Alyssa leaned against the elevator wall, recovering as she explained what had happened.
She'd gone back the way she'd come, but when she'd gotten to the stairs that had led her up to this part of the deck, she'd discovered that the B.O.W. – Uroboros – had done about as much damage to the building as she'd assumed it must have. It had completely caved in that section of the roof, and the stairs were buried in heavy rubble.
She'd tried a little to dig through it, but the concrete and rebar were too much for her. Then the Majini had arrived.
It had come in through another door, thankfully leaving her retreat to Chris and Sheva open, but she'd barely gotten out of that room without being shot to pieces. She'd expected it to be very slow, but it had come after her fast enough that she'd hardly had time to turn each corner before it turned the last. When she'd emerged into the night, she'd been grazed by one of the bullets.
She'd run through the mess of crates, constantly dodging for cover as the Majini got closer and closer to her, hoping that Chris and Sheva had gone that way. When she'd ended up pinned behind that crate, nowhere to go and no more cover to be had, she'd assumed the worst. Then they'd found her.
She wanted to hug them again, but she refrained. Instead all she said was, "Thank you for saving me again."
She felt guilty. She hadn't even been able to get herself out of their hair, let alone back to safety. And now they were going to have to babysit her. She expected Chris, at least, would be irritable about that.
But he didn't seem upset. All he said was, "Our pleasure. Now, few ground rules. Always pay attention to your surroundings, and try to keep yourself out of danger. We'll take care of the fighting, just follow our orders. This," he showed her a sharp, military gesture, "means keep low and quiet. This one means stop. This is retreat. This is attack. This means try to get around the threat."
He showed her each gesture in turn. Most of them were pretty obvious. She thought she'd be alright. Still, she focused hard trying to commit them to memory. "Okay," she nodded.
The elevator reached the bottom, and they stepped out onto a metal walkway. Red lights were flashing, and an automatic warning was playing overhead. WARNING! FIRE DETECTED IN THE ENGINE ROOM!
"Now," Chris continued as they stepped out and began jogging quickly down the hall. She could keep up, but was going to get winded fast if they maintained this pace. She was tired, and was still aching bad from her fall earlier. "Do you know how to use that gun of yours?"
She replied, "All guns are always loaded, keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire, never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy, be sure of your target. And my accuracy isn't bad, either."
Chris glanced down at her, and she thought he looked pleased. "Alright, this shouldn't be too bad. Just keep out of the line of fire, and take shots where you can. Ready?"
"To go home and get some therapy? Totally."
Chris smiled wryly, and Sheva laughed. A moment later, the warning overhead switched to, WARNING! SEALING OFF AREA WITH SECONDARY BULKHEAD! EVACUATE THE AREA IMMEDIATELY!
The laughter halted abruptly. "That doesn't sound good," Sheva noted. "Let's move."
They picked up speed, sprinting along metal catwalks into a mechanized inferno. Everywhere, red and yellow striped siding screamed CAUTION to the room, though Alyssa didn't know enough about the signs to understand what the danger was. Tall metal cylinders loomed here and there, as well as figurative black boxes with exhaust vents and pipes leading out of them, along walls and into the floor and ceilings. Tubes and cables trailed everywhere. The air was hot and smoky, and smelled wretchedly of burning chemicals. Flickering shadows made the whole room dance. And to top it all off, armed Majini were scattered everywhere, as yet unnoticing of their presence.
This is hell, she thought without any real alarm. Perhaps her fear had been largely exhausted by the last two encounters, or maybe her lack of fear could be attributed to the two verified heroes before her who had started firing at the Majini before she'd finished scanning the room, and who had taken them all out before she even had the mental acuity to draw her gun.
Not knowing what they were doing or where they were going, she just stuck to them as they ran along catwalks and down several sets of ladders. They dodged some bursts of fire that shot from damaged piping, Sheva kindly taking the time to tell her where and when to move, and they got to floor level.
There was water covering the ground, shin deep. A Majini was in the water, and Chris shot it in the head before punching it out of his way. They climbed another ladder.
Four thick pillars rose in from of them. Chris stepped up to one, nodded to Sheva, and somehow she understood what he wanted from her. She went around to another pillar, slid her gun around, and fired.
A yelp of pain. Chris rounded the corner of the pillar and struck, and a Majini that she hadn't even known was there, and that had been distracted and injured from Sheva's shot, flew out, falling to the ground.
She expected Chris to put it down, but he wasn't aiming his gun at it. Instead, he stepped up to it and raised his boot over its head. Alyssa watched, not even registering what was happening until the boot came down.
Cra—SPLAT.
Tenuous comfort inverted into horror, which gave way quickly to nausea. She stared at the sight of the Majini's ruined head in shock, of Chris scraping shards of skull off of his boot, then turned back to the water pit and threw up again.
"Oh, nicely done Chris," Sheva commented disapprovingly as she returned to his side from the pillar.
"Oh…shit. Er...maybe I should have used a knife on that one."
"You think?"
Alyssa stood up quickly, spitting a few times to remove the taste of bile. "I'm good," she croaked. "I'm fine. You do you."
Chris's face was twisted up sympathetically, but there wasn't any more time for her squeamishness. She stepped past the mess, and they took the cue and continued onward.
As her brain worked on lathering a generous amount of mental white-out onto that memory, she took the time to appreciate the grace and precision with which her new protectors moved. No movement seemed wasted to her, everything was done at maximum safe speed, and there was absolutely zero hesitation between registering a threat and disposing of it. While she was still looking around, trying to figure out where they were going, they were shooting things she hadn't even seen in the uncertain lighting.
