"Anything to report?"
"Negative Captain."
"Fine, but don't forget we're dealing with a BOW and an ex-agent. She- it will know how we plan to track and kill it. Don't ignore that."
The transmission cut off, leaving Agents Armando Cascos and Joanna Koprowska alone, one deck lower and cautiously moving forward, lights pointed ahead. Joanna's short ponytail of dark brunette hair swayed back and forth as she quickly turned down one hall and then another checking for any sign of the rampaging BOW they'd injured above. Armando was kneeling down near the railing, rubbing his gloved fingers over something on the floor.
"She was here."
Joanna fought the urge to roll her eyes, instead stepping to the side of her junior partner from Central Europe.
"Really Cascos? These more expert tracking skills for a Hunting Commando or is the fact that she must have leaked a pint of blood before the wound closed up?"
"It. Do not personalize the dead."
"Oh god, he's still doing it." Armando might try and cut the appearance of a seasoned agent, the borderline regulation breaking facial hair part of that, but her role as a BSAA medic had gotten her the opportunity to look at the files for his operations. He'd never even encountered a proper BOW, merely dealing with the cleanup and elimination of Plagas infected and T-Virus 'cannibal syndrome' victims. The big injury in his files he'd talked about earning during fight before had ultimately been caused by the structural instability of the building they'd been checking for zombies. She couldn't quite keep her facial expression neutral, though Cascos was still busy looking down at the blood stain on the deck.
"She was one of the best agents we had. And thanks to you jumping the gun all we did was injure her instead of doing it quick and clean like we planned." Her boot kicked a few of the shiny bits of metal in the blood to the side before she spoke again. "And stop touching that. If she's actually contagious you don't want to get her blood on you."
Armando said something vulgar in German under his breath as he shook his hand, rubbing the sealed and waterproof glove along the floor next to him.
A sudden sound of creaking wood thudding against the ship drew their attention up. And then onto the lifeboat, rocking back and forth against the side of the ship. Lady Aurora was in that strange middle ground of overproduced, yet mostly fake luxury, that attracted regular tourists willing to overpay for wood panels and an old timey aesthetic stapled over a semi-modern ship. The lifeboat's appearance as something a century older, while being fairly normal aside, was part of that.
"That's odd."
"How so?"
Armando looked over the side, down to the rolling waves and then back up to the deck where they'd had their ambush prepared for Valentine when she came out of the ocean again. Turning back towards Joanna he made to stroke his chin, freezing as he noticed which hand was free and what it had been touching.
"Didn't Commander Grady say something about the BOW taking out lifeboats?"
"What do you mean?"
"They all look to still be attached."
"Damnation, she took out the captain already?"
"Gutted him like a fish and took him overboard," Grady said as they walked around the bridge of the ship. Most of the controls looked torn up, either covered in thin spray of blood or bullet holes from the fire fight that had driven off Valentine the first time. After that he'd gotten the surviving crew to get the passengers down below decks and locked into their rooms. As long as they kept the main routes below deck sealed off they would be safe while they dealt with the aggressor coming from outside.
"And you couldn't have aimed better?" Captain Barker asked, looking down at the inoperable consoles. Between this and the jammed engines, which he wasn't sure how one mad mutated woman had managed without getting herself diced to pieces in the process, they were dead in the water. Only the helicopter they came in on which, while certainly able to get them back to the coast, certainly couldn't carry the whole crew.
"I was having a bit of an issue not joining her last victim at the bottom of the ocean… or in her stomach."
Anita felt the spent casings roll under her foot as she moved between the two taller men. The shorter blonde woman prying open the panel underneath. Her pale blue eyes narrowed at the sight that greeted her.
"Radio is not looking good sir."
"We got one on the copter Agent Jacobs. Still, it's good you got out that warning before she attacked again." Barker stood up and walked over to the main window, broken at the moment, bits of glass strewn about the floor near them. He still looked out into the shadow-covered ocean as he asked, "Any idea what set her off?"
"Stress… possibly her latent instincts triggered by the environment. I should have known better than to approve a mission, let alone one near the ocean given the instability of the T-Abyss. I'll take full responsibility for the deaths in my report. Handling Valentine if she went rogue was part of my responsibilities."
"Nonesense, you couldn't have known she was a ticking time bomb like that. Certainly we all suspected as much… just let our sympathies cloud our judgements."
"Why'd she retreat?"
They turned to look at her, confusion clear on Barker's face while Grady just looked back at her from the other side of the empty bridge.
"What do you mean Jacobs?"
