After that the briefing was about as she'd expected. Tedious and tiring and making her wish there were still ways to communicate her irritation with it all that beyond opening her jaw entirely too wide and yawning, rows of razor teeth and tongue that now looked purple red tasting the air. Even showing her eyes unsettled some people, the inhuman frozen expression of predatory hunger that those black orbs imparted never failed to make them look away. Even ignoring how her multiple eyelids worked, Jill felt pretty confident that she wasn't ever going to lose a staring contest from now on.
As they flipped back to an earlier slide, the geographic outline of the suspected infection range, Jill's jaw shifted as the tension and irritation peaked. One of the sharper teeth, among many already quite sharp at that, pressed down onto her tongue and rewarded her with numbing pain and coppery taste. She sucked back, her hood slipping down as she did and by the time the taste of blood had begun to vanish that numbing sensation had already faded.
The… speed at which she regenerated now was somewhat disconcerting. It had never led to complications, even after enough blood had been drawn to probably equal her new body mass, but it nevertheless brought up unpleasant memories from before. The carrion smell of a dying city around her, as something impeccable and unkillable had hunted her through that urban tomb. So far the doctors had declared her physiology remarkably stable given the cocktail of drugs, vaccines, and viruses which had led to her transformation into this new state. But sometimes she still looked at her arms, slightly longer and definitely stronger, the thicker skin too white in places and covered in blue-black flesh that went down past her wrists, over her clawed hands and the three taloned digits there.
She'd had more before.
Not even as a normal, human woman, but at times when Wesker had been experimenting with his unexpected success. The variable regeneration of the T-Abyss was definitely there.
Sadly she'd had little success at using it, which led to her current problem.
Looking at an arsenal of weaponry provided by the BSAA and unable to figure out how she'd even use it. Most had trigger guards too small for her fingers to fit, the smaller and lighter pistols bad matches for most BOWs or aggressive vectors anyway. The solution had always been custom modifications and specialized ammunition, but in her case that didn't solve the problem of how hard it would be to just use the damn things in the first place.
Umbrella had of course just Frankensteined a solution by just making everything bigger, as the oversized minigun and rocket launcher Nemesis had wielded against her had provided ample evidence of. Jill put the handguns down and looked over a selection of rifles that were as difficult, if not harder, to use with her current anatomy. She hefted one up, trying to find an angle that would support the rifle against her shoulder and let her look down the scope at the same time.
"This isn't going to work," she thought, hot air passing over her tongue and through the snout-like protrusion as she worked through reasonable ways to hold the weapon and rapidly moved to more unreasonable ways of the same. It was petty, minor, and on the whole rather absurd, but at the moment not being able to pass the STARS firearms proficiency test offended her more than the fact that she arguably didn't have a face as far as most would judge.
Not that Agent Grady could tell. She'd spent more time around Chris than anyone else and even he could barely tell the difference between 'Angry Jill' and 'Happy Jill' now.
"They didn't state you could carry anything that large, Agent Valentine." He slid the extra clips of ammunition into his side holster for the submachine gun. Between that, the handgun, a flare pistol, and a standard issue combat knife he was kitted out for just about anything.
"I know. I'm just trying to figure out what I'm allowed to use that I actually can use." While her facial features might have had issues, her voice was remarkably clear in communicating her annoyance. Grady shrugged, passing over the grenades and grabbing a set of waterproof emergency flares. Which he tossed over to Jill as he put two into his side pouch. "You could always take a knife."
She waved her hand in front of herself, letting the sharpened tips of her fingers trail through the air. "I think I got that part covered."
"Yeah, I guess you do. Honestly, we probably won't find anything but dead fish. All this" Grady said, gesturing to himself, "Is overkill. How about we just keep it simple?"
