"This makes, what, three times you've been in a mansion like this?"
"Yeah. Raccoon, Antarctica and now this one. More if you count the cruise liners a few years back. Spencer's consistent, if nothing else."
Although Jill had never seen the Antarctica Facility and the adjoining mansion before their destruction, she had been filled in by Chris after they reunited. She found even more detail in Chris' report on the incident, written back when the B.S.A.A. was first founded and a comprehensive history of bioterror incidents was deemed a necessity. Much like the Antarctic mansion, the interior of Spencer's castle was very much in-line with the design of the old mansion in the forest outside of Raccoon City, where the two's lives had been changed forever. Both had to wonder if and when this place would share the fate of its fellows.
"Can't say I blame him for wanting his homes away from home to feel familiar."
"Maybe a little too familiar." Chris traced a hand over an indentation in a pedestal near the gate into the lower levels. "What is it with this guy and cranks?"
"You said it yourself; he's consistent, if nothing else."
"Obsessed is what he is."
"On the plus side, we can probably navigate this place well enough from memories of the Raccoon mansion. There was a gate to the lab in this spot, if I recall correctly."
"Pretty sure that's right. But, if Spencer felt safe enough to retreat here after Raccoon, that could be exactly what he wants us to think."
"Hmm... true. Is it too much to hope that won't be the case?"
"Knowing our luck? Yeah."
No such traps emerged at first. After passing through a near identical dining hall to that of the old mansion, the duo came upon an old piano. The room it was housed within wasn't much like the rec room from the mansion, but the sheet music waiting on the piano certainly was.
"Moonlight Sonata," Jill said, recognising the notes even without reading the name of the piece. "I remember the last time I played this." She looked around the room, hoping to spot the sliding wall that would move in response to the music.
"Think you can still play it?" Chris asked, brushing a hand over a blank patch of wall. He had read Jill's reports on the Mansion Incident for both the R.P.D. and B.S.A.A. and knew how this was supposed to work.
"You mean right now? I dunno, it's been a while." Jill spread her arms and placed her hands over the appropriate keys to begin the piece. She had had an interest in the piano back in high school, but had put that aside once she started college to focus on her career in law enforcement. But now, as back in '98, she felt a sense of comfort to have her hands on a keyboard again. Of course, almost a decade had passed since she'd last played, so it took a few attempts to get it right.
During the first of these attempts, a section of the wall did start to move. The sudden shifting sound startled Jill, causing her to stop as her head whipped around in time to see a section of the wall in front of Chris sliding back into place. Chris seemed confused by her reaction before asking, "Not the same as before?"
Jill shook her head. "I finished the full piece before anything moved."
"Could be a ploy to throw us, specifically, off."
"That, or no one can build a mansion to the original's specifications but the man who designed it."
A man by the name of George Trevor had been the one who was commissioned to design the Raccoon mansion for Spencer. Based on notes they had found back then, it had seemed that Trevor had been betrayed by Spencer, seizing his wife and daughter for viral experiments, while the Trevor patriarch eventually died of starvation in a pit under one of the mansion's rooms in 1967. It seemed likely that any other uses of Trevor's designs, such as the Ashford Manor and the interior of the Queen Zenobia, were mere derivatives with their own unique quirks and mechanisms.
Jill began playing the piece again, eventually managing to get through the entire thing. This sample went on much longer than that from '98, but Jill played it through to completion, finding the wall sliding back into place just as Chris exited the hidden chamber with a shield-like emblem in-hand. She shuddered to think what might have happened if he was any slower in retrieving the puzzle piece.
"Look familiar?" Chris asked, handing the item to his partner.
"Yeah," Jill replied, running a hand over the surface of the emblem. "The other piano puzzle yielded something like this as well. Had to swap it out for the one above the dining hall fireplace. ...Is it weird that I feel almost nostalgic for the mansion?"
"Not really. Back then, getting out was all we were worried about. Now, we have to worry about not only an outbreak spreading like in Raccoon, but knowing that this is our life now, not just for one night."
"Oh, for the simpler times of a zombie-infested mansion."
Chris shook his head, reluctantly amused.
Jill shot the lock off the door to the control panel from her side, allowing Chris to dash into the smaller room and deactivate the trap Jill had narrowly managed to push him out of before it sprung on them. Jill sighed in relief and dropped into a sitting position as the ceiling stopped descending and returned to its original height above her. The one in the mansion had never gone back up after attempting to crush her.
Chris made his way back around to Jill's position and held out a hand to help her to her feet. "So, this is what Barry was talking about with that whole 'Jill sandwich' thing," he said casually.
