Legal disclaimers: I don't own or lay claim to the Resident Evil games or anything directly associated with them, nor the t.v. Programme Threshold. These all belong to companies who make far more money than I ever will. However, I do own any characters expressly created for this story and all original plotlines and ideas, so ask if you want to borrow them.
Disclaimers: This is the fourth and final part of my "Flashforward" Possible Future stories following on from Matt6's "Operation: Falling S.T.A.R.S.". As usual, this is just my take on what might happen and can be considered AU where it doesn't mesh with whatever Matt6 comes up with. You don't need to have read the first three parts to understand this one, but it might help. I hope that you enjoy it. A Y stands for a page break. All Reviews welcomed.
FUTURE
OCTOBER 19TH 2004-TWO YEARS LATER
Ten miles off the coast of Spain, 01:33The big passenger ship was listing heavily to starboard in the still darkness of the night, its massive funnels still slowly issuing traces of white smoke even though its engines were completely shut down. Slow, low waves washed up against its creamy white hull with natural abandon, taller ones reaching most of the way up the fallen side of the listing ship, washing away some of the massive bloodstains there every time. No movement was visible anywhere aboard, every light was out and traces of a smoke stream blacker than darkness fed by traces of deep red light which led to flames deep inside could be seen coming from the bowels, cabins and bridge of the ship with sharp eyes.
Windows had been shot out and smashed, doors torn right off of their hinges. Metal walls were pitted with the strikes of bullets, explosive fragments and every other kind of weapon aboard ship, from fists to anchor chains, some of the same weapons being buried deep inside human bodies which scattered the entire vessel, falling at every angle about the ships decks. Blood and fragments of flesh, pieces of people, some partially eaten, were everywhere, all about, under and around everything. The decks were awash with a thick slick of guts, brains and blood that made footing treacherous at best.
What was in the slick mess, tied to the DNA of the owners through food they'd eaten hours earlier which had been treated with a nightmare biological weapon, had made them monsters. The resultant Holocaust had been the result of determined, desperate resistance by the few survivors against all odds. Thanks overwhelmingly to the efforts of two people in particular, they'd won. It didn't change the fact that, of over 900 people aboard at time of sailing, less than half a dozen were still alive.
Leon Kennedy had survived the destruction of Racoon City six years ago, when a hundred thousand people had been exposed to a manufactured Biological and Chemical weapon mix called the T-Virus, later added to by its improved version, the G-Virus. In a city turned into a literal necropolis overnight, a place where the dead didn't stay that way and monsters created by mutation and surgery best described as abomination techniques stalked the survivors, on his first day on the job he'd found himself fighting for his life in a horror movie directed by the Devil, or at least that was how he liked to think of it.
He'd seen every kind of nightmare, monster, creature and mutation he could imagine and plenty no one could. He'd seen people rise to the occasion and do things he would have thought simply impossible to save lives and survive, he'd seen the depths to which men and women could sink in pursuit of the most base of human evils-greed, the constant need for more, of everything, no matter what the cost. He'd always known greed and arrogance could get you killed, he'd been a Police officer once. But no one sane could have imagined the depths of depravity some would go to in pursuit of satisfying their obscene, insanely overwhelming greed.
He still couldn't really comprehend the events of that terrible night, he doubted he ever would. He'd gone on to see worse and do things which drove him to the brink of his sanity in a four-year War with Umbrella Corporation-but they'd won, so it had all been worth it in the end. Or at least he'd thought so. Now? Now he knew better.
Standing at the port rail on the bridge, his black suit and tie torn to shreds, his white shirt drenched in dark blood, small cuts, bruises and a numerous variety of contusions all over his body reminding him every second just how close he'd come to going out forever, Leon Kennedy knew they'd lost. He was staring at the distant lights which signified the coast of far-off Spain, lights that reflected in his sky-blue eyes, trying to watch the motor launch carrying the Presidents daughter away from him and this ship against her will, stolen by black-clad commandos on his watch. It was too far away now, he could barely even see its wake, but he had to try.
A Secret Service agent, after all he'd been through and done-and he'd lost the Presidents daughter while she was under his protection to killers who had used an old Umbrella weapon to distract him? He deserved to be dead, but this wasn't over yet...
"You do know that this isn't close to being over yet?" asked the woman standing beside him at the bridge rail, raising an eyebrow even as she checked her weapons, the barrels of both 9MM pistols still being so hot she had to wrap her hands in torn cloth to hold them. Three hours of sustained gunfire with no more than a few seconds at bests pause to reload every time? He was halfway surprised that she hadn't slagged the barrels entirely the way she'd been shooting. He knew that he'd have been dead several times over if she hadn't been around, though, so he was very glad she really did know precisely and exactly what she was doing.
The bright light of far-away Spain lit up sapphire blue eyes in a dark face with tawny skin, black hair all around her face and shoulders hiding some of the damage the fighting had caused her. A truly remarkable beauty with a body to kill for stood out in any company, largely exposed by a shredded blood-red evening gown even as splatters of blood coloured her skin and hair, dark, heavy bruising being concealed by her dark skin. None of the blood was hers, nothing had gotten close enough to even chance cutting her, including bullets.
