Recommended BGM:
1. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles - Initial R
2. Resident Evil Director's Cut (DualShock Ver.) - More Rooms
3. Resident Evil (Remake) - Macabre Hallway
Chapter 17
Richard felt sick to the stomach as he finished reading the last few passages of George Trevor's diary. It was all making sense now; the mansion's complex design and architecture, the hidden secrets, rampant conspiracies, everything was merely a cover-up from the very beginning.
And the mansion's own architect's death…
That was never an accident. Umbrella and its CEO had set him up for the mansion's first test drive and he happened to pay the price, alongside his own family. Research on whatever virus that had infected the entire mansion spanned decades back and to think those people were the first possible human test trials…
"Richard? Are you okay?" said Rebecca, startling Richard out of his train of thought, his blood still boiling inside out of fury due to the lack of justice for decades on end. He hadn't even noticed Rebecca come in and she already had the gold emblem in her hand, with the bronze variant already put in place where the gold emblem rested previously inside the secret area.
Richard's face began to grow red by the second. "Sorry, I didn't even hear you come in at all." He then raised the diary in his hand, shaking it slowly before handing it to her as he began to explain in detail what he had read.
Rebecca simply listened in silence. She switched her gaze back and forth between Richard and the diary itself as she skimmed through some of the text inside.
"...and the guy found his own gravestone underground, lacking the strength to do anything but wait for his death in the end. Such a terrible way to go."
Richard stood up from the stool he had been sitting on for a while now, his distraught expression hiding nothing about the sickening feeling he felt inside. Even though it's already been thirty years since it happened, he couldn't stop thinking about the injustice that had befallen the Trevor family and virtually no one had done a thing after all this time.
Rebecca closed the journal, having heard and read enough of the tragedy that happened to George Trevor, putting it away into one of her packs for future reference as evidence for the RPD. After all, George was just an architect trying to be proud of his own work, and ironically, he became one of the mansion's very first victims.
She looked up at Richard, frowning.
"Well, there's nothing we can do for him or his family at all. The only thing we can do is to try and expose all this to the public. Then at the very least, we could serve them some justice the family never received after all these years."
Richard nodded. "True, but our main mission now is survival. Having all the information in the world won't do us any good if we're dead."
Richard was right. There was no guarantee they could escape the estate alive so if they could just focus on their escape first, then maybe they could have a chance at exposing Umbrella. Though it was much easier said than done. Umbrella is one big pharmaceutical company with the potential to hire the best lawyers in the entire country so it'll be an arduous fight against them in the long run. But with enough evidence like the journal she now possessed, alongside the other diary Chris and Alex had found earlier, they might just have a chance. But for now, survival was their first priority and Rebecca was fully determined to see it through.
After a long pause, she finally motioned at the gold emblem in her hand.
"Right. Let's go and solve this then so we can finally get out of here."
Richard gave a nod of approval and hurried after her, going through the rooms with their doors now completely destroyed.
After having arrived at the dining hall, Rebecca quickly applied the gold emblem inside the indentation where the bronze emblem used to be, making some sort of hidden mechanism activate somewhere near the ticking grandfather clock. The clock gear's access door unlocked and opened itself, revealing the gears that control the hands of the clock itself.
"Ain't that something?" Richard commented as he headed directly in front of the old grandfather clock, with Rebecca following after, examining it thoroughly. "So… what are we supposed to do here? Just mess around with the clock like little kids or something?"
Rebecca gave a quick chuckle before expressing her thoughts. "No silly! I think it has something to do with…" she checked the small carvings that replaced each perpendicular side of the round clock in front of them. "You notice that twelve, three, six, and nine are replaced with pieces of armor and weapons that a medieval knight would have?" Richard nodded, seeing where her mind might be going on. "They may have something to do with the keys of the mansion as I've seen sword, helmet, and armor carvings on some doors."
"Maybe," said Richard, still checking it himself. "The door leading to the attic had a shield carving on it too. I found it already unlocked though so who knows where that key is."
