A/N: Reworking this guy a little bit to steer it back to where I want. If you don't read my stuff often, you don't know that I weave worlds together sometimes. In this case, we're taking an ancient horror and merging it with a parasite, tying it up in a bow of a virus and setting it loose in the great white north. A terrifying concept. A terribly fun premise. I'm gathering inspiration from The Thing for the setup. If you don't know it, it's a really great movie, and a pretty underrated game.
Revelations:
Mirror Mask
Episode 1:
A Ship at Sea
3 months prior
The Queen Zenobia
The Queen Zenobia was loose in the middle of the ocean. It was a vessel built and bred for comfort and wealth. A beautiful ship, she was reduced now to the hollowed-out shell of her former self. She was a shadow of what she'd been bred and built to be. She was a ghost in the ocean, haunting even as she floated among the foggy sky in relative obscurity.
The smell of salt and sea airlifted and filled the nose with the knowledge that the storm that played out over the burgeoning black horizon was coming. It tossed the waves like playful fingers, flicking and careless, lapping against the sides of the aging vessel with a wet abandon. Were the answers aboard this once successful ship?
Was he?
Was he here?
She waited, watching the twist of clouds in the distance. The storm would be brutal when it broke, creating interference between HQ and them. It would leave them stranded. Would it leave them stranded alone?
Chris…are you here?
A rumble of thunder was the only answer.
He was her partner, her best friend, her mirror. It wasn't romantic. It had never been romantic. But it was love.
He was possibly the only person in the world she loved more than herself.
He was possibly the only person in the world she allowed to know her.
Among the Bio-Terror world, she was known to be as cold as the rain that trickled down her face as she leaped free of the chopper to land on the rolling deck of the darkened ship. She didn't make friends. She didn't make enemies. She didn't make a noise. She was quiet and deadly. She was cool and collected. She was professional and strong.
Chris Redfield was the gun, Jill Valentine was the bullet. They struck a blow together and ended dynasties made of evil. They were the most feared pair since Batman and Robin to those on the wrong side of the law.
He'd gone missing. The call came and woke her in the middle of the night. Missing. How? His signal had gone down over the ocean. Here. Right here. Aboard a ship without a Captain. Aboard a ship without a crew.
O'Brian had been adamant about not sending her in alone. So she was here to rendezvous with her partner. Parker would work in tandem with her and their liaison to locate Chris and then secure their departure.
But the BSAA wasn't working alone. The threat posed by Il-Veltro was too great. The risk of exposure here too wide. It was a joint effort with USSTRATCOM to bring in Chris, and find out who was behind his abduction.
The location of the vessel in the ocean was too close to Terragrigia's remains. It was too suspect. It was too close to the anniversary of the cities demise.
Something stank in Denmark.
Jill mused, "Why would he be out here?"
Parker came back, genuinely curious, "Hard to say. Jessica as well. This isn't anywhere close to where they should have been headed."
Quietly, Jill agreed, "I know."
The ship tossed her gently in the churning waves. It was dark and rainy, windy and rough. The sea didn't like the invasion of the girl on her swirling deck. The vessel itself rejected her presence, attempting to toss her off the sides into the abyss.
But she wasn't the type to go quietly into the good night. She was here to find her partner...hell or high water.
Jill turned and opened the door that would take her into the inner sanctum of the rotting ship. The thick and putrid stench was the first sign something was about to go very wrong within the moldy confines of the metal coffin she was set to explore. She touched her communicator in her ear, "Parker…are you close?"
"I'll be there in a moment, Jill," The Italian accent was thick and attractive. The man in question had been a helluva partner. He wasn't Chris, but he was close. He was polite, funny, and energetic. He didn't shy away from danger and he didn't care about the risk of personal loss. Parker Luciani had been the best back up partner a girl could ask for. "What is your Genesis telling you?"
The Genesis was the neatest thing to come out of fields operations in a long time. It was able to tell you the who, the when, the where, and the what. If it breathed, beat, moved, or functioned - the Genesis could tell you all about it. It looked like a big flashlight mixed with a handgun and coupled with a power drill.
She lifted it, scanning the narrow walls that ran with mold and bloated, rotting wood and steel. It analyzed, offering little in the way of help for them. "The mod ratio is pretty high. The area reads negative for vital signs…at least at the moment." She turned a little and something registered, squeaking on the machine.
