Resident Evil, White Claudia

Part 7/7

By Fenris Ulf

Disclaimer: I do not own Resident Evil or Silent Hill. If you do own them, please don't hurt me.

As usual, it was far too easy to walk in. She had only walked for a few minutes when she saw a door. It was shiny and new and looked like the entrance to an Umbrella lab. Again.

Sherry holstered her Barettas and cocked her M-8. Then she sighed.

"If you're listening, Lobsel Vith, there are other places you can make for me to be afraid in. There was a funhouse I visited when I was five. That scared me too."

She waited for a few minutes. Then she sighed. She approached the doors, and they smoothly slid aside for her.

She looked around. Instead of the sterile metal of a White Umbrella lab, she found herself staring at the magnificent stone and wood work of the Raccoon City Police Station. She stepped down the small staircase, the hard soles of her boots clicking on the polished marble floor. She stopped in front of the alabaster fountain and stared as the water flowed from the urn on the shoulder of the statue.

"Thank you, I think," she said to the statue.

She walked up toward the central dias. Like all other things of her childhood, this place where she had spent most of the last days of Raccoon City, was gone in the real world. It was a place built out of the combined greed of her own father and the Chief of Police. It was a place where honest, hardworking police officers had been betrayed by the company that had built Raccoon.

The Umbrella Corporation.

Unseen and unsensed by her, her mouth drew up into a rictus of hate and disgust. It only lasted a few seconds, but in its wake, Sherry knew what she had to do. She looked up at the upper floors of the station. Now that she was looking, she could hear the clicking of talons on stone. She could hear the almost gentle groans of zombies.

She looked at the desk sargent's station and walked over to the terminal. In the original station, all the security was controlled from this station: from the status of the lock-up, to the automatic locks.

She sat down at the work station. On one visit to the station that didn't include viral mutations, her mother took her to the station. An Officer Ford looked after her on orders from Chief Irons and showed her the terminal. She didn't understand half of what he showed her, but she had remembered most of it.

Status check, she typed into the computer.

The cursor paused for a moment before responding.

Communications net, inactive.

Lockup, registered empty.

Power, abnormal. Fluctuatons on floor B, 1, 2, 3, R.

Automatic locks, unsecured.

"That was relatively painless," she said to herself.

She only hoped that the ridiculous number of riddles, traps and secret passages that Claire had to navigate wasn't there.

Activating statue, suddenly appeared on the screen.

"Statue?" she asked the computer monitor as she heard the sound of stone grinding against stone. She looked around in time to see the fountain move. She then heard the tiny sound of metal striking metal.

She walked over to the fountain to see an old fashioned key sitting in a small metal tray. She picked up the offensive sliver of metal and looked at the grip.

On it was an odd symbol and the words: Hagith.

"Not another headache," she said to herself. Neither the key nor her touchstone reacted to each other.

She took out her PDA. "Thanks," she said to it. "I think."

For a moment, instead of holding a peice of modern technology, she was holding a red, pulsing organ of flesh. Before she could scream or throw it, she was holding a PDA again.

She carefully looked down at it, then carefully put it back in her pocket. Even if it happened again, she was going to hold onto it. It was a weapon and a curse, but one went with the other.

She spent a few moments sitting on the desk as she tried to figure out where Lobsel Vith would be in her nightmare. Would he be in the Chief's office where she hid for the most part, where Claire found her? Or the Chief's lair, behind and beneath his Office; the one that looked like the lair of a mad taxidermist?

She spent a few moments thinking about it.

Deciding that no place else actually inside the building was as evil as that room, she headed for the Chief's office.

Most of the route was fairly routine, monster-wise. A few zombies, some dogs, one Licker. She made it to the Chief's office without any fanfare. The Hagith symbol was crudely carved into the door, and the key opened the locked door without any problems.

She opened the door, carefully making sure there wasn't anything hiding in the corners.

"Hee, hee," she heard. At first she thought that a little girl version of herself was about to pop up and chew her ankles or something.

