The creaking of the ship almost overshadowed the panicked sounds of the two people around her. Almost.
Jessica was busy tearing the insides of the freezer apart, spilling the contents over the floor. Test tubes, blood packs, and more spilling or breaking upon the floor. Soon followed by the metal racks they'd been sitting on as she tore them loose as well. Empty of everything she grabbed the unit by the sides and with a sound that started as a scream of rage and turned into something else towards the end she tossed the whole of it onto the floor, the glass door shattering as it sputtered to death with the power cord severed.
"Maybe… maybe it's in this one," Jessica said, rubbing her eyes. Her nose had pushed out more, slightly wider and pointed. While her eyes were irritated, bloodshot and the pupils looked swollen. The veins on her face had started to stand out, bulging in an unpleasant manner. "Gotta be in one of these, I must have forgotten which one."
Armando wasn't doing much better, entranced by his own hand. Flexing the fingers as the flesh grew thicker and tougher, skin tone fading into a sickly gray. His nails had begun to push out, darkening in color and looking unpleasantly sharp as they twitched. The wound from before had faded, but he didn't seem to have control of the limb. It moved awkwardly, as if possessed by another mind while he swallowed audibly and began to reach for his gun…
She needed to do something.
"Think Jill, think! We don't have time to find vaccine now… the others might have more time left if it's still cold enough out there but-"
Jill ran over, snatching the gun from Armando's hand and picking him up. The shock of the motion brought him out of the haze and wherever his thoughts had been as he found himself staring into her face. He probably thought it was his future right then.
She knew better. The T-Abyss was frightfully unstable, her body was frankly the only stable example of it around. If they didn't further slow it's infection soon it would be worse.
"Jessica-"
"Nothing in here… nothing, but-"
"JESSICA!" Jill yelled out, mouth wide and the name echoing through the lab as she screamed it out. The ex-BSAA agent looked up. Her eyes were almost jet black now, strangely swollen like they didn't quite fit in her head. She reached up and rubbed them, stumbling towards Jill.
"It's-it's not here. That bastard, that goddamn idiot must have taken it and the other samples… he must be planning to just infect everyone left, hoping the BSAA won't be able to pick out what happened from the remains while-"
"Jessica," Jill said, slowly as she moved towards her and looked down, "are there more viral inhibitors in here?"
"N-no… those were my private stash. I only really had enough for me but I… so stupid, should have just kept them. Wasn't thinking, figured we'd have more time but-"
She was rambling again, the change or the fever or worries and doubts long dormant in her from her earlier betrayals all bubbling up at once. Given the nature by which 'mental state' affected the virus this was almost as bad as the balmy temperature and humidity inside the lab. "Ugh, they must have turned off the air conditioning or something when they infected these men."
In either case she didn't have time for this.
They grabbed Jessica and forced her to look her straight in the eyes. Now matching orbs of glossy obsidian staring at each other. Slowly her breathing calmed, her eyes blinking. And then again as a second set of eyelids folded over for the first time.
"Jessica, I need you to grab anything cold from the fridge. Ice, saline," Jill said. "Not blood… might trigger something in them if they're starting to get this bad already."
"And?"
"Pour it over yourselves, hold it against your bodies… just cool down. I'm going to try something."
"Try what?"
"Don't worry about it. Just get something to cool down with," Jill said as she moved over to the centerpiece of the lab. One of those extremely efficient and even faster sequencer systems that Tricell had manufactured before its end. Though she didn't care for that part.
She found a syringe and after tapping on her arm for a bit plunged it in. Teeth bared for a moment as she pulled a fair amount of blood out and then found a rack of empty and clean test tubes. Into a high speed centrifuge they want. It began to spin up as Jill turned around. Jessica had found some saline packs in another fridge and had sliced them open. Pouring the cold salt water solution over herself and Armando. That seemed to be calming them down, or maybe just focusing on something that could help instead of panicking had slowed the infection.
The Progenitor Viruses could be bizarre like that.
