"I don't believe you. Not one bit," Lucy said after Nadia and Claire had left and she and Helena were alone with Wesker, though frankly, Helena had been rendered rather useless by whatever it was that Wesker did to her so she might as well have not been there at all. Which was exactly what convinced Lucy that Wesker was lying.
They were in Wesker's office, the room brightly lit, the sterile white shade the room had been decorated with amplifying the light. The high ceilings made their voices echo a little, and Lucy spotted a red light blinking in the corner up above. Made sense, of course the offices would be monitored just like the rest of the building were.
"About what?"
"Your 'noble' motives. Maybe whatever you did will probably eventually have the desired effect, but how does that help anyone now? How does it bring the men responsible for all the evil they're doing now to justice? It doesn't. What, you think they care that eventually there will be a future where they won't have sons? I fail to see how they'd consider this a threat," Lucy scoffed.
"And what do you think you know about anything?" Wesker narrowed her eyes.
"See, here's what I think. None of this was ever your intent, not what you were going for. And honestly, it's great, what you've accomplished, I appreciate that, but it's not...the truth. If it were, you wouldn't need me. You wouldn't need her," Lucy said and nodded toward Helena who sat on the floor, slumped forward slightly, her chin resting against her chest, blood dripping from her face at slow pace, trails of it coming out from her eyes, nose, and ears.
"The fact that you insisted we come with you tells me you want something from us, you think she's got some special DNA you can play around with, and you think I'm the perfect specimen of your life's work, so you came up with this nonsense about making the world a better place in a way that I would personally feel very connected to. Am I close?" Lucy asked, and Wesker didn't respond. Just as well, Lucy supposed, what was there to say?
"Just admit it. You don't see me as kin, you're no better than the people at the DSO, no better than anyone who saw me as nothing but a lab rat or some kind of a monster to be studied."
"You're wrong," Wesker finally said, leaning closer to Lucy. "Right now, I may just be the only one who knows the truth about you, and the truth is that you are better than they are. Superior to all of the Weskers who came before you, superior to any agent the government might dream of training. With my knowledge and help, you can change the world. Imagine all the things we could accomplish together."
"If I'm superior...then what would I need you for?" Lucy asked slowly.
"For guidance, you arrogant brat. You don't even know what you're capable of, let alone how to make it all happen."
"I think I know enough for now and will learn the rest soon enough," Lucy said, snatching the syringe Wesker had tempted her with earlier, and uncapped it before inserting the needle into her arm. "All of the power, none of the side effects, right?" she asked, somewhat pointlessly at this moment since she was already injecting herself.
For a while, nothing seemed to happen. Then, slowly, a tingling sensation began to spread through her body, she felt like she was itching but underneath the skin. The itch quickly morphed into a burning sensation that felt almost unbearable until it faded away just as quickly as it had manifested.
"What exactly are you planning to do?" Wesker quirked an eyebrow, and Lucy smiled, shrugging one shoulder.
"We shall see," Lucy said and clamped her hands onto Wesker's cheeks, gripping her head tightly. The same kind of shadowy flame Wesker had used to burn Kai alive began crawling up Lucy's arms, licking the backs of her hands, and transferred from them over to Wesker's head.
The flames didn't slowly grip Wesker and grow gradually but instead, the moment they made contact with Wesker's skin, a white hot fire engulfed her head and in an instant, the flesh was ripped from the skin by the force, the charred bone cracking under Lucy's hands as she pushed harder, the cooked brain matter gooey and falling apart through Lucy's fingers. She shook off the remnants of it as Wesker's body (now without its head) slumped onto the floor.
"Now, what am I going to do with you?" Lucy muttered, wiping her hands onto her pants, turning her attention to Helena. "She really fucked you up, huh?" she continued, squatting in front of Helena, pressing her palm against Helena's forehead and pushing her head back so that she could see Helena's face. She snapped her fingers repeatedly in front of Helena's face, and she barely reacted.
"Your wife's gonna be pissed off if you go back home with permanent brain damage. Didn't you only just barely recover from the last time you got your head bashed in? For someone in a superior officer's position you sure are bad at this," Lucy chatted, moving to take a seat next to Helena, pulling her legs back toward her chest, resting her forearms on her knees.
"You got anything to eat? I'm really hungry. I'm thinking using my 'Wesker-powers' must be draining calories like crazy. You mind if I...?" she trailed off, not waiting for an answer before starting to go through Helena's pockets. She didn't discover anything to eat, but she did find Helena's cigarette case.
"You've upgraded since the last time I went through your pockets and stole your smokes," Lucy commented, inspecting the silver case. "Oh, it has the lighter built in, how clever," she said, opening the case. She took a cigarette out and lit it, holding the case up to Helena to offer her a smoke, but she didn't react.