Her name was Serena Baccarin, she was technically a part of his Secret Service unit on detached duty Undercover, just in case due to threats against the life of the Presidents daughter. In reality she'd been placed there to make sure, by whatever means necessary, that nothing happened, due to the nature of her real job allowing her unique insight into any situation of the lethal kind. Her real job was to kill people without anyone ever noticing or asking questions. In simple terms, she was an Assassin of the highest order-and she'd failed here, too. Just like him, though, she had by no means given up yet.
"Over? I'm going to rig a raft and sail after those bastards so fast I'll get there first and be waiting to kill them all when they land. I could use a hand, but someone has to find a way to broadcast an SOS before the ship sinks or none of us will be seen again. Suggestions?" he replied, glancing over at her.
"I'm going, not you. I may be better with technology, but the radio wasn't wrecked, I checked, they just ripped out the batteries after the ship lost power when the generators went down. Get them back up and you can broadcast an all points alert as well as an SOS with the touch of a button. That takes manpower more than skill and it would take me at least a couple of hours to fix the radio otherwise. Anyway, Leon, I'm the better agent for this job and you know it. You saw what those bastards did, their professionals and so am I, that makes this my call" said Serena. She ejected both magazines, reloaded and pulled at the tattered remnants of her dress with a frown.
"Fair comment, but with you gone that would leave me, a sixteen year old so scared she can barely move let alone talk and an eighty year old man in a wheelchair to fix things. Don't even mention Pauley Mosca" said Leon with a sigh, trying not to think about the young Politician who'd had all of the voluntary responses of a block of granite since the attack had started. He was in such deep shock that Serena hadn't been able to say for sure whether he was Catatonic or Comatose.
"If he doesn't wake up in ten minutes, whisper in his ear that if he survives and doesn't help I'll cut his fingers off and force him to watch me feed them to Zombies. If that doesn't work, throw him over the side and use him as a raft to float ashore on. There's no room for dead weight on this boat. Ah, Hell with it..." snapped Serena, giving up on the remains of her dress altogether. Taking the remains in both hands, she wrenched it apart and let it fall to the deck, leaving her only wearing what Leon couldn't help but notice was particularly slinky underwear. He tried not to stare and failed, but that she didn't care was very obvious.
"I have to go to my cabin and get my work clothes, I'll take a motor raft and get off to starboard. If you want to help, make damn sure that you get that SOS off and call in help before coming after me. For what its worth, I'd say you have two hours at most before this big tub goes down. I'll expect you soon after that if your still alive. Good hunting" said Serena, before turning and striding off towards the cabins. Leon caught himself admiring her body-given the timing, just how inappropriate could it be?-before remembering that he had something to say to her.
"Good night and good luck, Serena" he called after her, already trying to recall just how to get down to the ships generators, as well as where they were. In the engine room, right? He noticed the fact that she'd simply stopped abruptly at his words and wondered why, before she glanced over her shoulder at him, eyes cold.
"I don't rely on luck, Leon, I don't believe in it. Faith is a dead concept. The only thing you can rely on absolutely is trust, so you only trust what you absolutely have to. Oh, you mean "good hunting" I think, by the way" Serena replied, before disappearing inside the ships hallways, as silent as a ghost.
"Great, I really needed to hear all of that..." muttered Leon, before he started walking down through the bridge to the ships central hall. Thick with death and the dead as it was, with only three main exits and entrances which could be barricaded, one serving entrance which had been completely blocked and no way in without being seen, it was as close to secure as anywhere on the ship that wasn't on fire or effectively destroyed. It was, therefore, where he and Serena had chosen to secure the other survivors, including the eighty-year-old man in his wheelchair who had somehow managed to hide a double-barrelled shotgun under the bed sheets which wrapped his legs. When he'd shot his attackers with the huge, heavy weapon at point blank, there hadn't been enough left of them to tell the gender at a glance. He'd just grinned when Leon had asked how he'd managed it...
Honolulu, Hawaii, 10:35Song Ma Han, the Japanese Assassin sometimes known as "Dragonfly", wanted to kill someone. She wasn't quite sure who yet, but it was going to take a very long time, involve extensive surgical procedures, years of torture, the death of everyone the subject had ever met he or she loved or cared for at all and the subjects internal organs being paraded past his or her eyes before he or she died, at the very least. After all of that, she would just be beginning to get warmed up, so she'd need to think of more creative tortures. Flaying alive was always fun. Cannibalism? Whippings with a whip saturated in salty seawater? Molten oil over the limbs? Acid on every body part? Being forced to remove your own eyes with your bare hands? Vampirism? Breaking every bone at least twice before dislocating every joint and popping every vein in such a way you didn't bleed to death until the job was done?
She suspected that the fact she was having these thoughts meant she was actually quite angry-maybe even very angry. Emotions were something she had very little use for, though, except where her Husband of just over an hour, Kenny Bailey, was concerned. She was never angry, or upset, she just became...unpleasant in dealing with people when something like this happened.
