"Damn it! Where are they!" he yelled.
Coen, Valentine, and Kennedy had somehow vanished from his sight. He checked every camera he could find but they were simply gone. To be safe he checked the cameras installed in the town above the facility. There was nothing out there. This stress was starting to take him out of his usual calm demeanor with which he intimidated the inept Chief Irons back in Raccoon. Wesker took a few calming breaths and began to reprioritize.
"Keep your cool, Captain," Wesker calmly says. "Just think. If they've gone missing, that means what? Yes, it does. It means there's nothing in your way to retrieve the sample. Everything is now finally back on track, but first we have to do something about that pesky Nemesis, don't we?"
Wesker ran his fingers across his console and pulled up an image of the Nemesis. As he thought, the one-track minded beast had found the facility's nuclear waste disposal area. Smiling grimly, he hit a few buttons on a nearby keyboard. A massive, six-inch thick steel door came crashing down and sealed the S.T.A.R.S. killer inside with barrels of nuclear waste.
"Jill dumped acid on you and you still kept going, huh?" Wesker asks the image displayed before his eyes. "Let's see how long you last when the radiation starts to put that healing factor of yours into overdrive."
The former captain chuckles maliciously and leaves the safety of his command center. The night was still young and he was about to cash in.
Jill held tightly to the riot gun in her sweating hands and the shivering genetically enhanced rabbit on her shoulder wasn't making her feel any better about this situation. She hated the dark and enclosed spaces, and she had Umbrella to thank for that, but this was pushing it. She couldn't see her hand in front of her face and the longer she kept going down this dark stairwell, the more she felt that it didn't end.
"You all right?" Billy asks. Jill yelps and nearly loses control of her shotgun. "I'll take that as a no."
"Sorry," Jill mumbles. "I thought I'd be used to this kind of stuff by now."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Before Umbrella, the train was my favorite mode of transportation. Nowadays, I'd prefer the bus. What do you think, Leon?" No answer came to Billy's question.
"Leon?" Jill asks.
Bright lights clacked on, nearly blinding the ex-S.T.A.R.S. member and former Marine.
The rabbit took refuge in Jill's jacket.
"Lucky rodent," Billy mutters under his breath.
He wasn't sure but he thought he saw Jill glare at him.
"Hey, guys! I found something!" Leon's voice shouted.
Jill and Billy cautiously made their way down the stairs, still not used to the bright lights and the reflective paneling on the walls weren't helping matters either. They came down to the bottom of the stairs, where a smiling Leon was there to greet them, and a massive steel door that read "NO ADMITTANCE" in bright red lettering.
"How'd you get down here so fast?" Billy asks, shielding his eyes with his hand.
"I…fell," Leon admits sheepishly. "Anyway, you will freak at what I have to show you. On second thought, you won't."
"Is it a lab?" Jill asks.
"Give the lovely woman a prize," Leon declares, imitating Bob Barker, much to the dismay of his friends. "Sorry. Discovering Umbrella's latest pet projects makes me edgy."
The ex-cop turns around and punches in a code on a nearby control panel. The doors slide open, along with the whooshing noise from Star Trek. The trio exchanged glances of annoyance. Beyond the door was a setting Jill knew all too well.
"I gotta admit, Leon. When you find stuff, you find it big," she comments.
Sterilized work surfaces, low lighting, and massive glass tubes that went from the floor to the ceiling decorated the latest room. It had all the markings of an Umbrella lab, complete with a ripped open carcass on a nearby table.
"As much as I hate to admit it, this whole experience has gone better than my last one," Billy says.
Jill and Leon share a glance and say, "He had help from the start."
The group stalked through the lab, examining the various equipment. Leon and Jill holstered their shotguns, but Billy kept his ready to go in case the dissected corpse decided to get up. Most of the glass tubes were empty except one that caught Billy's eye immediately. There was a lizard-like bird encased in a tank of strange blue water. Various cables ran through it and a monitor nearby kept track of its vitals.
"What is this thing?" Billy asks no one in particular.
"It's called a Dac," Leon answers, busily reading a report of some kind. "Encountered 'em in Utah, in another underground facility. Easy to kill, but they're just too damn fast." He puts the report down. "Wonder why their keeping it alive."
"Let's not find out." The ex-Marine takes aim with the Striker and pulls the trigger.
The glass shatters and the strange creature within ends up with a donut-sized hole in its chest. Without taking any chances, Billy placed the shotgun against the lizard-bird's head and fired. Brain matter and various other fluids drench the floor.
"A little much, don't you think?" Jill says on the other side of the room.
"Made me feel better," Billy replies, holstering his weapon. "Find anything?"
"A keypad." Jill tinkers with a small device embedded in a pair of glass doors. "I'm gonna need a keycard and a password to get this thing open."
Leon steps up next to her and whips out the keycard given to him. He swipes it through the pad's slot and punches in a code. A hydraulic hiss followed and the doors slid open.
"The day Raccoon was destroyed," Jill comments. "How'd you know?"
"It was either that or 2101," Leon says.
The next door over concealed various chemicals frozen in oddly shaped vials. Jill picks up one and tries to read its label. Finding it futile to pronounce it, she puts it back. Leon finds a vial with a blue liquid inside.
"Look what I found," he says, showing it to Jill.
"Careful you don't drop it," she advises. "That thing shatters, we're all dead."
Leon carefully puts it back, but quickly picks it back up when a series of thunderous pounds emanate from the wall. Billy enters the freezer room.
"What's goin' on?" he asks frantically.
"There's something beyond the wall," Jill answers, spookily.
"Let's not stick around to find out what," Leon suggests. He firmly grasps the vial in his hand and slides it into his jacket pocket. He looks at Jill. "It may be a risk, but I'd feel safer if it wasn't near here."
She nods and the trio backtracked out of the lab and sealed the doors to the freezer. A few seconds later and the wall crashed trough, along with a Nemesis with melting skin.