She pointed her pistols towards the sound.

She followed the noise until she entered the trophy room. This was the room where Chief Irons had most of the treasures that he had purchased with the money her father gave him to look after the interests of White Umbrella.

"Hee, hee!"

She got out her other pistol and prepared to fire. She finally ended up in a very familiar place. As a child, her mother had told her to go to the police station. Her concern had been the Umbrella paramilitary unit that was going to be sent in to retrieve the G-virus from her father, whether he was ready or not.

They had tried to kill William Birkin, who then injected himself with the G-virus. The monster he became then killed the Umbrella retrieval team and accidentally infected some rats with the T-virus, who then infected some homeless people, who then turned into zombies, who then turned Raccoon City into the cesspool from hell.

When all this happened, the monsters overran the station. Early on, Sherry somehow figured out that staying with the group of survivors made her part of the target the monsters were aiming for.

Sherry walked over to one side of the trophy room. There was a row of ceremonial armor on this side. Behind them was a ventilation shaft. That shaft was where she had hidden until Claire Redfield had rescued her.

She heard the laugh coming from the shaft. She sighed for a moment. "I never had a goofy laugh like that. What is it coming from?" She looked at the suits of armor. When she was here last, she was small enough to squeeze between the legs of the display and the opening of the vent.

Now, she pushed on the shoulder of one of the suits of armor until it fell away from her. She pushed another one away until she could freely access the vent.

She pointed the Baretta at the vent as she used an ornate dagger from one of the suits to pry the vent cover away. Instead of finding a little girl or a monster, she found a tiny blanket soaked in blood.

"I'd almost forgotten about this," she said, looking at it. She almost smiled. Most girls associated the day she becomes a woman with her first period. Some with the day she looses her virginity or even the day they get married or have thier first child.

Perhaps it had less to do with becoming a woman, but this blanket represented the day she stopped being a child and became an adult. The day the sweet innocence of childhood was gone from her life forever.

"Nail the door shut!" someone said.

"I'm trying, but its not that easy to do when you don't have a hammer!"

"Keep trying! I think we might be able to keep them out of this area long enough for the folks on the basement level to regroup."

One of the officers dug into a box and gave Sherry a blanket. "Stay here for a moment, sweets," he said.

"Actually, if you could take her to the STARS office, that would be better," one of the other officers in the room said.

"But, they don't have any sofas there."

"I think they have a cot in there. In any case, we need more ammo and medical supplies to help that guy." He tossed his head to indicate a man sweating with fever on the other sofa. "Until we get this thing nailed down, it'll be safer there."

"All right, all right. Come on, Sherry."

He opened the door and left the door to close automatically. He turned the corner and screamed as a rotted face wearing a police uniform lurched and began eating him.

Sherry stared in abject horror at the viral zombie eating the man she had been holding hands with. She had known that people were being hurt (the word dying never crossed her child mind yet,) but due to the care of her guardians, she had not yet seen this sight.

Something in Sherry made her frozen limbs move and she retreated back to the lounge area. The door had closed, so she wriggled into the vent on the left side of the door.

She stood up and looked around. The two men were no longer working on the door, and the man on the couch was no longer there.

"Hello?"

She heard a noise and turned the corner. There were the bodies of the two police officer, with the third one eating at them.

She turned to run. There was a small space on the bottom of the sealed door, and she wriggled through it after a brief moment to look to make sure the way was clear. She didn't realize that she was still clutching the blanket until after she had made it to the dubious safety of Chief Iron's office.

Sherry pulled the bloody blanket from its pathetic hiding place. As she did so, out fell three stones. She picked them up. They looked like they came from South America; Inca or Aztec in origin.

She put them in her coat. They likely were a part of some puzzle that she didn't remember. Lobsel Vith was not in the Chief's office, therefore, there was only one other place he could be. She searched the Chief's desk for a few moments before finding the recessed switch that opened a tiny panel in the wall. The wall was decorated with Aztec carvings and had three squares cut into it.