"This" didn't require much explanation. The large town of Honolulu in Hawaii, her personal paradise and the one place on Earth where she knew she could actually relax-hence her request that the ceremony be conducted here and nowhere else-looked like it had been hit by a Nuclear weapon.
Tall, elegant whitewashed buildings were almost all collapsed, burning or ruins barely staying upright as gravity dragged at them remorselessly. Smaller wooden houses, larger structures, stores and every kind of open area imaginable had been devastated, some simply smashed flat, others torn up and blasted almost to shreds, bits and pieces of wood, stone and glass having been flung in every direction for over a mile in some cases. The streets looked as though they'd been subjected to artillery fire with huge craters everywhere, all flooded with mud, stone, blood and even bodies, while concrete burned with intense white heat in several places, the aftermath of incendiary bombardment.
Little life stirred, visibly or otherwise, for as far as could be told in all directions. Concussive blasts had killed everyone upright when they'd come crashing down and erupted out of the sky, shattering buildings, pulping bones, flesh and every form of wildlife as less than nothing when they'd hit. Pockmarks of bullet and shell strikes were scattered thick and deep everywhere, hideous amounts of bloodshed coating every surface anywhere near anyone who'd been remotely close to the point of impact of the attacks. The strafing runs had clearly been intended to kill off everyone who'd survived the initial attacks: by rights, they should have succeeded.
None of that was the cause of the extent of the sheer physical mutilation and damage to the shattered, shredded and lacerated corpses lying all around, though, nor the cause of the fact that so many were missing either their entire heads or large parts of their bodies, despite the destruction. No, that had come afterwards, when the strange smell the survivors had caught a trace of had made the first corpse blink its eyes, roll over and try to sit up despite its blown-out spine. That had come when a world she had never cared for had discovered yet another sickness for her to experience, another way for her to know pain.
Her first act on discovering she truly was still alive after the attack, the great dark planes crashing in overhead like things sent straight from Hell, had been to hack off the head of the nearest Zombie with her Katana, which not even her own Marriage could separate her from. After that, everyone left standing-every single surviving member of the Wartime S.T.A.R.S., the SOC and certain unique individuals like her Master, Isis-had grabbed anything to hand which they could conceivably deploy as a weapon and fought like a regiment of killers trained by Death itself to survive an awful conflict they'd believed over years ago.
At least three hundred Zombies had come for around fifty people in total-with certain special guests, she hadn't had time to count the heads properly-but by the time they'd been finished with the horde of Undead some very angry former soldiers and ex-Police of-a-sort had been hunting down the scattered remainder with axes, shovels and lit wooden torches. They'd lost maybe five of their own, fighting a War against worse than this for years gave you surprisingly effective skills and experience where despatching such things was concerned.
Song felt the perfectly balanced weight of her Katana in her right hand, her sword in her left, both raised up behind her with dried blood thick and black on the blades. Razor edges maintained by a substance harder than steel remained strong, but she wouldn't be slicing silk with them again soon.
The remains of her Wedding dress, a perfect pale creamy white full-length dress that was finer than silk in weave and texture, that had caressed and covered every curve and line of her slim body like a second skin and made people stare at just her passage, was utterly destroyed. Her legs were free, her arms were loose, she could feel warm air and traces of sand brushing up against her belly, back and breasts. She was barely wearing anything else, but she didn't care, it was what the dress had represented that had mattered to her. This was supposed to have been the happiest day of her life, instead she'd spent it fighting her way through Hell-literally.
She should have known better. "After the hand life had dealt her", to quote Isis...
"I really do hate it when that happens" muttered a mans voice as one of the former SOC soldiers strolled over to her from the direction of the shattered tables which had held the Wedding Cake and all of the gifts. A young man in his physical prime, one of the most professional soldiers the American army had ever seen and a living weapon even she wouldn't casually cross, a man who was quite attractive as well. His name was Matt Ryan.
The former commanding officer of the SOC, no one had done more to single-handedly end the threat they had supposedly finally faced down and destroyed two years ago. What was going through his mind given what had just happened, therefore, she didn't want to guess. However, given his bare chest, now bearing all new scars and coated with blood as well as fragments of flesh and even bone? His blood soaked once-white shorts and the fact that he was holding a big black bloody Crowbar casually with one hand, one which had bits and pieces of every part of the human anatomy imaginable on it? Given the look in his eyes?
She was willing to gamble real money that he was so angry the only thing holding him back from acts of truly extreme violence was the fact there was no one immediately available to practise it on. If there had been someone or something easily available he hadn't already beaten to a pulp or torn to pieces, he'd have taken it apart with his bare hands and a smile. Slowly.
"If you think this is bad you should see what happens when Isis goes out for a night on the town when she's in New York or Paris. The last time was a year ago and they still haven't settled all of the lawsuits. On a more serious note, though, me as well. Did you recognise any markings on the planes?" asked Song.