"Or…" she said as she checked the big painting right next to the left side of the clock. "Maybe it has something to do with the knights in this picture?"
"Why would it have any relevance though?" said a confused Richard, trying to understand why they were even wasting time with the old dusty clock, to begin with. "I mean, why would something so complex just open the gearbox for the clock anyway?"
Rebecca didn't falter and continued gazing at the painting itself, showing a pair of knights impaling one another with their swords, seeing there was something more than what met the eye. If the emblems had any significance with the secret door inside the bar having been opened with the right press of piano keys, surely they wouldn't have wasted much time trying to build something so complex, only to serve no purpose right?
After some thought, she began to understand what the painting might've been hinting at.
"You see the short knight impaling the taller one in the chest?"
"Yeah…" said a reluctant Richard, already wanting to just leave the place as the constant ticking of the clock itself was slowly driving him crazy. "What about it?"
"And the taller knight is impaling the other guy in the head," she continued. "So…" She proceeded to test her theory as she moved closer to the clock and began winding the gears in place.
Richard looked at her, still confused as to what exactly had she found out, until all of a sudden, there was a loud ring of a bell ticking inside as the grandfather clock slid to the right by itself, revealing a hidden hollow slot embedded inside the wall, containing something inside.
"Well damn…" said Richard, surprised that Rebecca managed to solve a puzzle he himself wouldn't have figured out on his own. "Guess I'm the rookie here, huh?"
Rebecca gave a small grin at him before grabbing what was inside. It was another death mask, exactly what Alex said he was looking for as well. It looked just as pale and deathly as the one Richard had found before, except this one did not have any eyes, giving it some sort of even creepier look than the other one that had no nose.
"Creepy, right?" She said as she began showing it to Richard. "I hope it's not what George Trevor had in mind for the mansion anyway."
Richard nodded slowly as he examined the mask itself. "Yeah… I don't think a lot of the mechanisms here were part of the initial blueprints he constructed the mansion with." Not wanting to think about what the poor guy and his family went through, he immediately suggested their next move. "Should we at least go to the back door of the main foyer and check out this cemetery Alex talked about? We could at least see how this whole mask thing works as well."
She nodded in response, thinking it would be in their best interest to see what they were dealing with, considering how Alex seemed to be quite sure that the keys to their escape were these masks themselves.
Having reached the doors leading directly to the main hall, they heard a distant door opening and closing just before they got inside the main foyer themselves. The person in question could've been anyone from STARS, though they weren't exactly sure if there were also any residential survivors remaining. It was still another possibility.
Not wanting to waste any more time, they decided to just focus on the door leading to the cemetery, which was a door hidden in plain sight under what seemed to be a giant painting over it. Just as they opened the door, a sudden wave of fresh, wildlife air washed over them and both felt immediate relief for being able to finally be outside, even for just a small moment. The smell of filth and death inside the mansion was as if they stood inside a morgue for far too long.
"Richard? Rebecca?"
A pair of familiar voices were heard just outside underneath them below the stairs leading to the mossy ground inside the cemetery.
The duo turned to find themselves face to face with Chris Redfield and Frank Woods, who were already done searching the area and about to re-enter the horrors of the mansion inside.
"Oh, Chris!" Rebecca gasped. "It's so good to see you again! Alex… he—"
"You noticed too?" Woods intervened. "The man isn't acting like himself. And I can tell since I've known him for a long time. Long enough to say that I haven't seen him act this way since…" He stopped himself mid-sentence, almost as if he was about to slip something out none of them were supposed to know. "Anyway, looking good there, Aiken. How are you feeling?"
"Could be better, but I guess I'll have an awesome scar after this," he chuckled slightly, though he immediately stopped himself since their situation wasn't exactly roomy for any chuckles or jokes.
"Frank here took care of the giant snake so you could thank him for avenging your injured arm," said Chris, grinning ever so slightly.
"Wait," Richard gasped a bit as he raised an eyebrow at Woods. "You fought that snake too?"