They respond to psychological triggers as much as physiological it seems. A mother dies while a child survives from a greater will to live… even thriving in the infection. Strange isn't Valentine?
She could hear Wesker's voice as she pulled the test tubes out one by one. Taking a new set out, loading them into the machine and with a fresh syringe sucking up the plasma from the vials. Then injecting it into the tray, she slid it into the machine and closed the door. The internal light switched to a dull red as it accepted the new bio-matter for analysis. Jill grabbed onto the trackball mouse, thankful for something more cooperative than a touchscreen given how her fingers worked, and scrolled through the options.
"Sequence… replicate… compare… ah, there we are. Antigen separation." She didn't have time to look at what her antibodies looked like now, not that she'd been trained enough to really make sense of it. Rebecca had left to continue her doctorate and specialized in virology, curing instead of making these nightmares. Jill and Chris had stuck to more practical solutions.
"That's the last of it."
Jill turned to see Jessica leaning against the last open fridge. Her suit torn open, her jacket as well. Her chest damp, the saline solution dripping over her sports bra as she slid to the floor. The larger nostrils swelling and shrinking as she took deep breaths. They hadn't grown larger yet, nor did it look like anything else had changed on the outside.
The machine clicked as it came to a stop, rapid chromatography made possible by synthetic chemicals once part of Umbrella's trade secrets. Those at least had started to spread out as something useful from it all, or so she'd been told. It still took a tiny supercomputer to make the system work. Though even that was getting better.
She watched a new vial slide out, the separated antibodies mixed with 60% saline solution. Diluted enough to spread around but not so much that it wouldn't still be enough for everyone. Or so she hoped.
"If it doesn't they'll be breathing salt water soon." Jill thought, loading the vial into a fresh injector. Though as she took a look at it in her hand, less fingers than there were supposed to be and with the webbing between them, she couldn't help but think that maybe they would anyway. Even if it slowed the virus down enough to make it survivable… a cure this almost certainly was not. "I can't just give it to them…"
Not without asking first.
"Armando… Jessica," Jill said, looking between them and making sure she had their, hopefully, cognizant attention. "I separated out the antibodies. This might slow or neutralize the T-Abyss in your bodies."
"Well, what are we waiting for!" Armando said, trying to roll up his sleeve. And stopping as his hand rebelled in rather problematic fashion and left long, red scratches along his arm. Instead her bit down with his teeth, yanking it up as best he could.
"Where did you find antibodies for the T-Abyss Jill?" Jessica asked. Though something in her tone of voice, perhaps the slight smile that spread across her lips as she leaned back, eyes still closed, told that she already suspected the answer and only wanted to hear it said aloud.
"My blood should still contain them."
"Wait… your blood?"
"Well well… I guess we're at this point." Jessica stood up, rolling her shoulders, a slight popping sound coming as she did. She lifted her hands up and brushed her hair back. Showing the ugly patchwork of veins that had started to darken along her neck. A sure sign that they had little time before neurological necrosis started to set in. "Guess swimming with the fishes is better than being buried with them."
"You joke too much," Jill said, stabbing the needle in and injecting a quarter of the contents. Jessica grit her teeth, lips pulled back as the burning fire of the chemical spread through her blood.
"It's part of my charm."
"Wait, but you're infected? Right?"
Jill sighed as she kneeled down, pulling Armando's jacket down to reveal a place for the injector. With a stray alcohol wipe she cleaned the needle. Not exactly sanitary, but anything blood communicable between them was unlikely to survive the T-Abyss's rampage, and even if it did, it was hardly worth worrying about at the moment.
"Technically not. It fully merged with my genetic structure and the active virus particles were purged once my immune system started working again. I'm clean."
"Clean and healthy and not exactly human. She's not lying," Jessica said, pulling her hand back and feeling how her tender neck had started to slow its swelling already. "But let's not sugarcoat it. Her antibodies identify a healthy body as T-Abyss infected one. It will fight the virus, but also leave a window for adaption around that."