"There weren't any, I made a point of checking when I was running for my life and trying to take cover in the sea or behind pebbles. Did you spot anything?" replied Matt, glancing at her sharply.
"The gas drop was a Chimera, a transporter flew low over the island after the initial attack and just opened its bay doors on the dead. Were far more than "lucky" to have not been infected ourselves, if we weren't. You did see the red eyes, I take it?" said Song.
"Given the way some of the "healthier" one's screamed at me I was going to die before I prised their brains out to check just how diseased they were, yes. Damn creepy and far more than worrying. Umbrella's dead, though, so who's doing this?" asked Matt, shaking his head while spinning his Crowbar like a quarterstaff, flicking blood off of it casually.
"Take your pick of the one's who've tried to fill the gaps left since Umbrella went under. HCF never completely collapsed even after half its staff Resigned and its Board of Directors went into hiding when Pierre literally decapitated their President, so it could be them. I know what you think, but I will not accept your belief that Area 51 cannot and will not have anything to do with all of this, not after what happened in Washington D.C. There are far more suspects and questions than there are answers to be had and, given this, no time to look closely at the possibilities. What matters here is that someone has refined and reengineered the Virus beyond anything either of us has ever seen and we don't know who, how or why. More disturbingly, we don't even know what. Speech? Coordination? Running? As you Americans like to say, Elvis has most certainly left the building... Have you seen Kenny?" asked Song, looking around and failing to find the young soldier.
"He ran into the jungle being chased by at least two Zombies after getting shot in the arm. He had that holdout he carries, though, so he'll be fine. Song, we need to get seriously worried here. Honolulu has a population of almost 380,000 and even a strike like this won't have put most of them down-not permanently, at any rate. The island has a population of 900,000 and we really don't know whether or not the whole island was hit while we were running for our lives like headless chicken. Almost a million Zombies could be out there and most of us weren't even armed when we came here.
Worse luck, the only way off this death trap is swimming unless you feel like a stroll through Honolulu to the docks because I really don't feel like fighting my way house to house against the population of this island with a crowbar to reach the airfield. Suggestions?" said Matt, eyes everywhere at once, reacting slightly to every single odd sound or sight.
"Matt, these Zombies may be new and better, but I can guarantee you they don't have the mind to walk quietly through a forest, stop acting as though they do. We need to regroup and work out our fastest possible route through the town. Once we get there, we need someone ready and waiting to jump-start the engines of the first boat or ship big enough to take us all. There simply won't be time for failure, you understand?" asked Song, turning slightly to look Matt in the eyes.
"Perfectly, which just leaves one question" replied Matt, turning to stare into the forests and half-flattened, burning buildings all around even as he did. "Just how the Hell are we going to find everyone like this?" he continued, to a frown from Song...
A sudden gunshot sounded from nearby, on the edge of the forest, then another. A human scream sounded-then a middle-aged man came running from the trees, clutching at his ruined left hand with his right as blood jetted between his fingers. Song noted that all of his fingers were gone as well as a chunk of his hand before two more figures came running from the forest, at the not-quite-steady run that identified the new form of Zombie one could identify with time to think. She was moving before the man had made it a metre onto the beach, Matt right behind her.
She sprinted over the sand with footfalls so light she barely brushed the sand, perfectly placed footwork putting her between the human and the Zombies so fast neither registered what was happening before it had. Her Katana described a shining silver arc in the air less than a second before she cleanly decapitated the left hand Zombie with a snapped strike, a moment before her sword drove up to the hilt into the seconds chest right through its heart. She already knew the creature wouldn't fall to the attack, she had something else in mind.
"BITCH!" snapped the Zombie, almost seeming to gasp in pain at the massive injury in its chest, even as its head snapped forwards to tear a chunk from her forearm. She back flipped and landed a double-footed kick to its chin before it even got close, shattering its jaw and stunning even the Undead creature for a long moment, the thing falling to its backside even as she smoothly landed on her feet, her balance flawless, her control perfect. Her sword came free as it fell and she slashed across both its arms just above elbow level, both of its forearms falling loose to the ground with a spurt of blood. They bled, that was new.
It growled at her, any traces of humanity it had left gone along with both of its lower arms and its jaw. It started to try and stand up-Matt's crowbar pulverised its head with such force its collarbone and ribcage collapsed inwards, the creatures head being driven deep into its chest even as it was turned into a sick splash and smear of bone, blood and brain, features and its eyes simply disintegrating in front of her.
"That felt far too good, stop playing with your food Song. What about him?" asked Matt, nodding towards the terrified man who had stopped running on seeing the Zombies literally cut and smashed to pieces only to start shaking like a leaf. He was obviously badly injured and in deep shock, she gave him minutes to live at best-and he had to be infected with that wound. Too bad.
"Lets ask him" replied Song, walking over to the man, making a point of not cleaning her bloody weapons. Matt followed, after taking a moment to wrench free his crowbar.
