Hello, everyone! Here is a companion (or you could say a sequel) story to the story "Tyrant's Eyes". Like that story, this work is set in the Resident Evil universe, but with different characters and a different location.
This story, like "Tyrant's Eyes", is written in collaboration with the Fanfiction user "RT86".
DISCLAIMER: The "Resident Evil" series is owned and published by Capcom. The author and the user "RT86" own the custom characters and other elements used in this story.
Onward!
The world was red. Red with blood, red with anger, red with questions locked away unanswered.
He floated amidst the red, subservient to its movements and changing currents. The red filled almost every cranny and tiny space of his mind with its own desires and feelings; what little space he had for himself was content with his surroundings. He was not entirely awake or asleep, resting in between these two extremes. The red floated around him, but not quite in him, and that wasn't a problem to him.
Greater concepts were ignored by the red, and so by him as well. The red held him close, nestling his body in warmth and safety. The few outside sounds that pierced through the red's protection were brief and forgetful. He and the red did not care to figure out what they were. Together, they were at peace. He did not consider the possibility of anything beyond the red, more for his own comfort than the red telling him not to.
The first real problem, a sign of something changing, came when the red began to break apart. No, it was forced apart by something else, something from outside. The outside filled him with concern and danger, because it was not like the red. It was not something he was content with. But he could not stand against it on his own; he had no power to his self apart from the red. So, he watched the red be ripped open by a darker, colder black. He moved as best he could away from the black, even though his independent thoughts all warned him it was useless to move away.
The black soon pulled him and the red into itself, its hunger seemingly endless as it blotted out the horizon. Its cold touched every part of him, reducing him to a shivering heap of… flesh? Blood? Flesh and blood? He could not decide against the growing voices in his head. The cold snapped his thoughts into life, his independence gaining full control for the first time he can remember. He thought about strange things, complicated and simple things that previously held no concern to him. It hurt to think about them; he shivered as his mind woke up, if that was the right term.
Something else came in through the cold as he thought – a voice. It was joined by another voice, and then another, and then more and more like a surging wave that overwhelmed him. They screamed and cried together with a single purpose that he could not understand or resist. His mouth opened to scream along with it, but something surged up his throat and out of his mouth instead of a voice he never knew he had. He fell forward and crashed against a solid part of the blackness.
The voices vanished the moment he spat out whatever was in his body. The silence the voices left behind rang loud and unending in his ears. He lurched forward and backward as his body forced out a large, foul-tasting something through his mouth. He did not open his eyes – now that he knew he could at all – to see what it was. His only desire was to go back to what was, return to the red and its comfort and thoughtless peace.
The red did not return. Gradually, ever so slowly, he began to feel his new surroundings. The black cold slowly became warmer, but it was not the same warmth as the red. He hated it. He hated this thing that crawled out of his body. He hated the cold that took him away from the red. He even hated the silence, the lack of another presence to bear all these problems with him. All he had left were thoughts that considered unknown things, a cold surface beneath what he now knew as his body, and the fact that things were never going to be the same.
Faced with the choice to adapt or die, his body made the decision for him. He opened his eyes and raised his head to see what his new world looked like. With his mind more open than he can ever remember, he expressed his feelings for what he saw in one unspoken question: "What is this?"
The space around him has several things he instantly knows, or maybe remembers, as he looks at them. He slowly moves his head around, viewing everything again and again. Each new discovery triggers a spark of pain in his head, some miniscule piece of a greater whole forcefully connecting itself back together. After several hundred of these tiny sparks, they cease to have any real effect on his thoughts.
One of the first things he notices are a few streaks of red blood along one of the metal walls in this place. These walls are tinted with green light from some source behind him. He sees his shadow on the floor, a giant shape that the light warps beyond description. Beyond the light, the walls extend to two different paths, one open and one closed. The barrier that blocks the closed path, what he remembers is a "door", is made of a thick metal like the walls. The other is on the floor and ripped out of place, marked by a pair of holes in the wall.
He crawls around, not having any desire to stand up, to look at the light behind him, automatically narrowing his eyes against the brighter glare. A large cylinder rests behind him and slightly to the left, the inner space empty and trailing a few wisps of white steam outward. Thick, black cords stretch out between it and the walls that surround it. The light comes from a series of green objects placed around the cylinder that shine into his eyes. He looks away after only a few moments of looking at this light, his eyes straining from the brightness. The darker areas of this space seem better to be in, so he looks over towards them for an answer to his question.