They got to a control console and pulled a lever. What she had assumed was a wall in front of her with red and yellow caution stripes placed randomly in the middle began sliding apart along the line.
OPENING SECONDARY BULKHEAD. PLEASE MAINTAIN A SAFE DISTANCE FROM THE BULKHEAD.
She wondered how they had known that was a door, or a 'bulkhead', and how they'd known that the lever would open it, and how they'd spotted the lever in all this mess, then decided that there was no chance at all of her actually being able to follow the plot without dying, and just turned her attention fully to scanning for Majini.
As they began backtracking, presumably somewhere that would allow them to get down to the bulkhead, she looked up and noticed three Majini crouched on a catwalk overhead. Pleased with herself for noticing them, she raised her gun and fired.
Chris and Sheva both halted, and the Majini she'd shot fell down in front of them.
"Woah!" Sheva said, and looked up. The other two jumped down before Alyssa could get them, and while Sheva got one, Chris shot the other – but not quite fast enough. The thing was carrying a stun baton, and it managed to step forward and clip him.
He jerked and stumbled back, and Alyssa started in shock at the sight of him actually taking a blow. Right on shock's heels was anger, and she moved without thinking. She shot the offending Majini four times in the chest, driving it back, while Sheva took care of the other two. The last, still alive, tried to rush them again.
Her adrenaline surged as the opponent came for her, and she spat, "Dumb fuck!" at it and shot it several times in the head.
It fell, and did not get back up. Chris was already standing up behind her, clearly alright, and as he rose Sheva said, "Yeah, Chris, that was a bit of an errant move on your part."
Alyssa practically squawked. She put her gun away and turned back to Chris, raising her hands and waving them in denial. "Nonono! I wasn't talking about you, I was—"
But Sheva was laughing, and Alyssa wondered wildly how the woman could find anything funny in a situation like this. Chris just rubbed his head, smiling ruefully, and said, "Yeah, that was pretty dumb of me, huh? Good spot on that attack, Alyssa. Thanks for covering me."
"Uh, huh," she replied meekly, drawing her gun again as Chris and Sheva moved on. She did not understand combat.
Her composure was rattled from watching Chris get hurt like that, her hands were shaking slightly, and she quickly forced herself to calm down. Before they continued, she paused to have a look at the shock baton the Majini and used, and picked it up. It was surprisingly light, and she spotted what she thought was the trigger for it. Since she had no melee weapons or means of defending herself in close combat, she decided it might be a good idea to keep the thing. She jimmied it into a loop on her pack and started off.
The enemies thickened. She found herself really fighting, not just tossing a bullet in every now and then to help. As Chris and Sheva worked on a flood before them, one would sneak around and try for their backs or come in from the side. She'd keep these off of them, but they popped up often enough that she was really starting to sweat.
One came, armed with a hatchet, and when Alyssa went to fire at it her gun clicked on empty. She hadn't been paying attention to her ammunition, too focused on just shooting. Sensing that to hesitate might mean to die, she shoved her gun in her pocket, drew her stun baton – it snagged on the loop and she ripped at it furiously, tearing something in the process – and clicked it on, shoving it into the Majini's stomach as it rose both hands over its head to bring the axe down.
The Majini dropped the axe and stumbled away, giving her time to reload her gun. The loop had been torn off her pack, so she had no way to store the baton in an easy-to-reach place. She kept it in her left hand and fired one-handed.
"You good?" Sheva asked.
"Fine," she replied, the explanation springing to her tongue. She clamped down on it. She was fine, they didn't need to know the details.
She heard a wretched sound – flesh tearing, and then something hissing and chittering like a giant insect. The noise made her skin crawl, and she turned around to see the horror. It was a huge, thick grey snake-thing bulging out of a Majini's neck. The head was gone, though she saw a piece of scalp hanging off one of the legs.
A scream rose in her, but never made it out. Sheva suddenly had a shotgun in her hand, Chris a long, sharp metal stake that he seemed to have ripped off of some rail or piece of machinery, and Sheva blasted the monster. It stumbled back and fell to the ground. Immediately Chris sprang forward with all the speed and ferocity of an angered grizzly bear and rammed the stake down near the tip of the thrashing grey worm.
It squealed, pinned as the stake sank through the grating beneath and lodged there. Chris straddled the Majini, pulled out his knife, and began hacking. The worm continued wriggling, but within a dozen fast, heavy swings, the base of it was sawn completely through. Chris had decapitated the monster with nothing but a knife.
He stood up, leaving the worm to die. Alyssa continued firing at the last few approaching Majini. Once the last of them were dispatched, he said, "Okay, bulkhead's open, let's move."
She was still staring at him. He looked at her, and she said, "You guys are so cool."
She expected Chris to roll his eyes, scoff, shrug, or maybe ignore the obvious comment completely. Instead he ran a hand through his hair, and if anything, looked embarrassed. "Uh…right. Thanks. Let's go."
The bulkhead had opened onto a short, wide hallway, and Sheva pulled out her rifle and sniped the Majini lining it from afar. "Nice," he commented as the last one fell. But as they got closer, Alyssa noticed something weird on the ceiling.
"What are those?" she asked, pointing at a pair of gooey, grey sacs. They looked like some kind of creepy alien pods or something.
Chris groaned, "Oh, God, not those fu—not those things again."
"I'm not twelve, you know," Alyssa commented.
Sheva jumped into an explanation. "Those sacs belong to a B.O.W. called 'Reapers'. They're insectoid and hard to kill, and what's more, spray a blinding green mist from their carapaces. Do NOT allow them to get close to you. We'll try to move past them, I think."
