As annoying as it might have been to not be carrying her more trusted equipment, there was one big advantage. Stealth.

The eerie silence wouldn't be disturbed by Jill, leaving her ample opportunities to stop at corners or the unsecured gates standing before her, peeking her head out, facial features as unreadable as ever, but the slight tightness of the thicker armoring of her facial hood giving evidence to the tension in her body. Assuming the way her tail was unconsciously flicking from side to side in minute and persistent motions, as if following the instructions of her SBOW inherited instincts on how to swim slow and unheard towards some prey.

Though as ferocious as she appeared at first glance and the ease at which she had dispatched that first zombie, Jill wasn't about to assume she was the predator in this environment. She didn't know what she was dealing with, only that whatever it was, it had managed to depopulate the frozen over old mining town and leave rather little evidence of its passage. Which meant something that spread fast and killed faster.

"Or that it had help…"

Bad enough was the possibility of zombies from an currently unknown viral source with who knows what possible BOW variations, assuming further mutations came in the package. Nowadays one had to worry about 'smart' BOWs. Not meaning her, but instead the various improved control and targeting methods that had been used. The Plagas was popular for that, either through direct implementation of Queen-Slave protocols using different versions or pheromone targeting system. Then of course one had to worry about the advances in conditioning used on Tyrant-Class BOWs, which while tending to include less hyper-evolving prototypes as they did in the old days were now far more useful as fire and forget biological terminators. Other systems with post-infection cybernetic implants, chemical or auditory conditioning as further control systems had also been used to some success. Gone were the days where a BOW was guaranteed to act as a near mindless beast, barely more cognizant than the zombie hordes around them.

Most were better classified as biological drones, possibly guided by a human intellect ordering them and even more troubling, coordinating them to attack in the most effective manner.

If something like that had happened here, it could explain the lack of evidence or damage. Most of the small population left to keep the lights on during the darkest and coldest part of the winter wiped out before they had a chance to sound any alarm. Of course this was all blatant speculation, it could just as easily have been an entirely mundane assault which had taken the unprepared workers by surprise, cut off the radio and then cut their throats just as efficiently.

Jill sniffed at the air, a stray snowflake falling from above onto the tip of her gray snout as she stuck her head out from behind a parked truck next to a desolate building that must have been part of the central control for the loading and unloading system. She didn't see anything, she didn't hear anything, hell, she didn't even smell anything. "What happened to everyone?"

She was starting to think that that body she'd found was the lone forgotten one, left behind by whoever had swept through earlier. Only to turn down the main street, or what could very charitably be called that in place so small that it had solitary general store and what looked like a small bar or recreation area attached nearby as the lone example of color against the drab grays and blues of old Soviet-era construction that had neither been replaced or much altered in the last forty years. But there, not far from that bar, was a charnel pile of bodies. Cadavers piled up around a central area and dosed with gas going by the smell. Then set aflame, and allowed it to burn for as long as they could. Long enough that they were now blackened and charred, almost fleshless gaunt things, naked or covered in bits of ruined cloth that had survived the fire.

Jill approached them, curious as to what other evidence might be nearby. Only to pause midstep, not risking even that slight crunch of snow under foot.

She'd heard something.

A fast sprint about the body pile and against the entrance to the bar, the very nearly dead neon of an unreadable sign flickering above her as she spared only the most hesitant glance outward. A dull humming, louder than that of the street lights and just different enough was coming from somewhere nearby. Approaching closer and-

There!

She saw it as only a shadow in front of a light on one of the larger, oldest looming buildings that stood like a gray mausoleum on this dead island. But the small flitting shadow was unmistakable. The drone slowly moved through the air, pausing as cameras no doubt scanned over the street where she had been. Before it turned and moved off, further down the road.

