All The King's Horses
By evolution-500
Genres: Horror/Tragedy
Feedback: Always welcome
WARNING: This story contains violence, mature themes and disturbing imagery. Reader discretion is advised.
*Gyorgy Ligeti - "Requiem"
Disclaimer: Godzilla and "Resident Evil" are properties belonging to Toho Co. Ltd and Capcom respectively. I do not own any of these characters.
Chapter One: Ruin
"Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting."
- Ernest Hemmingway
Glass crunched beneath booted feet as Chris eyed his surroundings, his finger just brushing against the trigger of his rifle with a tender stroke, the former agent eying every corner of his environment with unease.
His eyes studied the dark clouds.
The storm was still coming, but he should have some time still.
Turning his attention away, Chris' eyes settled on the setting sun ahead of him, the skies around it a mixture of red and orangish hues with soft fleshy pink flourishes.
Breaking his gaze away, Chris anxiously checked his ammunition and weaponry, unnerved by the sight.
To him, it was like staring up at a giant, pitying eye of one who knew that things had no hope of ever getting better, as if the universe, perhaps God himself, knew that the world was going to die, and that it was just watching with baited breath for the inevitable, like a nurse standing over a coma patient, waiting for the order to pull the plug.
Even worse, there was nothing Chris could do to fix it, let alone prevent it from reaching its end.
A feeling of melancholy came over the former agent at the thought as he turned his eyes back to the ruined city.
All of the buildings lay scattered in varying degrees of decay, from the vaguely pristine yet stained with soot, graffiti and ash, to the burned and burning, to the crumbling and outright destroyed.
Billboards and traffic signs were warped into grotesquely burnt and blackened shapes, warped by the intense heat, while snapped electrical wires limply swung in the wind.
As he moved further into the city, the more tense Chris became as he spotted fresh carnage.
Huge portions of asphalt roads were completely cracked and crushed, forming large pits that unmistakably looked like massive, four-clawed footprints.
Chris' hands tightened on the handle and barrel of his assault rifle.
There's no mistaking it. He's been here. He just needs to catch up with the bastard.
Exhaling through his gas mask, Chris continued following the trail, taking in more of the devastation wherever he went.
The smoke was becoming denser the further he traveled inward to the city's heart.
Turning a corner, Chris paused in his steps, the gun wavering in hesitation at the grim sight ahead of him.
Entire rows of streets and buildings were completely charred, blackened, and/or engulfed in huge, sprawling columns and seas of flames, the fire so large and thick that they practically licked the sky.
Chris stared, partially mesmerized.
He had seen this kind of devastation first-hand.
Back in Tokyo, before he had been rendered unconscious.
And yet, despite that, on some level...he still couldn't help but stare in awe at the sheer power this being displayed, the sheer utter carnage it left in its wake.
The first time he experienced it...he had been so utterly shaken, so utterly terrified that he hadn't eaten or slept for days, haunted by what he saw, by the screams. He had felt so utterly sick by what he saw that he had thrown up. Staring at the flames as they flickered and gnawed on the city's remnants like a hungry wolf on a carcass, the only thing Chris felt now, though, was numbness.
Letting his eyes drift, Chris twisted on his feet, doing a full three hundred sixty degree sweep of the area, taking in the rest of the city all around him, then froze at the sight of hundreds of human-sized, statue-like figures in various poses that stood in different parts of the street, many of them recoiling in fear, some curled up in fetal positions with their arms covering their faces.
Exhaling through his nose, Chris' broad shoulders sagged as he approached the closest one and studied its features up-close.
It would be easy to mistake these for sculptures, but he knew that weren't the case. Hell, he had made that mistake years ago, had seen the same thing happen across the world, and to see another one of these always made him feel hollow inside.
Chris stared upon the still, flash-heated figures morosely, his heart and form numb.
Dipping his head low, he respectfully nodded in acknowledgement, slowly and carefully moving past so as to avoid ruining the burnt effigies, all the while listening intently to his surroundings.
So much destruction...