"Oh, yeah," Chris said emphatically. "We still don't know what triggers them to emerge, so we'll sneak unless they start to hatch. If they do, run."
If Chris was saying 'sneak and run away if they see you', Alyssa figured this was a pretty serious threat. Her heartrate picked up a notch or two as they started slinking forward.
They moved as quickly and quietly as they were able, but when they jumped across the gap the opening of the bulkhead had left, things got a bit more complicated. More Majini emerged, and one of them had a rocket launcher.
Chris and Sheva both fired at this one immediately, and it didn't get off a shot. They kept firing and moving forward only slowly, and Alyssa couldn't keep her eyes off the sacs on the wall. Surely they would hatch with all the gunfire going on right beneath them?
But they didn't. The three of them made it past to the next bulkhead. She recognized this one because it had levers in front of it, and the same caution stripes in the middle the last one had.
They pulled the levers. OPENING PRIMARY BULKHEAD. PLEASE MAINTAIN A SAFE DISTANCE FROM THE BULKHEAD.
Behind them, as the doors started opening with a deep, mechanical rumble, she heard something very slimy and very gross, and she turned to see the sacs splitting open. Noise and nearby movement hadn't bothered them, but the heavy vibration had. They were tactile creatures.
"Uh, guys, we've got company," she cliché'd.
Sheva turned to glare at the emerging insects, then gasped. Oddly, it wasn't a horrified gasp. "Oh, I've been waiting for a chance to use this."
She reached into her pack and pulled out a big silver disc. Chris frowned. "You've had another one of those this whole time?"
"Yep," Sheva replied, then ran half the distance towards the newly-hatched monsters and set the disc down on the ground. She hit something on it, it began beeping, and she ran away and drew her rifle.
"What's that?" Alyssa asked as she took aim at the bugs. She also set her stun rod down. It wouldn't help if she couldn't get close.
"Proximity mine," Chris explained. "We used a bunch of 'em to drive off a giant bat monster yesterday. And a pack of mutant dogs."
"Your lives are just full of excitement, aren't they?"
"Yup."
BOOM!
The insects had split up, but one had come right at them down the middle. The others were going around the sides, behind pillars and such. The one that had rushed them had hit the mine, and when it stood back up – the fact that it had survived such an explosion at all was terrifying – it had a huge, throbbing white cyst of some sort on its chest.
Both Chris and Sheva started firing at this, so Alyssa joined in as well. Green mist began puffing out of cracks in the thing's carapace, but before it could get near them, they'd turned the cyst into an oozing white hole. The Reaper fell back, twitching, and did not get up again.
The next two were more problematic. They were all forced to retreat to the other end of the room as the things leapt at them from opposite sides, spraying that mist, and Alyssa caught a small whiff of it before getting out of range. It made her cough, and her eyes watered up instantly. And that was a very tiny whiff. She did not want to catch a face-full of the stuff.
They began firing at the things, Sheva with her shotgun, Chris with an automatic he'd pulled off his back. Alyssa fired too, slow, measured shots for the head and eyes, and they started a pattern – run to one end of the room, fire until the things got close, dodge around and retreat to the other end.
At one point, Sheva actually blew the head off one of the Reapers. The thing just kept coming as though it was perfectly fine. It did start tripping a lot, though, which helped. They got it down without much more difficulty.
The last one took the most time to kill, but they got it. And by then, the bulkhead was open and they could continue on.
"I'm running low on ammo," Sheva noted worriedly. The new room had stacks of crates, multiple levels, and more pits flooded with dark, greasy-looking water. On the far side of the room, a large silver door.
Chris nodded. "Same. I think we'll have enough to get through, though."
They ran up to the gap. Before jumping over, they saw something rising out of two black squares in the floor, coming up in a mechanical whir. And when she, Chris, and Sheva saw what the problem was…they threw themselves down into the flooded pit on their side before the gunfire could start.
It was two of those gunner Majini like she'd almost been killed by earlier. Two of them. And more Majini than that besides. Still, she trusted that Chris and Sheva would be able to handle them. They'd know what to do. She just needed to trust them.
The first thing Sheva said was, "We'll never win in a fair fight."
Alyssa's face went from scared and focused to just plain scared as soon as those words left Sheva's mouth, and she immediately course-corrected. "We need to fall back and come up with a plan."
Alyssa still looked worried, but the focus returned, and she watched them closely, as though utterly dependent upon their words. Which, frankly, she was. "First things first," Chris said. "Let's try to explore our arena, see if anything here can be used to our advantage. Alyssa, if you spot a place to hide, take it. This is out of your league."
"Alright."
"We need to stay out of the line of fire and try to pick the smaller Majini off," Sheva said as they began moving. This whole area was a giant playground of pillars, catwalks, crates and ladders. If they were careful, they'd be alright. "And we need to see if there's a way out of here. Let's go."
They would need to keep moving to stay alive. Sure enough, as soon as they got up the next ladder, the gunners caught up with them and opened fire. They all got behind a pillar for cover, and were able to pick off some foot soldiers before the gunners moved to a new position, giving them time to change theirs.
They crossed over to the other side of the room, where there were piles of storage crates holding God knew what. No explosive barrels, though, which was unfortunate. Alyssa spotted a gap in the crates and crawled in while she and Chris covered her, then they took off to draw the gunners away.
They found more cover, but when Sheva poked her head out, she saw one of the gunners kneeling beside the crates Alyssa was hiding amongst. It was peering into the gap and growling…but then it stood up, shrugged, and turned to go. Alyssa must have hidden herself well.