"Hello? HELLO!" snapped Song, before slapping the man so hard she span him right around. Subtlety and her were distant cousins except when it came to the kill. If you couldn't accept the reality you didn't belong in her world. The slap worked, the mans glazed eyes cleared, but he didn't stop trembling.
"S-sorry, not quite... Sorry, I've just-my family just died in front of me. I-I saw them get eaten alive..." said the man, with a voice which sounded so dead and detached she almost wondered if she should check him for a pulse. She didn't, she'd seen this and worse before, seeing your loved one's get sliced into strings of thin meat in front of your eyes would do that.
"Your already dead, so I need you to listen to me carefully. Anyone injured by one of those things is infected by what created them and will become one of them shortly afterwards, there is no cure or possibility of survival. If you saw your family die, be glad that that's the worst that happened to them. Understand?" asked Song, in her usual blunt style of speaking which, as usual, got Matt glaring at her.
"Now, my friend and I are still alive and intend to get out of here alive, one way or the other. We need sturdy transportation, a means of communication, preferably to the mainland, hand-held and, most important, a way to get the attention of any survivors so that they'll gather wherever we are when we find that way out. Give us these things and I'll help you. Talk" said Song, dead-cold eyes slicing into the mans terrified ones.
"Oh...oh my God and sweet mercy, no...how-no, never mind. Screw that, these bastards killed my family, they're not getting anyone else. Car keys for a black people carrier holding six and boot space in my left pocket, map in the glove compartment, a mile from here through the forest. I have a Satellite phone and charger in the back, but you'll need to charge it up before use. I came here on a tour ship with a hundred people an hour ago, no way it left yet, main docks, called the Quest, I think a novice could run it" said the man fast, clutching his injured hand as tightly as he could, blood continuing to pour down from his hand regardless, slowly pooling under him. His face was going grey as time went on, he was dead on his feet but was rushing to get it all out in time.
"One thing you have to know: to get there, you'll have to go through Honolulu. I just tried, five of us including my Wife, me and two young adult children, one young child. There are hundreds of these things, maybe thousands, everywhere in there and more are coming out of the woodwork every time you look around. They tore us to pieces and ate us alive, there is nowhere safe any more. If you get moving, keep going and don't stop, not even for your mother, or your dead. Good luck, I've run out myself. Now do-" he said, but Song's Katana took his head from his shoulders before he finished speaking in a single clean cut.
She looked at Matt steadily, then shook her head slowly. "Best day of my life? Last day of my life. Husband missing, presumed dead... Matt, if we get out of this alive by some trick through the Devil's eyes I'm going to do something so terrible it will go down in history along with whoever is responsible for this" said Song, slowly.
"Can I help?" asked Matt, raising an eyebrow.
Washington DC, the USA, 17:39
Threshold Command Headquarters
The Threshold headquarters building was a five-storey tall dark-black stone and steel building, where limited external access was granted by doors sealed by computer locks controlled from the inside except in an emergency and through very specifically placed windows constructed without exception of bullet-proof glass. The building was essentially a fortress, built to withstand a 7.6 earthquake and repel almost every conventional form of physical assault short of Bunker Bombs or larger, steel reinforced foot-thick walls, armoured windows and doors all being designed to make penetration of the building as hard and costly as physically possible. A first-rate Security force of Special Forces veteran soldiers assigned directly by the Pentagon made sure that slip ups and mistakes didn't happen where security was concerned, at least in terms of physical security.
The inside of the building was the same design, but massive double thickness steel doors could seal every internal area away from the rest of the structure while blast proof Bunkers existed for staff to retreat to in an alert situation. Finally, thanks to the big buildings ultra-modern state-of-the-art construction, computer access and secure communications were available everywhere to check the situation, the nature of the threat and communicate information, messages and Orders as required. In a Crash situation, if the Master Alarm was hit, every single entrance and exit Locked and Sealed in five minutes, Bunkers were completely secured in ten and the entire building switched over to Emergency Power provided by secure internal generators, making it impossible for anyone to enter or exit without high-grade explosives while the buildings automated systems supplied air, prepared panic stores supplying food, water and other necessities for three days if required. However, no-one could imagine a situation where, given the Master Alarms instant E-Mailed SOS sent direct to the Pentagon, the situation could possibly continue for longer a day at most.
The woman called Giselle, sometimes known as "Delphi", was discovering new possibilities every time she stepped around a corner or took a step forwards, literally. She'd known a long time ago that anyone who said they'd seen and done it all was either a fool or a liar, but this was making even her think twice. Her black hair hung lank, soaked with sweat about her shoulders, chest and back as she moved through the still air, her grey eyes tracking through the dull red Emergency Lighting every possibility of movement or action. A shabby, sleeveless white t-shirt, worn jeans and comfortable black shoes were all she wore, all that she'd had time to throw on when the Master Alarm went off just after midday.