"Are you dead?" Lucy frowned, closed the case and slipped it back into Helena's breast pocket before once again pushing her head back to look at her. Helena blinked slowly, and she was definitely breathing, she just looked a little...punch drunk.
"Nah, you're fine," Lucy said and went back to sitting down next to her, leaning into the wall and smoking.
"Let me guess. The case was a gift from Ingrid. And she said something along the lines of 'well, if you're gonna smoke, you might as well do it in style' when she gave it to you. Yeah, that sounds like something she'd say," Lucy mused, picking a stray particle of tobacco from her tongue where it had been transferred to from the filter.
"You realize she's the only reason you're still alive? If she didn't care about you, I would've let Wesker do whatever she wanted with you."
"Whhh—wwwhh..." Helena groaned, and Lucy frowned at the odd slightly wheezing noise she was making.
"Oh, you want to know why?" Lucy assumed. "Because Ingrid is amazing, and she was doing so well, and then she met you, Helena. Christ, does she love you, and now she's growing a little version of you inside her, and will be obliged to you for the rest of her life, and it's disgusting," Lucy scoffed, and Helena didn't answer. She did make another noise, one Lucy didn't know how to describe, it was kind of a gurgle, kind of a growl, kind of a scoff. Or maybe she was choking, who could say?
"Do you know what it feels like to watch someone you love waste all her potential just to have herself tethered to a useless, boring dumbass like you? It's just a shame, Helena, don't you agree?" Lucy shrugged one shoulder and pressed her fingers against Helena's forehead, pushing slightly to make it look like she was nodding in agreement.
"So, if you've ever sensed any hostility from me toward you, then rest assured it wasn't your imagination, because I really don't like you."
She took one more drag of the cigarette before crushing it between the floor and her boot to extinguish it.
"But don't worry, it won't matter soon. I never feel anything for very long, just bits and pieces here and there, but never anything solid and permanent...so, eventually, you will stop mattering to me, just like everything and everyone else."
It was a strange thing to feel nothing but a fleeting realization that her life was a waste of time, and once she was gone, it would be like she had never existed at all.
No one will remember me. What does it matter, she sighed internally. It didn't matter, but it did bother her.
Everything she had endured had made her into this tapestry of trauma and resilience, but none of it served a purpose. What was she supposed to do with this emptiness? What could she do with it? That combined with the powers granted to her, one would've thought the world was hers to do with what she wanted, but she didn't even want anything anymore.
The way she'd been raised, she hadn't learned to want anything, but even afterward when she'd had the opportunity to dream, there was nothing. Other people dreamed of having a nice home of their own, a family perhaps, maybe they had a dream job, or some other goal to work for, something they truly wanted.
Lucy didn't have that. There was no ambition because there was no goal, there was only hollow emptiness.
"Do you think it's possible for someone to be born without a soul? Or whatever it is that you would call that life force everyone else seems to have, that spark that makes someone...something? I don't think I have that."
Helena didn't respond, and Lucy let out an exasperated growl. This was getting old.
"Where is everyone? I would imagine 'grandma' had more than three guards at her disposal, shouldn't they be swarming this place? Not to mention Claire and Nadia seem to be taking their time. Though, I suppose..." Lucy paused to glance at her watch, "it has only been about twenty minutes. How long do you think it'll take for the security team to notice their boss is dead?" she chuckled.
"Good thing it isn't an emergency or anything," she added, resting her head against the wall, her laughter echoing in the room. "Oh! I have an idea!" she then said and got up quickly. She circled the desk and went to look at the computer, clicking her way through windows and files, trying to locate something that would possibly give her access to the facility's experiment labs.
"If I could release some BOWs, that would be fun. Alas, I lack Liv and Ingrid's talents when it comes to computer stuff. They make it look so easy, just type away a little bit and hit 'enter', and you're done," Lucy said and theatrically struck the key with her middle finger like she were striking a piano key. Nothing happened.
"Aww. Well, I suppose we need to get to the security office to mess around with those systems. Whaddaya say, wanna take a walk with me?" she asked, once more kneeling next to Helena, who finally managed to lift her head a little on her own this time.
"Mmm—-mm—I'm—-mm," was all she could say, however, and Lucy quirked an eyebrow.
"I'll take that as a yes," she said, pushed her shoulder under Helena's arm and helped her up.
The elevator couldn't have descended more than three or four floors when the sound of alarms going off became audible. Jill had already been on her way to the outpost near the city limit when she'd heard the news about what had happened to the recon team. Right now, she was angry at herself for ever thinking she could sit this one out, stay behind a desk at the DSO and just watch it all happen. That wasn't her, never would be.