Upon seeing the burnt figure of a woman clutching her baby, her face locked in a perpetual scream, Chris abruptly shifted his attention away, staring straight ahead to avoid looking at them, his hands clenching hard on his assault rifle as if it were a crucifix as he eyed the remnants of civilization.
So many people...
He tried to envision these streets as they had been, and for a moment, part of him caught glimpses or tell-tale signs of that prior life before it had all went to hell.
On one cracked street, he spotted a faded chalk outline of some kid's hopscotch game, but part of it was covered in old encrusted dried blood.
In another section, lying with their backs against a smoldering corner of a building, were the burnt remains of a woman clutching her two children close to her, the last vestige of love to ever be displayed in this horrifying world.
In another, he saw burnt and faded "Missing" posters posted on brick walls, streetlamps and utility poles, each page showing some missing loved one, be it man, woman, pet or child.
Husbands.
Wives.
Lovers.
Sons.
Daughters.
Brothers.
Sisters.
Every page depicted some poor lost soul whose fate remained unknown, who in all likelihood had perished the moment he stepped into the city. As the pages fluttered and scattered in the wind and smoke, Chris looked away with a heavy heart, continuing on in his endless quest.
Everywhere he looked, Chris saw flashes of humanity, some little things that told of some story of its denizens before the subsequent fall.
Scrunching up his brow beneath his gas mask, the BSAA agent licked his dried lips absentmindedly, staring at his surroundings in deep reflection.
He tried to recall the last time he saw a city full of normal people, tried to recall when things used to be so...normal... but it felt as if it were a lifetime ago, like a dream, so illusory and fleeting, that part of him wondered, much to his horror, if it had ever been real in the first place.
Chris felt his blood freeze as horror of it suddenly dawned on him; it was no longer a world built on rationality and reason.
It was a world of nightmares, a world of unending insanity.
A world of dark gods and monsters, and Chris had been unwitting enough to survive it all.
He had walked this madness-filled existence for so long that he had completely forgotten the very novelty of normalcy.
Of humanity.
Horrified by the thought, Chris paused in his steps and lowered his weapon, eagerly fishing around in his pockets.
"Where is it? Where is it?!" he hissed desperately, like a thirsty man trying to find something to drink.
In retrospect, Chris shouldn't be speaking to himself, but he just couldn't help it - it had been years since he had last heard a human voice.
Why he would speak at all given the fact that in all likelihood he was the only human being left in this insane shithole of a world, the commando had no idea.
Perhaps it was some form of comfort?
He had to admit, staying quiet for days on end while the dark things screeched out from the shadows and howled had a way of getting to him.
It was especially worse when there were no sounds at all; the silence alone greatly bothered him, far more than the creatures.
Then again, Chris reflected blackly, perhaps he was losing his mind.
There had been a number of occasions where the former agent would find himself saying something without realizing it. It had been so long since he had seen or heard from someone, anyone, and given the horrible things that he had seen, the horrible things he had to do...
Have I gone crazy?
He searched frantically in his pockets, checking every belt, buckle and pouch on his person until he finally stopped.
Feeling the object in his hand, Chris exhaled, sighing with relief as he took the photograph out of his pockets.
Running a hand over the photograph, the former BSAA agent despondently and quietly stared at the people on it, his trembling hand tracing along their features.
"You were real," he said quietly, his voice full of emotion. "All of you had been real."
Yes, they had been real - he'll never forget that, nor will he ever allow himself to forget, not as long as he lived.
His eyes watered as he stared down into the photo.
Why was he the only one to have survived?
Why couldn't have the others been spared from this cataclysm?
What had the others done wrong to merit such cruel fates?
Why hadn't he been allowed to die?
Swallowing, Chris' shoulders slackened as he allowed himself to quietly weep for the lives that had been lost, the life that had been taken from him.
Sniffing, Redfield tiredly shook his head.
Who'd have thought that surviving Spencer Mansion would have lead him down this path?
He had fought this war against Umbrella for years, against Umbrella and their legacy of bioterrorism.
If only he had fought harder. He could have prevented all of this, he was sure of it. He didn't know how, but Chris was sure that he could have stopped this when he had the chance. If only...
