She pulled herself from the frozen water by one claw. Her lower fins shifted to legs, scratching at the metal as she tried to find purchase to keep from falling beneath the rolling waves once more. Over and over, finally catched as she lashed her tail back and forth and managed to snatch onto the hanging rope of that half fallen lifeboat from her earlier arrival onto the ship. Her arm strained, muscles visibly struggling under the gray flesh as her webbed claws sunk into the hardwood. Teeth bared, Jill tossed the water logged body she'd been holding up above her and pulled herself into the lifeboat's tip as it swayed back and forth, bouncing loudly against the cruise ship.
The shivering heap of a woman curled upon herself, her blonde hair hanging wet across her brow, blue eyes unfocused as she coughed salt water from her lungs. Still in shock from her near death, Jill didn't even find her resisting as she checked her pulse and her black eyes looked into those blue.
"She's alive, but not for long if I don't get her inside and somewhere warmer." Jill looked up seeing the lone rope that still held the boat up. There were only two left, Grady among them, so she probably had less to worry about. Hopefully the surviving crew and passengers she'd seen (and smell, god it still got to her sometimes) would stay smart and stay put till she managed to get them and explain herself. She ran her fingers around her throat, the red near fully vanished, the smooth gray flesh. Her gills opened and closed, pumping the water out of that secondary (or primary at times) breathing system as the cold, salt spray air flowed down her throat. Her coughing sounded less guttural and deep, feminine tones of her natural voice, or what this body somehow emulated returning once more.
The patch on her rescuee's jacket named this one Jacobs, with a small Swedish flag on the shoulder pad. She supposed it made sense for the European BSAA to bother with something like that when one realized the sheer number of member countries that were technically supporting it with manpower in one way or another. Coughing lightly, she placed a hand on Jacobs' shoulder, both to try and draw her attention and keep her from doing anything rash that might send her back into the water below them.
"J-ac… Jac-" Jill coughed again, feeling more water pump out of her gills as she took a long, deep, breath that pushed her chest out and made her feel some of those earlier injuries. While healed by her body's often bizarre standards of most of them, they still made her wince even after devouring half a ham in an effort to finally stave off the hunger pains and give her biology the fuel to keep walking off all these injuries for a time. Much as her desire to 'not look like a shark' wasn't something she got, not feeling all this in the morning was probably going to have to wait a bit the way things were looking.
Right now though she was still struggling to make sure she had a painful next few days in bed to wake up to.
Trying again, carefully shaking the other, bipedal and more apparently primate descended woman, Jill said, "Jac-cobs… are you okay? Do you understand me?"
She slowly turned towards Jill, eyes wide but now focused on the tall and lithe predatory figure hunched over her, protruding aquatic face covered in shadows below the darker, almost black in this lack of light, armoring. What other aspects of humanity visible in her figure or musculature must only have made her seem almost daemonic so close, less a person or what had been a person but sea-borne specter that was about to gobble her up and take her to the great beyond.
Still she nodded, teeth chattering as she replied, "Y-yes I-I understa-and you."
Jill nodded, not trying to smile as the act, more a phantom limb of an expression, too burned into her mind and memories, led to showing a bit too many teeth and flexing certain muscles that felt natural now but made very nearly everyone back up when she did it. Chris of course had said it looked fine, but she'd known him long enough to realize that not even discounting their friendship his taste was horrid and weird in equal measures.
Less said about that horrible looking bulldog both Redfields had sworn to be the "Cutest thing ever" when showing pictures from their childhood the better.
Jill frowned, or thought of frowning. Her nostrils tightened a bit and the line of her jaw narrowed before she spoke again. "Jacobs… you need to understand. Grady is the one behind this. He's…"
"He's what?" Jill thought, still not sure what could possibly be tempting a man to sink so far from any sort of noble goal or purpose. Easily hundreds had been killed in whatever this was, with the potential for thousands, tens of thousands more if they didn't find the sources and stop it. All the harder with so many within and without the BSAA stymieing their efforts.