With that fear off her plate, Sheva's thoughts turned back to killing these two monsters.
As the gunner started towards their cover, she noticed something – a keycard dangling obviously from its neck. And the silver door had two keycard readers, one on either side. She pointed this out to Chris, and he swore.
"Damnit," he growled. "That's the door we need to take to get to Wesker. And it looks like we'll need the keycards to get in."
"Seems like it," she said, heart falling. Killing these things would be very, very difficult.
"Sheva, look – minigun," Chris pointed out. She spotted it, up high on a catwalk on the edge of the room, but fat lot of good it would do them. It was nowhere near anything resembling cover, and was in clear view of the room. Even if they could get to it without getting shot, they'd never be able to fire it uninterrupted.
They kept moving. Majini kept trying to drive them out of their cover, and some of them had guns themselves, but while Sheva took down the far ones Chris took on those that closed with them, and together, they were just able to keep ahead of the gunners. But they couldn't land a single damn shot on them.
Sheva wondered if it wasn't time to split up. "Should one of us try to distract them while the other takes the gun?"
Chris considered, but shook his head. "Too risky. If we split up, they might as well, then we'll each have to keep out of two separate lines of sight. You'd think they'd figure out that if they split up, they'd kill us pretty easily."
Right. The second those things figured that out, she and Chris were probably toast. They couldn't risk doing anything to lead them to that conclusion. So they kept running, and they kept clearing out Majini. At this rate they were going to use up all their ammo. Indeed, both her handgun and rifle were almost out, as was Chris's automatic. He still had a few magazines of handgun ammo, she plenty of shotgun ammo, but once that was gone…
"Grenades," Chris grunted as gunfire rained against the column they were hiding behind. They had only a few left, but it looked like they would need to start using them. "We'll have to use the rest of them up, and hope it's enough."
"We'll need to be strategic about it," she fretted. She had two incendiaries left, Chris one frag and two flash unless she was mistaken.
The gunfire stopped as the gunners started seeking a new line of sight. The room was void of normal Majini now, so it was probably time to make a move, whatever it was. First they needed to get to new cover, confer a bit more. But as they broke for the a long line of crates, they saw something alarming.
Alyssa had emerged from hiding and was creeping towards the fight. On her back, her pack was bulging and heavy.
"Shit!" Chris swore as Sheva eyed the backpack, trying to figure out what was inside it. "What is she doing?"
They got behind the next row of crates. They and the gunners were more or less going in a slow-motion circle at the moment, one predictable piece of cover to the next, and based on the last two go-rounds the Majini would jump down into another of those smelly water pits and up the next ladder to try and get at them again. They'd gone this way twice so far.
"We can't yell at her to hide, otherwise the gunners might notice her," Sheva pointed out, eyes darting stressfully around for anything the girl could use for cover. There were plenty of places for her to hide, but none of them were close enough for her to reach in a pinch.
Chris noticed this as well. "And she's right in the middle of the damn room. There's no way she'll make it to cover. What the fuck is she doing?" he reiterated, clearly frustrated. Like her, he was afraid for the girl.
What Alyssa was doing was getting closer and closer to the gunners, and Sheva's stomach was twisting up into knots watching. She took two creeping steps towards them for every galumphing step they took away, and she was closing the gap fast. Then, as they were only about two meters removed, she slung the pack quietly off her shoulder.
Was that pack full of explosives? If it was, this was a horrible time to use them. The gunners were about to jump into the water. Explosives in water did not usually have a good effect.
"Damnit," Chris growled. "We're gonna have to use a flash just to get her to safety. I can't…"
He petered off as Alyssa made her next move. The second the gunners jumped down, she sprinted forward, threw the pack on the ground, and began pulling out its contents.
Sheva's brows furrowed. Stun batons? Were those stun batons? Where had she gotten so many stun batons?
She noticed something else as well. The triggers on the batons were all covered with something. She pulled out her rifle and used her scope to see.
It was duct tape; Alyssa had found duct tape, and had depressed all the triggers.
Chris asked, "What's going on?"
Finally, Alyssa's plan clicked in Sheva's mind. Her neurons started firing fast. It was a long shot – a very long shot – but if it worked, it might be enough.
"We might be about to get the distraction we need to use that minigun," she murmured. "But we'll have to move fast." Then she asserted more confidently, "Give me the grenades, you go for the gun, and I'll keep them pinned if need be. Ready?"
He breathed out low and harsh, clearly frustrated, but he nodded and handed the requested munitions over. Just in time, too. Things were about to kick off.
Just before the Majini reached the ladder on the far side of the water pit, Alyssa grabbed a baton, cranked the power level up from zero to max, and dropped it into the water. The gunners barely twitched, though they did notice the splash. Both paused, one looking around, and Sheva popped out of cover, raised her rifle, said, "Go," and shot the Majini in the head.
Chris sprinted for the minigun. The Majini howled, and both of them raised their own weapons. But now they were extremely tense – Alyssa had dropped four more batons in, and the electricity was starting to have an effect.
These were not normal stun batons. Normal tasers stopped working in water, but these were letting out an unmitigated stream of electricity, continuing to surge as they were dropped in one by one. They seemed to have no halter on the current they delivered, and Sheva surmised that the rods were designed with electrocution, and not safety, in mind.
Alyssa must have had a dozen crammed into her pack, with a few more in her belt. By the time she finished dropping them all in, the gunners were both rigid, twitching, and growling in the water. The massive electric current had stunned them.