She held a pocket flashlight in her left hand, a Glock 9MM Semi-Automatic in her right as she crossed her hands to be sure of straight ahead and a clean, quick shot as necessary, a second Glock being holstered on her right hip while an MP-5 was slung across her back, a bandolier of grenades across her chest. She was lacking in any other gear, bar two reloads for each weapon in her pockets, excepting the headset communicator she had repeatedly tried to raise assistance on, with no success. She was sure that not everyone was dead, but all computer access was denied so establishing exactly what had happened and how-who was still alive, even-was an impossibility. Every system was utterly corrupted, the only possible explanation she'd been able to logically assemble being that a combined massive physical and cybernetic assault had catastrophically compromised Threshold to an unknown degree. She couldn't even progress from room to room without considerable difficulty, let alone floor to floor. For all of her skills and knowledge, manually overriding a ruined computer system which no longer recognised even basic commands and system prompts took time. Often, a fair amount.
Then there was the...odd state of the bodies she'd found so far to be considered. Threshold was the primary holding facility for HEV variants, stable ones at any rate, Umbrella's experimental leftovers and cast-offs, brought here to be studied and dealt with as necessary. They should all have been completely contained and Locked Down, especially with the Master Alarm hit, but she didn't know of much else which could do so much damage that parts of the dead were left hanging from the ceiling after one punch...
...Scrrr...scretch...
She heard them before she saw them, skittering claws sounding on steel floors and walls. She'd fought a War with things like that for over a year, you didn't mistake them for anything else after seeing them once, let alone hearing them as well. She turned about smoothly and took her flash in her teeth as she drew her second Glock, preparing herself.
Lickers. Shaped like a great cat without tail, skin or eyes with a huge brain set atop an even bigger tube mouth surrounded by massive, razor fangs for a head, its tube mouth could literally "fire" an eight-foot tongue at its prey, a tongue so strong that it could gut or punch a hole through right through a human body, even solid wood, without real effort. They were all dead and destroyed now, gone with Umbrella itself two years ago, she'd been there to see it happen. So how could it be happening here? Now? There was no answer she could ascertain right now to that one-
A pink shape came at her fast, all six massive forepaw claws extended, mouth open wide to extend its tongue. Both guns snapped up, fired point blank into its face and chest with armour-piercing rounds that shredded meat, muscle and bone as fast as quick, agile fingers could pull the triggers. Its brain exploded even before it hit the floor, dead. Another came at her left, its tongue snapped out and missed her by an inch as she ducked and rolled with almost inhuman speed and grace. She fired one gun into its flank before it could turn, brought the other around and emptied both into the Licker before it could attack again. It flipped onto its back even as it came around, its legs jerked, it spasmed, then lay still. Its guts and vital areas ruined, it was dead-
A deafening roar suddenly echoed from overhead somewhere, on the top level of the Threshold building since she was on the fourth working her way upstairs from the second. It was followed by an explosion so great that the entire building shook, which should have been almost impossible and made her wonder if the entire fifth level had been blown clean off of the building for a moment, before she realised what had to have happened. The Security Station on each level was fully equipped and arrayed with a massive variety of arms, ammunition and explosives to cover any conceivable situation that could arise concerning both Security and possible HEV threats should any possibly arise. Given the nature of the possible threats posed, this meant that the weaponry and explosives available were...considerable. Which meant that some creature had just blown up the fifth level Security Station for whatever reason, most likely blowing itself straight to Hell in the process.
Well, with weapons, gear, ammunition and equipment that would have been available on the fifth level gone, her job became both harder and easier. Harder, because she could unquestionably have used everything that had just been so catastrophically destroyed. Easier, because anything carrying a weapon big enough to cause a significant enough detonation to blow the entire Security Station was a very serious threat, but it had to have dealt with itself with the blast it had caused. It didn't change the fact that she had to reach Threshold Command, in the secure Bunker area on the fifth floor, regardless, just to find out what was going on, let alone what had happened...
"...Skkkrrrk...Can anyone hear me? Repeatt...kkk...Can anyone hear me? This is Molly Caffrey, Threshold Director, broadcasting an all-channel alert to anyone who can receive this signal. If able, respond immediate. Repeat, immediate. Can anyone hear me? This is...kk" a voice suddenly called out over her headset. It was such a shock it almost made her jump, but didn't. Molly's voice would never do that to her.
"Molly? This is Delphi, I copy. Please stop broadcasting an all-point SOS in my ears and tell me just what is going on" replied Giselle, reloading both pistols with her only spare magazines. She was going to have to break into the Security Station on this level herself to get reloads.
"...Skks...Giselle? Oh, thank God...no, no time. Listen to me carefully. There is a Nemesis Unit deployed and loose inside the building, heavily armed, using broadcast scramblers and jammers to ruin all of our systemssZZ... We have suffered a Cybernetic Armageddon that triggered the Emergency Alarm as a Failsafe, which wasrrrKK ktigned to release every holding cell prisoner. There is good reason to believe that at least some of the HEV prisoners are loose in the building as well. Full Lockdown means that they haven't escaped, but it might just mean that were all dead. The Nemesis is on the fifth floor, I repeat fifth, and is attempting to breach command as we speak. Should it succeed it may be able to access central comp and initiate Lockdown Override where we can't. Our only option to stop this is Self-Destruct, so I am ordering you to find a way to evacuate the facility as fast as you can. Before you ask, so much of Security was wiped out in the initial attack that what's left isn't a force. Do you know anything we should? Over" asked Caffrey.