"He's betrayed us. The BSAA," Jill said, motioning towards herself as she spoke. "He's got to be working with these bioterrorists that are trying to cover up whatever is happening here."
"How do-do you k-know this?" she asked, not trying to pull herself away from Jill at least, even if she was trying to put up a brave front despite being half frozen to death, unarmed after she'd dropped most of her gear into the ocean and seated within arms' reach of a BOW… SBOW that would have had very little trouble tearing her throat open with teeth or claws.
Jill opened her mouth, even as she struggled to think of what evidence she could both bring up that would be believable. She'd certainly seen enough to make it clear, but the evidence outside of what she'd witnessed was circumstantial. Unless-
The radio she'd taken from the other SBOW in Heimfest turned on, the dead channel coming alive once more. Surprising both of them, Jill perhaps more as she hadn't expected it to be of any use and had honestly forgotten she still had it clipped to her side where the now used emergency flares had been. Or that it would have been waterproof and so tough to survive her recent misadventures.
"Valentine… are you there?"
Grady's voice coming over it added to that shock, and certainly brought a reaction out of Jacobs, who looked ready to blurt something out before Jill put a finger… claw to her lips. It was meant to simply shush her but probably came across as more threatening than she intended, but she had a suspicion and didn't want to risk it.
"I'm still here Grady," Jill said.
"And two for two, or more, at staying alive. Honestly, if I'd known you'd be this much trouble I'd have left you back at that hospital."
"Why didn't you?"
"The directors wanted to do something with you, and this mission had seemed tailor made to your… condition."
"It would have been if you hadn't betrayed us."
"Hey, I'm just taking orders too. Mine just come from a higher authority. And sadly Krell and Colman had stumbled onto it before we were ready. Honest mistake, I thought we'd be able to wait out the winter and let the sun take care of most of it."
This time she didn't bother stifling the impulse, her teeth bared as she spat back a reply. "And for that you killed them and tried to frame me? Tried to kill me?"
"Technically that was an associate that did the killing. Shame they didn't get it to stick the first time. Would have saved me a lot of trouble… and a lot of lives."
"Shut up. You're just another deluded terrorist as far as I'm concerned."
He laughed at that, the mocking action making Jill's grip on the radio tighten, her armored hood slipping down almost to her eyes as her body tensed with anger. "Such a simple perspective. Not surprising given how you've spent your career dealing with eugenicist freakshows and deluded mad men. No Jill… I just work for those. I've got much simpler plans."
He paused for only a moment, not long enough for Jill to think of something else to say to that. The idea of someone dismissing the evil she'd faced down so casually stunning her to silence.
"Plans you've gotten in the way of too many times already. Taking down this BSAA team was the last straw."
"What are you going to do?"
"It's a better question of what you're going to do. You're going to come up, step into that big cafe they have on this little boat. Or I'm going to set off the C-4 I put in the engine room and turn this ship into a tomb."
"You must think I'm stupid."
"No, I think you're too much of a bleeding heart to let me kill the passengers and crew that I had herded down there or those two agents you managed to save."
Jill cocked her head to the side as she asked, "Shouldn't there be one more?"
"Captain Barker wasn't going to be able to handle you on his own if his whole team couldn't do it with the element of surprise," Grady said. "So he decided to take a swim of his own."
Jacobs bristled under Jill's grip, clearly wanting to say something but managing to read into Jill's expression and remain silent.
"... fine. You promise you won't kill anyone else?"
"I won't need to. You've already ruined enough of my plans. I'm going to have to switch to yet another backup. At this point none of this shit frankly matters. You're the loose end… so just do the right thing for once and accept the inevitable."
Radio clicked off, the signal killed once more. While Jill stared back at the shivering form before her. Though now it seemed like other emotions were driving that action, as Jacobs looked at her with barely contained rage, her own teeth bared as she cursed the man that had just delivered that ultimatum. "That… that jävla fan! I-I'll kill him… I'll-"
"You need to get to the helicopter."