He sighed tiredly.
How could it have come to this?
Chris stared down at the photo, then, a moment later, exhaled through his gas mask, the former BSAA agent's mood darkening.
Of course he knew how.
After the destruction of Raccoon City in 1998, a desperate last effort made in order to contain the outbreak there, the Umbrella Corporation's assets had been liquidated by the American government.
By 2003, the company had collapsed...but, rather than being the end of its corruption, as Chris and others had hoped, it turned out to be a new and horrible beginning.
The start of an all-new, and even worse, legacy as various criminal organizations, terrorist groups, corrupt corporations, governments, and countless others laid claim to Umbrella's viruses, resulting in new horrifying forms of bioweaponry that were then distributed over the black market.
Monsters no longer became mere works of fiction or stories told to frighten children; they became as frighteningly real as the atomic bomb itself.
Thus, the BSAA, or Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, had been formed to combat the threat.
One man, however, had made it all possible.
One man had been responsible for the nightmares that plagued Chris' life, had lead him down this road.
One man had his hand in destroying the world.
Chris' hand clenched into a fist.
"Wesker," he spat bitterly, cursing the name.
Albert fucking Wesker.
Umbrella CEO Oswell E. Spencer's wunderkind who, at the age of 18 in the '70s, had been accepted into Umbrella Pharmaceuticals as one of its lead researchers in their Bio-Organic Weapons ("B.O.W.") program.
A man who had founded the elite Special Tactics and Rescue Services, or S.T.A.R.S., unit in the Raccoon City Police Force.
A man who had been Chris' Captain and mentor before ultimately betraying everyone on the team for the sake of greed, leading them all up to that fucking mansion in the mountains to die, just so that he could collect combat data for his precious Tyrant bioweapon and T-Virus.
As the image of Wesker lingered in his mind, Chris repressed the urge to snarl in rage, to lash out in anger.
Seven people lost their lives up there in that mansion, a lot of them his friends and colleagues.
Only he, Jill, Rebecca, Barry and Brad had been the only ones to have made it out.
So many other people lost their lives because of Wesker and Umbrella.
The destruction of Raccoon City resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of people...but that hadn't deterred them with what they were doing.
That didn't stop either from ass-fucking the world and humanity into oblivion.
As he stood there fuming, Chris recalled his last encounter with the man.
Several years earlier...
BSAA Headquarters, New York City
Chris watched as Jill stared intently at the latest file.
Over the last few months, ships have been inexplicably disappearing in the Pacific, some even sinking.
At first, government officials had chalked it up as being accidents, but as the disasters became even more numerous, however, with wreckage washing up on shores sporting what seemed to be claw marks, along with dead fish, it didn't take much time for the watchdog group to call in the BSAA.
"Well, what do you think, Jill?" he asked as he thumbed through his copy, studying the photos of ship wrecks. "Think it's a B.O.W. attack?"
Jill frowned. "I don't know, Chris. Nobody has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the disasters." Her fingers traced along the photos. "If it is, then it must be absolutely enormous."
She shivered. "I hate to imagine just how big this thing really is. Part of me just hopes that this is just a coral reef."
As he watched his partner reflect quietly to herself with a trouble expression, Chris heard the phone ring beside him.
"BSAA, Chris Redfield speaking."
Jill turned to the next page in her file.
"Who is it?" she asked curiously.
He shrugged. "Dunno. Apparently it's a long distance call from Tokyo," he said before turning his attention back to the phone, "Yeah, put him through."
Chris waited a minute, then two. Finally, he heard someone on the other end.
"BSAA Headquarters, Chris Redfield speaking. Who am I talking to?" He waited. "Uh huh. Uh huh..."
He continued to listen, then suddenly looked up with a start. "Wait, what?! Are you sure?!"
Upon hearing the startling piece of information, Chris' face darkened, his hand clenching into a fist. "Okay, I'll be right down as soon as possible. Whatever you do, make sure that you have armed guard-"
He paused, his face perplexed by what he just heard. "He is? How bad?"
Jill looked up from her file, watching as Chris' eyes widened in surprise.
