye her hair and change her accent.
The voice of his wife on the phone, however, brought him back into reality as she warned him to get as many decks below the surface as possible… yeah, about that… he and Sheva were trapped inside of the bridge tower, which was the absolute highest part of the ship. It wasn't like they wanted to be there, everything had happened so quickly with Excella mutating and then eating all those corpses, and… God damn it, Wesker was gonna pay for this! The only thing Amelia could tell him in reply was that they needed to find some kind of cover, because the firing sequence was already locked in, and things were going to get a lot brighter around there pretty soon.
"So that's it, you're wife's just going to cook us?!" Sheva exclaimed once the call was ended, still trying to be quiet. "What the hell are we going to do?!"
"Everything's going to be okay, don't panic." Chris replied, desperately looking around for a solution. "Uh… there, the stairs… we'll wait until the satellite fires, and run to the bottom of the stairs while Uroboros is distracted. It's the best I got, and I'm pretty sure the monster's body and the ship's hull will be enough to shield us."
Did he just lie to his partner's face? Probably, since the Agent had no idea whether or not there would be enough cover to keep them from frying like an egg, but, you know… he wasn't completely sure that there wasn't, either, so… fifty-fifty? A slight chance was better than just lying there and waiting to die, and this plan was about to be put to the test as everything on the bridge started to become more visible. Yeah, there was an orange light coming from in between the black tendrils that were covering the window, and for a second it looked like the sun was rising… but it kept getting brighter… and hotter to the point where Chris was starting to sweat.
Oh God, here it comes, the Agent thought, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand as the light coming in through the window became as intense as the noon sun had been in Kijuju City. The metal floor was heating up now, too, getting to the point where Chris had to keep moving around so that one part of his body didn't get too hot… and then there was a roaring sound as the black tendrils suddenly shattered the glass of the window, with the Agent taking this as his signal to run.
Scrambling to his feet and running away while the giant black tendrils flailed around violently outside, Chris nearly lost his footing upon reaching the stairs, having to grab onto the already heating up guardrail in order to keep from tumbling down. Thankfully it was a little cooler at the bottom of the stairs by the door, but the temperature was slowly catching up, and then the monster screamed as the whole top section of the bridge was consumed with flame… flame that would have surely cooked both BSAA agents if they hadn't made a run for it.
All right, he wasn't literally on fire, but Chris was now sweating so badly that it was stinging his eyes, and he had to keep moving his feet around to get a moment of relief from the floor… which was heating up so much that it was starting to faintly glow red. Each breath was so hot and scratchy in his throat that it felt like the air was full of desert sand, and Sheva was gasping for breath… but everything just got hotter, and the young woman looked like she was going to faint.
The Agent tried to use his body to shield her from some of the heat, but he felt like his own skin was about to melt right off, and honestly at this rate he was about to pass out pretty soon himself. All of the metal around them was faintly glowing red now, with a cloud of fire still consuming the bridge upstairs, and Chris found himself struggling to remain on his feet, still holding Sheva as he wobbled back and forth, getting dizzy from the heat, and having to close his eyes to keep them from burning right out of his skull… but then it stopped increasing.
Everything still hurt and at that moment the Agent truly wanted to die, but then the heat stopped getting worse, and slowly… very slowly started to fade. Forcing his dried eyes open, he saw that the red glow was fading from the metal around them, while the fire upstairs had gone out, and the intensely bright light in the sky was becoming orange again as if the sun was setting. It wasn't, it was Regia SOLIS powering down, and… and holy shit, they two of them were still alive. Alive, and in desperate need of fresh air, which was why they decided to risk opening the door onto the top deck, since the monster couldn't be heard flopping around anymore.
A cool ocean wind was blowing across the ship as they emerged, sweeping away the burst of unnatural heat, which both allowed them to take a breath without feeling pain… and also to see what was left of the monster. The gigantic mass of slithering tendrils was gone, replaced by a layer of black ashes that coated the top deck… the entire top deck for as far as they could see. Good God, the thing really had spread out across the entire ship. The Agent wanted to call Amelia and let her know that they had survived, but as the last of the artificial sunlight returned to night, he remembered that the satellite's rays interfered with communications for a time.
"Do you think?" Sheva asked, her voice still raspy and dry. "Do you think Wesker got caught in the blast?"
"I don't think I've ever been that lucky." Chris replied, still coughing and raspy himself. "He probably ran to the lower decks as soon as he saw what was happening, and we gotta… and we gotta go after him."
Everything was rapidly cooling down, but the somewhat surgical strike on the Uroboros monster had left him severely dehydrated, along with dried, reddened skin as if he had spent about a month on a beach in Florida without any lotion. Sheva tried to take a drink from her one canteen, only to quickly spit it out, coughing and exclaiming something in Swahili that probably meant it was too hot. All right, with the bridge out of commission, and with all of the scorched surface damage to the ship, Wesker wasn't going anywhere… at least not until the two BSAA agents managed to find the cargo ship's infirmary to at least get some water and burn ointment.
There was a downward stairwell nearby, so the two of them helped each other walk over to it, and right now the only thing Chris cared about was getting to some slightly cooler temperatures as they started heading down into the lower decks.