"What?"
"I'll meet him like he asked, but you need to change into something that won't freeze you to death. BSAA teams should carry some emergency gear. And… can you fly it?"
After she nodded, Jill continued.
"And then you can radio back to tell them what's going on once you get far enough away from all this. I don't trust Grady not to do something else, but he definitely will if he doesn't get what he wants."
"How can you be so sure?"
Jill stared off towards the ship for a moment, the dark blue slipping back to show her gray skin brow and her eyes fully. Finally shaking her head slightly as she said, "I've dealt with men like this before. His ego won't let him accept anything less."
"That's still… crazy. They might have a plan." It was near impossible to tell what she was thinking, at least not without a familiarity she did not possess. But it seemed like Jill was thinking of something as she turned back to look at Anita once more.
"Maybe we can make one too."
The dining hall was like she left it, the floor wetter at most. The shattered ice sculpture had almost completely melted, and the last few balloons had popped at some point, but aside from that everything was the same. Even that tray of shrimp she'd nibbled on as she'd passed, trying to state her regeneration induced hunger and speed up the time for her throat to hill so she could explain things to the agents she'd captured and tucked away in a storage locker a deck below.
That problem had resolved itself finally, not that it mattered.
Agent, or former Agent now, Grady was seated at the bar between her and that back entrance below. Pouring himself a glass of brandy from a likely very expensive bottle he'd taken from behind the bar. Not alone, a pair stood beside him though neither seemed interested in a drink… or taking off their hoods at the moment.
She felt her own, fleshy armored hood pull down in reaction at the sight, just as she saw their green and glowing eyes turn towards her.
The feeling of hatred clearly mutual.
"And our guest arrives at last." Grady drank the shot quickly, coughing before throwing the glass behind him were it broke on the floor. Saying to himself, "Going to have to remember that one for later."
"Are you done playing around, or are you going to explain what all this was really about before you try and kill me again?"
"Shut the hell up! You killed Eric you fucking-"
"Carter, cut it out. People die. That's how it is." Though he said that, both of their eyes had shifted briefly towards a reddish hue before returning to that eerie green color.
"Yeah, you caused no end of problems for us tonight didn't you Valentine? All because we didn't kill you properly the first time."
"Just tell me why," Jill said, still hoping to receive some idea what this was all about. Even if they could put her down she still had to know why. The same curiosity, the same drive, that had had her fighting against Umbrella back when it had seemed impossible. So much so that even after she had thought to give up hope they had felt the need to send Nemesis after her to make sure things were settled how they wanted them.
With her dead.
At the very least it might also buy some time if her bet on his psychology was right.
"Fine. I suppose you deserve it, even if you're only ever going to tell the fish about it," Grady said, smiling as the alcohol loosened his tongue and flushed his cheeks. "Tell me Jill… what makes a man immortal?"
"What?"
"Humor me."
"This whole goddamn thing is me humoring you…"
Her jaw tightened, the armored covering of hood and cartilage-like covering on her back making the gray flesh of her fins point out more as she took one step forward as she spoke, bracing for the explosion of action that might occur at any moment now. The pair of guards beside Grady did the same, the woman reaching for something under her cloak while the taller man held his arms… or what looked like arms out.
Still they were focused on her, and that's what she wanted.
"The friends we make along the way," Jill said with a dismissive look as Grady smiled back, showing teeth as he did. "Or maybe you're more the 'living forever' kind of guy. Though my advice, it never works like you think it will."
"No, that's not what I believe. I believe that immortality comes from power. The power to act upon the world and make it different. And I will have power beyond anything you can ever dream."
Her foot-claws pressed into the wet carpet, the webbing between her new toes feeling the cold water underfoot as her legs tensed. Her tail swayed behind her, the fin shifting in motion as well, her every sense and focus on when she would have to move and how long it would take to put her hands around Grady's neck… or her claws through his chest.