"Now its starting to come back to me," she said. She felt glad that she didn't have to run around the station, collecting the damn things. She walked the short distance from the secret passage to the old elevator that led to the Cheif's Lair.

She took the elevator down. It seemed to go on forever. Perhaps it did. It was all too easy to forget that she wasn't really in the Raccoon City police station but a horrible reconstruction.

She then developed a sudden craving for chocolate.

The iron gate opened slowly. She expected to see the dark and dank, torch-lit corridor that led to the Cheif's Lair. She wasn't surprised to see a door apparantly floating in space. She could only look at the door, sigh, then open it.

She found herself in a metal hanger. It was littered with debris, upturned drums mostly. She recognized this place, of course. It was the transport tunnel where Claire had given her the vest.

She walked towards the heavy-lift train when a a strange sound was heard. The sound of a thousand damned souls wailing in agony.

"No!" she gritted out as the pain sent her to her knees. She dragged herself closer to the transport to notice a crudely painted sign on the back of the massive, yellow vehical. It was a strange symbol with the words "Bethor" underneath it. The symbol was slowly melting away.

"No!" she tried to shout at the sign, but all that came out was a choked protest. Her fingers curled in agony as the last of the symbol melted away.

She laid there for a few minutes as the pain assailed her. It hurt to lie down on the concrete floor, it hurt to try and stand up. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to have clothes on, it hurt when she opened her eyes.

Sherry Birkin was, if nothing else, a survivor. She slowly opened her eyes again when the psychic pain had become bearable. She slowly stood up and used the transport as support. She blearily looked at the controls on the platform. Everything was prepped, she then slapped the large, red button, and she staggered into the transport as the horns blared.

She was feeling more normal as the lift decended. The first thing she noticed was the large hole that had been ripped into the side of the vehicle.

She cautiously approached the hole when she saw something. The Bethor symbol had, unbidden, started to glow on her hand. Another massive headache ensued. She could see standing together in the compartment, two people. One was the cop, Leon Kennedy, that had travelled with Claire. The other was a pretty, Asian woman in a red dress. Suddenly, something ripped into the hold, injuring the woman. Sherry recognized the grey arm with bone spikes attached.

The vision, and the symbol of Bethor, both melted away. Once she was aware again, she realized that she had fallen to the floor.

Once she realized that, all the places that she had landed on started to hurt.

"I'm never, ever going to understand why anyone would want to practice this brand of magic without a lot of headache medication."

The tram finally stopped. She once again readied her weapons and opened the door.

"I'm glad you could make it, Miss Birkin," came a voice from the darkness. The voice was a high, male voice; very nasel. Sherry didn't recognize it, and found it to be very annoying and irritating.

A light turned on. Standing in the middle of a void was a man a bit older than Sherry. He was dressed in some sort of military uniform, red in color with gold trim with all sorts of medals and decorations on it.

"My name is Alfred Ashford, Master of Umbrella. I'm so glad you could come." He then gave out a weird, high pitched giggle.

If Sherry had met him on the street, she probably would have laughed at him.

"Lobsel Vith," she said to the popinjay.

"Oh, pish," he said. For a moment, the image of the popinjay faded to be replaced by a woman that was still the popinjay to be replaced by the popinjay covered in blood. "Pish," he said again. The image of the popinjay came back.

Sherry's eyes narrowed as this god, demon... idiot, laughed again.

She was tempted to start shooting.

She was tempted to shout.

She reached into her coat for her PDA. What she drew out was a grotesque lump of rotted flesh with the sigils burned into the surface.

"Pah! What do you intend to do with that disgusting and useless thing?" the popinjay asked.

"This," she gritted out. She could feel the headache, of alien forces floating around in her head, and her head not liking that one little bit. She looked at the first symbol she picked up. The symbol of the God of Silent Hill. "Gah!" she said as she touched the putrid mass to her left cheek and she could feel it burn into her flesh. She then looked at the popinjay.

