Title: Final Illuminations
Author: Malenkaya
Rating: R for violence and swearing
Summary: RE movie fanfiction. In this sequel to "Fading Away" and "Into the Light", Alice, Michael, Rain and J.D continue in their efforts to defeat Umbrella, finding along the way new allies, new enemies—and new hope for Matthew Addison.
Disclaimer: I'm feeling daring, so I'm not going to post one. Ever again! So ha ha. If, strangely and ironically, I disappear from due to this heinous offence, I will be found under "TMonkey".
Feedback: Please! I live and breathe reviews! Flames, as long as they're explanatory, are fine.
Author's Notes:
Ten reviews, wow! I'd like to thank the following for their wonderful reviews of chapter three: DarkPrincessPyro99, XMaster, rain1657, sarahvspsycheotic, masked-in-your-shadows, Violet Eternity, Kim Hughes, FREAKSHOW1, Gabzilla, and Sakura123; I really appreciate it. Please keep reviewing:)
Now, about this chapter—I wrote it in two hours on October 16th, and seriously considered posting it early before ultimately deciding not to:) Anyways, it is short—barely eight pages—but I, for one, love it. I really do. That may be conceited, but I am really enjoying writing this right now—after a massive replanning in September, I'm really confident about where this story is and where it's going to go.
Also.. has anyone been watching LOST? Michelle Rodriguez is a regular actress on the second season, and it's a really good show itself, so… you should watch :)
Also, congratulate me, I got a job! My first really big job (even though it's just as a waitress). It's been really fun, and updates will continue the best I can manage—I actually find myself wanting to write more often now that I have so much less time to do so, LOL.
Also, something I'm curious about—does anyone in here know of any music they feel fits in particularly well with the whole trilogy or characters? I only ask because I just realized I tend to listen to the same group of songs when I'm writing and reading, LOL, for pretty much anything, and wondered if anyone else did the same.
Anyway, sorry about the lengthy author notes this time! Chapter five will be updated on November 11th.
Chapter Four: Descending Into Hell
In all anticipated mistakes, all possible scenarios of exactly how and why this mission could have gone wrong, Alice had never expected it all to happen so fast.
One moment they'd been in the van, watching Alexei wander around, seemingly confused as he searched for his contact—and in the next, the van doors had been thrown open and they'd been invaded by Umbrella agents that had overwhelmed them in seconds.
They should have posted a guard by the van. They should have paid more attention. Alice should have demanded Alexei inform them all about his contact, in every aspect, so she and her team could at least understand what the hell had happened inside there.
But she hadn't done any of those things, and it was too late now to try.
Michael had escaped—he'd fought valiantly, with astounding bravery only recently acquired so fully, but in the end he'd had to run. For some reason—something Alice didn't want to think about, especially not now—they'd been careful to keep her alive, but Michael was nothing other than a loose end to them.
She could only hope the other three had managed to escape as well.
At the current moment, she was being hustled down Umbrella's hallways, filled with glass and marble, both breathtakingly beautiful and chillingly cold. There were two guards on either side of her, and while those two would have been no problem to take out, the gun sticking into the small of her back behind her eliminated any possibility of escape.
Alice didn't bother trying to ask questions—she didn't expect answers, and she didn't care.
All she had wanted was the anti-virus and an end to this mess—
And now, she was too busy worrying about her team to even think of that anymore.
Her entourage turned another corner, finally stopping in front of a tall, heavy set of wooden doors, woven through with glimmering bits of the same glass and marble that lined every hallway.
There was a keypad by the door, and the guard pressed his hand into the screen provided without a word, Alice watching closely.
The screen flashed blue, and he typed in a series of numbers—despite covering the keyboard with his hand, Alice was able to catch a glimpse of the numbers: 4, 7, 3, 2, 1, 9.
When he caught her look, he sneered, "Don't bother looking, Parks, it's not going to do you any good."
She raised her chin, giving him a look both bored and haughty—he wasn't worth her time, and she knew he knew it as well as she did.
He only scowled at her as the doors slid open and they hustled her inside, halting directly in front of the door.