He dropped the extra flairs and bio-sample kit on the bench next to Jill. All in all it was a frankly pathetic amount of gear, easily slung under one shoulder and barely even noticeable. Standing up once she was done she felt a sudden and strange sense of vulnerability at the lack of armament. Almost like one of those dreams where she'd forgotten to prepare for a speech and realized halfway through it she'd also forgotten to put on pants.
Which was particularly silly nowadays.
Even naked she was practically a biological killing machine, liable to walk off small arms and survive heavier calibers. With fangs and claws enough to gut anyone she got close to. About the only way she'd gotten less deadly was her tail, the awkward new limb a tad too long most of the time.
"Only Wesker could manage to make an aquatic predator in the middle of a desert." Her jaw tightened briefly, thoughts of all those tiny towns and villages turned into empty graveyards. In truth there had been plenty of water for her to hunt in if he'd felt like using her like that.
It was one small, small mercy that despite the nightmares she'd never actually tasted the blood of anyone but herself, never used her claws or teeth beyond that time that she'd been ordered to attack Chris and Sheva.
"It could have been worse." She always thought that at times like this.
Of course it could have been worse.
But that didn't make this good.
—
The helicopter ride had been long, ample time to think. With her face pulled back into the protective covering of what had been her face before-
(A thought she tried not to think about, not like it was much better than the memories of her skin and muscles seeming to melt and bulge about her bones as they strained and grew too large for the woman she'd been and almost big enough for the creature she was to become.)
More of her body was hidden though, a rather haphazardly altered BSAA windbreaker pulled over her torso. Slits cut into the material to let some things through, while the hood comically failed to cover the inhuman shape of her skull sticking out from under it. Beneath that she'd put on an outfit that bore an uncanny resemblance to the old wetsuits she'd had in her last, at the time apparently successful, mission involving the T-Abyss. Problem solved, monster slayed, and a vaccine for another man made horror injected into her blood.
Only to find out years later that the beast she'd thought slain had only been wounded, circling just beneath the surface till the protection of her miraculous immune system had failed (been taken away).
It brought back bad memories, not that anyone at the BSAA knew or cared. They probably just thought it made sense. "You can breathe under water now? Sure, here's a wetsuit so you have something to wear and don't look like a disgusting naked mutant freak."
Probably not in those words, but by now she was too numb to care about that. At least it fit, unlike most other things she'd been given to wear. She had no idea where Ashley Graham was getting clothes for someone with wings and insectile tail, but if she ever had the opportunity to talk to her it would be the first thing she asked.
At least this time there wasn't a mind controlling implant stuck on her chest, partially responsible for the chemical toxics which had unsettled her precarious biology and set her along the path to looking the way she did. If it weren't for the size of her body and her limbs she'd probably still pass for normal. That it took a full body suit almost to hide enough of her skin for that to even be a possibility was just a statement of a fact now.
"No amount of gym memberships will ever get me a beach body again," Jill thought, a slight and bitter laugh coming from her throat.
"Something funny Agent Valentine?"
She turned the mask of her face towards her current partner. Seeing him, if in shadows through the thin skin covering her eyes at the moment. Not as clear as normal, but hardly the blob of color one would have expected. Beneath the hood one of her eyelids blinked and the shape shifted slightly in clarity. Not a sensation she was ever going to get used to.
Or ever really wanted to get used to.
"Nothing really, just thinking about the past."
"You had a lot of missions… before."
Her head cocked to the side slightly as she shifted back. Grady had been with the European BSAA for years, most of it spent in the East in the various hot zones that broke out along and within ex Soviet States. She knew her career was (or had been, prior to all of this ) more notable, but there was no denying that anyone that had worked that region had seen their share of action and then some.
She'd been expecting this, sharing war stories and showing scars. Not that she had any of those now, everything from injuries at the mansion and what she'd gotten escaping Raccoon back to that little one on her thigh from a bike accident back when she'd been thirteen just as erased from her body as everything else. Her skin changed, her hair gone, her very genetic history erased as the body she'd possessed became raw materials for the creature she had become. She barely seemed to have a connection to the woman she'd been, save for memories that were more and more obviously colored by senses and experiences she didn't even feel the same way anymore.