"Well, if she's gone feral, shouldn't she just keep coming till you ran out of bullets or put her down? BOWs aren't known for tactical retreats."
"The ones you deal with most of the time you mean," Grady said. "But I think Valentine isn't all gone. More like her broken mind is pulling out the trauma from past events and replaying it. She probably thought the two she killed at the camp were zombies, the crew she attacked her the same. From what little she spoke between this I think she's seeing me as someone she knew."
"Who?"
Grady smiled a little before he said, "Well, don't be surprised if she mutters something about Wesker before trying to rip out your throat with her teeth."
Anita stiffened at that. A gloved hand went to her throat as she imagined what it would be like if Jill Valentine, the new Jill Valentine attacked her like that. She'd been one of the most formidable and famed agents prior to her transformation. The idea of that strength and skill warped, twisted, and set upon her with ferocity devoid of human restraints was an intimidating thought.
"Understood sir."
"Nothing in the gym."
"I checked the bathrooms and showers as well," Joanna said as she came around back to her partner. "Still nothing on the motion sensors I've been putting down behind us."
"Maybe you had to drop the sensitivity too much because we're on a boat?"
"I know how to calibrate a security system," Armando said, looking up from the tablet he was holding. "And if she- it was able to follow behind from those rooms she'd have to be some kind of sensor ghost."
"Maybe the T-Abyss does that?"
"The T-Abyss turns you into a fish," he replied, a dismissive wave of his hand as he said so. "There are odder viruses, yes, but this one isn't notable for any traits like that. And our BOW stopped mutating months ago."
"Maybe the stress that triggered her attacks has led to further physiological changes."
"That is… possible," Armando said at last, nodding slowly. "But we can not act like we do not have any baseline knowledge on what we hunt. At the very least, we know it bleeds…"
"Is he really going to?"
"... and if it bleeds we can kill it."
Joanna bit down, hiding the grimace as she came around to the door leading into the dining hall. There other team members were moving from the opposite direction, hoping to flush the BOW into one or the other's sights. She was hoping that they'd have a chance to just wait until they were told to move forward, but Cascos checked on his sensors again and the door itself before smiling a bit too proudly.
"Ha, just as I thought. The next room is clear."
"How can you be so sure?"
An even smugger look crossed Cascos's face as he pulled the panel he'd attached to the door down and slid it back into his pack. "A high frequency scanner we used for urban BOW pacification and search and rescue. With it I could even tell you how many chairs they had set up at the table for brunch. And there's definitely no BOW in that room."
"Don't you think we should wait anyway?"
He'd already moved to open the door, motioning for her to take point on the left as they entered, for all the good it would do if the room was really empty. Still she pointed her gun and light in that direction, all the while hoping that at this Cascos was as good as he thought he was. As much as she wanted to just find Valentine and be done with this already, being the first to wander up on her set her on edge. She'd seen those bullets strike true, her throat ripped open by Anti-BOW rounds.
And there hadn't been a body below, only the bullets themselves spat out with a mess of blood on the floor.
"What will it take to kill something like that?" She shuddered at the thought, as it connected to how that thing had been a person. One that would have preferred the merciful death they sought to give her, but which her own biology and now virus twisted mind, driven by primal and inhuman instincts now denied. It was bad enough that most BSAA agents had a conversation about 'who would pull the trigger' on them. But this? "What if one bullet is not enough?"
"See, I told you this room was-"
A sharp pop came from one side. There guns out a moment later, safeties off and before they could realize what it was a short burst of fire had sprayed out of Cascos's weapon. A partially melted ice sculpture of a mermaid beheaded as another balloon nearby popped and the rest floated up and bounced against the ceiling.
"Cholerny! What are you doing?"
"I thought it-"
"Cascos! Koprowska," their radios burst into activity. "Did you encounter the BOW?"
"Negative… a misfire."
"Bloody hell," Barker said over the crackling sound of the speaker. "Stop making a mess of this and handle it like professionals."
"Yes sir."
"Finish setting up the sensors around the dining room. We're making sure she hasn't snuck down to the lower decks where the passengers are hiding."
With that they were left alone, Armando looking suitably embarrassed once more as he moved towards the errant display and now partially destroyed dining set up. "Shame most of the shrimps are going to waste."
"Just focus on the mission," Joanna said, turning back and looking at the kitchen set up. A large open grill for displaying what was being cooked next to more conventional ovens and a large walk-in freezer in the back. Probably more store rooms below, but this would be were they kept the majority of it. "Wonder how they get the food up here though. Do they take it up the passenger elevator or-"
Another sharp pop sound had her jumping slightly, hissing under her breath as she turned around. "Least you didn't go shooting up the place this-"
Armando was gone.
