A.N: Ok, I apologise to anyone out there who has been waiting for this for a while, but I had exams... Anyway, they're over and done with now, so...back to the story!
Chapter 19
Wesker, unsurprisingly, was the first member of the group to wake up. Having not really slept the night before, however, and being a tyrant, he hadn't needed the sleep and had spent most of his time in the night, wandering around the park, a few minutes walk away from Leon's apartment.
Currently, he was making his way to the entrance of Leon's apartment building, having just signed out of the hotel he had stayed in that night. He passed through the park as he walked at a brisk pace to the multi-storey building, knowing, however, that most of the group would still only just be waking up, as it was only 7:30am.
Despite the early time though, the city of Washington DC was extraordinarily busy, people just starting to leave their homes for work, some already stuck in grid lock, just ten blocks away from where Wesker stood, watching people scurry by, and he briefly wondered how Leon and co. managed to get this rather lengthy amount of time off work.
Shaking himself slightly, he continued towards the building at a slower pace. They were supposed to be meeting outside the building at 8:00am, meaning he still had half an hour to spare.
To his surprise, when he got to the front of the building, he found a few members of the group already out there, loading up the cars.
Chris glanced up as Wesker approached them and grunted at him, before pulling out a cigarette and lighting it, letting out a contented sigh as he inhaled the smoke and leaned back against the jeep.
"Jill's gonna kill you if she finds you doing that," Billy commented, shoving a few things aside to slot a bag in, and then slamming the boot down.
Chris merely shrugged a shoulder "Less work for Wesker, then,"
"Believe me, Redfield, as amusing as it would be to see you murdered by your wife, I would far prefer for your death to be at my hands." Wesker stated simply, folding his arms across his chest.
Chris didn't answer just grunted again and went back to his cigarette. Maxi, who was sitting on the curb glanced over to Billy and rolled his eyes.
An uncomfortable silence settled over the four men for a few minutes, until Yunsung came out and shattered the silence by yelling:
"Alright! Are we ready to go and kick some mutated freaks butt?"
Maxi rolled his eyes again and flicked his hair back, before getting to his feet. "I suppose."
Wesker looked over to Chris "You know where we're going, yes?"
Chris nodded, cigarette still hanging between his lips.
"Good, then I'll go ahead and meet you there…try not to take too long." With that, the blonde disappeared around the corner and headed for his car.
"Who's going with whom anyway?" Billy asked
"I'm going on my motorbike, you, Jill and Claire are going together in the jeep, and Leon has borrowed a mini van and is taking everyone else."
Billy nodded, watching Chris walk over to the black motorcycle by the side of the curb. He quickly picked up his leathers and started pulling them on, when the rest of the group walked out.
They all seemed tight lipped and anxious.
Leon, without saying a word, walked out of sight and came back a few minutes later with a non-descript mini van.
"Alright, get in." he ordered, gesturing to the opened back doors. The Soul Warriors, Link and Liam clambered into the back of the van, and he slammed the door shut behind him.
Meanwhile, the others had got into the jeep and Chris had mounted his bike. Leon nodded to him, before hoisting himself into the driver's seat of the mini van, closing the door and starting it up.
Chris pulled up beside him "Just follow me, and try not to get lost."
Leon nodded and Chris snapped the visor of his helmet shut, revved the bike, and took off down the strangely empty road, in the opposite direction to the rest of the city, inching their way to the centre of town.
Chris pulled up the dirt track slope into a field, making his way towards the tall figure of Wesker, who was leaning over the back of the black Mercedes he drove, pulling things out and strapping them to his body.
Stopping close to the car, Chris killed the bike and pulled off his helmet as he dismounted, running his fingers through his hair to make it stick up again.
"Hope you haven't been waiting long" he said through gritted teeth.
"Not really. I arrived here about 5 minutes ago."
"Oh good." he spat out sarcastically
Behind the sunglasses, Wesker rolled his eyes. He pulled them off a moment later until he found the hunting knife he had been looking for, and strapped it to his thigh.
Chris watched him out of the corner of his eye as he pulled off his leathers and changed into some slightly more comfortable, stealthy clothing.
Ironically, the tactical vest he had with him was the very one he had worn when he and the rest of the now ex-STARS team, had done the mansion mission.
"Was the irony intentional or not?" Wesker asked, pulling a silver case from the boot, glancing over to Chris.
The brunette merely scowled at him and pulled the vest on, tightening it and then pushing guns into their holsters.
He looked up when he saw the mini van struggle up the track followed by the jeep.
When Leon had finally managed to park the van he shoved the door open, looking disgruntled. Billy had also gotten out of the jeep and was laughing at Leon.
"What happened? Why are you late?"
"He broke down." Billy sniggered, going over to the back of the jeep to pull his gear out, whilst Leon yanked the doors of the van open, and the others stumbled out and he continued to grumble under his breath. For the next few minutes most of the group busied themselves with preparing for the mission.