"Agent Valentine?"
She'd wandered off into her thoughts again. She shook her head slightly, her jaw stretching out as her face pushed out and revealed itself. Her voice clearer when she next spoke, "Sorry, I was just thinking about your question. Yeah, I had a number of missions."
"Anything like this?"
"Like this-"
The mountains, shrouded in fog as they crashed down, cut off. Monsters after them, chasing them down like mere prey as they were driven into a slaughterhouse. Worse within than without, all from what should have been a simple investigation, cleaning up a few crime scenes and waiting for the CSI to show up and file a report.
Instead they'd been betrayed, though she hadn't known at first how deep. Or how much Wesker's obsession would cost her in the-
"No, not really. Most of the time it turned into a real horror show." Jill patted the satchel at her side, running her clawed fingers over the biosample kit before she spoke again. "This will be a nice change of pace."
The sun sank behind them and vanished utterly as they continued North. They wouldn't see it again till the return trip. Or in two months. While the sea lanes in this region were reasonably open, strong currents keeping it free of ice just south of arctic covering, there was nothing but perpetual twilight ahead of them.
The landed finally, the small rocky island beach shrouded in darkness and illuminated by only the lights of the helicopter itself and the landing flares they'd fired down below them. Grady had departed first, performing a quick sweep of the area with night vision goggles pulled down. Jill followed, the fleshy covering that hid her full face pulling back as her eyes blinked before the darkness. Through the hood of skin she'd been almost blind in this low light, but as the bitter chill bit into the thinner muscle of her naked jaw her inky black eyes adjusted quickly and in desaturated grays and blacks the rocks and ice faded into view. She wasn't sure if this qualified as true night vision, or just the absurd sensitivity of her vision now, but in either case there was nothing but a few hardy plants among the rising hills.
And the stench of dead fish, her jaw rising open and twisting into as much of a frown as her new musculature would allow.
"Looks like we picked the right spot," Jill thought, grabbing onto two of the larger supply crates and pulling them behind her. She'd been voluntold to handle unloading the long-range helicopter that the BSAA used for these sorts of things, and to set up the temporary camp they would use for the initial inspection and selection of possible ABS cases. By the stench that surrounded her, she could tell already that the Hot Zone for this infection must have left evidence on the nearby beach. Just a matter of setting things up so they could have a comfortable place to work. Technically this should be performed by skilled specialists, but the European BSAA was understaffed and stretched thin as it was. Too many incidents of losing those same specialists by sending them into an infection zone before it could be cleared by agents like her had led to some changes in protocol. "Well, agents like I used to be."
"Let's get the tent set up over here, so the wind won't be blowing in too hard if we have to be here longer than expected." Jill nodded, pulling out one of the metal supports and stabbing it into the ground. The rocky ground resisted, but depressing a button along the side of the pneumatic system had it rocketing downwards and anchoring securely. Her uncovered foot, claws and all, pressed it firmly down as her weight kept it from moving up as this happened. Normally a job for two or more, but given her advantages in this matter she handled it all alone. One by one, till the supports were up and she began to wrap the plastic and cloth covering onto the walls.
While she continued her work, the two other specialists that had accompanied them disembarked. Already dressed head to toe in biohazard suits, the BSAA logo printed over the upper right of the chest. She didn't even know what they looked like, both having been fully covered before even stepping onto the transport. She'd felt their stares on her the whole trip.
Obviously she'd been wrong about the level of disgust and fear that was coming from Agent Grady. While she couldn't smell it from the two in the suits, it was obvious that they hadn't had as many field deployments if they found her that hard to be around without staring constantly. The taller one, she thought might be a man but they hadn't spoken so she was only guessing, had been moving their hand towards their pistol as they waited for the tent to be finished.