There was a man inside the room—sitting, tied into to a chair, and Alice felt her heart jump with the thought that it could be Matt there, still alive and waiting for her, before she realized the idiocy of the thought and pushed it out of her mind.
And then she took a closer look, at the pale face and green eyes beneath the man's blood and tears, and let out an involuntary sound of shock. "Anderson?"
James Anderson looked up, his face a mask of guilt and sorrow, and babbled, "I'm sorry, Alice, I didn't want to—"
"But unfortunately, the poor man didn't have a choice."
Another voice in the room, and Alice looked away to see another man enter the room.
She had never seen him before, but looking at his dark hair, the pale blue eyes, the cold arrogance in his assured expression, recognized him instantly.
Vincent Crawford.
And then the pieces were falling into place, forcing themselves into her recognition as if she'd known them all along—James had been Alexei's contact, and something had happened, someone had made the choice to betray them all—whether Alexei or James had made the call, Alice didn't know.
It didn't matter.
What mattered now was that their plan had been fucked up, had fallen apart out of nowhere, and Crawford had been behind it all.
They'd never had a chance.
She could feel tears stinging the back of her eyes, and blinked them back—now wasn't the time to get emotional.
"Crawford," she said simply, and took pride in the cool steadiness of her voice.
He inclined his head, acknowledging her smoothly. "Alice."
The sound of her name on his tongue was cold, eerie, and somehow so very wrong—like in saying it alone, he had stolen a piece of her, and Alice shivered inwardly.
He nodded towards his office. "Would you like to come in and have a seat?" he asked politely, and she marveled at the sinister quality he managed to interject into every kind, polite thing he had said so far.
"I'll stand," Alice said coldly, "Thanks."
The guards' grip on her upper arm tightened, and she tensed, ready to put up a last fight if necessary—
"There will be no need for that, Haddock," Crawford snapped at the guard, and Alice could almost feel the fear from the guard as he not only loosened his grip, but let go of her entirely.
They all backed away from her, as if leaving her completely to Crawford, and the action only made Alice feel more vulnerable.
When Crawford turned to look at her again, his expression was one of the slightest amusement. "I have a few questions for you, Alice."
Alice folded her arms across her chest, raising an eyebrow at him and giving him a cool smile. "I'm sure you've realized by now I won't be giving you any answers."
At this, Crawford actually laughed—and it had the effect he had obviously wanted, because Alice cringed, but didn't back down, glaring at him now.
"Good," he said, an almost proud tone in his voice. "There'll be time later to… convince you."
Alice didn't know what he meant by the comment—she didn't care.
By that time, she planned to be far, far away from here, with Umbrella reduced to ruble.
"In the mean time," Crawford announced, as if seeing right through her silent demeanor, "We'll take a little field trip."
He smiled at her, and the malicious intent practically pouring out of him enveloped Alice in it's grip, chilling her to the core, and she realized that no matter what they were going to see now—she probably would have preferred the torture.
xxxxx
"So what are we going to do?" J.D asked finally.
They were still in the forest, on the outskirts of the corporation. The sun had already risen far into the sky by now, and Michael was burning in the all-black clothing covering him practically from head to toe.
He shrugged when J.D stared at him—despite his words earlier, he had no idea where to begin, and J.D turned an accusing stare on Demitrov.
"Well?" he asked, and Demitrov glared up at him.
"First?" he asked, his Russian accent thickened with fear and pain. "I'm wrapping up my fucking ankle, J.D."
J.D scowled. "Well, that's productive."
"And standing there blaming everyone else is?" Demitrov shot back at him, and although Michael normally would have tried to intercept the argument by now, he agreed with the comment.
"You're the one who said he knew what he was doing," J.D said darkly. "You're the reason this whole thing fell apart, and you're the reason Rain and Alice are still inside."
Demitrov gave him a look of pure exasperation. "Didn't we just go over this five seconds ago?" he demanded to no one in particular.
"You didn't have an answer then, either!" J.D fired back as an answer.
Despite his injured ankle, Demitrov stood and faced J.D; even two inches shorter than J.D he somehow managed to tower over him as he said, the same darkness leaking into his own voice, "Do you want to know who's fault this is, Salinas?"