The last motion sensor he'd been putting down blinking next to the stairway that led down to the next lower deck, the light to activate it timing down till it blinked on. The boat rocking from side to side as the waves picked up, and part of the broken ice sculpture tumbled down, falling to the floor and shattering into so many shards of frozen crystal against the maple colored floor.
"Agent Cascos?" She stepped towards where the sensor was, her boots crushing the ice underfoot, the sound too loud in the sudden silence. The clouds parted, letting the eerie glow of the sky shine through for a moment, passing just as quickly as she came to the stairwell and looked down.
The tablet he'd been monitoring with fallen halfway down the steps.
"Gówno!" Joanna grabbed at her radio pressing down on the button. Only to freeze as she heard something. The soft crunch of ice.
Behind her.
Then another, closer, louder. The pounding of her heart so loud that the next seemed muted as she dropped the radio and all sense of training. Pulling her weapon up as she turned, a scream at her lips.
Silenced as the cold and clammy claws of the creature grabbed at her throat. Before she had time to think about it, to realize the size of the beast, the BOW that had once been a comrade, pulled her weapon down with her attached to it, twisting the straps and making a makeshift noose that strangled further sounds from her. She managed to angle it towards the creature's soft belly, but found the trigger stubbornly refusing to engage. Realizing too late as it's inhuman face drew near, the mouth opening and closing, showing fangs smeared with the indeterminate meat of some recent victim, that it- she had been smart enough still to press the safety down and then disengage the clip from her weapon at the same time. How such taloned hands could remain so deft or that monstrous creature could remember such skills Joanna did not know.
But at that moment it seemed so terribly unfair.
They didn't realize anything was wrong for almost another fifteen minutes. The follow-up check Cascos and Koprowska came up unanswered. Barker cursed up a storm as they ran towards the bow of the ship where the main dining hall had been located. A couple curious faces peaked out from doors as they passed through the passenger decks, all the while Anita yelled at them to keep their doors closed and locked.
By the time they reached the ornate wooden doors to the stairs leading up to the dining hall, they'd been out of communication with almost half their team for a little over thirty minutes. Grady was on the right while Barker kicked the door in and rushed up, the light attached to the end of his shotgun illuminating the area. They swept in, Anita following behind, cautiously as she could. The floor above the steps was wet, bits of ice broken and melting into the floor. No immediate sign of anything was found. No blood, no spent bullet casings.
No bodies.
Until her foot hit a small object, causing it to roll across the floor and bump into the side of Grady's boot. The senior agent slowly bent down, picking it up as her own squad commander came over and checked on what he found.
"It looks like an Anti-BOW round."
It certainly did, the green band around the side marked with the rather obvious classification for the technically illegal fragmentation round. It wouldn't do for these to end up used against people after all when they were meant to put down monsters.
Though the real question was why it was laying on the floor, unfired with no gun around for it.
"Did someone mess up trying to reload?" No that couldn't be right, frowning as she looked from the lone bullet back to a rather lackluster amount of damage for a possible pitched battle with BOW of Agent Valentine's… type . If they'd emptied a clip there'd be bullets and blood sprayed all over the place, not forgetting the amount of noise that would have been produced. But aside from the misfire that Cascos had talked about just before they'd disappeared there'd been no sounds of gunfire at all…
It was like the pair had just been gobbled up, guns and all.
A disturbing thought, given she'd only ever heard of Valentine's appearance post-infection and seen a few reports about the now otherwise eliminated T-Abyss strain. Tricell had clamped down on it, and while they'd been part to their own host of human experimentation and bio-terror actions they'd kept the potentially catastrophic and uncontrollable variant of the Progenitor Viruses with its deep sea affinity from ending up in the rotation of black market weapons that the BSAA dealt with on the regular. T-Virus mutations, the Plagas now, and a few more exotic attempts to rework and manipulate those were most of what they saw. Thankfully nothing worse had been engineered as of yet, but given past experiences no one really believed that that luck would hold out indefinitely.
"Could she have?" She was supposedly larger now…
No, that was an absurd thought.
The creature's mouth stretched open, serrated teeth surrounding a maw unlike any human jaw as it bit down. Chunks of meat torn off as it closed, the juices of its attack dripping down the gray flesh and onto the paler throat, still marred by blisters of red where the flesh hadn't regrown and veins stuck out, red and pulsing. Watching it-watching her try and keep the mess from falling further, onto her (in Joanna's opinion anyway) unnecessarily tight and in parts revealing wetsuit made the whole scene all the more uncomfortable to watch. Not that she could do much else.