At this point she wasn't picky or even feeling squeamish about acting to type like that. He deserved worse in her opinion. All she needed was an opening.
"So what, are you going to blackmail the world's fish supply or something? Raise up a zombie army and conquer Denmark?"
"Don't be stupid Jill. Power is the same as it's always been," Grady said with a smirk. "And that's money."
Her surprise stopped her planned pounce. Though she hardly needed it now.
The fire from behind the trio shattered bottles, Grady crying out in alarm and then pain as he rolled to the floor. Jill followed down, avoiding the bullets and shrapnel as the two mercenaries from Heimfest took the brunt of gunfire and fell to the side, sharp high pitched hisses of pain.
The two other surviving BSAA agents moved quickly out from the doors into the kitchen and freezer, pointing their weapons at Grady and kicking him over. Red blots were showing along his leg as one of the bullets and tore through the side of his thigh before continuing on its path.
"Stay down!" the man, Cascos according to the name Jill had seen on his uniform shouted. Koprowska pulled his sidearm from him and kicked it to the side as Grady cursed under his breath and tried to keep pressure on his injured leg while two guns were leveled on him.
"Guess it was the friends we make," Jill thought as she walked closer, the metallic scent of Grady's blood notably different and normal compared to the stranger and fouler smells she'd been dealing with for most of the last few hours. Once again, just a greedy and narcissistic human, not some biological horror had been the cause for so much misery. "And this time he won't get to carry on with his plans."
Jill reached down and grabbed Grady by his collar, lifting him up and level with her face, blood spurting from his wound but not enough to show more than a painful and debilitating flesh wound. Lucky given what Anti-BOW rounds would do to soft flesh if they had a direct hit and were allowed to fragment as they were engineered.
"So, how about you tell me who hired you?"
He grit his teeth, fighting down the pain and probably trying to think of some other self-serving nonsense to say instead of an answer. Her grip tightened, stabbing through the tough fabric and stepped forward to slam him against one of the pillars at the edge of the bar. The pained cry came out of him as he tried to kick back and unable to look away he found her face drawn close as she repeated her question.
"Fine-fuck… fine, you win Jill," Grady said, wincing as his leg bumped against the side again. "We got hired by Leviathan."
"What's that… some new conspiracy?"
"Wait, the power company?"
Jill turned towards Cascos who had looked up from where he'd been kicking on of the cloaked bodies to stare at Grady and her.
"Power company?"
"Coal, oil… natural gas and other stuff too. They've even been trying to expand into renewables and clean energy too."
"As a tax write-off maybe," Koprowska interjected. "They've been all in the news for expanding rapidly in the last few years. A lot of charity work and donations too."
"But why would that be important?" Jill asked.
"Because they're funding us," Grady said with a pained laugh. "We don't work like you do back in the States. Over a half of the funding we get now is from corporate donations."
"That's what this is about?" Jill turned back to the man she held, lifting him up higher, almost growling as she asked, "That's what this is about? You're… what? Skimming from the books and covering it up?"
"No… but the two billion a year they've been giving to us has been nice."
That at least explained where some of the specialized gear came from. Particle rifles weren't cheap, but if you were the one paying for the BSAA to maintain and purchase them in the first place it wouldn't be that hard to get an extra. Absurd and wasteful, but at least it explained how it had ended up there.
That still did not tell her why it was in the hands of an SBOW.
Or even how or why they'd ended up like that in the first place.
"Ah… Joanna?" Cascos said as he looked away from Grady. "Where are the bodies?"
"What bodies-skit!"
Jill turned as well, seeing the now empty camouflage outfits lay empty on the floor. They turned wildly, aiming almost at random. The creak and sway of the rocking boat was muffling the sound of something moving in the room with them. A table on the far side jostled slightly and Cascos emptied his clip into it and below the tablecloth. Glass and other parts of the decor shattered and fell as the wood splintered and fell to its side. Before Jill could say anything he'd already moved closer, coming to see what might be behind it.