Alyssa turned and sprinted back for the crates. Sheva pulled out her flash grenade, ready to toss one in and wondering out long the baton charge would last when they were at full flow like this. Surely the batteries would give out soon?
They did. Dumping their charge like that at max power, they only lasted about twenty seconds. Chris reached the minigun just before they did, though, and he just had line of sight on the things. But they had line of sight on him, too, so that was where she came in.
He started firing, and both gunners growled and spun around to return fire. She pulled the pin on a flash and tossed it, waiting a moment so it would go off before hitting the water. It worked, and Chris was able to continue raining lead on them. That said, based on the last gunner encounter they'd had, the things would regain their sight in seconds.
Chris stopped off, perhaps giving the gun a second to cool down, and she got an incendiary ready. Hopefully fire would distract them a bit more than just light. Alyssa was coming back, too, her pack laden down once again, and Chris opened fire on the gunners before she could get in the way.
She skidded to a stop, looked up, saw Chris, and halted some ten feet off so she wouldn't get shot. She dropped her pack and began pulling out more stun batons.
She must have found an entire crate of them in that pile, turned the power output to zero, taped the triggers down, and waited for the gunners to step into the water before cranking them back up. Inventive girl. If she'd known anything about tasers she likely wouldn't have tried it, since this should not in all truth have worked; but luck was compensating for her lack of knowledge. They had a weapon.
Sheva tossed the incendiary, and it went off right before hitting the water, stunning the gunners as effectively as the flash. Right after that, Alyssa began cranking on the batons and hurling them like…well, like batons. They whirled perkily through the air like a cheerleader's implement, sparking cheerfully, and landed one by one in the water, generating another paralyzing field. One clipped a gunner directly, and the thing yelped and dropped its gun.
The whole time, Chris just kept pouring lead into them, pausing only periodically to let the gun cool. By now the gunners were injured enough that they were slow to raise their weapons, and Chris was able to swap back and forth between them to keep each one them from firing. And since all their focus was on him, Sheva was left free to toss in a shot every now and then, and Alyssa had swapped tactics to aim her last few remaining stun batons for the Majini instead of just the water. She had terrible hand-eye coordination and would probably never be an Olympian-grade baton twirler, but she got them a few more times, once just in time to stop Chris from being shot to pieces.
At last, the gunners dropped to their knees, and finally pitched over into the water. Sheva stepped out from cover, though Chris remained up on the tower, minigun aimed at the fallen gunners. He wasn't taking any chances with their safety.
Sheva approached Alyssa, who was poking and flicking her ears with a pained expression. Poor thing didn't have any ear protection. When she saw Sheva, the expression melted into concern, and she asked, "Are you guys okay?"
"We're fine," Sheva assured her. "That was fast thinking with those batons. You really saved our skins there – again. Thank you."
Alyssa beamed, then Sheva told her to wait there while she ran down to the water to grab the keycards.
A dreadful thought occurred to her then – that one or the other may have been damaged in the fight. How did I not think of that when I saw the minigun? she wondered. Still, she pushed the thought down with the fear and climbed down the water. Keeping the batons in mind, she reached down and brushed the water with her fingertips first.
There was a very mild charge, the sort of thing one might feel on one of those devices people used to try and shock illnesses out of them. Harmless. She jumped in, hair springing up to stand on end, and approached the dead Majini.
One had its card sticking out of its back pocket. She grabbed it and had a look. It seemed fine, and it was wrapped in plastic, so hopefully it won't have gotten damaged by the electricity. One down.
She approached the other gunner, and as she did, it stirred. Her radio came on, Chris tuning in to say,
"Careful, Sheva!"
She waved a hand dismissively at him and walked right up to the thing. It rose slowly out of the water, teeth bared in a hateful grimace, and growled at her as the dark water dripped from its lips. She bent down to look it in the eyes, then reached out and yanked the keycard roughly off of its neck.
It was too weak to do more than grab at her, and too slow to actually catch her. She hopped away and climbed up the stairs, leaving Chris to pour a hundred more rounds into their mostly-felled foe.
She inspected the second card, and her taste of victory soured. The plastic cover was damaged, the card was singed…and two bullet holes had pierced the little black strip. "Oh, no," she breathed as Chris slid down the ladder at last and ran over to her.
"Get the keys?" he asked.
She held up the damaged one, and his eyes flashed darkly. "That's not good."
Alyssa had taken all her supplies out of her pack to make room for batons, and she went back to grab these and load back up. As she did so, Chris tugged his focus from the damaged key, turning it to her instead. "You know, we're really lucky your trick worked. If that had been clean freshwater, the charge wouldn't have carried."
"Really?" Alyssa asked, distributing her remaining magazines throughout her pockets. She also handed a couple to Sheva, who took them and inspected them. Red Hawk. She thanked her, and loaded one into her handgun. She'd run out taking down the last couple Majini.
"Yeah. Pure water doesn't carry a charge. But I'm willing to bet that was saltwater coolant, and probably mixed with a ton of other crap too – grease, dirt, biomatter. Conductive. Good stuff."
They tried the cards, even though odds were their luck had run out. She handed one card to Chris, the other she kept, and they slid them through. Chris's, the undamaged one, turned green. Hers did not.
Alyssa watched curiously. They tried again, and as they did, she began digging in her pack. "I don't know what to do now," Chris said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "That was one of the only ways into the hangar. Any other route will take half an hour, assuming guards. Half an hour at least."
"We can try these, if you want," Alyssa said, holding up two keycards.
Sheva tilted her head. "What are those?"