She'd been pulled down, bundled up and dragged into the back of the dining hall and through the fridge, only to find her earlier thoughts about possible service elevator hidden there to be correct. A tight, and with both of them gagged and tied with strips of cloth torn from the dining room tables they couldn't even scream for help as they descended, the lights dimming leaving Cascos and her trapped an in enclosed space, the looming figure other amphibious BOW standing over them, crouched slightly while they lay on the floor.
She'd disarmed them both, of both their primary weapons and their backups and even checked her for hidden knives she might use to cut herself free. Leaving little in the way of possible escape methods. Even if they had a chance of dealing with her once they did get loose, considering the ease with which she had manhandled them once she got close.
Supposedly there were ways to combat the often overwhelming physical strengths of a BOW, but their training had been centered on avoiding that scenario, and only the suicidally brave or idiotic made a habit of getting within knife range of this modern menagerie of manmade horrors. Though at the moment she was rather disappointed that she'd never been able to train in CQBZ, as at least then she might have had some idea of how to respond to threatening Beyond Apex-Predator getting her webbed clawed hands on her and being within bite range.
At least a way to react beyond freezing up.
Like she was doing now, watching Jill Valentine gorge herself on the refrigerated ham she'd pulled from a shelf, sharing the occasional look with Cascos who was laid out on the floor opposite her. Both equally surprised by this odd event, but not interested in looking a gift horse, or shark, in the mouth and questioning why their BOW seemed more interested in raiding the ships food supplies than tearing their throats open.
"Maybe she's storing us for later?" It would make sense, as they were in an area full of frozen and refrigerated food. But that was a damn odd instinctual behavior for a BOW, especially one which had come about from mixing the genetic lines of a variety of animals, not a one of which was none for putting of its appetite for long term gains. If anything she would have thought Valentine's natural proclivity now would be to eat first, eat often, and ask questions later (or never) as it were. Putting off a meal of fresh living prey for something else that was laying around nearby brought to mind the possibility of a great deal more forethought than one wanted to see in the creatures the BSAA hunted.
The last thing they needed were Lickers that could spot landmines or a black market Tyrant variation that knew better than running into a heavy machine gun placement.
As she swallowed her last bite she stood up, throat bulging slightly as the torn meat traveled down. Stretching up, swaying her head from side to side as that armored hood of cartilage turned carapace pulled back to its limit, almost letting the brow of her still enlarged skull show from where the protruding shark-like snout and jaw merged into the altered skeletal structure of what had once been human. Opened and closed again, rubbing the back of her taloned fingers against the raw flesh and coughing. Spitting bits of bone and sinew and-
Metal, clinking onto the floor below as fragments of the Anti-BOW bullets fell out of her mouth. Valentine looked down at them, opening and closing her jaw as soft, strange, and bizarre sounds came from her throat. Like an out of water whale call mixed with deep growl. It wasn't pleasant to listen to and made her scoot back as far as she could against the wall.
Which was about the time their radios turned on again, static tinged words coming through.
"Agents Cascos and… do you read? This is Grady I-"
Valentine reached down, savagely pulling the communications systems off of them and crushing them in her hands as she stood up. More angry growls from her throat as she made her way towards the elevator, looking up at the ceiling.
Before she reached up, tore something down and climbed up, tail trailing behind her for a longer time, the gray fins swaying from side to side and flexing as she ascended into the shaft itself for some reason.
And left the two gagged and bound agents alone. While numerous questions lingered in their minds.
Most pertinently, "Why are we still alive?"
"Jacobs, stay close to me," Grady said as they moved along the side of the ship. The sea air and the increasing motion of the oncoming storm rocked the boat from side to side making this path less than hospitable even with their winter gear equipped. Anita brushed stray locks of blonde back, re-tying her hair as the wind picked up and the bitter cold bit into her even through her scarf and jacket. A sudden wave tilted the ship slightly and splashed water all the way up to their deck, making the wooden floor even more slippery than it already was.
"We better be careful. If we don't finish this up and get this ship back underway Valentine isn't going to be the only deep sea critter that might get a chance to take a bite out of us."
"Got it sir," she said as they moved down the side of the boat. The two lifeboats on this side rocking from side to side, occasionally bouncing against the wood with a loud clang. Stable, but clearly the ship was meant to navigate through and out of these sorts of storms, not simply sit them out as it was now.
"I thought you said she damaged the lifeboats."