Jill glanced at the screen. And it told her that the thing she was scanning wasn't human. It had been…once….but it was long done trying to pretend it was now. She lowered the Genesis and found herself face to face with the ugliest, smelliest, stupidest looking thing she'd come up against in a long time. It was slime and rot and infection with blackened, eel-like arms and tentacles and a sphincter for a face filled with teeth. It literally looked like a butthole with teeth.
The joke that wanted to spill out of her mouth fell short. There was no Chris there to laugh with her about it. Parker was great, he was…but he wasn't right. And she felt, again, the rolling, skin prickling push of pain.
She raised her weapon, "Parker? There are hostiles. I'm going to neutralize this one."
"Roger. Hold on. I'm almost there."
She blasted it, felt the air shift as it slapped the ground where she'd been a moment before, and rolled to her feet to shoot its warbling face right in the gaping maw of its thousand teeth filled mouth. She'd read something about a similar disgusting mess. She couldn't remember where.
She blasted it in the face and it didn't stop. It just kept on coming. She holstered the pistol and pulled her M9 from the sheath on her thigh. Her body settled, waited, and when it was close enough she flurried it. She came in low, spun out, and brought the little blade up to butcher it. She jabbed and dipped even as it tried to swing at her. Jill rolled across it, smoothly missing tentacles and teeth, and severed pieces as she went.
She watched them plop and drop and shiver on the ground. It was a dance. She was a ballerina. She pirouetted and plied and spun seamlessly. She shed the skin of the warrior and was nothing more than speed and skill.
She heard Parker open the door as she moved. He watched her, curious. She kicked and flipped and dropped. She poured it on, spilled it back, and destroyed. A beautiful thing, he mused, to see a woman move like music with a knife.
Objectively, she had the face of an angel. He wanted to stare at it until it vested itself in the interior chambers of his brain and made a home. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman he'd ever met. Her smooth dark hair, the swirling gray of her eyes, the centerfold body in that wet suit. He'd laughed a little meeting her.
She'd lifted those perfect brows at him.
And Parker had said, "You realize you are at a distinct advantage in this business, right?"
"How so?"
"A lot of men will see the face first and forget about the blade behind it."
"Everything is a weapon, Parker. Everything. From beauty to brains to braun. It's all there to help you do your job. How you use it? That's what defines you from the idiots that see my face and forget I'm a threat."
She was beautiful. And she was brilliant. He enjoyed partnering with her for both reasons.
They moved to the grate in the center of the filthy floor. The Genesis was telling them that it was positive for gun powder and traces of DNA. They stared into the gelatinous pile of crap within the rusty grate there and met each other's eyes.
"You want to…or…." Parker shifted his mouth, searching for the right words.
Jill studied him. He had a good face. He had little round cheeks and a perpetual five o'clock shadow. The shaggy hair around his smiling face was rich and dark like good oak. He was a big guy, stocky and thick, and made her miss Chris more than she should while looking at him. She kept waiting for the jokes to turn quasisexual. But Parker was a gentleman. He joked, plenty, but it was never untoward.
Jill shrugged and glanced around. The kitchen area granted her the use of an ugly, rusty pair of tongs. She picked them up, clicked them together, and dug into the ooze. They both made faces of disgust as she reached those tongs into the mess of it. Parker covered her, shuddering. Her fingers closed the tongs around the hilt of the pistol and pulled it free.
It was…not Bettina. It was not Bettina. Bettina was Chris' Sig Sauer P226. She was his favorite 9mm and had been in his holster any time he'd gone out to face the demons. She operated by a short-recoil locked breech method and had a decocking lever incorporated on the side. This pistol…was not Bettina.
Relieved, Jill held the pistol while Parker scanned it with his Genesis. They waited, relaying data and looking at the readout. The pistol was registered to a Marvin Starkwater. He was from New Jersey and worked for the FBI.
Jill lifted a brow. Parker shrugged.
"See what you can find out about this shit," Jill said conversationally, "I'm gonna check out the rest of the top floor here and see what I can dig up."
"Let me just get some samples for HQ and I'll be right behind you."
"Cool." Jill stepped out into the hallway and took notice of several things. The first was that the ship was a disaster. Things didn't just die here. They'd died fighting and blasted apart by the people trying to survive. They'd also turned. The lack of bodies, the mass amount of dripping ooze and stench, told the story of their demise. A helluva way to die.
The way forward was a mess of broken debris and collapse. The elevator to her right was wide open, dismantled, and empty. It was either lodged on another floor or it was done for. Either way? She wasn't going that way.
Jill studied the short curve of stairs to the left. They led down a level. She should really wait for Parker but she wasn't in the mood to do that either. She moved down the short flight of stairs and felt the temperature plummet as she went. The heat was clearly not on here.