"One is an all-access keycard for the last facility I was in. The other is a security keycard. I doubt they'll work," she admitted. "But we may as well try them."
Chris shrugged. "Worth a shot," he said. He ran his card as Alyssa slid the all-access one. His console flashed green. Hers, red.
Sheva watched her switch to the security card, though she had already dismissed the cards and was planning how they would get to Wesker before he could launch his attack. In her mind, their chances seemed very, very bleak.
They swiped the cards. Both lights turned green, and the door slid open.
David closed the minesweeper app halfway through his game and rolled back, away from the desk. He couldn't focus on it anymore.
Alyssa had left almost an hour ago, and he hadn't heard anything from her. All he'd heard was something massive moving around on the deck, tilting the ship left and right. Out here on this dark ship full of monsters, it made him feel like he was in some H.P. Lovecraft story, waiting for the eldritch demons above to find him and tear him apart.
That was mostly silly, though. The feeling had since ebbed, but the sense of foreboding had left him with nothing but sorrow and fear for his friend. Whatever that upheaval upstairs had been, he wasn't sure Alyssa had survived it. And now all was silent.
He couldn't bother worrying about something as abstract as the end of the world. The concept was too big. But losing a friend? That friend? The only other living person on the face of the planet who understood, from start to finish, the hell he'd lived through? Everything he'd lost?
He pushed himself away from the desk with his good leg, and noticed the ship was listing slightly to starboard as his chair rolled towards the door. He reached out to steady himself. Then he sighed miserably as the last two day's trials went skipping through his mind, each memory a dark, spreading ripple.
Ajay. David had never met anyone like him, and he wasn't sure he ever would again. That calm caring wrapped up in that odd, quirkiness. David had never experienced hatred – hot, visceral, mind-numbing hatred – before Sarah. What she'd done, he didn't consider any better than murder. Preemptive self-defense that Ajay had paid the price for.
The memory stone skipped again. Ruth. Yeesh, she'd been so timid. She'd wanted to help so badly, but she'd just been too scared – scared to act, scared to speak up, scared to sound silly. He knew that feeling. The only reason Sarah had liked her was because she was malleable, agreeable, apt to cave to the slightest pressure. Sarah had figured that out early on, and had recognized Ruth as a potential tool if handled correctly. She'd sounded him out, as well, dropped a few subtle comments to see if he was as easily manipulated; but the second he'd made it clear that he actually was a vertebrate, albeit a fairly mellow and pleasant one, the result had been something of a psychological cold-snap. They'd been on bad terms even before Ajay's death.
He pushed roughly off the wall with one foot, rolling himself back towards the desk. Then he turned himself around and pushed off again. He did this until he got dizzy. He stopped in the corner, facing the wall. His ankle hurt.
And speaking of pain, Kyle definitely still hurt to think about. If there was one person who'd deserved to get out alive, who hadn't deserved a single, solitary thing that had happened to him, it was Kyle. He was the kind of guy you couldn't imagine hurting anyone, physically or emotionally…until he'd taken up arms to save them from the security team's attack. And even that he'd hated doing. Given his way in life, he'd probably have been as much of a pacifist as Ajay had been. David wondered what his family was like, and how they'd react when they heard what had happened. He hoped he got the chance to tell them, even as painful as the idea was.
And Theron, for a fourth skip…David still had trouble grasping the idea that the guy was gone. He'd seemed invincible. Up there at the front of the group, watching for danger, keeping them all safe; maybe it had just been David's own inability to imagine having to take charge himself, that made him think Theron would never die. He wondered if he and Chris would have gotten along well. Probably - the B.S.A.A. soldier reminded him of Theron in a lot of ways.
He'd left as much of the difficulty as possible to Theron. They all had, trusting him to get them through it all. And losing them, one after the next…he couldn't even imagine what the guy must have been feeling by the last floor. He'd taken all of the worst on himself, and it still hadn't been enough. Who knew…maybe at the end, giving up his own hope of escape to ensure Alyssa's, maybe that had been enough. Maybe he'd been at peace.
Of course, he hadn't taken all of the worst upon himself. Alyssa had stepped up, too, shouldered so much of the responsibility of keeping them safe. The deaths had wounded her so brutally, and even now, all she could think of was everyone else's safety. His. Chris and Sheva's. Reynard's. The world's.
David sunk down in his chair. He wanted to say he'd have gone with her if his injury had permitted; but the very fact that his first thought upon hearing her plan had been, Oh, thank God I can't go, I'm injured, told him that maybe that wasn't necessarily true. Maybe he would have stayed here, too afraid to leave, too afraid to help. But now he didn't know, because he hadn't gotten the chance.
He rolled back to the desk and slumped over, cradling his head in his arms. The stone sank, but the ripples kept sloshing around in his head. The room was cold. Alyssa was gone. And God, his ankle hurt.
Everything hurt.
The guards had left, rushing off in response to some silent command, which had given Reynard ample time to thrash, contort, and generally torture himself in an attempt to get out of his bindings. The guards hadn't returned, so he'd continued to wriggle and writhe until the discomfort had become too much. His muscles had all but given out by then, and he hadn't even come close to breaking a single bond. He was stuck, well and good.
Well and good? he scoffed at himself. More like well and bad. Well and damnably bad. Well and apocalyptically bad.
Humanity could be wiped out because he couldn't get out of these damn cuffs.
He cursed himself for his mistakes. He'd dawdled too long on those files, sating his own curiosity when he should have been actively searching out the knowledge they'd needed. He should have contacted Chris and Sheva the instant he'd read the passage on that serum. Those few seconds of hesitation had cost him.