Jill wasn't sure what good it would do them. Her skull had been uparmored in addition to pushing out into a maw of teeth, and while her muscles and flesh weren't hard enough to stop bullets, her regeneration would more than make up for it. Sheva and Chris had unloaded a full clip into her each and all that had done was piss her off.
Grady had at least kitted himself out to handle something like her, half of his clips filled with armor piercing fragmentation rounds, BOW Killers , that would go through the tougher skin and muscles of most known irregular mutations before breaking apart and hampering un-natural regeneration. Get enough of those in her chest and she'd probably be down on the ground and coughing blood instead weathering the damage and watching the lead pop out of her skin as it knitted back together, even the scars of the bullet holes vanishing back into smooth white or bluish hide before her eyes.
Get a few through her skull and-
Well, they weren't called BOW Killers for nothing.
She hefted the generator up as the small electric buggy pulled out the tiny trailer loaded with the last of supplies. The other biohazard suited BSAA specialist drove it around and parked in front of the tent as Jill sat down the generator and plugged it up to the cords leading into the shelter and the lights pointed out into the darkness unlit by the still smoking flares. With one strong tug it roared to life.
Just as the sound of the helicopter grew louder, lifting upward and away before swiftly returning to the landing pad on the coast they'd departed from. Not to return for at least eighteen hours, or until they called for an emergency evacuation. Which would still take some time to reach even then.
Plenty of time to finish this recon mission and get bored out of their heads.
She'd just have to keep busy until then.
"I'm not sure I heard you right," Grady said, looking down at the dissected fish that was, in spite of having most of its organs either removed or rendered into reddish jelly, continued to wriggle on the metal tray in front of them. "It's what?"
"Truly undead. Mutated yes, but in this case I think we can say it has even been properly re-animated."
Jill had been wrong. The tall one had been a woman while the shorter tech was a man. He, a Dr. Krell, was nervously explaining what they'd found from the samples pulled up from the beach. Not hard to find, as the shore was heavy with fish carcasses when Grady and her had gone down to collect them.
Well, more Jill doing the collecting while Grady pointed a flashlight around and guarded them against nothing.
"Zombie Cod might be disgusting," Jill thought. Taking another sniff, her snout stinging from the foul odor as her jaw tightened and nostrils shrunk. "Very disgusting, but that's not going to be a danger to anyone with legs and a sense of smell anytime soon."
"How is that different from normal zombies?"
"Agent Grady, normal zombies, or Aggressive Infection Vectors are just that," the woman added, turning her still covered head from the wriggling fish carcass as she spoke. Agent Colman continuing, the slight Swedish accent coloring her words as she did, "they are the infected, still living yes, but changed. This truly died, all cellular function ceasing and killed by this unknown vector for contamination before reanimating again. Level of aggression, if any, still unknown of course."
"How'd you miss this in the previous samples?"
They looked at Jill, where she sat on her haunches, tail laid flat across the cold ground even with the tiny space heater within the tent. Her body just a bit too tall to easily stand without bumping her head against the metal support beams. She looked from one to the other, her expression unreadable even as her jaw minutely shifted out of neutrality into a tighter clenched frown.
Or what her human mind thought of as that, even if it probably barely looked any different at all. Her eyelids, both sets, blinking twice while they looked at each other probably told more about how she was still waiting for their response.
"I share Agent Valentine's concern," Grady said at last, putting emphasis on the word, even if it was only a probationary recommission at the moment. "Shouldn't we have noticed this from the samples back on the mainland?"
"Yes… that is very concerning. We saw the after effects, the mutations created by whatever this… is, but the infection itself had been completely purged by the time it reached the lab."
Dr. Krell nodded, probably quite enthusiastically for it to show so clearly through the biohazard suit. "Yes! When we got them they seemed completely inert, lots of cellular damage and the genetic tracing a complete mess. But with the infection purged we couldn't tell what we were dealing with."
"We still can't Krell, not till we get whatever this is sequenced."
"Should we call for backup?"