"Yeah. Not as scary this time though."
"Because you knew I had your back, or because the addition of pointless spikes took it too far to take seriously?"
Jill chuckled, then affected a tone of mock offense. "How heartless! Your partner was almost killed, you know."
"Not while I'm around. If all else failed, I would've bent the bars aside for you to squeeze through."
Jill looked over her companion's impressive musculature and couldn't help but laugh at the mental image. "Knowing you? You'd probably bust through the wall and hold up the ceiling yourself.
"My arms aren't that big."
"Bigger than any guns I've ever held."
Chris wasn't normally this quippy. He'd always been more the serious, stoic type. Of course, knowing him as well as she did, Jill knew why he was acting like this now. Back when Jill had almost been crushed in one of the mansion's traps, Barry had taken her outside for some fresh air to help abate the sickly feeling that threatened to overwhelm her. It was there that he had made his now infamous joke about Jill almost fitting into a sandwich.
As lame and borderline insensitive as the joke had been, Jill couldn't deny that it certainly had helped cut the tension surrounding her near-death experience. That was part of the reason Barry had continued to tell the story many times over the subsequent decade. Even the act of observing how the story had become simplified and mutated, until the phrase 'Jill Sandwich' was now all that was required at a S.T.A.R.S. or Burton Family gathering to elicit laughter, was amusing in and of itself.
A similar sickly sensation had started to rise in Jill the second the door locked, but having Chris there to back her up was the most reassuring thing in the world. There really was no better partner a person could ask for.
At a certain point, a wooden walkway collapsed beneath the two, sending them tumbling into a dank underground area that may not have been a sewer, but it sure as hell looked and smelled like one. A quartet of bulbous, raggedy B.O.W.s dragging along anchors as weapons began stalking the duo. Given that they had lost their weapons and been separated in the fall, fighting back was a serious struggle. Luckily, the area they met back up in had some sort of crushers, similar to the now multiple descending ceilings Jill had been faced with in Spencer's estates. Finding the correct crank for each socket to make use of the crushers was a pain as well.
Each foe one was easy enough for Jill, the quicker of the two, to lure under the trap and escape so that Chris, the stronger of the two, could use his years of crank-handling experience to compel the ancient machinery to flatten the creatures. The fourth and final creature proved the trickiest to deal with, as it used its anchor to prevent the the heavy platform from descending onto it.
Jill's mind raced as she stared the creature down, contemplating how best to throw it off its game and cause its demise. She had no weapons to injure it, and getting in close to kick it left no guarantee she'd make it back out before the ceiling came down on them both. When she glanced over at Chris and spotted one of the other three colour-coded cranks not currently in use, a wicked grin spread across her lips.
She grabbed one of the cranks, rushed back to the opening in which the B.O.W. knelt, took aim, and threw the chunk of metal, nailing her target on the head and throwing it off-balance. The platform then promptly flattened the thing, breaking the crusher as the prior three had.
"Yes! Who's the sandwich now!?"
Rolling his shoulders to do away with the fatigue of his work, Chris stepped closer to Jill and let out a deep sigh - both in response to his growing fatigue, and her unusual outcry. "I wonder what Barry would say if he knew what a... mm, psychological toll his dumb joke has had on you, all these years later."
"He'd be glad it's not the 'Master of Unlocking' that stuck."
Chris chuckled. "I suppose so. Ah, shit."
"You okay?" Jill's concern was communicated clearly in her tone.
"I'll be fine. Just all that damn crank turning to deal with those B.O.W.s."
"C'mere." Jill took Chris by the hand and guided him toward some rubble she could have him sit on while she gave his shoulders a quick rub before they moved on. "I wouldn't expect a guy who works out as much as you do to be such a baby over ten minutes of crank usage."
"Very funny." From Chris' only semi-annoyed tone, Jill got the sense she was doing it right. "Smart move with that other crank, though. Good aim too."
"Thanks. I just hope we didn't have to use that one again to get outta here."
"Is it too much to hope that won't be the case?"
"Knowing our luck? Yeah."
As Jill slowly recovered from being launched across Spencer's private study and colliding with the glass covering of one of the numerous bookshelves encircling the octagonal room, she saw Chris continuing the fight with Wesker. And losing.
Jill had known the late S.T.A.R.S. captain was alive ever since Chris had learned of his survival in Antarctica back in '98. But despite a near miss in '03, Jill hadn't actually seen Wesker herself since he was impaled by the Tyrant in the lab under the mansion five months prior to his return. Chris had reported, both verbally and in written form, that Wesker was not only somehow alive, but sporting enhanced strength, speed and durability.