"...I see. I'll be there soon. Thank you, Doctor."
As Chris hung up, Jill placed her file away, turning to face him.
"Chris, what's wrong?" she asked concernedly.
He stared at the phone in disbelief, shaking his head.
Chris looked up at her. "I just got a call from a Dr. Eiji Tsuburaya from Tokyo Hospital. A patient of his wants to turn himself over to the BSAA, but he wants to see us specifically. You're not going to believe who it is."
Jill leaned forward, her curiosity peaked.
Chris was quiet for a moment, his mouth tightening.
"Wesker," he said simply.
The news had been startling to say the least.
At first, the two of them had thought that it was some sort of practical joke, but no - according to the doctor, Wesker was in critical condition and had been exposed to extremely lethal levels of radiation.
How that happened, the doctor wasn't sure, nor would Wesker explain; instead, he had been demanding - practically begging - to turn himself in, on the condition that he met with Chris and Jill themselves.
After he had gotten off the phone, he took the earliest flight out to Japan with a fully armed unit.
Chris recalled that day vividly.
When he and Jill got to the hospital in Tokyo, they had been stunned by what greeted them.
Part of him had expected to see Wesker standing smugly at the secretary's desk with a smirk on his face.
Instead, they had been guided over to the isolation ward, dressed from head to toe in protective covering, where they all found a broken, bedridden figure who looked so utterly unrecognizable that both Chris and Jill had to do a double take, the two of them reeling back in shock.
Neither of them had been prepared for what they saw at all!
Wesker had lost a lot of weight; probably a hundred pounds or more, looking as if he had shrunken, wearing nothing but a white hospital gown, his musculature and lean physique had dwindled down to a frighteningly thin frame, his bones held together by a thin wisp of skin, some of it looking like it had been...melting.
His once handsome features had become sickly and pale, his golden blonde hair that he had kept so pristine, so cared for and slicked with gel...it was gone!
He was completely bald, his face partially hidden behind an oxygen mask.
Even more, he looked so...old!
So frail!
Parts of him had been badly burned, horribly blackened even in a couple areas.
His green, cat-like eyes, had looked tired and wrinkly, looking as if he had aged a good fifty years, but what was even more noticeable, however, was the emotion that Chris detected in his eyes.
He saw fear.
Chris had always thought the man to be fearless, but to see such a thing...it was disarming.
What could have possibly scared him so much?
What could have scared even the Devil himself?
Once they had been certain that Wesker and the people that accompanied him - a group of nurses and doctors who all wore thick HAZMAT suits - hadn't been armed and that the building itself had been secure, Chris and Jill had then listened to what the former Umbrella researcher had to tell them.
Memories of Wesker's final moments came flooding back to Chris with remarkable lucidity, as if it had been yesterday.
"Chris," the bed-ridden figure greeted in a croaking voice beneath his oxygen mask. "How nice to see you. You look well...unfortunately. Been feeding on boulders, have you?"
Balling up his fist, Chris took a step forward only to be blocked off by Jill.
"No, Chris!" She said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Not now."
Looking down at her, Chris sighed, then nodded before turning his attention back to Wesker, offering him a heated glare. Turning to a BSAA soldier, not taking his eyes off Wesker for even a moment. "Is the area secure?"
"All of the personnel have been cleared. It's clean, sir," the soldier replied.
"Keep an eye out for trouble."
The bed-ridden figure chuckled in amusement.
"You have nothing to worry about, Chris," he remarked, letting out a hacking cough. "I'm not going anywhere anytime soon."
"What happened to you?" Jill asked. "You look awful."
Wesker shifted in his bed, groaning.
"Nice to see you too, Jill. Looking as lovely as ever I see." As he settled into a more comfortable position, he looked up with tired, drooping eyes. "I had just completed a successful transaction in China that involved selling the T-Veronica virus to a customer when a contact got in touch with me about some news. Apparently, the Organization - a syndicate that I had worked with - had been turning their sights toward a-"
Chris leaned forward, cutting him off. "Tell us more about this 'Organization'."
Wesker gave an annoyed though weak glare.