This time there was no long pause, though it looked like the two specialists were about to speak first.
"No. I think we should stick to the plan Agent Valentine. I'll head down towards the beach to secure the parameter while we get more samples prepared for more in depth inspection. No use running back before we get everything we came for."
Krell and Colman shared a look, clearly not happy with a longer stay. Though Jill couldn't fault the logic. This place was abandoned, too small to hide much of anything, and once they had a few more samples brought up they'd just hunker down around the generator and heater till their return flight landed.
For once a truly easy mission.
"Valentine, you take point outside of the camp for now," Grady said. Probably more to give the two clearly unsettled techs some space then because he really thought they needed her patrolling area. She nodded, heading out and biting back sharp exhalation as the hard chill hit her lungs. Thankfully the hood kept the air from her gills and as the hood of flesh pulled down over her face she felt most of the cold vanish from her more sensitive extremities. Anything else was covered by the wetsuit, and her body was doing a remarkable job at dealing with the cold. Blood slowing down at the surface, a numbing tightness as the thicker hide of her body weathered the temperatures better than she ever could have before even in a full sub zero suit.
Her uncovered feet, webbed and clawed toes shifted the rocks as she moved around the tent. The lights were bright enough that she could 'see' slightly even with her face tucked in. Or see well enough not to trip. The area beyond the lights was a hazy black void at the moment, and all she could hear was the generator thrumming along nearby as she passed it. The radio at her side sprang to life, Grady's voice clear through the short range walkie talkie.
"Agent Valentine, anything to report?"
"Nothing but rocks and cold."
"Same. I found a few larger samples on the beach, I think one might be a sturgeon… or was. That should be enough."
"Probably."
"Look around for a secondary tent location. I think this operation might go on longer and we might as well prep for the next team."
"Got it," Jill said, lightly pressing down on the button on the side as she started walking towards the small trailer with the rest of their supplies on it. Reaching down to grab the second bundle of tent poles.
And paused, clawed hand halfway down as she noticed how the bundle it came in had already been ripped open, the metal shafts rolling free next to one of the extra gas tanks and-
Jill lurched forward, the thud of the impact reverberating through her whole body before she felt the pain. The spear tip penetrated into her back, through bone and cartilage like armoring and into the very core of her body. Her eyes widened beneath the hood as her jaws snapped out and a muted cry of pain issued out, blood and spittle flowing over her teeth. The prongs that anchored the poles expanded outward and shredded through something important. She fell against the side of the trailer, before rolling onto the ground, her action causing the tent pole to twist and yank down, a stabbing pain that made her vision swim red and black as she struggled to stand again.
The pain utterly swallowed her, her heart pounding and pounding and finally growing still…
And in the silence, just before she fell into an abyss of darkness she heard-
"This is Skadi… the primary target is down."
Something else was said, echoing in that deepening darkness.
But Jill knew it not.
"Don't you get tired of eating like that?"
Wesker looked up from his tray, the salad and protein shake combo disgustingly healthy to her eyes. She knew it wasn't some vegan thing either, Wesker had proudly talked about the BLT he'd gotten from the same organic restaurant down from the station on one of his 'cheat days'.
"A body is a temple Jill, and I make sure to worship mine."
"God, half the time he's a total nerd… and then he says weird stuff like that." She honestly didn't know how he'd ever gotten into this profession. Wesker just didn't seem like he was the type to wear a uniform. Jill took a drink of water as she thought about it more. "Maybe STARS is just a holding position while he tries to get a job in forensics for some federal lab?"
Wesker was definitely smart enough for it, and she half suspected his specialty was less law enforcement than some kind of science. Even if he was the only person aside from Chris that was tying her shooting range score.
"You should treat yourself better you know," Wesker said, taking a long drink of that disgustingly green and fruity-smelling protein shake he'd made. A strange smile coming over his lips as he looked down at her own tray before meeting her eyes with his own once more. "Someone like you deserves better than chum."