"Don't even fuckin' mention it…" said Woods, not wanting to think about the experience with the giant reptile. "Almost lost my arm. Bruised it up, but I'm fine overall. Seems like you got it the worst, eh."
Richard simply shrugged it off. He didn't want to tell him how he got his arm bitten, considering the consequences over something so dumb that he could've been more careful about.
Rebecca saw the embarrassment through Richard's body language. She decided to spare him the trouble and took out the death mask they had found earlier in the dining room.
"So we came across this mask," she said as she raised it in front of them. "Do any of you have any clue as to where this should go around here?"
"That's one similar to the mask Alex had put in place down inside the crypt below when we checked it out," said Chris as he pointed to the crypt's location just further up ahead of the cemetery. "Where'd you find it?"
"In the dining room behind the clock, but it required a bit of complex puzzle solving. In the end, we were rewarded with this mask hidden inside."
Richard nodded. "As I was telling her earlier, I'm probably the rookie in the group since I wouldn't have been able to solve it myself after all."
"We all have our own personal talents," said Woods, trying to reassure the younger man. "Hell, if we had to play a video game as a puzzle itself and our lives depended on it, I'd be dead before I could even touch the damn controller."
They all gave a small laugh over that one. It was the first time they ever heard Woods joke around like that, especially Chris, who he always wanted to try to befriend, even before he even knew who the man really was anyway, despite both Frank and Alex's best efforts to try and avoid having any deep conversations with him initially.
Before long, however, their moods shifted just as quickly and both Chris and Woods led Richard and Rebecca down inside the crypt, with the latter duo becoming uncomfortable as they descended further into what seemed to be the depths of hell itself. The raging fire behind the bars seemed to have no end, lighting up the entire crypt with its constant flame, burning through a limitless amount of fuel that it had at its disposal.
"The smell… it's— it's horrible!" Richard gasped, trying to take in some breaths of his own as Rebecca struggled to keep it together herself as well.
"I know," said Woods as he pointed to where the mask needed to go and then the suspended coffin itself. "Shit only gets uglier from here. Put it in and see what I mean."
Rebecca moved closer to the statues sitting on the left. They all represented different faces for different masks and two of them were already put in place, making the mask she held in her hand the third one overall. As she hesitantly put the mask in place, it made a clicking sound behind the wall and one of the chains that held the coffin in place snapped apart just as quickly as she turned around to see the result. Blood seeped out through the hole in which the chain was last holding the coffin, or corpse, in place. The pedestal underneath the coffin was already bathed in blood, probably as a result of previous chains having snapped apart due to the masks activating some sort of hidden mechanism behind the walls through the statues themselves.
"My goodness…!" she said in awe, quickly taking her gaze elsewhere. "You weren't kidding."
"And now," said Chris as he looked at the duo in front of him and Woods, "we just need one more and we'll finally be able to get whatever key is inside the coffin."
"So… where do we begin to search for the last mask then?" Rebecca inquired, wanting to know a bit more about what Chris and Frank have searched by far.
Chris shrugged. "Well, Alex told us he'd go back to the second floor and search the east wing from there. You two could go search the rest of the first floor, while me and Frank will go search the other side for any armor-carved lock doors…"
"Good idea," said Richard, nodding confidently. Rebecca made a thumbs-up gesture to Chris, letting him know she was fine with the idea of finishing up looking for more clues and other potential survivors around.
"You both need anything, we'll meet at the main foyer ten minutes from now. Got it?" Said Frank.
"Yes sir!" Rebecca motioned at him with a quick firm salute.
"Roger that!" Richard followed, nodding in response.
Barry hurried back to where he came in from, trying to put as much distance from Jill as he possibly could, feeling the immense guilt about what he had pulled on her just earlier. Before she gave him an unexpected fright to his already hurried beating heart, he'd entered the small office room to try and catch his own breath due to how tired he's been feeling, especially when he couldn't take the image off of his own family becoming hostages to Umbrella and Wesker.