True to his nature, J.D didn't back down. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"If we had gotten out of there when I made the call," Demitrov told him, his tone both condescending and apoplectic, "Instead of standing around and arguing, thanks to your idiocy, we wouldn't have gotten trapped, we wouldn't have gotten separated, and Rain wouldn't have gotten shot."
His tone took a turn towards absolute disgust as he added finally, "You want to know who's to blame for this Salinas? Try looking in the fucking mirror."
It was one of the only things Demitrov had probably ever said that actually got J.D's attention—clearly at a loss, expression battling between guilt and fury, he had absolutely nothing to say.
So he punched Demitrov instead.
Michael stood immediately, ready to intervene—
But didn't have to.
Despite his twisted ankle, Demitrov barely faltered—he only stumbled back briefly, and when J.D came at him with his fists raised, didn't even bother fighting back.
Instead, he shoved J.D back, hard, and shouted, "Fuck off, Salinas!"
It had no effect on J.D, and Demitrov grabbed the collar of his shirt in both hands, yanking him towards him and saying, his voice emphatic and furious, "You want to help Rain and Alice, J.D? Back the fuck off and start working on an actual plan that doesn't involve blaming every other goddamn person besides yourself."
J.D looked shaken, and Michael felt a strong wave of pity go through him—he was close to Rain, was protective of her—and with Alice missing too, everything had fallen apart drastically fast.
Demitrov let J.D go, stepping back, his expression back to one of exhaustion and disgust as he added, "This shit isn't important right now."
Still looking stunned, J.D nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said, his tone full of guilt and weariness. "Yeah, Demitrov, you're right."
Demitrov gave a satisfied nod. "Damn rights I am," he muttered under his breath, dropping back down onto the ground and reaching out to Michael with a scowl. "Give me the damn tape, Cahill."
Michael did so, unable to stifle a small smile.
Rage probably wasn't the best way to start expressing himself, but finally, Demitrov was starting to drop the icy walls around him—and in the end, that was only going to help them more.
There was a short, companionable silence as the three men, united by one common goal, finally began to focus on the problem at hand—
And then the gunfire erupted.
xxxxx
There was no pain.
She had just been shot twice, in the fucking abdomen, and there was no pain.
Of course, that was probably due to the fact that they were obviously tranquilizer darts—and right now, Rain was well on her way to complete unconsciousness.
She was lying sprawled out on the cold floor, shivering uncontrollably; there was blood on her stomach, trickling down her sides like cool, icy raindrops, and her head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
Through hazy vision, she could see Umbrella's agents surrounding her, guns still at the ready—she was deaf to them, her ears swimming like they'd been filled with water, and with tremendous effort, she shook her head clear.
Sound trickled in, enough to hear that one of the guards was still further back, radioing in to his superior. Rain couldn't hear the answer, couldn't see the expression on the man's face as he hung up the phone, didn't know whether the news was going to be good or bad for her.
One of the agents shoved a booted foot down onto her abdomen, turning her over—she let out an involuntary cry of pain, biting her lip to silence it.
And then the questions began.
She couldn't even keep track of them all—the words washed over her in a jumble of incessant questions and shouted threats, and she could feel herself shaking again, in a combination of rage and fear.
And then, finally: "Tell us about Alexei Demitrov."
The question was completely unexpected, and she forced her eyes open again, trying to focus on the hazy vision swimming in front of her.
They seemed to note the change in focus, and one leaned in front of her, his face almost directly over hers—she tried to scowl at him, but couldn't focus on him clearly enough to know whether she was glaring at him or the fucking wall.
"Tell us," the same man repeated, his voice now both distinctly threatening and eager, "About Alexei Demitrov."
Rain wondered blearily what he wanted to know—she wondered if one of these men had been the contact Alexei had been so sure he'd kept carefully secret.
She swallowed slightly, trying to get the dryness out of her throat, and then spoke, carefully enunciating the single word: "No."