"Armando! Get back here you idiot!"
Before he could even turn back towards them he reached towards his neck, kicking and struggling as something lifted him up into the air and slammed him into another table. Jill's eyes peered into the darkness, seeing some strange motion that didn't seem right distorting the air and hanging from the ceiling.
"They can turn invisible?"
Koprowska ran forward, only to suddenly be grabbed and swung around by the semi-invisible figure. Her gun fired into the floor, held low while something else grabbed at her neck and cut off her cry for help like she was being strangled by an invisible foe.
Making a decision, Jill dropped Grady and ran forward. Only to come to a stop, the BSAA agent held before her like a shield. Her arms pinned to her sides, while sharp taloned fingers pressed into her throat. A pair of mandibles faded into view and clicked together as more of the other SBOW became visible. Eyes glowing light green as they stared over the woman's shoulder.
"Take another step. Come on. Give me a reason…"
"Don't-ugh… don't kill them yet," Grady said, hobbling up to his feet as he pulled out disinfectant and anesthetic spray from his first aid pouch. "We'll need them alive for this to work."
"What… they need them alive?" Jill's thoughts were interrupted by the quiet thunk of steel on flesh, a long thin metal spear pierced far up on her thigh and came with a stabbing pain as the veins reacted. Followed by a burning, screaming sensation that went up and down her leg, before striking into her chest and taking her breath and strength.
She fell to her side, stunned and gasping for breath. Gills struggled to work in the air as the panic overwhelmed sense, instincts both old and new, and left her a prison in her new flesh. Numb and unable to even move.
Her ink black eyes turned back towards the far entrance where another figure was approaching, one she hadn't seen in years, back before this living nightmare had consumed her. Holding an odd speargun like weapon with the logo for the company that had conspired, in part, with her own metamorphosis.
"Jessica… Sherawat?"
"What the hell took you so long!"
Jessica cocked her head to one side, looking only briefly at where Jill lay before speaking. "I needed a perfect shot. Only have one after all…"
They may have said more, but Jill was falling into an abyss, only the scent of trees and nightmares long passed to welcome her.
The panicked run through the forest had only just ended. Chris and Barry were busy barring the door behind them as best they could, this fortuitous mansion thankfully not only unlocked but warm after the unusually cold midsummer night. Jill held her gun down, webbed claws tight about the grip while she looked at every shadow, wondering if they hid another mouth of snapping rabid teeth ready to leap out at them.
"Calm down Jill, you're safe now." She reached up, adjusting the STARs beret as the blue black flesh armor slid back revealing more of her brow. Of course her hat had to be adjusted, velcro strap about her chin to keep it on, but it fit and that was the important part.
"You see anything Jill?" Wesker asked from the other side of the room.
"No, I don't see anything." She sniffed the air, the scents of the forest still linger on them. As well as the bizarre mix of blood and rot which had hunted them as they'd-
No, this was wrong.
She shook her head, looking down at her hands, smooth gray skin with sharp claws tipping her fingers instead of nails, thin webbing between them about half way down from the tip. The backs of her hands the same (unnatural) color while up her arm it faded into a darker blue-gray color before a semi-soft armoring sprouted up and around her upper arms. This merged into her back, covering almost everything but her back fins and-
Tail.
She felt it now, the awareness of it, extending out of a hole in her pants, long enough that it dragged on the floor if she wasn't careful, the back fin still marred by a few bits of grass and leaves from when she'd been running through the woods, those snapping jaws at her back.
Why had she ran from them?
She had more teeth than those dogs, sharper too. Claws and the flesh of her legs were covered in that same organic armoring some places, while in place of shoes padded bracers wrapped around her lower legs and down to where her bare foot-claws tapped against the floor.
That must have been it. Jill opened her mouth slightly, closing it before she even spoke.
No… there was more, wasn't there?