"That could be bad." The infected were one thing, even if she was playing it safe as she could when dealing with an entirely unknown infection. But whoever had set up the signal interference had to be the same ones with those drones, as they wouldn't be able to control them if they weren't in control of the blockers. Which meant…

Well, Jill didn't know what it meant, but like she'd told Svenn and his uncle. Anyone that could and would bring that kind of gear out here wasn't going to stop at non-lethal ways to silence witnesses. And the last thing Jill wanted to experience was the business end of high-explosive munitions or an anti-material rifle.

Or in other words, the solutions that prepared militaries brought out when dealing with things like her these days. Human rights issues and war crimes very specifically not covering creatures that had been defined out of being human after all. Thankfully she had one very big thing going for her in comparison to most of the BOWs that those tactics had been invented to deal with.

She'd been in the meetings that had drawn them up in the first place.

"So, drone patrols to limit direct engagement with infectious vectors and possible BOWs. Possibly armed ones too, but they'd probably keep those in reserve unless needed." That, and if they could pull out a full automated missile strike at will she was dealing with an 'officially' unofficial black-ops group or someone with pockets as deep as Umbrella's used to be. Even if the best they could do was direct fire support or prepare a sniper ambush the effect would be the same if Jill let herself be spotted and didn't know about it in time.

One very bullet ridden Valentine.

Her jaw parted, teeth showing in frightful display as she tried to frown. She could keep moving slowly, staying in the cluttered areas between some of the buildings. But that ran the risk of untold numbers of possible early warning signs. The other option of course was to break into the buildings, taking advantage of the fact that maintaining surveillance over all of this at once would be a daunting task for a clandestine operation when they could just monitor the outside and see who entered or left. It would at least get her closer to that lone radio tower standing tall in the distance at the other side of Heimfest.

What she really needed was a map. Or directions.

A sound of breaking glass came from behind her, Jill turning swiftly, the blue-gray of her carapace hood falling over her eyes as her jaw snapped closed and she warily stared into the shadowed building behind her. Taking a close look inside for the first time she saw how chairs and tables had been moved around, some braced against the door itself. She experimentally tried to open it, feeling it shift only a bit before a chain halted her motion.

But not, thankfully a very thick one. And it was attached to the frame of the door itself, bolted to the wood but hardly an insurmountable obstacle. At least to what she was now. She didn't have any bolt cutters or a key for the padlock fastening it shut, but she had three webbed claws and just enough room to get her arm in and grab onto it firmly. Wrenching it from side to side, the metal buckling slightly as her grip tightened before she felt the bolts holding it to the door frame yank out slightly with barely audible creak of stressing wood. She pushed and pulled harder, a low growl in her throat as part of the chain broke and the whole of it came loose at last. Dropping it to the floor she reached inside and pulled up at the table, her claws digging into the wood as she dragged it in with the door itself.

The sound wasn't quiet, but she did her best not to make too much of a racket as she slipped in, stepping over broken bottles and shattered glass. Her tail trailing over them, the fin feeling the splinters of the wood as she crouched down and passed by the abandoned bar, turning towards a light source and a sound of motion coming from a floor halfway down from where she now stood. A loon light of a lantern illuminating a pool table, and a figure standing before it.

Mumbling something in… Russian?

He wasn't dressed in the sub zero worker outfit, instead the drab green colors of positively ancient military uniform adorned him as he… sang?

Jill didn't know enough to guess the meaning, but the melody was there at least, and with one broken bottle on the floor and the scent of strong liquor perfuming the air she could estimate what was happening. Even if it made rather little sense. This man looked healthy…

She brought her left foot forward only to be rewarded by a cacophony of sounds as a fishing line went taunt and empty cans fell over along the nearest booth. The man whirled about, the bottle still in one hand as he grabbed at a pistol. Hesitating for a moment as he saw her in the darkness before aiming. Jill was about to speak, only to hear a loud click as the chamber failed to fire.

He grimaced, looking at the gun before he threw it at her, the act stopping her from speaking in sheer surprise. That he immediately took another drink from the bottle, almost emptying it at that added to the sight. She cocked her head to one side, the hood pulling back as her dark eyes shined in the lantern light.