He couldn't risk his family's lives any further, especially the fact that it wasn't just his own family that was at stake, but Alex Mason's own son as well. And he very well understood that as a father himself, losing his son would mean losing a big chunk of himself in the process. Barry clenched his fists against the desk in front of him as firmly as possible, his fury growing with each moment that passed by.
Wesker… you won't get away with this! I promise!
Through the red haze inside his mind, he caught a glimpse of a small folder laying underneath his fists, with a small inscription that read, "To my dear Alma".
Curious, he took out some pieces of paper inside and it was a letter in itself. However, inside the letter, it mentioned the connection to "a guy with sunglasses". Instinctively, he knew that it was none other than Wesker himself, who had told the staff inside the building that they weren't allowed to leave or even make phone calls to the outside world.
For a whole minute, he hesitated whether or not to go through with it; to destroy any evidence that even remotely linked Umbrella and Wesker himself with the whole biological outbreak.
Not long afterward, he then thought about his family's safety and the potential dangers they were now in. He had to do it. Even if there was nothing left to nail Umbrella and Wesker, there had to be other ways to do so. His wife and kids, however, one mistake he or Alex would make and it'll be all over for them.
Angry and frustrated, he slowly ripped the piece out and put the incriminating evidence in one of his pockets. That is until Jill had come out of nowhere and half-scared him to death, throwing the entire folder to the ground in response.
He had so many regrets. So much in fact that he desperately wanted to inform Jill about the situation both he and Alex were in, but again, he simply couldn't risk it. For all he knew, Wesker could be eavesdropping at every chance he could get and since he most likely knew the mansion like the back of his hand, it was just too risky.
Barry gave a deep sigh and continued on his way inside the U-shaped corridor, until he heard a door open and close very quickly, apparently rushing through the narrow space from the other side of the corridor. After a short while, a zombie he hadn't killed earlier was heard as the person shot their gun a few times before he then heard the walking corpse give a low, gurgling sound as it finally gave a thud towards the ground.
Oh crap… Where do I go?
He couldn't go back anymore since Jill was still back in one of the rooms he had left behind and if he were to open any of the doors now, they would probably hear him out and follow through the source of the sound, catching up with him regardless. Then, he'd be sandwiched in between them and Jill's location, with them most likely demanding what has he been up to or why he was in the place where he was.
With no other choice left, he gave a small, but deep breath and decided to confront whoever was the person on the other side and think about a small excuse in the back of his mind before leaving them on their own, which was something he was definitely not looking forward to doing.
As he turned to the corner, he immediately saw who they were even in the dim lighting of the corridor, their gun aiming at him before quickly realizing who he was as well.
"Oh shit, Barry," said Alex, surprised to see him there. "Almost pulled the trigger on you."
"You're fine," Barry responded, his tone giving off an obvious expression of regret and frustration, more than he wanted to let on. Though he also noticed Alex's face was filled with shame and regret as well, not because he was about to shoot him, but Barry knew it had to be more than just a close call to friendly fire. "So… you too huh?"
Alex raised an eyebrow, confused about what he meant for a moment.
"You're saying I wasn't the only one that almost shot you?" He inquired.
"What I meant was…" Barry hesitated to continue, but he really wanted to have a talk with someone else entirely that knew exactly what he'd be going through, and Alex was the only person who would know that all too well right now. He then gave a big sigh. "You happen to run into anyone and have to lie to their face recently?"
Alex merely looked him in the eye for a moment before breaking his gaze elsewhere into empty space, seemingly feeling extremely ashamed and angry all at once, just like Barry had felt earlier.
"It was hard enough to lie to Rebecca and Richard with a straight face," he paused for a short moment before his voice soon started to slowly break. "And then when I bumped into Chris and Frank… It—it was even harder. Frank's like a brother to me, ya know. Lying to his face was just… God, I felt entirely disgusted by it! This guilt is— …it's killing me, man!"
Barry sympathized completely. It was awful enough to hear your own family is in danger, but lying to your own friends' faces, backstabbing their trust just like how Wesker had been doing after all this time, was simply something he could never forgive himself at all. And the mutual guilt he felt with Alex, he simply didn't know how he would live with himself, should they find out about their betrayal against their own friends.