"Don't interrupt me," he scolded. "I don't have long, so just listen to what I have to say."
Coughing, Wesker raised his eyes to the ceiling as he continued on.
"As I was saying before the rude interruption," the former researcher said as he took his mask off to wipe his mouth, "I got a tip-off about the Organization's interest in a researcher by the name of Goro Maki. Maki had been a former Japanese zoology professor from Tokyo University who had been expelled from Japan for unknown reasons after his wife died of radiation poisoning, and according to my findings, he was later employed by an American energy firm, which made me curious.
'I had met Maki in person ages ago, back when I was a young researcher, and from my recollections of him, Maki was as straight as they came, a man who was completely unlikely to be involved with any sort of B.O.W. program. A principled man, by all accounts."
Wesker coughed, hacking loudly, his eyes watery.
"And yet," he continued, wheezing, "according to my contact, Maki had been requisitioning a lot of high-tech equipment and materials from the Organization lately. What he had been working on, nobody had known; whatever it was, it was enough to draw interest from the Organization itself. Even I myself had been puzzled. What sort of research had Maki been doing?
Why would he be involved with an energy company of all things?
'As far as I had been aware, Maki had been anti-nuclear energy, and from all accounts, the company Maki worked for hadn't at all specialized in genetic engineering, nor had they ever been involved with anything illicit. None of it had made any sense. It had been a riddle that had drawn the attention of everyone, including me."
Wesker lay on the bed, then shook his head from side to side.
"Perhaps it would have been better had I not let curiosity get the better of me. If it hadn't been for that, I wouldn't be here groveling to you of all people."
He exhaled. "Well, here we are. As a result, I opted to investigate the matter, if only to satisfy my curiosity. A great deal of time and effort had been spent trying to find Maki, much to my frustration - whatever it was that he had been working on, Maki had left no traces of his work anywhere. Not at his old home, not in his labs.
'The only thing I had found, however, had been a single word written on a scrap of paper in Maki's old office at the university, a strange word that I had been unfamiliar with."
He swallowed, licking his dry lips.
"'Gojira'," Wesker spoke softly. "That was what Maki called it. Admittedly I was puzzled by the word, so I decided to do some checking up and research the matter myself, believing, if not somewhat hoping, that it would be a potential clue, but the results of my efforts only left more questions than answers. According to various sources and linguists, 'Gojira', or 'Godzilla' in the English translation, had a number of meanings.
'One meaning, I had discovered, had left me completely confused, since the actual translation had been 'Gorilla-Whale'."
He let out a weak laugh at Chris and Jill's perplexed expressions.
"I had the same reaction as you two," he nodded, his eyes locked on the ceiling. "At first, I thought that it had been some sort of practical joke, and for a brief moment, I had pondered over the possibility of calling the whole thing off. If it had been, as I had initially suspected, then someone was going to die, painfully, and very slowly."
The bedridden figure exhaled softly.
"However," he continued, "the more I had researched, the more I felt that I had been on the trail of something. Something big.
'According to my sources, the name itself seemed to have had some direct connection with the Bake-kujira yokai, a large, ghostly skeleton whale from Japanese mythology that had been said to be accompanied by strange birds and fish. Those who were said to have witnessed a bake-kujira, according to the myth, ended up infected with its horrible curse, which they would, in turn, bring back to their villages upon returning home, passing it on to others.
'The whale's curse brought famine, plague, fires, and other horrible kinds of disasters."
Chris and Jill exchanged looks, then turned their gazes back to Wesker as he continued to elaborate.
"Upon reading this information, my interest had peaked considerably. That alone was suggestive of some type of B.O.W., but what kind?"
He cleared his voice. "Further research into the name, however, revealed other meanings with far darker and more ominous connotations. 'God's Shadow'. 'God's Wrath'. According to sources from Odo Island, where Maki himself had been born and raised, the word translated to 'God incarnate', or 'Incarnation of God'. It was at this point that I became compelled, even obsessed, with finding what it was that Maki had been involved with.
'Eventually, I was able to track the man down, and when I did, I had confronted him.