Chris, who was ready, looked over to Wesker who had opened the silver case and was looking inside it.
"It's a little something for backup, Chris. I like to be sure that I'm going to come out alive and with what I intended. True, that didn't happen in the mansion" he held up his hand when Chris opened his mouth to comment "But I was working against you then. I'm working with you now…what could possibly go wrong?"
"So what is it?" Chris asked, his hatred being overridden by curiosity for the moment.
"A couple of doses of the anti-virus, and a few vials of a weak form of the T-Virus."
"Why?"
"Incase I need it. I'm not impervious, and if I'm injured to the point of not being able to heal it quickly, I might need to use it as a sort of pick-me-up."
"Not carrying a gun then?"
"Why do I need to? You and your friends have plenty of gun power, and I want to fight Aaron one on one for at least a little while. Tire him out, and then you can finish him off if you wish."
"… I suppose that'll do. As long as Aaron dies it doesn't really matter."
Chris shrugged and looked over to where Leon and Billy were just finishing up. Jill and Claire were watching the Soul Calibur guys, who had actually changed into black clothing as well.
"Are we ready to go?" Chris shouted
The group turned to look at him, and then nodded, glancing to Wesker as he locked his car and hid the keys.
"Let's move out then."
Chris looked to Wesker, who merely nodded and started to walk away from the vehicles.
The rest of the group trotted up behind and arranged themselves so they could talk with whom they wished to.
Chris hovered just behind Wesker, watching him suspiciously, as the older man just continued to walk with long easy strides. He became suspicious when Wesker stopped by a cluster of trees, and seemed to listen for a moment, before continuing to walk.
After two hours of walking in relative silence, the group was starting to become impatient.
"Do you actually know where this facility is or not?" Yunsung yelled from somewhere near the back of the group.
Wesker turned round and curled his upper lip into an unfriendly sneer at Yunsung.
"Be quiet, boy. We're almost there…and it's not a facility we're going to."
"What is it then?"
Wesker didn't answer, just glanced around for a moment, then turned right and continued onto a little dirt path that was scuffed between short scrub grass.
They followed the path for another few minutes, until they came to a small clearing, in the centre of which was set a small grey-blue house.
Chris looked back to the rest of the group, and they mirrored his uncertain expression as Wesker walked to the front door.
"Are you serious? We're just going to walk into this person's house?"
Wesker just grunted and pushed the front door open as he stood on the porch.
Glancing at each other, everyone followed him inside the house.
The front door opened into a short hallway, with two doors on either side of them, but Wesker ignored them and walked further down the hall.
About halfway down, the walls stopped, so that the two other rooms were open to the hall. The room on their right was a kitchen, on the left a living room with a flight of stairs.
The house smelt vaguely of dust and disuse, but there was a faint hint of furniture polish in the air too, and it seemed that whilst the house had been empty for a while, it was well cared for by whoever came here from time to time.
They turned right into the kitchen, to see Wesker in the refrigerator.
"Because he's going to be hiding in the fridge." Claire remarked
Wesker pulled his head back "I haven't eaten this morning…I was seeing if there was anything."
He shut the fridge and walked back up the hall, to the door that was now on his left.
The room seemed to be nothing more than a storage cupboard, but in one corner, there were a few floorboards lying out of place from the rest.
Walking over to them, he pulled them back to reveal a flight of stairs. Pulling a few more out of the way, Wesker began to descend the stairs.
"Coming?" he asked, looking back at the others.
Hesitantly, they followed him down the stairs to find themselves in a dark, cramped passage.
"This strangely reminds me of the training facility," Billy commented, looking at the grey-green walls. Wesker glanced back and seemed to be trying to say 'don't even go there'.
Billy merely shrugged and they continued on their way down the passage, following the silhouette of Wesker as they wound through a seeming underground labyrinth.
As they turned a corner into a wider passage that was lit by a few lamps on the side, Wesker stopped abruptly, holding up his hand, and drawing a knife from under the black turtleneck sweatshirt he was wearing.
Chris raised an eyebrow at the ex-captain's behaviour, but took it as a good reason to draw his own weapon. Aiming down the corridor, they waited for a moment.
For that moment, there was nothing…then, a faint high-pitched squeaking sound reached them, and grew steadily louder and deeper until it resembled something of a rasping growl.
The creature it was coming from emerged soon after, from the thick shadows at the end of the hallway.
Chris rolled his eyes slightly as a rat ran towards them, and then straight passed them until the creature that was making the growling appeared.
Tensing, Wesker sniffed at the air slightly, and then cocked his head to the side, listening for footfalls. There didn't seem to be any.
The creature came round the corner before Wesker had time to say what it was, padding slowly up the corridor, lowering it's head as it was joined by five others of its kind.