She then turned the lump to look at the sigil for Lobsel Vith. She gritted her teeth and pressed her left hand against the symbol.

"Uhhhgh!" she gasped out as she felt a sharp, distinct pain in the center of her skull that ballooned like a bloated corpse.

The smaller pain of feeling something burning on that hand only enhanced the pain in her skull.

She carefully put the rotted lump of flesh back into her coat, faintly amazed that she was still conscious.

"This has been amusing," the popinjay said, "But there's nothing you can do to me."

The symbols burned anew on her cheek and hand. She could see past the popinjay, down into the layers of Lobsel Vith.

He looked like nothing more than a yellowish blob of jelly. He was constantly changing in color from a bright yellow to a dark, sickly color. His form changed from vaughly humanoid to having psudo-pods out that looked like the creatures she had seen so far.

"I can do this," she gritted out. She held out her hand and slowly walked toward the creature.

The popinjay shied away from her. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I think," she said, staggering foward another few steps, "that I'm going to drag you back with me. Back to a place where you can't get away."

He took another step back.

"Stop!" she yelled out.

He froze in his tracks. "You can't do this!" he cried out.

She took another step and grabbed him by the arm. She felt the layers and saw her hand clasp a psudo-pod crawling with spikes. The spikes changed into bugs which changed into warts.

She took a step back and dragged him with her.

He begged and pleaded, he threatened then he tried to order her. Her world shrank down to her grasp on his arm, her pain, and her steps, taking her one stride at a time away from the dark.

At odd times, she would dimly perceive some of the other people from the hospital. She could not hear them, and she could not see them, save as shadows on her mind. When they left, she briefly wondered if they were actually there, or if she had imagined them.

Then, as she was feeling as though her flesh must be melting from her bones, she heard Ben, as though he were speaking to her from a deep well in her mind.

"You're at the gate, Sherry. Bring him in."

She was able to see again as she heard the doors shut.

She looked down at her prisoner. The image of the popinjay had completely fallen away and she saw the dark yellow blob of Lobel Vith with rows of sharpened teeth around a round maw like a lamprey.

"Ai Nebbu, shemei asagu!" he bayed at her.

She could now see Lisa and Jim standing in the middle of a symbol etched in glowing white. She recognized it as the Seal of Metraton.

"Bring him into the Seal!" Jim called out to Sherry.

Lobsel Vith was scrabbling at the floor, biting at Sherry's arm, but somehow, he could not find purchase. His teeth merely drew blood instead of ripping her arm off.

"Shai Geddith! Shai Geddith!" he bayed again.

She resolutely walked towards the circle. It seemed as though every step only brought her foward a millimeter at a time.

She let go of him as she reached the center of the Seal.

The thing crowed in agony and triumph, then howled again as it could not move from the center.

"Now Lisa!" Jim howled.

The nurse reached behind her and raised an axe. It was massive, it seemed ridiculous that such a slight person could wield it. On its sides was her Sigil.

She swung it down with all her might, but she did not hit him. She struck something just behind him.

He hissed and shrieked as something came to light. It was a long cord composed of the sickly, yellow mass of his body. It stretched from the mass howling in the Seal to beyond the gates of the Hospital.

Then, Lobsel Vith glowed a bright white, then dissolved in an explosion of white ash. The cord also glowed, and dissolved in white ash and light down it length. Nothing happened for some minutes until, off in the distance, the sky lit up for the first time in this bleak place. The white light filled the dark void and for a moment, Sherry could see the nightmare depths that it had concealed.

Then, it was dark again, and Sherry felt a peculiar sense of loss.

Jim rubbed a hand across the Seal, and it faded away.

The gates opened, and Sherry saw some of the hospital inhabitants return.

She collapsed to the ground, still conscious, but her strength was gone. She looked at her hand. The symbol of Lobsel Vith was gone, and perhaps she could journey back to the light.

"You can rest now, Sherry," Ben said, lifting her up.

She closed her eyes, hoping that her dreams would be only of home.

Next Part: Epilog.