'What I had discovered," Wesker admitted, "changed my life. In 1954, the US government had illegally dumped nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean. Maki, I had learned, had been doing research on mutations caused by this dumping, but somewhere along the way, he came across something...unprecedented.
'He had discovered an ancient species that somehow not only managed to survive the highly irradiated materials in the cold oceanic depths, but to also evolve and feed on said-waste, using it as sustenance!
'Once Maki had captured this creature, he had dissected and studied it thoroughly.
'Somehow, the creature had been able to create new, never-before-seen elements, elements that made this creature a living goldmine of enormous potential.
'Once I had examined this data for myself, I had found himself in awe at the possibilities that it represented.
'As a result, I had offered Maki a chance to continue his research by providing funding and equipment for him, even working alongside Maki himself. Whatever he needed, I saw to it that he had been provided for, just so long as I was involved. From there, the two of us had tampered with the creature's genetics, creating an artificial womb in order to birth a newer version of it that refined the elements in its body."
"The results," Wesker confessed in awe, "were incredible! The first organism to have ever been birthed through an artificial womb, and already possibilities were opening up for me. I saw new ways to revolutionize the field of genetics, new potential areas to explore!
'New possible B.O.W.s to produce!"
Jill shifted in discomfort. "So what happened?"
A frown appeared on Wesker's sick face.
"Before I could capitalize on our success," he spoke, "the creature ended up escaping from captivity and found its way into the ocean.
'How it managed to escape completely puzzled me at the time, but regardless of the cause, Maki and I needed to capture and contain it as quickly as possible. Thus, I ended up utilizing a private military contractor that I worked with, the "Host/Hive Capture Force", HCF for short, to help track it down."
Wesker hadn't gone into specifics, let alone mentioned where or how long he had searched for, but apparently tracking the creature, the former S.T.A.R.S. Captain admitted, had been a major undertaking in and of itself, filled with no shortage of complications, especially when they were trying to maintain a low profile.
However, once they were able to locate the specimen, he had been positive that they would have been able to capture it, if not kill it.
He couldn't have been any more wrong.
Wesker didn't elaborate on what had happened, but regardless of what had occurred, one thing had been certain; it resulted in the entire militia being annihilated.
Whatever he saw happen on that day, it shook him to his very core, scaring him badly, and that fact alone was a major warning sign for Chris, for Jill especially.
Even worse, the incident itself resulted in Wesker becoming exposed.
"I hadn't known at the time that I had been," Wesker wheezed. "Not until I started coughing up blood and slowly losing handfuls of my hair. I tried confronting Maki about what happened, but the man just straight up disappeared, leaving behind nothing but a note."
"What did it say?" Jill asked.
He clenched the bedsheets and his mouth angrily.
"Maki, it seemed, had other plans for 'Gojira'," Wesker said with grit teeth, his eyes glowing dimly. "Apparently, he had no interest in pursuing the black market, nor in money. No. He had grown spiteful towards humanity, so disgusted and embittered with the world and its various so-called "evils", including the likes of me, apparently, that he wanted this dark "god" to be unleashed as humanity's ultimate punishment and test."
Wesker gave a dismissive snort.
"Misanthropy is woefully underrated," he said scathingly. "This is why you never should put your trust in anyone."
"Considering who he was working with and your nature," Chris said with his arms folded, "I'd say he's justified in feeling that way."
Wesker clicked his tongue absentmindedly. "Touché, I suppose. He made no mention of where he had gone, nor what he intended to do next - he merely thanked me for my services that I provided, then wrote, 'I did as I pleased. Now, do as you like.' After I had crumpled up the note, I sought to find Maki with the hopes of delivering very personal and very, very painful retribution on the old wretch."
He coughed violently into his mask.
"I regret not finding and killing him when I had the chance. Believe me, if it hadn't been for the condition that I'm in, his entrails would be splattered across this entire city. Before I was able to begin my hunt, I started becoming weaker. Sicker. None of the medications that I had available were working, thus, I had to force myself into a hospital out of desperation. And now here we are," Wesker wheezed into his oxygen mask upon completion of his accounts, coughing as he glared up at Chris with his feline-like eyes. "I bet you like seeing me like this, don't you?"