It had been Wesker himself who had taken him down, he was certain, and the thought of what the terrorist wanted him alive for would have been enough to make most informed men chew their own arms off if it might mean escaping. He wasn't about to do that, though. Not because he thought waiting here until Wesker returned was a preferable course of action, hell no…but because he could not reach his arm to chew.
His mouth twitched up briefly, then fell again. He was in the worst situation he'd ever been in, bar none. He didn't think he would be making it out of here.
And yet, he'd thought the same exact thing yesterday. Kneeling on that stage, surrounded by a sea of monsters, two giants towering above him, ready to take his head off, he'd poured his impotent fury out to the sky under the assumption that it was his last gasp of life. And what had happened?
That single gunshot ringing out. His Executioner toppling back, inexplicably felled by the shot like Goliath by the stone. What had happened was a stay of execution, a lease on life bought at the cost of the ire of a horde. Whatever Chris and Sheva had said about the hivemind spread of alarm, he didn't buy for a second that they had risked nothing in saving him. That they'd all made it out alive had been a miracle.
He strained feebly against his bindings again, if only to test their constancy. Still just as unbreakable…but given all that those two had already taken on, perhaps the same could be said of them. He hadn't seen the half of what they'd accomplished so far, and he knew that Chris alone had done far more in his own past. Perhaps together, they could…
He went limp once more. Without the serum, Wesker would tear them apart. Then, once he was done and the world was as good as his, he would turn to his captured mole.
Reynard had suffered in the past. He was accustomed to enduring pain. That didn't mean he didn't fear it, but he didn't waste any energy or imagination contemplating it now. If Wesker won, it wouldn't much matter what came after. His focus would be better spent trying to figure a way out of here, or at the very least, how to avoid giving Wesker any information that might actually benefit him.
And yet, his mind did not drift to these practical things. Trapped alone in this little cage, awaiting news of global devastation and imminent torture, he found himself thinking about his pair of survivors upstairs, and wondering whether they were still alive. And if so, how long they would remain so.
Reynard could tell that he would survive the coming apocalypse. This cell was obviously intended to withstand such a thing. Filtered air, temperature controlled, and he had a needle in his arm, likely to keep him hydrated. Perhaps they'd even feed him every few days. But that room upstairs was not air-proof. They had little water, and no food. He could only imagine them sitting there, waiting for him or Chris or Sheva to come back, hope dwindling, until they were either found or forced to leave their shelter for sustenance. And what would happen then?
Perhaps Uroboros would filter in and take them. If it did not reach, then they would fall prey to the Majini – if they were lucky. If not…Wesker.
His mind tried to sideslip that thought, the image of that skittish girl trembling in front of that ruthless monster of a man; of her being dragged off by him, perhaps to serve as a lab rat, or an animal in a zoo: one of the last members of a species he was attempting to eradicate, kept as a novel pet. Or maybe he'd just dispose of her, shoot her, crush her skull, throw her off the ship or to his henchmen. The idea made him sick like no thought of torture could.
Once this is all over, he'll have time to spare with us. At least Chris and Sheva will probably die fast. The bastard is no doubt in a hurry to move his plans along – he won't waste time on torture.
He was genuinely surprised to discover real pain at this thought, and silently cursed himself for it. There was a reason he was a bit of a bastard on these missions. He wasn't there to make friends. He was there to make a change. Friends were only a distraction.
So you have friends in the area?
No, I have comrades.
He tried to regain that sense of distance. They were resources to each other, nothing more. And yet, when he grasped for that mental isolation, he came up only with echoes. Jokes shared over the last forty-eight hours, and the laughter that accompanied them.
Just how many dignitaries did you run into?
You mean how many grandmothers?
Yeah, those.
The teasing, too. The ribbing.
We can't do anything that could jeopardize team effectiveness. And I work best alone.
Yeah, saw that back in Kijuju.
And concern. Real concern, not the cold, calculating concern that had everything to do with mission success chance and nothing at all to do with the people running the mission themselves.
Good luck, Reynard, and stay safe…
He closed his eyes. Of all the times to admit to anything deeper than strict comradery, now was the worst one. What was the point now? They would need a miracle to get through this.
As I thought yesterday. And yet, here I am.
He opened his eyes and growled. He tensed his muscles, relaxed them, and began twisting them slowly back and forth, pulling in and down, seeking even a millimeter of give. If there wasn't, then tearing the skin might generate enough blood to act as a lubricant.
He pushed until the pain became too great, then kept pushing. Damn it all to hell, there was too much at stake. Be it billions of lives or just two quivering civilians huddled in an office upstairs – or two people he was loathe to call friends, but would be lying if he said otherwise – he had something to fight for. Something to suffer for.
He twisted, and something gave. His arms slid down through the long, tight cuffs, just slightly. He grinned through the pain.
Then a loud horn blared overhead, and some lights flashed red. Immediately, the cuffs tightened, and a stunning electrical shock surged through the manacles. By the time he could move again, he recognized by the tingling in his fingertips that the cuffs were tight enough to restrict blood flow.
His grin was gone. His teeth were now bared only in pain and frustration.
He stood up, taking some pressure off. The tightness of the cuffs lessened slightly. Blood rushed back into his hands. He tugged again, but the moment he did, the cuffs tightened once more. The system was more advanced than he was capable of dealing with.
Damnit Chris, Sheva…it's up to you.
"Kick that fucker's ass for me," he snarled softly.
Jill went back to check on Doug for the fifth time that hour. They'd done everything they could for him, but though he hadn't gotten any worse, his vitals remained fluttery. Any hard knock could destabilize him.