Jill's eyes widened as the smell of fish, raw and possibly just this side of rotten assaulted her senses. Her nostrils closed up even as she felt things push outward and-
No… no, this didn't happen like-
-her face deforming, melting, reforming as bones snapped, teeth growing out as the old human ones fell out one by one by one-
I didn't-stop. STOP!
-suddenly parting, her jaws pushing out, snapping open as she gasped, struggling to breath, struggling as she felt her heart still in her chest, a stabbing pain as it tried to beat but couldn't, wouldn't-
Wesker looked at her with concerned bemusement as he took a bite of his sandwich, seemingly uninterested in her body's swift abandonment of anything and everything that remained of her humanity. More interested in the reddish blotch growing on her chest, more evident as her body stretched out, her STARS uniform soon ill fit to contain what she was to become.
"Jill, are you really going to just lie there and-"
Her claws dragged across the ground as she rose up, her entire body burning from a lack of oxygen. Her insides twisting, the half thump of her heart reverberating in the muted silence of her near death state. She felt her insides twist about the metal spike that had almost impaled through the organ. Missing by centimeters and then pulled down as she'd writhed along the ground. Twisting through the large veins leading below it, larger then normal and once shredded by the impalement. Regrown, but then torn again and again as she moved and tried to force her lifeblood to continue to flow even as it pooled internally in her chest cavity.
"Damn… damn it." Jill managed to rise to a sitting crouch, reaching behind and tugging on the pole. Only to wince as the pain redoubled and her vision went black again.
No good.
The prongs had extended and her own body had tried to grow over the entrance wound. She wasn't pulling it out, not like that.
So she'd have to go the other way.
Rising up, kneeling and part way standing she aimed the pole towards the grown. And fell back.
Her voice was keening roar of pain trailing into woman's scream only at the end as the end speared out, blood spraying into the air as the tip protruded outward. She saw the metal teeth of the anchoring system before her as her head turned down. And her hand grasped around it.
Her claws.
She twisted and felt the metal bend.
She gripped harder and pulled, the tip breaking off and leaving only a sharpened tip.
Which sank back into her flesh as she rose, inch by painful inch till she stood. The end of the pole falling from her back. Only for her to collapse onto the ground, knees first, her tail lashing out behind her as her jaws opened wide. A torrent of blood and bile flowing out, her heart roaring back to life as the metallic invader that had kept her from properly regenerating had been removed at last. Within moments even the wounds on her front and back had closed up, only a slight dull ache where she'd been stabbed straight through. Even the reddish welt was fading into too pale white on the front and the bluish black on the opposite.
Jill took several deep breaths, the harsh cold welcomed after that numbing pain of catatonic injury. Only to turn sharply as her ears finally picked up the sound of the generator once more. She ran towards the front of the tent, pulling open the flap and-
"Damn it."
Her voice was still hoarse and strained, but the clarity of her annoyance came through. Not that anyone was there to hear it. Both Krell and Colman were dead, their bodies laid out over their work. Krell had been torn open, wickedly cruel claws spilling blood and viscera across the ground. Colman had been luckier, or perhaps unluckier, to have only had her throat torn open. The blood spray painted the back of the tent where she had ran, but then fallen to the ground. Both their sidearms were out, several rounds spent in both.
No sign of what they had fought, though the radio looked smashed to pieces across the floor. The biosamples were missing too, not that it was easy to tell with the devastation that had happened within.
"Oh no." Jill took off from the tent, towards the beach. Her eyes and jaw coming out as she ran, the muted darkness blossoming with more detail as her eyes adjusted. The smell of dead fish remained, along with new scents. Her own blood… and something else. She stopped at the edge of the island, looking around the shore. A new emergency flare had been dropped, the light illuminating the rotting and yet still twitching fish carcasses. That larger sturgeon that Grady had mentioned before.
And yet no sign of the man himself.