And Chris was his own best friend. To think he'd have to lie to him should he ever come across with him…
"I wish I could make things better for the both of us," Barry replied, feeling guilty that he was powerless to do anything to help overcome the guilt they were both feeling. "But if we want our families to be safe, we have to do whatever it takes."
"Whatever it takes…" Mason echoed his words softly, seemingly thinking to himself in response. After a short while, he gave a deep sigh before proceeding to tell him something important. "Since we are both stuck together in this shithole, I think it'd be best that I tell you the real reason why Frank and I have joined STARS."
Barry's eyes widened slightly. He hadn't exactly known Frank and Alex's pasts all that well. Nobody in STARS has since they were formerly CIA agents, but one thing for sure that popped in his mind every now and then was; why would they come to a small town like Raccoon City and join its Special Forces just weeks after the disappearances and murders started happening around the outskirts of the city? He'd always wondered if they knew more than they let on, but with his relationship with Frank, somehow deep inside, he knew they were trustworthy people and decided not to press too much on it at the time.
"I'm all ears," said Barry.
Alex had just opened his mouth to begin to tell him before he then immediately realized something they had both forgotten about.
"Not here," he whispered. "Fuckin' Wesker could be eavesdropping for all we know."
"Oh, right," he responded, almost forgetting the fact that Wesker could virtually be anywhere in the mansion, potentially following their location. Barry looked towards the double doors to his right and motioned at them, seeing the carving of the key plate itself. "Think one of our keys could open this door. We get in, lock them, and if you can, you could tell me all about it in there or if you want, after we get through all this first."
Mason nodded and Barry proceeded to unlock one of the doors with the armor key he had, opened it, and immediately closed it behind them, making sure to lock the door behind them.
The room they had just entered was filled with armor suit displays lined up across both walls on each side. At least four armor suits were sticking out of place as if they were a part of some sort of mechanism since there were lined scratches on the surfaces underneath them. As they silently observed the chamber around them, something caught Barry's attention in the back. Inside the closed grate was a decorative box inside, possibly containing something of importance hidden inside. Four pictures hung above the depression, showcasing four knights holding different medieval weapons; a shield, ax, sword, and halberd. All four pictures had small roman numerals inscribed right in the corners of each frame.
Barry didn't know what it all meant, but before he could figure it all out, Mason signaled him at the center of the room, containing a square pedestal with a switch underneath some sort of written inscription that read:
WOE TO THOSE WHO DISTURB MY SLEEP
Before any of them had the chance to say another word to one another, a door was heard in the background, shutting loudly as light but muffled footsteps were heard growing ever so closer to the doors in front of them, wishing for the person to just go elsewhere, hoping they wouldn't hear them inside.
A low moan of a zombie was heard just behind the doors and a familiar scream was soon followed next.
Jill!
Barry was about to move out of there until Alex put an arm in front of him and silently shook his head with a sorrowful expression etched on his exhausted face.
Barry understood that they couldn't blow their cover no matter what, but hearing Jill's screams didn't make it any easier for him. He had helped her before and wished he could do it again, especially if her life was in danger, but he couldn't do anything. Helpless and frustrated, he backed away from the doors as he turned around and rubbed his hair all the way to the back of his neck, feeling all kinds of anxiety as he tried to focus on the safety of his family as much as he could.
After a few excruciating short moments, the screams had stopped, followed by a quick muffled snap of something breaking. Fearful about what may have happened just outside the doors, he leaned in closer and listened to anything in particular.
Small footsteps were heard ever so slightly and had already opened and closed another door somewhere else on the right side of the room they were still in. Jill had survived and most likely, snapped the zombie's neck, doing quick work to the same zombie Mason had failed to kill earlier, making him feel even more guilty for not having burned the zombie's corpse in the first place, making sure it'd be dead right then and there. Though with Barry's interruption and the very little time they had to avoid being seen by anyone, Alex wasn't able to have the right time to check whether or not he had actually killed the downed rotten corpse.