They were pushing on through wind and rain, beelining for the ship, which Jill had been able to pull up a tracker on. They were perhaps fifteen minutes away now, and once they got there, they would have to watch carefully for an opening. Rocket launchers lined the wall, half a dozen ready to go, but she knew firsthand that they would have a very limited effect on Wesker. They may as well have been flash grenades.
But it was all they had. The rest would be up to Chris and Sheva.
"How is he?" Josh called back hoarsely.
Jill adjusted Doug's hand, which had slipped from beneath the blanket and away from the emergency heating pads, back under the meager cover of warmth. Then she stood up and returned to the front again. "Same. But all things considered, same is good. He's not getting any worse."
Josh nodded, jaw clenched.
She knew exactly what he was going through, how hard it was to push on through a mission even though it might mean losing an injured teammate. And it had been clear from the first exchange between the pair that they were more than just teammates. These two had known each other a long time.
As Jill's thoughts turned to what was ahead of her, to Chris and Sheva, she wondered how long those two had known each other. Had they teamed up recently? Or had Sheva stepped in sooner – a year ago? Two? Right after the funeral, perhaps? Had the pair grown as close as she and Chris had once been?
Jill searched her heart for jealousy at the thought, and found none. She knew that, even if the pair had grown so close, it would not have come at any cost to Chris's relationship with her. The way he had reacted to seeing her, the restraint with which he'd fought her, and his near inability to leave her behind, even with the whole world at stake outside; these things had made it clear that he had never given up on her.
She could only imagine the hell he'd gone through. She'd gone through a hell of her own, and her fear for what she would find when she finally reached the tanker was fanning the lingering flames of it.
And yet, even that fear was limited. She'd seen firsthand what he was capable of, and she knew he was capable of even more than she'd seen herself. And Sheva – if there was anyone whom she'd have trusted to take her place at Chris's side, it would have been the fierce, kind woman who had fought brilliantly to subdue her one moment, and forgiven her for all of it the very next. Yes, Chris was in good hands.
They would be arriving soon. She feared what she may find. She feared what would happen if they failed, and even feared what might happen if they succeeded – win or lose, no mission this big ever came without a cost.
But the fear was nothing. Not beside the burning surety she had that, if anyone in the world could stop what was coming, it was the man whose back she'd had since that first night in Arklay. Before that, really, but that was the start of it all in her mind. That first night. That first victory. That first betrayal.
Wesker.
She clenched her fists.
Chris.
She leaned forward in the seat. "Can this thing go any faster?" she asked.
"Not without substantially increasing the turbulence," Josh replied evenly.
Jill considered, then hopped up and went back to Doug. "I'll keep him steady, make sure he doesn't get jostled. Kick it up as much as you can."
She saw him glance back at her in the mirror, eyes burning, but it wasn't with resentment. It was determination she saw there. Despite his pain, he was ready to confront what lay ahead.
Despite her fear, so was she.
She wrapped Doug up more tightly, braced herself as best she could, and held onto him as their speed picked up. The chopper was jostled, and winds ripped furiously along the sides, setting them rocking. But she held on. Just as the others would.
The bomber had been warmed up, the deck above cleared. All was prepared, and here he stood overlooking it, ready for his new world to commence. So why had he not raised the platform, boarded the bomber, and initiated the takeoff sequence?
He could hear it all going on in the room behind him. The gunfire was the only sound loud enough to echo up the corridor, but it was all he needed to know exactly what was happening. Chris and Sheva were fighting their way through his security, racing to get to him before he could depart and damn the world. Would that they understood – it was damned already. What he offered, what he had spent years toiling over, what lay on the vessel before him, ready to be spread to every corner of the globe…that was salvation.
He knew this. The world would know it hereafter. Why, then, should he care about the opposition of one man? What did Chris's ignorance matter to him?
The gunfire's stopped. They'll be here momentarily.
Perhaps it wasn't his ignorance. Perhaps it was the idea that, when presented with the facts of the matter, he still wouldn't concede his point. His single-minded assumption that he was the protagonist in this grand story, his enemy the antagonist, was so simplistic. It did not seem to Wesker that it could hold up to those truths that had been salient to him from his youth. Still, no one in the world was as blind as the zealot.
And yet here Wesker was, waiting. He did not believe for a moment that Chris could overcome him, nor Chris and Sheva, nor Chris, Sheva, Jill, Reynard, or anyone and everyone else the B.S.A.A. could throw at him this late in the day. They could send every soldier they had at him, it would not matter. He would not yield, not when he was so close. And the prospect of confronting Chris was too enticing. He wanted to see how the man would react when he came to the true realization of what his nemesis was endeavoring towards. A new world, void of war, disease, poverty, degradation. A perfect world. Earth, an Eden.
Come, Chris. Tell me I am wrong. I want to see your face when you choose to defy perfection.
Behind him, the door opened.
OoO
Hey Relyt! Thank you, I'm so glad you enjoy the fight scenes :) I always look for a good angle on them, be it an injury, a chance for character development, or at least a new method of killing them.
This chapter was hard to get through. I almost skipped the last fight with the gunners altogether. But once it was done for, I very much enjoyed writing the preludes to the fight - where everyone was, what was going through their minds...especially Wesker. I always wonder what's going through a bad guy's mind when he's standing around, waiting for the good guy to show up. Please, friends, let me know if you think my ascribed motivation is an acceptable one.
And welcome to esonic, my newest follower! Glad to have you, and I hope you're enjoying the story! I'll see you all in a few days!
Sincerely,
The Topaz Dragon