Barry must have noticed her distress. He was oddly perceptive at the minute changings in the motion of her fins and tail in terms of how she was feeling. Or maybe he'd just guessed that their junior member, no matter how impressive her resume or her SBOW abilities might be feeling a bit stressed out at having wandered into such a disaster out of nowhere.
"Any- fin wrong Gill?"
"No I- god Barry," Jill said, snorting softly as she tried not to laugh. "Why do you never seem to run out of these?"
"Dad privileges, it comes with the territory."
"Jill, we should check the back rooms to make sure they don't have a way to sneak up on us."
Chris nodded to that, adding on, "Look for a phone or something while you do that Wesker. We're not getting back to the helicopter at this rate so maybe we can still call back to Raccoon City if we're lucky."
They moved out of the main entranceway, into a large dining room. Wesker took the lead while Jill followed behind. Glad to have something to keep her mind off the lingering thought that something was wrong. Beyond the rapid and strangely smelling dogs or the missing STARs team. Beyond the serial murders they'd been sent out to investigate only to find something worse.
Something was wrong with her.
But she couldn't quite sink her teeth into what it was.
"Nothing's wrong Jill."
She froze, turning back to where Wesker stood in front of the fireplace, back turned to her as he spoke.
"What."
"Nothing's wrong because you're supposed to be like this," Wesker said, looking back as his eyes glowed red and a very different and far truer expression of cruel egomania went across his features. "I don't make mistakes after all."
"Motherfucker!"
Grady cursed again, drinking from the bottle as he emptied the wound closer and dropped it to the floor next to where he sat. Only a flesh wound, if a nasty one. Frankly he'd been amazingly lucky.
Unfortunately.
Joanna glared up from where she lay, arms once more tied behind her back, her neck still sore and tiny cuts from the SBOW suka that had threatened to rip her throat out before. Armando was in no better a position, similarly bundled up and disarmed for the second time by yet another intelligent and military trained mutant in the span of an hour. At least they'd gone down fighting this time.
The plan had almost worked, Jill's arrival through the back supply elevator and helpful collaboration from Anita through their radio. Thankfully they weren't blocking all the frequencies the BSAA normally used, though if that had been part of the earlier cover up and why Valentine had been unable to call them first she wouldn't be surprised if Anita wouldn't have any luck radioing back even if she tried from the helicopter where she was currently hiding an stripping out of her waterlogged clothes. The two of them had managed to gun down the targets, or so they'd thought. They'd been injured too, their bodies stained red from blood. But apparently they'd been wearing tactical gear as well, and combined with their body's altered biology it had been enough to turn debilitating injuries into merely inconvenient.
"Should have made sure while they were stunned on the ground." She mentally kicked herself again. All these rookie mistakes were going to get them killed if they weren't already doomed to die as it was. Worse still the only equalizer they had at dealing with these things in close quarters was apparently unconscious on the floor.
Having a long sharp spear pulled from her thigh as the new woman walked up.
"Worked like a charm," she said. While Grady glared back at her. The brunette smiled as she tossed the spear to the side and slung the weapon that had fired it behind her shoulder. "I knew that it would, Tricell was paranoid about T-Abyss enough to pay people not to sell it and let out that they'd made a counter measure if it was weaponized again."
"What took so long?"
"I only have one shot on me," she said. "It's a special mix of jellyfish venom and a Stonefish bite. With a number of unique alterations to take advantage of the improvements, if you'd call them that, which the T-Abyss can make to a human."
"What took so damn long, Sherawat?"
She seemed taken aback by how Grady spoke, looking at the two agents on the floor and back up to him before speaking again.
"I had to make sure I had a clean shot… especially with the gun fight and-"
"You wanted to see who won."
"What."
"I'm not some greenhorn BSAA janitor that cleans up zombie outbreaks with a shovel like these two. You had plenty of time to shoot her but waited till her allies were down before taking the chance." Grady stood up, wincing as a tiny spurt of blood came from his injured leg. Pulling out his sidearm as he stood and aiming it at the woman that had shot Valentine. "I don't know what you planned and I don't care at this point."
