Escape and Certain Death

Hi, everyone. I'm sorry I took so long, but I've been busy with lots of exams and everything lately. And then there was Christmas with all the presents and all that hassle... And of course, my cousin got RE: Zero for Christmas and I've been playing it with her like crazy. -laughs- Hope you understand!

Reviewers: Thank you so much!

Selphiefan 89: Thanks for saying that! Yeah, it's really sad how people can just go crazy. My grandfather did but then he died of cancer.

SniperR: Yeah -laughs- it's going to be pretty hard for Barry to prove that he's not an impostor because Jill's crazy. I needed to bring Barry into the story for a moment because the plot is pretty hard to write without any sane people in the fic. I don't think I'll make Barry go insane, but we'll see... Thanks for saying that!

JoJo10: -laughs- poor you! Now I want chocolate chip cookies too... Mmm.... cookies... Anyway, porridge is umm... that soft food madeby boiling oatmeal and stuff until it becomes all sticky and thick. It's really good when you put a lot of milk and sugar in it. Thanks for the praises! Sadly this chapter isn't scary either, butIthink it's important to have a plot rather than just having her run around, going crazier and crazier.

---

Barry let Jill go and she rolled down the stairs to the first floor, groaning. Before she even noticed the pain, she reached out to the lock pick, pulling it close against her. Barry heard her whisper to it soothingly, her feverish ramblings sounded like she was casting a spell.

Barry ran down to her, asking if she was okay. She hissed at him like a feral cat, trying to scratch him with her nails. He backed away, watching her go to the corner on all fours. There she turned around, looking at him with fierce eyes.

"You'll never get us!" She said, her voice crackling with anger and fear.

"I'm not trying to kill you." Barry answered calmly. He just wanted to get out of the mansion.

"Stop messing with my head!!" Jill screamed as she took a hold of her head. It seemed like she was in great pain, but he knew that the only pain she experienced was mental. She couldn't grasp the concept of reality anymore, she had created her own nightmarish world where zombies roam and nothing good exists. The only thing that was keeping her from autism was that lock pick she held in her hands, her Barry.

He sighed as he took a step closer, looking at her calmly. "Jill, we both know that together we can make it out of here. If I leave you here now without any weapons you'll be dead in less than five minutes."

She glared at him for a while before she really understood the situation. He was right, no matter how much she wanted him to be wrong. She and Barry were going to die here if she wouldn't let the impostor take her somewhere. Her mind showed her images of him killing her by shooting her in the back or strangling her to death when she had done everything he had wanted her to. Fear tingled in her lower back like needles, making it hard to decide. Either way she was going to die, which one she wanted more? Did she want to die like Chris, a zombie eating his flesh or by strangling?

She got up, slowly. After a while of glaring at Barry she finally gave in.

"I don't really have a choice." She said, narrowing her eyes.

"No, you don't." Barry answered, trying to smile encouragingly.

Jill got up, pressing the lock pick in her hands very tightly as if it would protect her if he decided to do something to her. She looked at him, then away, glanced back at him and away again. Her eyes seemed to wonder in their sockets like lost sheep, scared. She took a small step towards him, blinking rapidly. Barry frowned; he knew she wasn't okay at all. He couldn't leave her alone like this; the zombies would definitely get to him sooner or later.

He stuck out his hand, waiting for her to grab it. Now that she was finally calm he wasn't going to do anything aggravating or quick, just in case she would lose it again if she got even more scared. She watched his hand for a long time, at times she whispered something to the lock pick she held, but finally decided to grab his hand.

He pulled him after her towards the save room in the Eastern mansion. They met with a few zombies, but they weren't much of a trouble. Barry killed them quickly with his Colt, but Jill always started screaming, demanding for her gun. She knew they were nothing but corpses, but she was too scared to look at them. She knew one of them would eventually be her beloved Chris and she wouldn't be able to kill him.

As they came to the stairway in the Eastern mansion, leading downstairs to the tiny storage room where Barry kept the things he had found but hadn't been able to carry them with him. Jill followed him obediently, looking around with cautious eyes. Somewhere in the back of her head she could hear someone whispering.