Grady turned towards Barker, the all weather goggles he'd slipped on hiding his eyes he spoke. "I meant that it was too rough to send them out, especially when she could attack through them and pick us off one by one at her leisure if we were in the water."
"That makes sense. An aquatic BOW is bad enough just by the water. It's a death sentence to fight one in it."
Anita held her tongue and her own questions that were coming more and more. Like how Grady had managed to get this far from his original location all on his own. He'd mentioned something about flagging down a passing ship with a flare gun, but then why had it taken him so long to get in contact with the BSAA? If he weren't so high up in the European branch and the trouble over this SBOW nonsense finally coming down like many had suspected when Chris Redfield of all people had come back from Africa with a bundled up monster and told them it was his friend there would probably have been more questions.
"As is, I can't imagine how he's going to spin this report when we get back. Losing four agents to one BOW won't look good for anyone, I don't care how much of a golden boy they treat you like."
"Still, how is she running circles around us? She's out of the water. Bloody hell," Barker said as he looked over the side at the waves pounding upon the ship, "shouldn't we have the advantage on dry land?"
"More of her mind survived the transformation than most. Even now there's a cunning mind trapped within those inhumanly predatory drives. We're just letting her rest."
"Or she's going to retire us instead," Anita thought, turning around and looking back the way they came. The shadows cast from the swaying lights of the rooms inside dark and moving like living things across the slick, wet floor of the deck. She turned back, seeing that Barker had moved down a side passage through the ship while Grady stood silently gazing out at something in the distance. Before she could ask what he saw, she stepped into a new shadow, one which had struck out from the side of the boat. Falling down as the waves crashed and hidden in the swaying motion of the lifeboat. Cold wet hands that were too large, too few fingers, and with a texture that reminded her of wet gloves or perhaps the skin of sea animals from a marine petting zoo she'd gone to as a small girl in Malmo.
Her hand was pulled from her weapon as she was dragged back, finger unable to press the trigger nor able to aim at anything. But in her panic she fought back still, despite how futile it felt. Till she bit down, hard as she could and more from the shock the BOW holding her let out a strange half-cry of surprise.
"There you are!"
Anita's eyes looked back, hope springing from the jaws of damnation as Grady pulled up his weapon and aimed it at the creature holding her. Who growled, words half-formed from a throat not at all human.
"G-rady… you ba-tard… trai-"
He pulled the trigger, as Valentine's tail swept her body down and around, turning to place her stronger back towards Grady. Who responded by tossing something down and between their feet. Anita's eyes widened as she saw the high-explosive white phosphorus grenade a moment too late. Closing them as she prepared for, and hoped, that the concussive force would kill her before she felt the heat.
Only for the burning pain of ice cold sea water to engulf her as she, and Valentine hit the ocean. Her mouth opened in shock, gasping as her now waterlogged clothes began to drag her down. But before she could succumb entirely and sink beneath the waves she felt those same clawed hands snatch her up, tearing at her gear and pulling her back towards the boat.
All while something dark and ominous started to loom closer, blocking out the waves as it drew closer…
"Damn it all! My whole team?"
"Apparently," Grady said, walking beside Barker as they continued their fast walk back to where the helicopter had been parked on the tennis court of the ship. A few of the dead ship crew in various states of bodily integrity remained where they had landed, evidently killed so quickly in Valentine's earlier attack that nobody had time to even mount any sort of effort to get to safety or to call for help until Grady intervened.
"I'll need to call this in. Get another team, hell get a full patrol sent up with support from NATO. We're out of our league."
"Clearly," Grady said, a rather dour tone in his voice as he continued behind, almost to the steps leading up to the front deck of the boat where the helicopter was parked. "Why didn't you tell us what she was-"
His machine gun emptied half a clip into Barker as he turned, the man's shocked expression going still as he collapsed backwards and fell onto the stairs motionless and dead.
"Because I thought even you couldn't screw this up." Grady dragged the body towards the nearest side, dropping it over into the ocean as he continued his walk up. Now looking over the port side of the ship. The looming shadow now quite close indeed, the vast bulk of the nearby vessel blotting out the horizon.
The blue-white symbol of great serpent biting down on its tail painted onto the ship's side, while upon the deck of the apparently empty oil tanker for Leviathan Chemicals a light stealth helicopter sat.
Two cloaked figures and one woman in a slim and fur capped snowsuit looking down from the side.
Picking up his radio he dialed in a new channel, and asked, "Ms. Sherawat, do you have that countermeasure Tricell developed?"
After a moment's pause a woman's voice came back, "Assuming you don't mind a bit of spearfishing."