Chris shrugged. "...A little." He admitted.
"I'll admit," Jill said slowly, "it gives me some satisfaction, if only for karma's sake."
"Hm." Wesker grunted.
"That said," she continued, "...despite all the pain and suffering you caused..." Jill shook her head slowly, "I wouldn't wish this on you...even if you did deserve it..."
Chris watched as Wesker's distinctive smirk weakly formed on his face as he chuckled lowly.
"Small comfort," he croaked, letting out a cough. "What a position to be in...to be comforted by one of your own enemies...fate really does have a sense of humor..."
"At least you won't be able to hurt anyone anymore," Chris said, his eyes narrowed with anger and hatred. "Once we clean up this mess, you're going to spend a very long time in prison. No more wars, no more B.O.W.s. You will be finished, just like Umbrella."
Even in his weakened state, Wesker let out a dark chuckle.
"Chris, Chris, Chris," he smiled unpleasantly beneath the oxygen mask, "oh how I adore that unfounded optimism of yours. You really don't get it. What Maki unleashed...it is...unlike...anything...the two of you can ever ...possibly imagine!"
Chris scoffed dismissively. "Don't sound so confident. Jill and I beat that Tyrant of yours back at the mansion along with all the various B.O.W.s Umbrella sent our way! We'll beat this thing you and Maki cooked up just the same!"
"...I wouldn't be so sure about that." Wesker enigmatically spoke as he stared darkly up at the ceiling. "Those B.O.W.s are nothing compared to what you will face. This being...this creature...the power it wields..." He shook his head slowly. "...I've never seen anything more...perfect."
A dark smile edged up one corner of his mouth.
"'Incarnation of God', indeed." Wesker said in an admiring tone. Turning his green, feline-like eyes to meet Chris', he regarded the latter for a moment. "...As much as I would like to watch your inevitable failures and deaths...I'm afraid I don't have much time left."
Chris watched as his former commanding officer coughed.
"...How bad is it?" Jill asked, a trace of pity in her eyes and voice.
Taking in a deep breath, Wesker stared up at the ceiling.
"Chances of recovery are nil." He stated in a croaking whisper, sounding sleepy. "My organs are shutting down...and my white blood cell is diminishing quickly. It'll only be a matter of time."
Jill lowered her head. "I'm...sorry to hear about that."
"Hm." Looking over to the two of them, Wesker weakly watched them. "You have my sympathies for what's to come. I don't envy you. Not one bit. Give my regards to the other survivors of S.T.A.R.S...to Rebecca..." A look of sorrow filled his eyes. "...Tell Rebecca that...I'm...her..."
"Wesker?"
As he slumped into his pillow, doctors gathered around.
"Everyone clear the room! Get the defibrillator asap!"
Chris watched and listened as the room came alive with activity, the sound of EKG droning a long, low though loud flatline.
Dead leaves fluttered by Chris' feet, the cold wind striking his form as he pushed relentlessly forward. Overhead, the dark clouds were creeping closer toward him.
Adjusting his clothing and armor, he exhaled softly, looking ahead to the remains of a church that he passed by on the street, its cross fallen and splintered in the middle, as if in surrender.
Wesker's death alone should have comforted the BSAA agents, should have been an encouraging sign, a symbol representing an end to this insanity. It should have been a new and hopeful beginning, the promise of a better tomorrow where bioterrorism and bioorganic weapons would be no more!
Chris grit his teeth underneath his mask. How woefully naïve he had been.
He thought that this being was just a minor annoyance that needed to be dealt with, the final hurdle to be overcome, the end of bioterrorism itself.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
It was the end of an era, alright. How unfortunate that it wasn't the era Chris hoped for.
Wesker had been right - Godzilla wasn't like anything the BSAA had ever prepared for.
It was doom incarnate.
When the creature first made landfall in Tokyo a couple months later, it had been disastrous. The entire city itself looked as if a hurricane or a tsunami had crashed through it, with clusters of ships cluttering and clogging up the streets, crashing into cars and buildings. Hundreds of thousands ended up getting hurt or killed, their bodies floating alongside the debris, staining the water red.