"Damn it!" Exclaimed Alex in a sudden loud voice. "My fault for not having killed it for good."
"Don't keep beating yourself," said Barry, giving him a small pat on the shoulder. "It's not gonna do any good to anyone and trust me, I know that all too well."
Alex didn't utter another word and simply moved on to look around the room once more, seeing some peculiar things.
"One… two… three… three ventilation shafts around each wall," he said as he pointed to each of the three locations. "You don't think this is—"
"A trap?" Barry finished. "Yes, I think so too. Maybe to suffocate intruders? Possibly a gas chamber?" After the ceiling trap Jill got herself into, he didn't have a single doubt that this room had a hidden trap, a puzzle to solve in order to unlock the grate blocking their access to the box inside the depression.
Alex began to murmur something Barry wasn't able to quite hear clearly.
"You said something?" Asked Barry.
"Oh huh? No nothin'," Mason replied, though he seemed more distracted than usual, something that made Barry feel a little bit on edge about what he was murmuring about. Mason immediately put his attention elsewhere and pointed out the four different armor suits that were sticking out of place. "I think we have to push these in order but the main problem is… in what order exactly?"
Barry remembered the roman numerals inscribed on each picture hung above the grate, each of them representing a random number from I to IV. As he reached closer to them with his own height, he took mental note of the order in each picture; "I" was the knight holding a halberd, "II" was the one holding an ax, "III" was holding a shield, and "IV" held a sword.
"Alright, here's the order," said Barry as he continued instructing Mason on which one to push first.
After having pushed the third suit in place, the armor suit that held a sword immediately slid itself into place, startling both STARS members as they watched in shock, unsure if it was any indication that they had solved the puzzle correctly.
"Was that supposed to happen?" Mason queried, his voice sounding a bit more worried than before.
"I don't know…" he responded, unsure himself. "If you want, you can leave the room now and I'll press the switch, in case anything bad should happen."
"No," said Alex firmly. Barry knew he was not going to let this slide as easily. "I shall do it. I have nothing much to live for anyway."
Barry felt a wave of depression and guilt wash over him and immediately protested.
"Yes, you do! You have a son that needs his father. I'm not letting that rip apart on my own account."
Mason looked at him in the eyes, his face showing a deep sense of empathy towards Barry as he proceeded to counter his argument.
"And you think I'm just gonna let you get killed and have me tell your family about their dead husband and father? Plus, I never had a good relationship with my son ever since I abandoned him for… selfish reasons. In fact, he probably wouldn't care if his old pops died anyway…"
Barry didn't exactly care for his own well-being, but to put his family through the misery of losing him for good, he couldn't bear the fact to think about making them suffer the loss of a husband and father, especially his young daughters, who needed their father just as much as they needed their own mother.
However, he couldn't also let Alex do the same thing to his own son either. Even if his son grew up without him all his life, there's always some sort of emptiness anyone would feel regardless if they ever resented their parents for any particular reason. He was not about to let Alex throw away any potential opportunity to rekindle his relationship with his only son either.
"You don't mean that," Barry replied back, his voice low and smooth. "I'm sure your kid is already missing you, no matter what he has told you in the past."
Mason turned away from Barry's gaze, apparently seeming shameful about himself. "You have no clue about the things I have done… —things that …he'll never forgive me for."
Barry did not have a single clue about what he was talking about, but if he was referencing their current betrayal against their own friends and helping out Wesker and Umbrella do their dirty deeds, it was something he himself could not live with at all. Let alone after their family and friends find out about this sooner or later.
Barry moved closer behind Mason's back and put a hand over his shoulder.
"Come on…" he said. "Let's get you out."
Mason hesitated for a long moment before finally nodding back at him and following after him as soon as Barry reached the doors out of the chamber and unlocked one of the doors for him.
After he had opened one of the doors, Mason quickly snatched the key from him, with Barry feeling a sudden, but surprising brute strength as he was shoved out of the room almost effortlessly before shutting and locking the door behind him.
