Title: For Want of Other Idleness: Chapter II
Fandom: Resident Evil Extinction
Pairing: Alice/Claire
Disclaimer: Not mine. Don't sue.
A/N: Set in the Extinction movie-verse. Feedback is super appreciated. My muse came back for this one. Thank gods.
Once all of the Alice clones had been awakened, they totaled nine hundred and seventy-four. Three had died of complications during the reanimation process, but nine hundred and seventy-four near-perfect replicas of Alice survived.
Alice herself expected to feel differently, surrounded by women who appeared exactly like her. They had the same eyes, the same jeering smirk and roll of the shoulders. They had the same mannerisms and tone and inflection of voice. They, supposedly, were infected and bonded with the T-virus the same way she was, possessed the same abilities. They had her memories, up to the point in Detroit when she disappeared from Umbrella's surveillance. They were supposed to be her.
But in truth, sequestered hundreds of meters underground in Umbrella's research facility, with no one but nine hundred and seventy-four copies of herself and one annoying child-formed AI, the White Queen, for company, Alice had never felt more alone or isolated.
Even in the desert, before she jumped aboard Claire Redfield's convoy, she had the solace of herself. But surrounded by so many clones, so many women almost precisely identical to her, she felt even that had been stripped away.
She expected to find some comfort surrounded by women who knew what it was like to be not-quite-human, to be other, to be her.
There was only one ease to the aloneness, one moment that managed to pierce through her isolation and grant her a breath of respite. Normally, she did not willingly indulge in the use of her active powers. She could not really stop the progression of her passive abilities like her fast healing capabilities and super strength. But the active abilities like telekinesis or summoning a firestorm were more reflexive and inadvertent and terrifying.
But Alice found that if she allowed the world to drop away from her, to still her mind so she was no longer cognizant of her environment, she could prod at the boundaries of her awareness. With the snarling tendrils of her perception push outwards; she could reach out, even across vast distances, and touch the awareness of others.
The first time she had done it, it had been an accident. She had been working on the anti-virus. It was not so much the cure that the White Queen had promised, but a weapon and a vaccine. That was how she spent most of her days, locked in one of the many laboratories in the underground facility, with the child AI peering over her shoulder and telling her what to do with the vials and samples and microscopes and machines that she had no name for.
She had been hunched over one of the microscopes, and found her mind drifting away from the monotony of scientific exertion. At first she was merely indulging in memories, remembering the last time she felt not alone. She and Claire had relegated K-mart to sleep in one of the other vehicles that night, so they had the Hummer to themselves.
They'd spent the night in the back seat of the Hummer, losing themselves in one another, drinking in everything the other had to offer. Alice spent the night memorizing what Claire tasted like, the softness of her lips, the wetness of her tongue, the salty slickness of her sweat. What she felt like underneath her hands and lips and breasts, how her hair smelled not unpleasantly of sweat and Claire and cigarette smoke. She forced herself to imprint every soft curve of her body and heave of breath into her memory, because there was nothing she ever wanted to forget about the convoy leader.
When they slept, it had been in an anxious tangled embrace until they awoke again, made love again. Their love-making had been passionate and desperate, as if both were acutely aware that this may be the last time they had such an opportunity.
It had been. The next day they finally had reached Las Vegas.
That memory inevitably bled into wondering. Wondering if Claire and K-mart and the rest of the survivors had made it to Alaska, if the remote state actually had been a wilderness haven like they hoped. If they were even still alive.
And then suddenly, Alice was no longer staring into a microscope, wondering, daydreaming. Suddenly, it was singularly herself and she knew. She could feel them, specifically Claire. She knew that they had made it to Alaska, that they were safe.
She could sense Claire, in a manner, feel her without seeing her. Like a faint brush of hands, she could touch Claire's consciousness. The dire terror of constantly avoiding death in the convoy leader was gone, replaced by a fragile alertness. But Alice could still sense her guilt and pain, only now it seemed more severe than she remembered. There was an unyielding, cruel pain haunting her that Alice did not remember about her lover.
Even still, knowing that Claire was alive and safe, provided an immeasurable abundance of consolation to Alice. And being able to reach out and sense her from time to time helped assuage some of the unrelenting solitude Alice felt.
It helped solidify her objective in her mind. Once the weapon, if it could be called that, was finished, Alice began sending out platoons and squads of her copies to test it. On a small scale first, to see if it could clear the Undead that had nearly overrun the area directly above the facility.
It worked. It infiltrated the T-Virus like a Trojan Horse and effectively annihilated it, which also left the host dead, but Alice had shot too many zombies in the head without regret. She did not feel a single wisp of regret that her "cure" for the Infection was a genocidal bio-weapon. The Undead had ceased to be people long ago, even if it was through no fault of their own. It could not be helped.
Even manufacturing vast quantities of the "cure" to be dispersed, it would take a long time to spread it effectively all over the world, to kill every last remaining bastion that the T-Virus had spread to. It was a War, but perhaps the tides were turning in their favor. Maybe with nine hundred and seventy-four Alices working to accomplish the task, it was indeed possible.
They worked tirelessly to gather supplies, trucks, choppers, anything they could acquire to use in their war. Alice taught her copies how to manufacture the weapon themselves, formulated a plan to spread it first across the North American continent and then to the rest of the world. There was hope that there might be a world again, that humans might survive after all.
When there was nothing left to do, Alice gathered all of her clones together in one of the assembly rooms in the underground facility. They had cleaned up as best they could from Dr. Isaacs rampage, but no matter how much they cleaned they could not eradicate the damp tang of death and blood completely.
Alice stood in front of them, gazing out over a sea of reflections of herself. It was like staring into a mirror that reflected nine hundred and seventy-four times, some dressed in scavenged, threadbare clothing and others, ironically, in Umbrella Corporation uniforms, but the face always the same. At first, Alice had wanted to draw a number on their foreheads so she could tell them apart, but found less and less that it mattered. They called her the Original, and Alice admitted that it still unnerved her to see copies of herself.
But instead of gazing out and seeing similarities, Alice saw differences this time. She was none of these women, and for the first time, she found she wasn't afraid of herself. "You are the last hope of humanity," She said in a voice that was meant to carry and ignoring the smile of approval the White Queen beamed at her. "We all know what we have to do if there is any hope of survival, if we wish to triumph over the T-Virus."
"And I wish you all the best of luck." She finished softly with a curt nod. Without waiting, she abruptly turned and strode out, leaving a rising crescendo of murmurs in her wake.
The White Queen followed, of course, there was no escaping the irritating AI. "Where are you going, Alice?" She asked, hovering behind Alice as she strode down the empty corridors.
"I'm retiring." Alice said.
"What do you mean, retiring? You cannot change who you are." The White Queen declared in a snotty voice, which, had she been a real child and not a holographic AI projection, Alice might have backhanded her.
Alice shrugged casually. No, she hadn't changed who she was. No one could change that. But someone else had changed her perception of who she was, what she could be. For the longest time, Alice lived in perpetual fear of herself, considered herself a freak, an abomination of what should be. Seeing the copies of herself that felt exactly the same way demonstrated to Alice that there was something else, that she had experienced something they had not. Humanity.
Alice had something that the nine hundred and seventy-four clones of herself did not have.
She had Claire.