Could she have made a difference in there had she been there? She couldn't say, odds were she would've just ended up thrown around or burned alive like Kai, or she would've done something that would've made it all worse, but she still hated that she hadn't been there.
One of our junior agents is dead, another kidnapped, and once again, Harper gets kidnapped on my watch, Hunnigan's gonna kill me...no, wait, what was it that she said? That she's gonna feed me my own eyeballs if I get Helena killed, Jill sighed internally. This was not a good start to her career as the director.
Judging from Claire's report (which was short and simple, "Wesker went full Carrie in there") Jill presumed it had to do with telekinetic abilities. She couldn't say she'd ever heard of any of the virus's variants granting such powers, but she could hardly rule it out either. Hell, Alexia Ashford had been able to ignite her blood on fire, who knew what terrifying advances Irma Wesker's research into all of Umbrella's products could have made possible.
Nadia had mentioned she'd noticed Wesker visibly tiring when using these powers, so perhaps the team would manage to detain her before she had a chance to rest up properly. Jill doubted they would get so lucky, they never did, but she could hope. Then they'd just need to figure out what she was intending with Helena and Lucy and where they all were exactly.
Wesker had offered an injection of something that presumably removed inhibitions and limitations, what did that mean, what other things could she be capable of other than telekinesis and pyrokinesis? And how exactly was the team supposed to fight against something like that?
Chris and Sheva defeated Albert Wesker by overdosing him, but I don't know if Irma Wesker would require injections at regular intervals to upkeep her powers. Would be lucky if she did, but again...when have we ever been that lucky, Jill mused silently, dreading what would await for them at the bottom floor, the alarms growing louder and louder the closer they got.
"Oh, wonderful," Claire muttered when they exited the elevator. The corridor was littered with people clad in Umbrella-uniforms, their bodies mauled and maimed, blood and gore splattered on the walls and ceiling, rows upon rows of bullet holes scattered along the sides from where they'd tried to defend themselves against whatever had attacked them.
"Be ready and be careful. Come on, let's move on," Jill said quietly and they made their way to the nexus where Claire and the rest of the original recon team had been before. From there, they had no idea which way to go.
"Might as well follow the carnage," Nadia suggested, nodding toward the bloody smears on the floor.
"Works for me," Claire agreed, and Jill nodded.
Aside from the alarms going off, there were almost no sounds whatsoever in the lab. No monsters growling, their claws clicking on hard surfaces, no sounds of flesh rending, no screams of victims, no undead moaning. It was too quiet, it was unnerving. Something had caused all of this, but there were no signs of the creature or creatures.
"Oh, well...that answers that," Jill muttered to herself when they came upon a bloody messy pile of dead lickers and hunters, the gaping gashes on them implying they had fought each other to death.
"Have you ever seen those turn on each other? This is Lucy's doing," Nadia said.
"Well...I guess we should count ourselves lucky she decided to make them kill each other rather than leave them to give us a nice, warm welcome," Claire commented.
"Let's go," Jill said.
After a series of twists and turns through winding corridors, they arrived at the administrator's office and found Helena and Lucy. Neither one was looking too good, Helena was seated in one of the chairs, slumped over a desk, and Lucy sat beside her, staring off into the distance, sweating profusely.
"What the hell happened here?" Jill asked.
"Oh, hi, Jill," Lucy seemed to wake up from whatever trance she'd been in.
"Where's Wesker?"
"Dead," Lucy shrugged nonchalantly.
"Did you kill her?" Nadia frowned.
"What do you think?" Lucy scoffed.
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"Because she could've helped us create a vaccine for whatever it was that she unleashed," Claire commented.
"Sure, sure, I'm certain she would've gladly helped undo what she called her life's work," Lucy laughed mirthlessly. "And I thought you were the smart one," she muttered, running a hand over her face tiredly.
"What's wrong with Helena?" Nadia asked.
"Don't know, don't care."
"Can we all just get the hell out of here and send in the clean up crew and figure out what the hell was done here and for how long and by whom later?" Nadia then said.
"Go, and take her," Lucy said, jerking her thumb toward Helena, "but I'm not going anywhere with you."
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist," Jill said, and to emphasize her point, lowered her hand to rest on the grip of her holstered handgun. Lucy glared at her, then smiled, and Jill had just realized how ominous the young woman's smile was when her gun suddenly fired.
"What the"— she began to say as she looked down and noticed the gun felt hot against her side. She unholstered it swiftly and placed it in a drawer in the nearest filing cabinet just before the cartridges within the magazine started to go off in a quick succession like a bunch of firecrackers tossed into an open flame.
"I don't think you're in a position to insist anything from me," Lucy commented, wiping sweat off of her brow, a little out of breath. Whatever she was doing and however she was doing it, it was tiring her. Good.
