Chapter 18
"Unraveled"
August 1st 1995
Brian sat on the edge of the bed, holding the female subject's hand in his and smoothing her hair with his other while trying to reassure her that everything would be okay.
Albert Wesker leaned over her chained arm and injected her with a lethal dose of curare. He handled her more kindly than he ever had before.
They all waited while the drug took effect, and watched. Brian was the first to know it when her grip on his hand slackened, then fell limp. Her breathing became more labored until it seemed as though she was being strangled, and in fact, she was. The curare had paralyzed her diaphragm and without it, her lungs couldn't expand and take in the air she needed. She was being strangled from the inside.
The drug had paralyzed her muscles and she couldn't do anything, not even thrash her arms or cry out for someone to save her if she still knew how.
It took for what seemed like hours before her hold on life gave out and her heart stopped. She died with Brian holding her limp hand and smoothing her hair like there was nothing more important on the planet.
When John stepped forward with a stethoscope to confirm her death, Brian had to leave or risk crying when the news came.
He walked from the room quickly and headed down the hall to a door he had heretofore never been through. A door that lead to a room only the military and security personal knew of. Being friends with one of the soldiers in the facility granted him the knowledge of the room.
Brian ripped his identification card from where it hung on his lab coat and swiped it though the brand new electronic locking device next to a door with reinforcement bolts running down it's edges. He entered his personal access code into the keypad and the only light on the device, a red one, turned green and a buzzing sound was heard from inside the walls as the lock was disengaged.
He opened the door and slammed it shut, sending the crash of metal on metal echoing up and down the corridors with deafening finality.
Turning to his left, Brian flicked the light switch. The almost ancient florescent light tubes flickered for a moment, then bathed the room in their frosty light.
Looking around, he saw that, indeed, he was in the right room. Brian turned to his right and went over to one of the many gun-closets in the Secondary Armory. These looked like a long row of lockers, only they pulled straight out and, when empty, looked much like a coat-rack. These gun-closets, however, were not empty. The gun-closets on this wall were devoted to pistols. They were listed first by caliber, then by manufacturer.
Brian was muttering to himself almost insanely as he scanned the closed doors, reading the labels under his breath as he went, ".22, Too small, .25, Too small, .380, too small, .38, too small, 9 millimeter, too small, .357 Magnum, too big, .40 too small, .44 Magnum, too big, .45 hmm maybe. .50 Action Express? Fuck that. Thing would take my hand off."
He pulled the .45 shelf out and stepped aside as it slid into the open, then reached in and pulled out a Springfield Armory 1911-A1. The pistol felt lighter than it should have. He soon found that to be because it was empty.
Leaving the gun-closet open, Brian walked to the corner of the room, and opened a door leading to another, smaller, room. Shelf's lined the walls, all stocked with ammunition and clips. Jay would have corrected Brian, saying that they were magazines, not clips. Brian would have told Jay that he didn't give a shit.
Looking around, Brian saw that the clips for the 1911 was within arms reach and he plucked three from where they rested. He slammed one into the butt of the pistol and dropped the last two into his pocket.
He turned and walked out of the armory so fast he might as well have been running.
Jay caught him at the end of the hall to the female subjects room and tried to stop him.
"Brian what're you doing?" Jay asked, stepping in front of his friend.
"I got three clips here. One for each of those fucks by my figures," Brian told him, raised the pistol and jerked the slide, chambering a .45 slug.
"Brian, that's a bad idea. You go and kill 'em and there'll be a thousand soldiers in here with itchy trigger fingers."
"Look, I just don't care. They went and killed her after stealing her life and her childhood!"
Brian pushed Jay aside and walked briskly to the female subject's room, where William Burkin, John, and Wesker were just emerging from.
Brian snatched the nearest warm body he could find, in this case, Albert Wesker, slammed him against the wall, and crammed the barrel of the 1911 against his sunglasses so hard the lens broke.
"Brian, stop it!" Burkin shouted.
"Brian put the gun down," Jay pleaded gently.
Brian did neither, he pressed the pistol harder into Wesker's eye and tightened his finger around the trigger while grinding his teeth to dust.
"Brian," Wesker said quietly, ignoring the growing pain in his eye-socket, "It wasn't my idea. The order came from the facility director."
Brian flexed his finger around the trigger and the hammer on the pistol moved back slightly. He couldn't see the man in front of him, his vision was milky and soon it would turn as white as paper. His rage was quickly blinding him and soon it would deafen him as well. Even now Wesker's voice seemed to be coming from a quarter mile away.
"If it was up to me, this would never have happened," Wesker told him in that same patient voice.
Brian tried to pull the trigger enough to fire the weapon, but it seemed to weigh a metric ton. He might as well have been lifting a redwood. The pistol started shaking in his hand and it had ground the lens shards into the man's face, piercing Wesker's skin. Blood was running down his cheek in thin streams and dripping on his jacket.
Wesker's soft voice seemed to have a calming effect on him, because Brian's vision was slowly returning and he could hear better now. It was hard keeping up a noble rage in the face of such passiveness.
Feeling a warm weight, Brian turned and saw that Jay had his hand over his friend's arm.
"Let it go, Brian," Jay told him quietly.
Slowly, Brian pulled the pistol away and pieces of the broken lenses fell to the floor. As if by divine intervention, none of the shards had cut Wesker's eye. Divine intervention couldn't stop what happened next, though. Brian swung the heavy pistol in a wide arc and connected with the side of Albert Wesker's head, breaking what was left of his sunglasses and knocking him to the floor.
Using the pistol as a weight, Brian backhanded William Burkin, breaking his nose and causing him to fall on top of Wesker.
"You can not comprehend the depth of my loathing for you two," Brian growled at the two fallen men.
Brian spun on the ball of his foot and walked back to his room. Halfway down the hall, his rage returned and peaked. He raised the pistol over his head, jerked on the trigger, and the resulting thunderous crash that tore through the otherwise silent facility caused the new lab director John to do something he hadn't done since he was in diapers. The weapon thundered again and Burkin could feel the shock-waves from the muzzle of the weapon pushing against his innards.
Brian pulled the trigger of the Springfield again and the 1911 let out it's controlled explosion, sending numbing waves down his arm while twisting his hand violently to the left as the .45 caliber slug left the barrel.
Brian's ears were ringing so bad he though he was in a church bell tower on a Sunday morning as he fired the pistol, blowing out one of the florescent fixtures, until their was no longer any ammunition in the magazine. Even when the weapon fell silent and the last of the spent cartridges tinkled hollowly on the tile, Brian still tried to fire the Springfield.
After what seemed like eternity, he lowered the pistol to his side, glancing at it to see the slide had locked back after the last round was fired. He let the weapon pull his arm to his side before pressing the magazine release with his thumb.
The clip slid from the pistol and landed amongst the empty shells, knocking a few aside and sent them skittering across the floor and into other shells. Like ripples in a pond, cartridges slid and clinked into others, some slid up against the wall, others skittered and spun into Brian's boots.
Brian walked towards his room, his head hung low. He was tired. The acid smell of gunpowder followed him and drifted into his nostrils, causing his eyes to water.
Jay watched his friend as he walked, then smelled something very different than gunpowder.
Sniffing, Jay turned to John and a look of disgust crossed his face; "Man, go wipe your ass!"