"Only that there are Mutations loose in the building as well. I just killed two Lickers, Molly, on level four. There's a Nemesis Tyrant on level five? Zombies on the other levels which operate and kill like I've never seen before? They speak, use weapons, are intelligent? Add the cybernetics attack here and this becomes a full-scale assault, one which opens a War we can't loose. I can reach level five and might just be able to deal with the Tyrant, unless its new and improved as well. Hold on in there for a while yet, Molly. Delphi out" replied Giselle, just as she heard something new.
A snigger, a suggestion of a laugh. The quick clatter of fast footsteps on steel floor, as though someone light footed wearing hard shoes or boots was nearby. Then a voice, feminine, so familiar... "On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me..." sang a voice she knew. Who, though? Who-? No. She was dead...
Giselle didn't register the flicker of steel before a knife buried itself hilt-deep in the small of her back. Even as she fell to hands and knees, though, burning agony hotter than Hell spreading out across her back, down her arms and up her neck, she didn't scream. There would have been no point, anyway. She stepped into view properly even as Giselle's strength drained out of her through the terrible wound in her back, blood drenching her back and legs.
Red cocktail dress, short-cut black hair, slanted brown eyes and sharp, beautiful features that spoke of her mixed-race heritage. Ada Wong. A woman who was dead, who had died twice, once in Raccoon City in 1998, again at Umbrella Headquarters, Paris, in 2002. The first time, wounded and weakened by rampaging monsters, exhaustion, increasing illness and a massive gunshot wound, she'd apparently fallen to her death despite all attempts to save her-only she hadn't died, thanks to Albert Wesker. In Paris, Giselle had shot the love of her life in the back at point-blank range and blow her heart out of her chest before watching her fall six storeys straight down into Hell. She-was-dead...
Ada raised a gun and fired casually, almost without aiming. The bullet shredded Giselle's left cheek, exposing teeth and bone while almost ripping out her eye, blood and gore exploding outwards and inwards as Giselle involuntarily gagged in reflex as her self-control nearly failed her, swallowing parts of herself as blood flooded her mouth. The shot should have blasted her over sideways and would have knocked most people unconscious at the very least, would have put nine out of ten people in deep Shock. Giselle wasn't most people, never had been. She stayed kneeling on her hands and knees even as her face slowly fell off of her head, blood turning the floor under her into a crimson pool even as it was decorated with parts of her in a way which would have sickened a Mortician who saw worse than death every day. She knew now she was going to die here, as even the simple act of spitting out thick, choking blood made her almost faint with the pain...
"What's the matter, Giselle?" asked Ada, casually. "That hurt?" Giselle was barely even conscious, let alone aware, but she was always the first to register anything at all everyone missed otherwise. She didn't miss the fact that Ada's eyes glowed red even as she spoke...
Paris, France, 01:03
Not that many people were desperate enough for any reason to disturb Jianna Torres when she was on Leave, fewer were willing or even capable of considering disturbing her when she was on Vacation. So few people knew of her existence even now, let alone the truth about her nature and what her job description really was, that the list of people who could and would disturb her was in single figures around the world. That meant, to her, that she got to enjoy her holidays.
At the moment, the city of Paris was wishing that she didn't. So far, the casualties had reached a hundred and fifty dead, two hundred wounded, twenty-two missing. A nightclub had been so completely gutted by fire that it had collapsed in on itself but the fire had shown streets drowning in blood, deformed bodies, bits and pieces of people everywhere, scenes from Hell that had had a thousand people calling the Emergency Services to report that France was being invaded.
The first to arrive had been Police Special Weapons teams, who had thrown up everywhere before trying to arrest the only upright survivor of the nightmare melee. After Jianna had produced the Threshold ID she was under instructions to carry in case of emergency at all times, the Police commander had completely lost his temper. Once Jianna had let go of him, he'd agreed to not use such terms to describe her again, taken a Statement and let her return to her Hotel, leaving him and the arriving Fire and Ambulance teams to clean up the mess. Jianna had been unable to reach Threshold by any means at all since, having tried several times using every communication trick and channel she knew, an extensive list.
Finally, ready to throw the phone out of the window having discovered that none of the former SOC soldiers, S.T.A.R.S. officers or "special" people she knew were answering either, she gritted her teeth and made the one call she could which would be answered. She hated dealing with these people, they always decided that you owed them favours or a job-or two-just for information supplied.
"Fallen Angel, Clearance Level 6, pass-code 0010976, requesting immediate connection with Lucifer" she spat out when the call connected, hating just having to say the words. Her Clearance and pass-code were verified in thirty seconds, after which she was passed directly to "Lucifer", the Agent who ran the CIA's Black Ops operations from an area beneath Langley which didn't officially exist, suitable for a man who had quit intelligence work when Regan came to power and "died" in 1990 in a catastrophic car accident that had left only DNA to identify him with. She'd done a few jobs for him, so she knew that he had sources no one else did and, more importantly, that he was always right. She needed information that the Presidents Chief of Staff was the lowest ranking member of the Government to have access to and couldn't go through channels, so she was being forced into extreme methods.