Even through vision growing consistently more bleary, she could see the man scowl—
And then he hit her across the face, and even though she could see the other men moving forward, presumably to do the same, she was unconscious before her head hit the floor.
xxxxx
If there was anything Alice had learnt about the inner workings of the Umbrella corporation today, it was that every single fucking pathway looked the exact same.
It made it hard to concentrate on where she was going, especially with the hurried pace they kept up throughout—probably to discourage her from trying to figure out where they were going.
But despite the hurried pace, she was heartened to see the code was apparently the same at every door, and by the time they reached the door they'd been heading for, the numbers had already been burned firmly into her mind.
4, 7, 3, 2, 1, 9.
They stopped, this time in front of a set of high, deeply set glass doors—Crawford looked back, for what reason, Alice couldn't tell—and then, producing a key from his pocket, inserted into the lock and pushed the doors open.
As they passed through, Alice looked up at the words clearly embedded, in fine gold print, into the glass, and felt a sickening sense of dread.
Umbrella Corporation Laboratory.
They passed through the doors, walking down a seemingly endless hallway—there were windows set on either side of them, searching into separate laboratory rooms, and Alice felt a chill run through her as she was reminded instantly of the room she'd woken up in after the Hive incident.
"Matt!"
Her own screams were echoing inside her head again, and she pushed back tears, not wanting to think about him—not now, when she had a sinking suspicion she already knew what Crawford was taking her to see.
While most of the rooms contained basic medical laboratories, filled with people producing and packaging different varieties of chemical solutions, a few were filled with test subjects, both animals, and people, and Alice felt sick looking inside the rooms.
Some of the people were caged, screaming and crying; others were clearly too far gone to bother, staring dismally out the window at her, their gazes both accusing and fearful—but few were fighting back, seeming to understand, despite their will to survive, that it was already far too late to try.
Alice looked away.
She only looked up again when they stopped, staring at Crawford instead of through the window in front of them.
He gave her an icy smile that didn't reach his eyes, nodding towards the room, and with the resigned air of a prisoner prepared for execution, Alice looked inside.
It wasn't what she had been expecting.
Hades was inside, locked in a cryogenic chamber—icy vapors spreading up around him, the monstrosity curled into itself as if seeking protection.
Peering past the chamber, Alice could see the message written into the labeling board.
Execution Date: November 10th.
She looked to Crawford for explanation, and he smiled blandly at her. "Unfortunately," he said coolly, "Hades wasn't up to our standards."
Alice stared at him for a moment before turning her gaze back to the mutation inside the room.
Unconsciously, her hand flew to her ring finger, where she twisted the gold ring sitting there still carefully around her finger.
She had meant to get rid of it, but had never gotten around to it—and she felt a wave of sorrow go through her for her husband.
They hadn't parted on good terms, and Spence, in the end, hadn't been a good person—but nobody deserved this fate.
And despite the guilt it brought about, she felt an overwhelming sense of relief that it was only this Crawford had brought her to see.
If he thought this was going to gain a reaction out of her, he was dead wrong.
"Fortunately," Crawford continued, when she turned to raise an eyebrow at him, "We had something much better planned."
The icy chill returned with full force, and she could feel herself paling, all available retorts disappearing instantly as he smirked at her before turning, leading their continuing march down the hallway.
xxxxx
With no ceremony or grandeur, Thomas Robinson slipped the syringe he held in one gloved hand into the chemical solution he held in the other, carefully drawing it into the needle.
He had, after all, done it before. Many times.
The task done, he turned to look at the test subject on the floor where it lay, cringing and shivering.
He stifled a sigh—the subject's behavior was pathetic, and it was at times like this he had to remind himself what he was doing was ultimately going to benefit society.
No matter how many test subjects they had to sacrifice in order to do so.
He gave a short nod to the lab technicians on either side of them, and they hurried forward to take care of the test subject.
Despite their titles, laboratory technicians in Umbrella were merely glorified henchmen.
It was the doctors, in the end—like himself—who truly made a difference.
The two technicians dragged the test subject forward, kicking and screaming, crying like a child despite the fact he was over twenty seven years old already.
It was fascinating, that the virus had caused his mental stature to debilitate so completely, reducing him to the mental, emotional, physical state of a child.