And then he smashed the bottle against the pool table and shouted something at her.

"... do you really think that would work?"

He paused, staring back at her, the bottle falling from his hand and breaking against the floor next to the earlier one that Jill had heard.

"Kakogo cherta - you can talk ?"

"So of course Haagan, God rest his soul, he would always say 'Samuil, Samuil, you must pay tab'," Samuil said, holding yet another bottle he had purloined from the now dead proprietor of the bar/store/recreational location of Heimfest. Jill nodded along, more curious at the moment on how this man could possibly still be conscious after consuming that much liquor. The smell from him was simply overpowering, though he seemed surprisingly coherent despite it all. Not particularly perturbed by Jill's form either, simply shrugging it off as 'How the Americans must be doing things now' when she'd said she worked for the BSAA.

"'Back in my day it was different?' What was he even talking about," Jill thought, Samuil taking another drink and sinking lower into the booth at the far corner of the room. He'd sequestered himself next to ready supply of drinks, of which he could be certain weren't contaminated and the piles of unopened (and a small pile of opened) cans showed that the food hadn't been a problem either. Ammo for the antique he'd tried to shoot her with had run out, but as long as he kept quiet and stayed off the streets it looked like he'd survive.

At least till the generators went down and he froze to death, but as far as plans in a crisis like this Jill had seen far worse fail far quicker.

Wishing she had simple way to communicate her disinterest in the 'Struggles of Samuil' to pay his bar tab, or at least one that didn't rely on baring teeth or some other intimidating mannerism of her body language, Jill coughed lightly from where she leaned against the pool table.

"That's… interesting, but you said you could tell me what happened here." Jill waved her webbed hand about the empty room, the humanoid shadow of her finned form cast upon the wall behind her in flickering lantern light. "This must have happened fast."

"Da, one day everything fine, trying to dig deeper into coal mines. New owners want more, always more. Not like old days though. Not at first anyway," Samuil paused as he spoke, looking at Jill with a strange sort of intensity. "Back then, the first time, they sent men from Moscow to find out why."

"Why what?"

"Why some get sick and some did not."

"Wait, he can't mean…"

Jill rose up, standing over him, the tension readable even to Samuil in how her tail stiffened and the armored cartilage that covered her back and most of her head tightened, making her fins seem more aggressive, pointed and sharp in that moment. Her mouth opened wider than she intended, the shock showing teeth and the unusually long (for what she looked like now anyway) tongue in her mouth as she spoke. "This happened before?"

"Oh yes. Back in… 86? Big deal. Lots of very smart ," Samuil let out a barking laugh at the word before continuing, "men came here. First they thought it just weird disease, then when the 6th excavation team all coughed up lungs they think they found new bio-weapon. But Samuil stay healthy!"

He punched his chest to emphasize the point. Almost dropping the bottle in his other hand as he did so. Jill's expression was unreadable, though the slight tilt of her head communicated the disbelief she felt at what she had just heard.

"Hell, I felt better after I came up from mine that day."

"He has to be making this up," she thought. Leaning closer and looking at him. A middle aged at most man, stinking of liquor and wearing an old military uniform which looked a bit loose on him at that."You were in the mines twenty years ago?"

"Ha! I've been on Heimfest since '73. Came when it was a penal colony and we built the radio tower. But then I was stuck with the rest and we just ended up working in the mines since the war never came. Till we broke through into that bad air and then… khrenoten!"

He made an odd and very clearly vulgar gesture as he sank into his seat.

"All turned to shit. Everyone get sick except Samuil, everyone beg for a bullet except Samuil and everyone but Samuil…"

He trailed off, broken English fading into Russian, staring at the bottle in his hands before roughly throwing it at the nearby wall. It shattered, the liquid running down the faded wallpaper and adding one more stain to the multitude.

All while Jill started to understand.

"You were immune."

He nodded, still looking down as he did.

"But no one else was."

"Da. The doctors, they tried to figure it out, but as the bodies piled up and the cost mounted they just sealed it over and left."