"Get Helena out of here," Jill muttered, and Nadia nodded, helping Helena up and beginning to head out of the room.
"Go with them," Jill then ordered Claire.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"You saw the mess out there, we don't know for certain all the BOWs have been eliminated, they will need an escort," Jill reasoned sternly.
"For fuck's sake," Claire muttered, frustrated, but did finally agree to move out.
"So, what is your plan, hm? Kill me if I don't come back with you to be the DSO's guinea pig, is that it?" Lucy asked Jill once it was just the two of them. "And how exactly would you justify it? I haven't done anything wrong. In fact, I think you're the one attempting to kidnap me."
"You and I both know I can't just let you leave, not after what you've been exposed to over here, you've already proven yourself to be unstable and dangerous."
"You have no right!" Lucy yelled furiously, and Jill clenched her teeth when she began to feel a little too warm inside.
What Jill really hated, though, was knowing that Lucy wasn't wrong exactly. She hadn't done anything wrong, not really, and Jill knew exactly what happened to agents with her skills. It had happened with Sherry, it had happened with Jill herself, it would happen to Lucy.
The difference was, Jill and Sherry had accepted they needed to be monitored to ensure they wouldn't accidentally hurt themselves or others with the "gifts" granted to them by the viral infections they'd been exposed to. They had agreed to use their powers for good, as cheesy as it sounded. Lucy, however, seemed hell-bent on causing as much damage as she could. Her powers had to be neutralized, and if they couldn't be, she'd need to be detained. Maybe in time she would gladly work for the DSO or the BSAA, because if you had to go up against bioweapons, who better to fight it than someone who had also been enhanced by them?
"I have every right, it is my job," Jill said, and Lucy growled in frustration. Whatever she'd been trying to do apparently hadn't worked, because Jill was still very much alive and well rather than reduced to a pile of ash. But, Lucy had no intention of going down without a fight.
Jill side-stepped Lucy's opening punch easily and grabbed her wrist, yanking her back forcefully while driving her fist into Lucy's ribs, the collision of her body and Jill's fist amplified by the force of Jill's pull. When Lucy doubled over, Jill swiftly attempted to knee her in the gut, but Lucy lunged further down and out of the way, catching herself on her hands before falling face first onto the floor. Using the momentum for added force, she swung her leg up as she lunged, the heel of it almost catching Jill's head, but she blocked the kick at the last moment.
Lucy quickly pushed herself up and threw her elbow back, but Jill blocked that too and countered with a set of hard punches into Lucy's exposed abdomen. This sent her staggering back, and Jill pushed on, throwing her body weight into the assault, striking her left elbow against the side of Lucy's face, and followed it with a vicious uppercut from her right fist.
"I don't want to hurt you any more! Stay down!" Jill yelled.
"Just finish it," Lucy breathed through clenched teeth, expelling droplets of blood and spit as she did.
"Why do you want me to kill you?" Jill frowned. "Is your life really so full of suffering?"
"Oh, please," Lucy laughed, "it's really more of a boredom-thing and emptiness at this point. I yearn for an end to that, or peace, if you will."
"You don't need death, you need a psychiatrist who enjoys a challenge."
"I've had a few of those," Lucy laughed. "I have no intention of giving you more than two choices, either you kill me or you die by my hand," she then grunted and stood back up.
Her movements were sluggish, her body language easy to interpret, her intention clear to Jill before Lucy even made her move, and she easily once again side-stepped the incoming assault. As she did, she put her foot out and in front of Lucy, giving her a shove on the back, sending her tripping and falling.
"Stay down!" Jill yelled again.
"And then what? You take me back and the DSO or the BSAA lobotomize me just like they did you?"
"What are you talking about?
"I heard all about you. How long were you under their watch, medicated to oblivion until they were satisfied that you weren't going to start sprouting extra eyeballs and tentacles?" Lucy asked, standing up. "I...will not..." she trailed off, visibly straining, and Jill felt warm again, like she had a fever. Fortunately for her, the effort was too much for Lucy who'd been struggling to keep up with the amount of energy she'd used up, and she passed out before she had a chance to cause any damage.
She didn't come to until over an hour later in the medevac chopper where she and Helena were being transported back to the D.C. headquarters, Jill catching a ride with them so that she could begin coordinating the cleanup operation as soon as possible.
"Keep her sedated!" Jill ordered the medic, who nodded, already preparing a needle to inject the sedative into the saline solution dripping into Lucy's veins.
"Anybody...got anything to eat?" Lucy groaned groggily before once again going under.
Jill sighed as she stared out of the window, having never imagined she'd ever find herself looking back at Raccoon City from a chopper again since the last time. She hoped there wouldn't be a third time in the future.