The property damage alone... Chris couldn't remember the financial details resulting from it, but suffice to say, it had been incredibly expensive.
What was even worse was that had the government acted more efficiently and timely in its responses, he was certain that the BSAA would have been able to take care of this damn thing.
"Fucking bureaucrats," Chris muttered.
If there was one thing he hated, it was bureaucratic bullshit. He hated it back in Racoon City, and he hated it now, even when everything was nothing but dust and burning cinders.
Because of government ineptitude, countless people ended up dead.
Even worse, they had allowed the problem to escalate even further.
To evolve.
When it came onto the shore, the creature had a strangely fetal-like appearance, with developed hindlegs, googly fish-like eyes and jaundiced skin, with barely any motor control, just haphazardly flopping about. At the time, Chris and Jill had been in one of the BSAA bases located in Japan, staring up at the TV screens, watching the chaos, but Chris himself couldn't help feeling kind of...unimpressed at the sight of the creature.
Sure, it had been big, faaaar larger than any known animal, whales included, but still, this had been the thing Wesker had been warning him and Jill about? This had been the thing that caused him such fear and worry?
At the time, Chris wondered if it had been a joke.
The creature had been just grinding itself against the ground, looking as if it hadn't known how to move on its newly-formed legs.
Periodically, fountains of blood had sometimes gushed from gills on its neck and spilled onto the road, causing car tires to corrode, but it had been the expression on its face that made it look ridiculous; the damn thing hadn't even seemed aware of the fact that it was moving at all - it was just staring out with blank empty eyes, barely even cognizant of its own surroundings.
It had just flopped and rolled around like a literal fish out of water, and if it hadn't been for the fact that its spasms crushed cars, boats and even people in its wake, resulting in God knew how much death and destruction, Chris would have laughed at the time.
Even as it pushed itself up the side of a building, it had looked absurd, even as the the structure collapsed underneath its immense weight.
Over time, its movements had started to slow down, and for a moment, he and everyone else felt certain that the creature would just die as its movements became more sluggish.
After all, how could something that large live on land?
It had been too big - researchers at the BSAA were swearing up and down that the gravitational forces on its body and the amount of blood flow would be too much for its heart to handle.
It wouldn't be able to have enough oxygen in its liver, some had claimed.
What had happened after completely and utterly defied logic and expectation; once it had stopped moving, it had changed.
The creature's skin had reddened and rippled, as if millions of worms were slithering underneath its flesh as its body started to...reconfigure, with steam rising off of it, as if it were being cooked from the inside.
Tiny little arms had torn their way free from the main body as the creature reared up onto its hind legs, and as it stared up into the sky, it let out an impossibly loud roar that caused windows nearby to shatter.
The first time Chris ever heard the sound, he had actually flinched while Jill herself looked visibly shaken, with trembling legs and paling skin.
The sound struck some deep, primeval cord within them both, a sound unlike anything that they ever heard in their lives. Words couldn't even begin to describe the sheer alien quality that the roar had possessed. Neither Chris nor Jill could fully articulate at the time what the roar truly sounded like, let alone what it had reminded them of.
Over the years, they had heard various comparisons - a smashed guitar, an air siren, a high-pitched foghorn - and while there were some elements of truth in them, the reality was that neither of those descriptors really came close to matching, even if there were slight similarities.
It was only years later, when Chris was walking alone down a street and heard one of the large church bells crash to the floor far behind him that he was finally able to pinpoint an equivalent to the creature's roar.
It was a sound that he could only describe as...demonic, for lack of a better word - an enormous, unholy bell crashing on the floor, long, loud, and terrible.
Skkrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnggggggggggkkkkkkk!
Stirring from his thoughts, Chris stiffened as he heard the roar ahead of him, the sound rumbling through his frame, as if in response to the crashed bell, making him stand on alert, his assault rifle feeling heavy in his hands.
He's close.
Shivering at the thought, the survivor gathered himself, moving in the direction from where that sound came, going deeper into the dark.