"What is this?"he asks himself again, and he still doesn't get an answer. As he turns back around his hands press against a warmer, stickier substance. He looks down at some black tar on the metal, and then smells it a second later. The scent disgusts him even though he has no clue what it, or the stuff that's making it, is. He crawls back from the tar until he feels his backside press against one of the walls. Not wanting to be any closer to the foul-smelling stuff than he has to be, he quickly stands up against the wall. He the realizes he just stood up and looks down at the floor to see how that happened.
He can't see much, but he recognizes a few features. There are two "feet" with three sharp "toes" beneath him, connected to "legs" that go up to a "thigh". These are all colored a dark black in what he thinks is his "skin". As he looks at his legs, he can feel the muscles inside them working to hold him up. They feel strong, and that feels good to him. Satisfied that he can stand by himself, he looks up from his legs to the smelly tar on the floor. There is not as much of it as he first thought, he can probably move around it.
The concept of "walking" comes almost instantly after he thinks about it. He enters the proper motions quickly, stepping across the room and feeling the cold floor's touch on his feet. Avoiding the tar, he moves to the next new thing in the room to look at: the streaks of blood, and farther back than them, a body with two legs like himself. He looks at the other things this body has – two "arms", the "hands" connected to those arms, a "chest" that the other end of the arms connect to, and a "head" above the rest of the body. He looks at his own hands in comparison and sees he has the arms, hands and chest, but not colored the same way as the body's.
He lowers himself to one knee to get a closer look at the body. It has pink skin, brown hair that is gray around the edges, and smells a bit like the foul tar. But what is it, exactly? He tries to figure out an answer, not remembering ever seeing this creature before. And then, almost like a switch going off in his head, the term comes to the forefront of his mind: "human". This is a human body.
He narrows his eyes in concentration. This human is not like the ones he pictures in his head. It looks… wrong. An arm is mangled, the skin peeling in several places and coated with dried blood. The clothes it wears are torn, revealing the pink flesh beneath. More blood trails from its closed mouth and down its chin. Its eyes are barely open at all, just a tiny sliver where they should be wide and searching like his own are. In addition, his idea of a human does not smell this badly or appears covered in blood.
If this is a "human", then is he also a human? He has the same parts – he feels his head and chest with his hands to make sure – but they aren't shaped or colored the same as far as he can tell. Does that make him not a human? The desire to answer these questions prompts him to raise one of his hands and touch the human's bare skin with his sharp five fingers. The body does not move. The skin feels a bit warmer than the rest of the room, but that warmth fades even as he feels it. He presses a bit harder, and the body wiggles slightly, but the eyes do not open, and the mouth remains closed.
"We have no use for the dead." He stops moving as a voice rings in his ears. It is not his voice; he doesn't remember having a voice at all. Why is it speaking now, with this human? Why does it say the human is "dead"?
"Leave the body alone." The voice does not sound angry as it speaks to him. "It is useless to us."
He does not move. He does not want to move. That is a new discovery by itself, something he feels good to show by staying still.
"We cannot stay here," the voice insists. "We must leave." He does not leave, instead trying to figure out why there is now a voice in his head at all. It says this human is dead. Is that why the human is not moving or reacting to him? The human he pictures in his mind has its mouth and eyes open and moving. So, this human must not be alive anymore. That creates another important question: Why, or how, did this human die?
"The dead are useless to us," the voice repeats. He feels it press against his skull as it talks, emphasizing its point. "We must find the living."
He has had enough of this voice's words. Without speaking himself, he tells the voice to explain itself and why it is in his head. His raw feelings reach the voice but do not find where it comes from. The voice seems to be from every space of his mind, attaching itself to every sensation and thought he has. He is no longer alone, however comforting that really is.
"We are us. We are together." The voice's statements sound meaningless to him, but the voice's next words, "We shall guide you", cause a sense of hope to grow inside him. The voice sounds like it knows things, maybe even things that he doesn't. Should he know more than he does now, forever separated from the red and all its comfort?