"Alex? Alex! Open up!" Barry shouted as he began pounding on the door, almost not caring whether or not anyone would hear him around. "Don't do this, Alex! Please! ALEX!"
There was a sudden but muffled click inside the chamber, Barry feeling the worst may have already begun happening. After a few suppressed sounds of a hidden mechanism running somewhere inside the walls, he half-expected some sort of poisonous gas to disperse inside or the ventilation system to start pumping air out of the sealed room itself.
However, nothing major was actually happening after the mechanism had finished doing its job just a few moments later. Other than Alex's own footsteps, nothing else was heard for several long seconds until he quickly unlocked the entrance and opened one of the doors to reveal another death mask he had in his hand, much to Barry's relief, apparently now answering Barry's question whether or not they had actually solved the puzzle earlier.
"One more and we hit the jackpot," he said calmly as he tossed the white key back to Barry. "And sorry about …earlier."
"It's alright," he responded, still feeling relieved that they at least finally got through with it one way or another. Still thinking about the safety of their families, he quickly asked him about their next move. "So what do you suggest we should do next?"
Mason was about to say something before someone rushed through a door nearby, almost violently, and Barry immediately hid his key in response. Both men quickly raised their firearms before the thing in question came into view through the dark corner, revealing itself to be Jill as soon as she stepped into the wall sconce's dim shade of light, almost panting while she held her hip, somewhat in pain.
"I heard shouting," she panted, taking in some deep breaths in the process. "Are you— Oh… Alex! Good to see you!"
"Good to see you too, Jill," Alex responded, his tone sincere, but slightly dry within.
Barry, once again, felt guilt flowing through his veins almost painfully all over his body. He couldn't even be bothered to look Jill directly in the eyes ever again and tried avoiding eye contact at all costs, not wanting her to get more involved with him than she needed to. He had messed up; revealing their location unintentionally, and now he had to find a way to get her away from them. Though it was much easier said than done.
Jill… I'm…
"Sorry about that," said Barry, trying to sound as convincing as possible. "I thought Alex was another ghoul and was about to shoot him when he came out of those doors here." Barry turned to look at Mason in the eyes, silently trying to tell him to play along so as not to blow their cover entirely. He quickly understood.
"Yup," he followed. "Thankfully, Barry didn't pull the trigger or I'd have joined these corpses on the ground."
Jill kept a good stare at both of them, seeing as though she was having a hard time trying to buy their story.
C'mon, just take our word for now…
She then began to point out the mask Alex had found inside the room next to them.
"I see you found another one of those death masks," she remarked. "I'm assuming you have been unlocking some of the armor-carved locks around here?"
"Yes," said Alex, almost as confident as Barry has ever heard him be. "I found it somewhere hidden on the first floor. Was pretty easy to miss." He then immediately changed the subject. "You feeling okay yourself?"
"Yeah," Barry agreed. "You seemed as though you were in some pain while rushing from around the corner."
"I'm fine," she reassured them. "Just fought with one of those red …things you mentioned before. I'm merely just sore."
"Oh damn…" said Mason, knowing the dangers of the red-skinned zombie variants he and Chris had encountered before. "Sorry you had to go through that horrible shit."
Barry hadn't seen these crimson heads in action, but he definitely didn't want to go find out either. Though he was always making sure that whenever he had to kill one of the ghouls, to always go for their heads. His custom magnum had a better shot at instantly killing them with little to no problem, with more than half of the time blowing their entire brains out.
Immediately, he put up a mental picture of his wife and daughters with him before wasting any more time dwelling on their emotions.
"We should at least put the mask where it belongs and plan out our next move from there."
Both Alex and Jill nodded. Thankfully, Jill was still on board about it and so far, she has not discovered their true nature of intentions just yet, and Barry and Alex knew that it is of the utmost importance to keep their interactions between them and Wesker a secret if they wanted to keep their loved ones safe. Although they will have to keep Jill out of their way after placing the mask in place and think about how they will go on without any further interruptions from their fellow STARS teammates. Without much talk, the trio silently headed their way back into the cemetery.