"Well, well...The Fallen Angel herself, calling the Devil stuck in his little dark pit. Is this a request or a question scenario?" came the digitally disguised voice of Lucifer, after a series of hisses and clicks brought all of the anti-surveillance, tracking-blocking, scanning and recording equipment the line always used on-line. She always wondered if he knew that, with her senses, none of it mattered. She could have picked him out of a crowd of people with a single word with her eyes shut.
"It's a question and shut up, this is very serious. You know who I work for now, so here's what you don't know. Central Paris looks like a War Zone because I just destroyed a building and had to kill over a hundred people with my bare hands after G-Virus variant Zombies, a new breed who think, speak and use weapons, came after me publicly. I tried to call in to my employer using every way I know how and nothing worked, I can't even get an automated response and there's only one reason that would happen" said Jianna, pausing to make sure she had everything straight.
"It gets worse. I can reach former SOC, S.T.A.R.S. and special survivors, veterans of the Umbrella Wars, at any time I want, wherever they are in the world. All of them. Right now, I can't reach any of them. Do you understand what I am telling you here?" asked Jianna, sharply.
"Jianna, get on a plane and get to Washington D.C right now. I ran a systems check while you were talking and even the Threshold Homepage is down. That can't happen unless all systems there are totally compromised. I can't get a reply any more than you can and that, from me, is in the next universe after freaking impossible. Threshold is completely shut down and locked away yet no alarms have gone off, anywhere, you understand me? Can't help you yet with the missing Vets, but believe me, I'll find out. I'll have someone you trust waiting for you at DC International. Good luck" replied Lucifer, before putting the phone down.
She stopped and stared at the phone for long seconds, almost worried for one of very few times in her life. Lucifer never, ever wished someone luck unless something catastrophic or Apocalyptic was occurring-or was going to...
The coast of Spain, 03:30Leon Kennedy waded ashore from the edges of the beach and collapsed as though he'd reached the end of the world. In the past six hours he'd fought for his life on a ship infested with a new kind of Zombie, run around a sinking ship effectively single-handedly restoring enough electrical power to send an all-points SOS and a breakdown of events to any receiving, run a damaged lifeboat which was the only one left relatively intact into the water from that sinking ship with the three other survivors aboard only to have it turn turtle, flood and sink a hundred metres off shore, then finally had to watch all of those other survivors get swept away and drowned one by one as he was forced to swim for his life.
He'd killed dozens, including the shapes of people who'd once been friends of his. He'd lost everyone and everything, bar one person, including, of all people, the kidnapped Presidents daughter, who it was his express duty to guard and keep safe...
He felt so broken up inside and out, even without his actual physical and mental injuries after a four year War with Umbrella Corporation fighting things from Hell followed by the further injuries he'd received during the battle on the ship and then on trying to survive its sinking, that it really was all that he could do just to stand up. It didn't change the fact that he didn't want to ever stand up again, let alone walk on and fight the good fight...
He smiled bitterly. He had to, though, didn't he? Beating the odds, no matter how impossible, fighting the good fight to the bitter end, winning despite all odds somehow... So many people had called him a hero since the War had ended, he must be one then, right? No, wrong. He was just a dreadfully tired young man who had given his all to defeat a terrible enemy so truly evil, so complete an abomination, that if it hadn't been done he would have lived no longer than it took him to put his gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.
He could never have lived with himself if he hadn't done what he had to do, that was the one thing he had left to keep his mind in one piece after everything he'd been through. That was the real reason he'd left the S.T.A.R.S. for the Secret Service after the War, he had to get away from all of that, from everyone who'd ever been a part of that. To go back would be to kill himself another way, his mind would go once and for all or maybe his body-or maybe he would find himself travelling on a final journey deep inside, into the Abyss, a journey which would change him forever and take away from him once and for all, for always, the man he had once been and wanted to be again, desperately?
He was still thinking of that when he saw the smoke rising up ahead, when his stumbling footsteps brought into his sight the savaged, bloodily broken body of Serena Baccarin. Blood coated the Assassins body, he could see bones and smashed organs, mutilated flesh, a grenade had to have gone off on top of her to do this kind of damage...
He spotted the small handheld computer in the bush a few feet away, managed to fish it out and, with some difficulty, got the message to display.
Las Plagas
What the Hell were they? Or-worse-who?
Safety and freedom were all an illusion, no one was safe, he knew that now. Steeling himself as best he could, he forced his body to respond properly and began to stride towards the smoke, weapon held high and ready. One last time into the breach...
How did that old saying go?
"Damned if you do, damned if you don't"
Welcome to Hell, Leon Kennedy. Sometimes, it waits for you...
(Never)THE END