Kill him before he kills you

She glanced at the impostor's muscular back, grimacing with anger. As soon as she could she would free herself and Barry from his clutches and make it out of the mansion. She stumbled, but managed to stay on her feet. As she glanced back, she could see the distorted face of Chris looking at her, begging for her to escape and come and save him.

When Barry pulled her after him she glared at him with such hatred that it could've killed him.

Popping out of nowhere, Wesker walked into the room, noticing that Barry was still dragging Jill behind him. He chuckled. The poor woman was a sad excuse of a human. She held onto her lock pick like it was some treasure and her eyes rolled around crazily. She was shaking all over, gasping at every small sound. She indeed looked pretty harmless, but he was better off her not hearing what he had to say to Barry, just in case she would escape the mansion and someone, someone as nuts as her, would actually believe her feverish ramblings.

Before she could turn around, he took a hold of her from the behind and put his other hand on her eyes, lifting her gently in the air to carry her into a room where she could scream until he had said what he had wanted to say to Barry.

She kicked and scratched him like a feral cat, hissing and swearing, kicking and growling. Before he managed to open the door and throw her in, she plunged her nails into his skin, pressing hard enough to make it bleed. He grimaced, but let no sound. If he would show her that he was alive she might start asking questions.

He threw her on the floor of the small room, closing the door with a bang and leaning against it to prevent her from coming out. For a while she banged the door, screaming and shouting, crying like a panicking child, but then she quieted, even oddly.

"Barry, have you found the crests?" Wesker asked, his face was solemn; the dark shades wouldn't let any feelings show from his eyes.

Barry didn't obviously hear him; he was looking at the door he leaned against, hoping for a sound from Jill to know that she was all right. Wesker hadn't even checked were there zombies before he had cold-bloodedly thrown Jill there. Maybe to him it was all the same how many of the S.T.A.R.S. died in the mansion, but to Barry it surely wasn't. Ever since Jill had come to the force he had looked after her like she was his daughter. "She's harmless. You didn't have to lock her up!" He said, controlled anger in his voice.

"She might be harmless but do you think she'd take a secret underground laboratory lightly?" Wesker knocked the shades on the tip of his nose, his icy blue eyes fixed on Barry. "You must remember that she's crazy, and no matter how harmless loonies seem like, they can be geniuses."

"We both know Jill." Barry answered, still looking at the door with worried eyes. "You should've even checked the room for zombies before you threw her in!"

Wesker chuckled, lifting the shades again to hide his eyes. "In case she dies… let me comfort you, without her you work faster, you follow my orders faster and your family is safe faster. Which one do you choose, Jill or your family, Barry?" He asked, knowing very well just how much Barry's family meant to him. It was not only his life, it was something far more, he was completely dedicated to them and loved them more than anyone could possibly know. Wesker didn't care about that, only that Barry followed his orders and that he would do it fast. He still had to find the wolf emblem to get into the laboratory and with Jill slowing Barry down it would take them awfully, maybe even fatally long.

"Wesker, you've got a gun on my throat, let me at least save her life." Barry pleaded. Wesker laughed out loud at that, he had always thought that Barry would bend but not break, but how odd, he was breaking and giving into anything for his poor family.

"If you get her co-operating, then you can keep her with you, but I doubt she will. Barry, she's crazy, you'll do her a favour if you shoot her in the back of her neck and let her out of her misery." Wesker said coldly.

"No, she's a team-mate and I won't kill her or leave her behind." Barry insisted.

"Fine. Do what you want, but if you bump into Lisa, one of you will die." Wesker said, the tone of his voice very calm and cool. It was obvious to Barry that he didn't care and he would never care about anyone else's life than his own.

"Lisa? Who or what is she?" Barry asked, looking openly worried.

"Lisa is… You do know that this mansion was designed by George Trevor, don't you?" Wesker asked, but didn't wait for an answer before he continued. "Anyway, Sir Spencer invited him and his family to this mansion when it was completed, the poor guy didn't know about the secret laboratory built under the fountain. Sir Spencer has always had an eye for girls, so he ordered his daughter and wife to be kidnapped and used as scientific test subjects because back then he had trouble of getting them. Lisa appeared to be a success. Her mother died when she was infected with the G-virus, but Lisa survived everything they put into her. She mutated, became stronger and stronger and sadly, lost her mind as well." Wesker gave the locked room's door a pitying look, remembering Jill.