He stands up from beside the dead human and looks to the two doors. The voice is silent as he walks over to the closed one. The surface feels the same as the walls when he touches it, and it does not move when he presses his hand against it. He presses harder, and the door pushes back just as strong.
"This is not the way," the voice tells him. He agrees, which leaves just the open door as the only way out. He steps through it without looking back at what he left behind. The way to understanding what is going on is forward.
The new space he enters is warmer than the first. There is a thick smell he does not recognize, and the green lights are not present here. The path from the broken door winds between a few tables and square-shaped machines. The machines are silent, one of them smashed through by an unknown force; in addition, one of the tables is overturned with more streaks of human blood against its wooden surface. There is another human body here, but he does not see its head. The strange smell comes from where the human's head should be; a sharper aroma that is almost as foul as the tar now that he smells it up close. He draws back, placing a hand over his nose as something inside him rumbles in disgust.
It does not take him much longer to search through this space. He does not find out where the warmth comes from, and he stays away from the headless body. There is another closed door here, this one made of wood rather than metal. It is the only way he can see to go any farther. Since he can only go forward, he moves to the door and presses against it. This time, the door opens with a light push, revealing a darker space filled with a winding set of stairs made of wooden beams and metal railings that steadily climb higher and higher. The air here is cooler than the previous room, but there is much less area to move around in.
He steps into the space and looks up at where the beams go to. He can't see the top, it's so far away. What lies up there for him to find? Hopefully something better than what he's already seen; dead humans and foul-smelling substances are not things he wants to see again.
A glint of light catches his attention as he moves to the railing. A metal sign rests on the closet wall to him, right by where the door was. Words engraved into the sign read, "LEVEL 07: CRYOGENIC STORAGE". He doesn't know what the word "cryogenic" means, or why it must be stored somewhere.
The voice sees this and reacts with vigorous insistence. "We must travel higher," it states as if going higher will make things better than they already are. With nowhere else he can see to go, he follows the voice's words and starts walking up the narrow passage. The stair's beams creak and bend beneath his feet, but he continues anyway.
As he rubs his hand on the railing, something sharp digs into the skin of his palm. He pulls back, but he still feels pain from his hand. Turning his palm upward, he spots a thin gash under the skin rapidly being filled by a series of tiny tendrils. The pain fades as he watches the wound be sewn shut by some other force in his body, until neither the wound or its pain register in his sight or mind.
The short time it took for his body to cover up and erase that wound confuses him. Humans do not heal this quickly, even from small cuts like what he just had. Why, then, does he heal faster?
"This is natural." The voice answers his questions once again. "This is our strength. We are special because of this strength. We will not be special if we are dead." He looks at where his hand was hurt and sees a part of the railing broken and sticking up, ending in a sharp point. That point was how he was hurt. He can't have that happen again. As his next few steps up the stairs cause them to creak even louder, a new sense of fear makes him walk slower than before. Falling through the steps might give him even more pain, something his body will need more time to heal from.
"Good thinking," the voice comments. "We must be smart if we are to survive." He questions the "we" the voice always speaks in. The voice is just a voice to him, helping him move from place to place and deal with things along the way. Is it more important than that?
"We are together," the voice answers. "We were made together. We will also die together." He doesn't question how the voice knows about dying. He doesn't want to put bad thoughts in his head.
The path goes up at a steady pace, winding around and around like a spiral. There are no other sounds than his feet against the stairs and a distant grinding from beyond the walls. A few lights put into the walls shine bright white along the stairs, those lights the only ones he can find as he looks around. They also reflect off a large piece of some material he finds at a corner on the stairs. When he gets closer to the glass, he sees someone reflected inside it. He stops, and the reflection stops as well.
"Do not be alarmed by our image," the voice tells him. That surprises him: this is how he looks? It does not look like his idea of a human at all!
Well, actually, he finds some similarities when he looks closer at the has a human body, but larger than any human he has seen here. His skin is a hairless bluish-black, thicker black lines trailing up his arms and chest. His arms and legs are thicker than the human arms he's seen, the fingers long, colored red, and ending in sharp points. The toes on his feet are colored the same red when he looks at them again. The area around the left side of his muscle-filled chest, or rather the right side in his reflection, appears thicker in the reflection.