"Wait, is that what happened?" Jill asked, stepping forward, the floor boards creaking under her as she moved swiftly, not bothering with the cautious actions she'd been taking since she'd become aware of how unsettling she could be at times. "Someone came in and opened up the tunnels you mentioned?"

"No… it's all still sealed. Under Heimfest."

Under Heimfest was quite literal. They only had to walk into the basement to find old bomb shelter tunnels that led straight from the bar, once the old Soviet forward guard post apparently, all the way up to the military base they'd built east of the mine. The town, from the old concrete apartment blocks to the storage buildings was riddled with such things, the whole of them firmly shut, long faded warnings plastered over the door. The myriad of warnings couldn't decide if it was nuclear, a biohazard, or simply a matter of worker safety.

The point was clear regardless.

No one should proceed past this point.

"So this leads all the way up to the radio tower?"

Samuil nodded, idly picking up the now ancient and rusted chains that bound the airtight door and kept one from turning the crank to open them. Letting it drop with a loud and echoing clang that reverberated through the small room and likely the passage behind.

"Just straight ahead… the yellow line. Not the blue…" He trailed off again, turning away and once more mumbling to himself as he began to climb the stairs back up to the bar. Jill's mouth opened slightly, the attempt of a frown as she turned her eyes back on the departing man. He'd been remarkably calm, or simply too drunk, to react as she'd expected after the initial panic. But there had to be more he could tell her.

"Like, how did this get out if the mines were blasted shut and this is still closed off?" He'd mentioned someone new taking over, but had only cursed up a storm in Russian about ruining the union when Jill had tried to find out who that had been. Even then that hardly explained the why of all this. The one lucky survivor didn't necessarily know what was really going on.

Jill had some experience in that matter first hand.

While Samuil probably knew more, piecing it together from his rants would take too long and she was on strict time limit already. She'd been… unconscious for almost half an hour, taken two to get this far. It had been about one more since she'd come to Heimfest and now she was going to have to take a long, dark and probably dingy route to the old radio tower so she could get there without being found out by the real culprits of the massacre she'd survived earlier.

She just didn't have the time to find out anything else. Hopefully Samuil would survive and sober up, but as for her…

Jill grabbed onto the metal chains, far tougher and far stronger than the improvised door lock from before. She braced her foot against the metal, the boney white foot claws of her digitrade fin-leg pressed down and made hard scratching sounds as she pulled. Her muscles strained, the armored flesh of her hood fell over her eyes as her body pressed on the effort more and more.

At last she let out a loud groan of effort that shifted from her emulation of her human voice, primate and female and into something deeper and stranger, her jaw showing more than one row of teeth for a moment as she opened her mouth wider than she normally dared and tugged even harder.

The rusted metal gave, warped, and finally snapped loose as she stepped back, her tail came to smack against the damp concrete, her fins shifted from side to side as she tossed the useless metal away. She stepped forward, grabbing onto the crank handle of the door and gave it a hard turn. Long disused gears gave awful sounds from within as she moved it slowly, till at last the mechanism moved and the door shifted loose. Jill pulled it open, her jaw coming to snap fully closed as the dank and dusty smell from beyond came to her and she stared ahead into utter pitch darkness.

Pulling one of the two flares from her side pouch, she snapped it between what was once her thumb and what was once another pair of fingers, holding the brightening green light before her as she shook it.

Stepping into that darkness. Worried that there might be something worse in it than herself.

Somewhere, in the dark reaches of her mind and memory she heard the self-confident laugh, thinking of how sickeningly self-assured Wesker had always seemed. He'd probably find the idea of her being afraid, especially as she now was ( thanks to him of course ) absolutely hilarious.

"Stop thinking about ghosts Jill," she thought. She moved forward, her hood slipping back again, dark eyes trying to peer into the shadows as she did. There was nothing to be afraid of down her.

It had been dead and buried for over two decades. Not even BOWs could live that long without something to eat…