This was bad. Impossibly bad. Someone had attacked her, managed to almost kill her. Known how to do so even and-
"And then ripped apart the lab techs like a-"
"Shit."
She'd heard someone speak… a woman? It had been strange, probably masked against the cold, but clearly speaking to another. But they'd killed them with blades or perhaps 'smart' BOWs using a control method. It would look to anyone that came like they'd been torn apart by-
By her.
Grady was missing, the radio was destroyed… by the time the BSAA chopper came back the trail of the real killers would be long cold. Best case she spent the next six months in five times the level of security as they tried to decide if she did it or had simply screwed up and let it happen.
Worst case they took one look and sent in an attack chopper a few hours later to test out those new incendiary rounds they were using in the miniguns to handle things like her.
"Goddamnit." She sat down, kicking one of the mutated fish away, its body exploding into gore as part of it made it all the way to the water. Her one chance, likely her last chance, had been taken away from her. All because she'd been too sloppy, not paying attention to her surroundings like a rank amateur and not a woman that had been through this half a dozen times before and-
Wait.
What was that?
Her eyes blinked, jaw dropping open slightly as she crawled forward and then stood. In the distance, perhaps only a few hundred meters were lights. A boat… parked not far from the island, close enough that-
Could it be them? This Skadi or another that had attacked her? Perhaps they might still have Grady…
"Even if it's just a fishing boat they might have a radio, and I can call in what happened and explain myself before someone jumps to conclusions."
She stepped into the water, the cold almost welcoming to her body. Before she froze. Her tail floating behind her, her fins flexing in the surf. If it wasn't her attackers, if it really was just some unfortunate fisherman that had ignored or missed the BSAA's warnings.
What was she going to say?
"I'll cross that bridge when I get there."
She didn't really have a choice.
Chicago NPR
"Good afternoon. This is NPR with a special interview. I'm joined today by a remarkable young woman whom I'm sure you've likely heard of before. Ms. Graham, would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?"
"I don't think that's really necessary. I've talked enough about myself already. If they're curious they can just listen to another one or read all those magazine articles over the last year."
"If you're certain about that."
"I'm not here to talk about myself again. This is about something more important. The EU is still holding back on using viril inhibitors even though they have an almost perfect track record of preventing death in the case of severe infection."
"A perfect record?"
"Death as in the death of the person infected. If they survive in any sense they're still alive. Before that the number of survival cases only numbered in a few dozen, at least those publicly known."
"You make it sound like that number is different."
"It is. I've looked at the classified Umbrella documents. They created SBOWs during their initial trials. They just weren't considered useful, since they wanted either mindless slaves or 'perfect' super soldiers fit for some Aryan propaganda poster."
"That seems a tad extreme."
"Have you read the Wesker Report? The founders of Umbrella were charitably called eugenicists at best, even if their obsessions were odder than those of prior criminals and mad men."
"I think we're getting off topic Ms. Graham. Surely there are some good reasons to be suspicious of those viral inhibitors given their side effects."
"The side effect is living. Without them surviving infection is a fluke event at best, almost always related to getting a vaccine in time, if one exists, or being a one in a million Golden Ticket immunity."
"What about the number of mutations in the treatment? While the area is still under quarantine, TMZ snuck in recently and took pictures of a number of cases which are-"
"Like me you mean? It's public knowledge that the inhibitors were developed based on my own treatment, and when given to Plagas infected they could have similar effects."
"Isn't that a concern?"
"How? Even with the bans on research we've still managed to improve them enough that fully eighty percent of those given the inhibitor treatment to purge their bodies of Plagas strains showed no or minimal mutation. Even for the rest almost eighteen percent had very minor effects."
"What about the remaining two percent? Isn't that enough of a concern for continued studies and investigation?"
"No, and I don't like the implication that we should continue 'investigating' when a treatment exists that could save people now."
"I'm not sure I follow. What implication?"
"That it would be better if everyone dies then risk someone ending up like me."