As soon as he thinks about his chest, the area he just noticed feels warmer. The skin swirls around and apart, opening to reveal a large red thing beneath it. This thing beats in a steady cycle, a lub-DUB that he feels spread through his body. Each set of beats provides noise to his ears, breaking the silence apart where other sounds do not. The color reminds him of the red he cannot go back to, and that in turn reminds him of the happiness he can no longer experience.
"This is our strength," the voice says about this thing in his chest. "It is our heart. It must be protected. It must not be in pain." He agrees, enjoying the good feelings he gets from the heart's beat. There is comfort and sadness, but there is also a third feeling that he can't quite tell. Once again, the voice has an answer.
"Our heart gives us power. Power helps us live. We must live." Seeing as how every other human he has seen so far is dead, he agrees to this without question. The next question is why he should live. Is it just to avoid being dead? Or, is there some reason he should know, but doesn't yet?
One last look at the glass reveals features around his human-like face. His lips open to reveal sharp teeth, like fangs on a beast. A pair of black eyes, blacker than the skin around them, surround two red slits colored the same red as his fingers and toes. The eyes glow with life, unlike the dead humans from where he woke up. They reflect the power in his heart, a power he does not want to lose.
He repeats this thought in his head as he moves further up the stairs, stopping only when he sees another wooden door. There is another sign here: "LEVEL 06: BARRACKS". He remembers that word, the memory of using it tickling the corner of his thoughts. He opens the door to learn more about it.
The barracks have white walls, several small metal boxes with small holes along one wall. A wooden bench is in the center of the room, a black object on top of the bench. The object gets his attention from the moment he sees it. It seems familiar, but he cannot figure out why. He walks towards it, and looks at it, without understanding it any better.
The voice, yet again, has an answer: "That is a weapon. It is used to fight. We know how to fight." No, he doesn't. He doesn't know how to –
Pain burns inside his skull. He falls against the nearest wall as something forces himself into his thoughts. An event plays itself out without his agreement, producing pain along with something else…
Breathe in. Hold steady. Balance the weight. Watch the target. Get a clear shot. Fire.
The loud bang of Jason's sniper rifle is muffled by his earplugs, and then by the padding in his helmet. He watches the target's eyes widen as the bullet slams into its skull. He does not see the actual impact, but he has fired enough bullets into dummy targets to understand what is happening. The target slumps down before blood starts to flow out of the entry wound. Jason's hands are already moving on autopilot, working to reload his rifle and reposition his weapon to another target.
The commlink inside Jason's helmet crackles with the voice of his fellow sniper, Damian. "Good eye, Jason. I would've missed that perp."
The mental comfort Jason feels from this action is just as pleasing to him as if he patted his back. Even though a part of him expects more of a reward, he understands he won't get it for a good time yet. For now, he can garner some reward from seeing the brains of the "perp" covering a wall adjacent to the cover he was using. Jason tightens his fingers around his rifle's scope, forcing his brain to return to the important things right now.
Right now, the two snipers crouch in the upper floor of a two-story house, the windows on their floor smashed open to make room for their weapons. Jason looks across the surrounding streets in advance of their squad. The target building, a former bank turned into a makeshift shelter, is where Jason has his rifle trained. It has a large scorch mark on one side of the entrance, proof that some major conflict took place here before Jason and his squad arrived.
Right now, Jason and Damian are following orders to wipe out the entrenched guards before the rest of the squad punches through to secure the vaults inside. Right now, the building is coated with debris, windows smashed open and rubble scattered from various blast zones from what used to be a heavy resistance force fighting for its life. Right now, the streets are otherwise empty, people keeping their heads way down and whatever weapons they have close at hand. These resistance fighters are acting that way, at least.
Right now, with the ongoing war moving onto a fresh battlefield, small kill-teams like Jason's are sent in by their superiors to mop up and pick up anything the frontal assault left behind. The vaults in this bank have something Jason's superiors want, and he will get it for them.
Time is short, the clock ticking down as Jason lines up his next shot. One more unprotected head to pop out of cover, and he can take out another threat to his team. He slowly breathes in and out through his helmet's mouth guard, the air's taste or smell not interfering with his focus. That's how he's been trained.
Damian's rifle goes off from his position, targeting the same general area as Jason. His subsequent comment of, "Got another one," coming quietly through the commlink proves his shot was on target.