Loathe though he had been to admit it, Chris had been dominated in each encounter with Wesker while trying to save Claire. But even knowing all that had done little to prepare Jill for the experience of fighting Wesker herself. Even with the increased physical strength he now possessed from the rigorous workout regimen he had adopted since then specifically in preparation for the inevitable rematch, Chris was not doing well.
Even with Jill by his side moments earlier, Wesker was the clearly superior fighter. From the glimpse Jill had gotten of the recently murdered Umbrella founder Oswell E. Spencer, lying dead in his own study, the cause of death had been a puncture wound in his chest, mirroring those found in his bodyguards in the foyer. The wound looked about the size of a human hand if all five digits were extended. And the blood on the fingers of Wesker's right glove suggested he had simply... pressed his hand into Spencer's chest like a knife. But strength wasn't the only superpower her former commander now possessed, even if the feeling of his grip tightening around her throat earlier had made that alone seem quite sufficient.
His speed was beyond superhuman, able to move with enough speed to dodge their bullets and appear as if he were actually teleporting. Hell, for all Jill knew, he really was teleporting. Whatever virus had given him these incredible abilities was completely unknown to the duo. And based on how ill-prepared Chris seemed to be in this fight, Jill suspected this was far more extreme than the meagre advantage Wesker had had a decade prior.
The one advantage Jill had now was that Wesker seemed solely focused on Chris, as if Jill had entirely exited his mind the second his palm had struck her. That gave her the element of surprise if she approached the right way. But whatever it was she was going to do, Jill had precious little time to plan it out as Wesker hoisted Chris into the air with one hand around his throat, as he had with Jill earlier. By now, the fight had moved from the room's centre to one of the large windows overlooking the cliff onto which the castle had been built. From her position, it looked like those windows had taken most of the dodged bullets she and Chris had fired throughout the encounter. Before she fully grasped the opportunity presenting itself to her, Jill's feet were already moving, carrying her faster than they ever had in Raccoon City, even with the Nemesis hot on her tail.
Just as he had freed her from Wesker's grasp earlier, Jill now freed Chris by throwing all of her weight against the human B.O.W. Wesker's focus on Chris had been so all-encompassing that he had completely failed to factor Jill or her determination to save her partner into his current plan, leaving him unprepared to dodge or counter her as she slammed his body through the structurally compromised glass. As if it might somehow limit his movement enough to keep him from escaping his fate, Jill held Wesker tight as both she and he rocketed down towards the crashing waves below.
An all-too-familiar sickly sensation started to rise in Jill's stomach as she and Wesker plummeted to their deaths, but having Chris back up there to continue the fight without her, and put Wesker back in the ground if he somehow survived this fall was the most reassuring thing in the world. There really was no better partner a person could ask for.
Wesker smirked as he took a sip of the coffee one of Excella's underlings had brought him. It had been too long since had had had a chance to simply relax and perform an experiment. The hunt for the elusive Umbrella co-founder had taken far longer than anticipated, and setting up an operational cryostasis cell to house his latest test subject was yet another lengthy and expensive endeavour. But it would all be worth it in the end.
The loss of pigment in her skin and hair was unfortunate. Jill's naturally brown hair had always looked rather nice, even when dealing with whatever outbreak she was caught up in at any given time. Alas, such was the price for progress. And oh, what progress there was to be made with this one. Jill truly was the perfect candidate for Wesker's new experimental formula.
For starters, he had her medical files from the S.T.A.R.S. days, in addition to her current medical reports from the B.S.A.A., thanks to his inside man. He'd scarcely believed what he'd read when he'd first perused his former underling's current file, but the blood test he'd performed himself had since proved it true: Jill Valentine had become infected with the T-Virus at some point between 1998 and 2006. And more, she had actually managed to get her hands on an antivirus. How or when this had come about, he was unsure, but it made Jill the gift that truly kept on giving.
T-samples could be difficult to come by, even on the blackest of black markets. And samples of an anti-virus were even rarer. Plus, her potential decade of gestation allowed him to gather data on long-term effects of the virus and antivirus for use in his crafting own ultimate virus. And if this P30 drug proved successful, she'd be more than cooperative with his research. And she'd also be the perfect weapon to use against Chris.
After a decade of fighting bioterror together, Chris would never willingly harm Jill. But, with a strong enough dose of P30, Jill would, theoretically, do more than simply harm her old partner.
Wesker simply could not wait to see the results.
While researching and recording footage for my latest video, I had a few random exchanges form in my head and decided that writing up a short story that sets them up was the most sane option, as per usual. Of course, that requires a bit more of a point to be made to justify the story, and here we are.