"Oh crap," Claire muttered.
The animals were once wolves, or something very similar, like a husky dog, for they had the silver grey and brown tints to their fur, or what was left of it.
Most of it had fallen out, leaving white, raw red, or purple skin exposed, the ratty strings of fur hanging down from the animals' limbs, trailing on the floor.
Bone was visible on a few of them, the skin along the spine and ribs having split open in places to reveal the inner organs. The eyes had sunk into the skull and were discoloured, changed to an inflamed red-pink colour.
The 'wolf' in front started padding towards the group again, opening its mouth to growl, revealing too many teeth, extra rows pushing out of bleeding gums and even the edge of the lolling tongue.
The leader suddenly threw back its head, letting out a loud long howl, before bounding towards the group, saliva gathering in its mouth and dripping to the floor.
Wesker tightened his grip on the knife he was holding, whilst Chris and Leon fired at the creatures, peppering their heads with shots. But the shots didn't register, and the lead wolf leaped for Wesker, despite his diseased blood, only to die a few seconds later, the knife in its mouth, the blade in the roof, plunged into the brain.
Wesker pried the knife out of the wolf's mouth, letting the body drop fully to the floor, whilst Billy and Jill moved forwards, to finish off the two 'wolves' that were now left. Chris and Leon had blown holes in the creatures' brains and eyes.
Billy fired a shot and it hit the creature between the eyes, it crumpled to the floor, dead. A couple of seconds later it was joined by the last creature.
Wesker knelt down next to the wolf he had killed, looking it over as if it might yield a clue to where Aaron was within this place. There was nothing.
Turning to Chris he sheathed the knife, then waited until Chris had finished reloading to speak.
"I need to go and check on the test subjects in the lab down here. I suggest you carry on, though seeing the creatures and finding out there weaknesses might prove beneficial. In any case, you shouldn't split up from your group."
"I don't trust you," Chris answered "If you go somewhere, I'm going too."
Wesker rolled his eyes behind the sunglasses.
"Fine. The lab is just down the corridor."
Quickly, Wesker turned back to the right direction and strode down the corridor. After a quick walk to the end, he entered a small laboratory.
The entire far side of the wall was dominated by cages, various mutants sitting in them, hissing at the intruders through the bars.
There was a small computer in the right hand corner, and Wesker strode over to it quickly, whilst the others filed inside, and skirted around the operating table in the centre of the room. There was a dissected Hunter lying on it, its organs hanging on the table around it, causing a terrible stink.
"I wouldn't get too close if I were you, for the few of you that have taken interest in either that Hunter or the creatures in the cages." Wesker warned as he tapped a few keys on the keyboard slipping a disk into a port on the PC.
"The hunter is dead," Yunsung pointed out "What could it do? It's been cut up."
"That's my point. It's not going to come back to life, but if you get infected with the T-Virus, then you're going to be dying in a very painful way."
"You're infected with it," Yunsung pointed out "You're not dead."
"…You will turn into a zombie if you go near it. I am infected with an adapted form of the T-virus, which allows me to keep my life. And, no, I can't make any more of this version."
"Why not?"
"I can't. I don't know how."
"Didn't you create it though?"
Wesker snorted and hit the enter key, sending a worm into the computer. "No," he answered turning around "William Birkin made this version, and I never matched up to his intelligence."
A light tone sounded a moment later and Wesker turned back around to open up a few files. Yunsung wandered over, looking at the complex structure on the screen.
"And you understand that?"
Wesker nodded slightly and scrolled down, his eyes scanning the data on the page. He made an angry noise in the back of his throat at a certain point, and Yunsung moved back to the rest of the group, lest he get hit.
After a few more minutes, Wesker fiddled around with the computer a bit, and then pocketed the disk.
"Well?" Chris asked
"These creatures are easy to defeat. Or should be. A characteristic of this virus is that the infected subjects tend to split open during mutation to grow extra limbs etc. They don't heal fully either."
"Those were what the splits on those wolves were." Claire exclaimed.
Wesker nodded "They had been infected for several weeks and so had managed to heal the wounds to a further degree than anything else in here." He gestured at the animals in the cages
"So we go for the wounds?"
"That would be a suitable strategy, don't you think?"
Jill, Chris and Claire grumbled slightly at the condescending response.
"We should continue. Aaron is close by and if we linger here too long they'll get agitated and try to fully break out." Wesker stated, gesturing to the experiments locked in the cages.
The group nodded. Turning on their heels, they moved back into the corridor and down the path to Aaron.
OK loyal readers, there are only 6 days to go til Christmas, so let's get into the Christmas Spirit and review lots as a pressie. In return as a present to all you lovely peoples, I'll write the best last chapters I can...
Clicky, Clicky...don't forget peoples. :)