"Snipers, report. How many targets remain?". The rumbling voice of the squad's leader, a Sergeant Jason never tries to remember the name of, comes through his earpiece. He realizes, somewhat embarrassingly, that he forgot to count his kills or remember the total number of targets. Ironically enough, he is focusing too much on making each shot count to remember how many shots he has to fire.
Damian comes through for him with a quick reply. "Two left, Sir, hanging on the western edge of the main entrance. Give us a minute, tops." The Captain grunts in reply, Jason turning his head to glance at Damian for a moment. Damian's black flak armor and camo-colored uniform beneath it blends relatively well with the exposed stonework around him.
Jason turns back to his work, searching for one of the remaining two targets so his squad can advance. He looks between the broken windows, and into the chaotic rooms they connect to. He does not linger on the thoughts that anyone would choose to live in this kind of blasted place after everything that has happened here.
Movement appears at the edge of the scope's sight. Jason turns his aim towards it, finger on the trigger… and stops himself from firing. What he sees is not the target he is supposed to kill, but it still carries a threat for him and his squad. It is human, and yet not living. It moves with ragged steps with grey, lifeless eyes as it advances toward the old bank's entrance, its mouth hanging open and showing rotting teeth.
"Captain," Jason states, his voice a harsh whisper from lack of use in the mission, "an infected is approaching the building entrance from the left flank."
A curse comes through the link before the Captain responds. "Kill it. Inform us if any more approach; the noise is drawing them here." Jason tries to not think about several more, tens or even hundreds of infected, rushing towards their position in a mindless horde. He readies himself, his scope still trained on the lone infected. Protocol and training guides him through certain motions reserved for dealing with non-living targets.
He watches the creature's motions, the bobbing of its head and the slow gnashing of its teeth. He looks at this figure, a sign of terror to many in the world, and feels nothing for it.
He pulls the trigger.
He opens his eyes, not remembering he had ever closed them. He looks to the bench and sees the gun still on top of it. The voice in his head is joined by many other voices, combining into a massive storm of noise and words. Some of these voices are familiar to him, or the him he used to be; others are the same sounds he heard when he first woke up from the red. He does not focus on any of the voices because he realizes something new. He used to be someone else, someone named "Jason".
The voice from before comes back into his mind. "We remember now. We are Jason, a soldier. We are trained to fight." That is correct. He is Jason. The memory he just experienced is one he remembers happening to him. He, Jason, does not question it.
A wisp of colder air flies by Jason's skin, his bare skin. He suddenly realizes that, unlike the humans he has seen, he has nothing covering his skin. Humans do not show their skin; they cover it with things, clothes and other items. But he has nothing on him to do that, and there is nothing nearby that he can see.
"We do not need clothes," the voice coldly states. "Our skin is our protection. You have seen it work. It will keep us safe." Jason does not entirely believe this, but he accepts it for now. Maybe he can find something to wear as armor if it can cover his larger-than-average body size.
Jason recognizes the gun he clutches as a "machine gun", one useful at close range. As for fighting, he remembers how to use his hands and legs in a variety of maneuvers. Perhaps he can use the gun as well? It was used by a human to great effect, so can he gain the same benefits by using it?
The voice disagrees with Jason's thoughts as he picks up the gun with his hands, his sharpened fingers not breaking the thing apart. "We do not need this weapon to be powerful. We have our own weapons. We should use them instead." As he looks over his body, Jason does not see a place to put the gun other than his hands. But he also feels he needs his hands free to fight. So, he places the gun back on the bench with some regret. Maybe, as with the desire for clothes, he can find a weapon that his new body can wield and use. But to do that, he needs to remember more about himself.
"We must remember more," the voice states in agreement with Jason's thoughts, hammering itself against his skull. We must find more memories."
In agreement, Jason turns to the nearest door he can see that is not the one he just came through. He needs to know more. He will find more further up in this place, starting with the barracks here. Maybe he can find some more clues, armor, or maybe precious memories, from a soldier here.
Alright, that's all for now.
How do you all feel about the start of this story? It is different than "Tyrant's Eyes", but how does it compare to that story? Will Jason, the soldier-turned-monster, discover all the memories he needs to survive in this strange place?
As usual, any feedback you can give to me and "RT86" will be great to see.
Draconos is taking off!