"What do you think you're doing you maniac?"
"Cleaning up this mess… and an extra pair of hands would help. Conner," he said to the male SBOW which was still standing beside Armando, "go get the package from the ship."
The helicopter was cold and empty, but at least she was out of her soaked clothing and warming herself with a couple of chemical packs. There hadn't been enough time to get back and help the rest and even if there had been she was still shaking from her dip in the ocean.
Anita smiled slightly as she thought about her unexpected rescuer. "Advantages of mutation."
Valentine had been fine and easily snuck around to free her captured teammates while she radioed back to them to explain the situation. Now she was just getting her strength back and waiting for the call to fly back. Either by herself to get help, the bridge of the ship trashed enough that it might be a better idea to get some expert sailors out here to help them head back instead of trying to rescue the survivors by themselves.
Or perhaps with some passengers (and potentially a traitorous ass bound and gagged on the floor).
What she didn't expect to see come walking up from the lower decks was a tall, and obviously inhuman figure bundled up in a torn and stained winter camouflage outfit. The hood pulled back, sharp black mandibles moving as it scanned over the deck before walking towards the nearby ship parked so close it threatened to sway into them with the waves. She ducked down behind the seat of the helicopter, as she had no way of knowing how keen its vision might be. Her breath came fast and panicked as she reached for the pistol she'd pulled out of their spare supplies and held it in her cold and shaking hands.
Minutes ticked by yet nothing came. Then more, till she was about to peer over and out, her worry and fear falling away as warmth and bravery finally returned.
Till she heard sharp voices once more coming towards her.
"Damn! Careful."
"Well, sorry for me that you can't handle a couple bullet wounds as well as some people."
The woman she didn't know, though her voice sounded odd, a strange hiss as she spoke. The man though.
"Quint Grady…"
Anita looked out briefly, seeing the traitorous BSAA agent being helped up the steps and towards the ropes leading up to the small oil tanker. They continued to walk towards the edge of the ship, backs turned to her till she could no longer see them.
But she could still hear.
"Fuck it."
"Need a little help?"
"... Fine, but be careful as you-aah!"
A soft buzzing sound and Grady's cry of pain faded into the distance. Anita dared to look out the back, seeing no sign of anyone on the deck or above it looking down. As the sudden awareness of what that might mean that they'd all come up while she'd heard nothing hit her, she took off, heart pounding and running towards the stairs below. She'd made it about halfway before the whole boat rocked, not from the waves, but from the impact of the larger ship taking away and the brief contact shaking them. She could only hope it had just smudged the paint and not torn a hole in the hull.
For now she was driven by more immediate concerns.
"Did they die… were they killed?"
Was she alone now, trapped on a ship with possibly dozens of survivors hidden away and who knew how much time left to get help before things got worse.
She ran into the dining area, the new signs of combat evident around her. But she didn't see anyone.
"... Koproska? Cascos… Valentine?" Anita shouted out.
"We're in here," Cascos yelled, almost a panicked scream. "Get us out now!"
She was already running towards the back, through the swinging double doors into the kitchen before she heard another, an American woman, trying to speak over him.
"No you idiot, don't tell her to-"
She gasped at what she saw, her lungs filling with a strange odor, like cleaning detergent with a bit too much metal in it. Her teammates were tied pipes beside the walls, looking surprisingly alive for what had just happened. A third woman, a brunette with a side pigtail and healthy tan was at another corner, her winter jacket partially opened where she seemed to have been trying to worm out of it… or get something hidden inside out.
Valentine was on the floor, chest barely moving and otherwise still and dead to the world.
And on the counter between them a vial of red liquid was bubbling, the double helix container hooked up to a specialized aerolizer as the gas it dispersed filled the room.
"Damn it, get rid of it now!" Joanna cried out. Anita ran, grabbing a heavy metal pot and stuffing it inside as she took off towards the freezer and tossed both inside. Sealing the door behind her.
Not that it mattered.
They'd all been exposed by now.