She thought of the thing that had attacked her up there. It had moved in a staggering, robotic, almost jerky pattern. What was the infection here? And how was it spread? Her eyes slid up the wall in front of her and found the ducts broken, dripping, and offering the answer.
She knew, now, how they were getting around the ship. Jill studied the mess of it, considering how this would play out for them. They were susceptible, sort of, to bullets and clearly capable of being killed with melee and hand to hand. But the risk there was surpreme. Killing them could get tricky in close, narrow, and restrictive confines.
Jill moved to the second level of the stair case. She tried the first door she came to and it was locked. She wiggled the knob, considered it, and hit the button on her communicator. "Parker?"
"Yes, Jill." It sounded like Zhill. It was adorably Italian.
"My Genesis isn't giving me anything in terms of life down here. You?"
"Negative. There is nothing here."
"Yeah…Chris isn't here." The minute she said it, she felt it. She felt it like a proverbial punch in the gut. She closed her eyes and pictured his face. Not here, she thought, but something was here. And it needed finding.
She lifted her hand and touched the visualization flap on the door. She pushed it up and it creaked, whiny with rusty metal. She put her face to the narrow opening…and she died. She died where she stood. She felt everything swirl and shift back into place around her.
"Parker! Parker! I'm on the second floor. The first door! I've found Chris. Hurry!"
"I am on my way, Jill! Hold position."
There he was, waiting for her to save him. He was strapped to a chair, bound there with his head down. She could see the broad swell and shift of his back, each line of muscle, each curve of it in his arms and hands. He was unconscious, clearly, and so close. Why? Why was he bound in there?
Who was keeping him there?
"CHRIS!" She rattled the door. She kicked it. It rang with metal in the narrow hallway. "Chris! Can you hear me? Wake up!"
There is a moment when hope springs eternal. It coats the soul, lifts the spirit, and spills wet and wonderful into the heart. It was there now, in her chest, in her blood. She shook the door, kicked it. She felt like she couldn't breathe and could fly simultaneously. She wanted to rip the metal down with bare skin and excitement.
The sight of him so close, so infinitely far, rolled with a red and washing want across her body and stole her reason. She kicked the door again and called his name. She felt the blaze and burst of sheer soulful want of him inside of her belly with a pulsing combination of fear and happiness. He was RIGHT THERE.
He was her best friend. She was going to save him. She could feel it in her bones.
Parker was on the stairs now, moving closer. "Look! He's RIGHT THERE! Can we just get this door down somehow?"
"Is he alright in there?" Parker was peering through the opening. "Chris! Can you hear us?"
"He looks unconscious. Wait here ok? I'm gonna look around and see if I can find the key or something."
Parker nodded, "Try down toward the bilge. Most of the scientist probably gathered down that way to work. The truth is somewhere on this ship, Jill. Can't you feel it?"
Didn't he understand? The only truth that needed answering was on the other side of this door. Chris was here. He was alive. He was there waiting.
She cut down a flight of stairs and rounded the corner. She was two steps down when she heard the fighting. Something was making a burbling sound. It sounded like a slurp mixed with a rattle. She paused, staring at the glass in front of her.
The blood splashed wet and red like someone had spit. It stole her breath as she gasped. The body of a woman in a wet suit hit next, the glass fracturing. It cracked and held, but it didn't help. The blonde hair dragged around in the blood as her body sank to the floor, and Jill stared into the ugly face of the thing that had killed the woman.
It cocked its head like a curious dog and turned. It raced toward the door, but it didn't come out the door after her. It leaped up. It gripped the vent above the dirty washing machine beneath it and threw itself into the dark.
Jill backed up, twice, and stumbled on the step. She heard the vents groan in distress. She touched her communicator and warned, "Parker? Look out. There's something in the ducts."
And the one above her burst out the wall in a clang of metal. It hit the far wall with a clatter. Jill ducked and avoided losing her head to the tendril of nasty appendage it threw out of the duct at her.
It dripped slime and gore and came out torso first in a push-up motion. She fired at it and her foot hit the slime. She slipped. She grabbed for the railing and missed, and down she went.
She tumbled three steps on her butt as it rolled out of that vent atop her. It's butthole mouth opened to show sharp teeth. It dove for her face and she shouted, "NO!" And kicked it twice in the face.
It got her foot and twisted, spilling her back and doing a strange fish flopping, jerking, weird little dance until it could pour over her with its nasty tendrils.
It took her to floor in a spill of ooze and oily limbs while she tried to gather the strength to even scream.