"What happened then?" Barry asked, growing angrier and more disgusted by what had been going on. And no matter what, he was helping Wesker to cover it all up.

"Lisa was strong, but she was mentally very weak. You can't really blame the poor thing because she was only ten", Wesker said and kept a small break to study Barry's facial expressions with amusement. "She wanted to see her mother, but as I already said, she had died long ago. One of the scientists tried to pose as her mother for her to calm her down, but she killed her and ripped off her face and ate it. After that they tried to lock her up again, but she escaped and now resides in the cottage. And she doesn't take kindly to visitors..." Wesker said, a mischievous grin tugging at his lips.

Barry wasn't able of saying anything. He had always thought that Sir Spencer was crazy, but this crazy? He had kidnapped the mansion's designer's daughter and wife while he had been innocently visiting the mansion he had designed and that man, Sir Spencer had experimented on them. Barry didn't even want to think what they had probably done to Trevor himself...

"Anyway, I should be going, the wolf emblem doesn't search itself. You could do me a favour and kill Yawn. She should be waiting for you upstairs." Wesker said, then he disappeared into the corridor with a mischievous smile plastered on his thin lips. Barry sighed and opened the room's door where Jill had been locked.

He looked around for a while, it was a corridor shaped like a U, paintings covered the other wall and small spotlights of different colours were pointed at them. The first one was a small child playing, the second a lady, probably Mrs. Spencer and the last one was an old man, maybe even Sir Spencer himself. How Barry despised to see the last image, it somehow made his stomach turn. The man's eyes were so empty of emotions, it was like he was dead inside, cold as ice. He waited for a moment for Jill to show up, but there wasn't even a sound. Somewhere a gush of cold air came to him, like there was a door leading out.

Immediately he deduced the worst and sprinted to the turn, looking at the other sides of the paintings. In the end of the corridor there really was a door.

And it was open.

---

Jill ran down the stairs of the main hall and into the statue room, digging the sword key from her pocket. She didn't stop before she had closed the door to the statue room and leaned against it, heaving a relieved sigh. The room was deadly quiet as if someone was waiting for her to come. The paintings and photographs looked at her with malevolent gazes, she was sure that some of them were narrowing their eyes to see better what their newest victim looked like. The statue in the middle didn't look at her, but she was glowing ominously as if she was from a distorted dream. Even the air seemed to be stopped, it was like even the dust falling down had stopped with the stillness of the room. She had escaped from her impostor, thanks to someone she didn't know. She assumed that maybe it had been Chris or one of the Bravos that had finally caught the impostor and killed him. She let herself fall on the floor, breathing heavily.

Her hand found Barry on her belt almost instinctively and patted him. Not even once had she questioned him, she knew that this was the real Barry, not the one that had been dragging him around the mansion even if the impostor had showed her a possible way out. He was safe as well and glad that they had escaped.

She decided to keep moving in case her stalker was coming after her. It was going to be much easier to avoid him by moving all the time. She knew that if she stood still in the statue room, waiting for help to arrive she would go crazy.

She opened the door with the sword key she had got from the book, entering into a long, L-shaped corridor with light green walls. On the right wall were lots of windows, making her feel highly uncomfortable. On the left were a lot of drawers, on each of them some gloomy family pictures. She put her hand on her gun realizing that her gun was with the impostor before she started towards the turn of the corridor.

"Nothing here…" She said quietly as she reached the turn. Somehow she still didn't want to believe it. Her instincts were jumping to the walls already but something made her even more alarmed, as if something was coming her way, readying its claws or fangs, yearning for her blood.

From somewhere the sound of a piano being played floated into the dark corridor. A light melody was being played, but it wasn't soothing. The sounds of incongruous keys were like screams of pain, twisted by the malevolent mansion. It made Jill fear; who or what could possibly play a piano in the mansion? She reflexively pressed against the wall, listening to the music. She could almost see the smooth movements of the long fingers dancing on the white keys, sometimes brushing past the black ones.

Jill screamed as the window broke and a green, frog-like creature jumped in with a shriek.

She had no weapon, she was surely going to die.

---

Over and done! How did you like it? Now, I promise, the next chapter will be horror again because now Jill is alone and free to go crazy! Bathtubes are waiting for her...

Thanks for reading, I'd love to hear what you think!