When they had strapped the subject down to the chair in front of him, Doctor Robinson stepped forward, jabbing the syringe into his neck with no precision or gentleness.
In his experience with this subject, he found it ultimately yielded better results.
With a flick of his thumb, he emptied the adrenaline into the subject's system, yanking it out and stepping back to view his results.
The crying stopped instantly, but the screaming began anew, as what had formerly been a human subject rippled grotesquely, his features changing, the skin darkening and hardening to muddy brown, swamp green scales inching over his body.
The thick tubes and metal piping they'd added at a later date, to pack more blood and adrenaline into it's system, leaving it's body cavity free to build more muscle mass, appeared next, twisting around him in a careful web of added technology.
Finally, all expression, all innocence disappeared entirely and then, and only then, Thomas Robinson smiled in satisfaction.
He was looking at Nemesis now.
And then the monster attacked.
xxxxx
The doctor went flying, sending the two assistants with him as Nemesis tore into them, screaming fury, that same hideous scream Alice had been forced to listen to the whole entirety of her time in the metal systems underneath the Hive.
The same screams that had haunted her nightmares for the last three months.
Tears burned behind her eyes, but she held them back, glaring balefully at Crawford as he smiled at her, real amusement in his eyes this time.
How fucking characterized it was of him—that the only time he gave a real smile, broke the ice shielding his every emotion, was at her pain.
And Matt's.
Nemesis broke, tearing for the doctor again—with no false play at bravery, the man grabbed one of his assistants, throwing him at Nemesis instead.
With barely any effort, Nemesis threw the assistant to the floor, tearing into him with one massive hand, adorned with a row of silvery claws—the man screamed, writhing on the floor, and Alice felt like she was going to be sick.
Taking advantage of Nemesis's momentary distraction, the doctor grabbed a syringe of the table, whipping around and stabbing it into Nemesis's neck, just like he'd shoved it into Matt's.
The anti-virus, Alice thought, in almost hysterical desperation, It's right there.
And for once, her desperation wasn't misplaced.
The effects were instantaneous—Nemesis fell to the floor, and within moments, its screams were replaced with loud sobs as Matt reappeared.
He scuttled backwards, with both hands and feet in a crablike fashion, obviously desperate to get away from the blood that was pouring out of the man on the ground in front of him.
He was naked, innocent and lost like a child, and the guards with her were snickering, pounding on the window and making jokes—Crawford was allowing them to, she could feel his self-satisfied smirk as he stared at her, watching her reaction carefully.
She almost held it together.
But then Matt turned his terrified gaze to the window, obviously looking for the source of the noise, and locked eyes with her.
The dam inside her broke immediately, tears flooding down her face as she stared back at him, witnessing his complete lack of comprehension, the alertness and love she had always seen in that gaze replaced by utter fear and despair.
"Matt," she whispered, and then, forgetting herself entirely, screamed, "Matt!"
Matt only stared at her, tears stopped momentarily in his surprise, eyes a mix of terror and confusion, and it was only then she realized—
He didn't recognize her.
"Matt!" she shouted again, crying feely now, pounding on the glass, unable to stop herself, unable to face facts—as if she kept trying, he would remember.
She would make him remember.
The guards and Crawford himself made no attempt to stop her—they were still laughing, still making a mockery out of Matt, and she felt like she wanted to kill them, wanted to do something, anything, to end this.
"Matt," she sobbed, both palms against the window now, staring in at him as he stared back at her, in mute fear and a strange sort of sympathy.
He didn't recognize her.
A trauma team was rushing in now to take care of the fallen assistant, and the doctor was hurrying outside the room to speak with Crawford, but they were dead to Alice—all that mattered was Matt, was the terror and confusion written within his beautiful blue eyes.
All of the weak sentiments that they had tried to apply to his life, had tried to apply to his gravestone, were flying through her head now as she tried to regain her shaky grasp on reality and understand what was happening, finally finishing on one particularly ironical statement:
Matthew Addison—You Came From Heaven.
And descended into Hell.
And as Matt continued to sob, screaming in fear when the doctor and medical team began to approach him again, all Alice could do was cry.