Jill slowly nodded as she turned back to the man before her. Who was looking at his hand, grimacing at how the limb seemed able to move still but not how he wanted it to. He looked up at her eventually, a grim sort of acceptance in his expression. "But it could stop it."
"Maybe."
"Or our bodies decide a little mutation is healthy. Worst case it does nothing and we still die," Jessica added. Then lifting the hand that was still rubbing her eyes up and tapping at her head as she continued, "Or die up here till someone shoots us enough and makes sure we're properly dead."
"... fine. Do it," Armando said. Before turning to show his other side. "This arm. Maybe it will slow it faster here and-"
"It should," Jill lied.
The psychology of the subject was as important as the physiology after all.
And maybe if they hoped enough they really could walk out of this with only minor mutations .
"Alright, nice and even landing."
Her copilot, for as much as she'd been working the controls, said nothing. She simply stared at her hand, which she turned over and around as she opened and closed it. Her index and middle finger placed down on her wrist and as she softly counted under her breath as she measured her pulse.
Again.
What, for the tenth time now? Or was it the twentieth.
Anita had thoroughly lost count. She was trying to keep her mind off… that . Joanna's medical training wasn't allowing such an easy distraction, or perhaps the lack of anything to do while on board the helicopter after Jill and the rest had departed onto the Leviathan tanker had let her mind wander back to their condition .
But she felt fine. No drysuit, her jacket zipped down while the shirt she'd thrown on stuck to her still damp skin and she shivered like she was about to enter hypothermia again. But being a frozen popsicle person was preferable to ending up some mutagenic deep sea horror.
Though given her look she'd be frozen fish popsicle and split the difference.
"Joanna, you take point on the right. I'll check the left. We need to secure the landing zone."
This at least would keep their minds off it all. The doors opened and the bitter cold hit them like a landslide. Her teeth chattering as she moved around the landing pad. They'd come down on the far side of the oil platform, which had been unusually built up compared to what she would have expected. Not surprising given its unstated purpose, but that meant there were more potential places for enemies to hide. The ship was still making its approach at least, and by what Valentine and this Jessica woman had said, there probably weren't any more high class BOWs onboard.
Or SBOWs.
The terminology was confusing, and frankly bothersome. They'd trained to exterminate these monsters, not have conversations with them or work with them. But Jill Valentine was now effectively the most senior agent on hand by a good measure and unquestionably loyal to the purpose, if not the current leadership, of the BSAA.
Which was more than she could say about some of the directors down in Paris. They had to have known that Grady was funneling in large sums and requisitioning supplies and captured viral samples out of their hands. Either they were complacent or incompetent to the point of negligence and she didn't know which would bother her more at the moment.
Hadn't they joined up to keep a Raccoon from happening in their countries? To stop the next Terragrigia Panic and the countless dead and orphans it had created when another city had been swept in biological horror and sterilized for the good of humanity? To turn one's back on such a cause for mere profit…
Well, Jill Valentine might look like a monster, but as far as Anita Jacobs was now concerned this sort of scum were the true inhuman beasts deserving her ire and whatever weaponry she could find to use against them.
"Honestly, she's a little… weird, but on the whole she looks healthy compared to most BOWs. Probably won't be modeling anytime soon, but it's almost all cosmetic." If anything her transformation had made her a better agent, allowed her to survive injuries that would have killed, crippled, or at best left her hospitalized for days or weeks and come back swinging in mere hours. Were it not for the cold water affinity provided, and set of gills to go with it, Anita would have droned, soaked and shocked and swiftly sinking into the cold dark waters of the Arctic.
It was hard not to see the positives, few though they might be, when she was only alive now because of them. Hell, Armando put three rounds through her throat and she just coughed up the bullets and walked it off. Of course such regeneration had its limits, Jill was no Tyrant with secondary parasites or cybernetic injectors of additional T-virus ready to enhance their freakish genetics anymore. Her stability meant that, in principle, enough bullets would overwhelm her body and stored calories, fat, blood… everything she was drawing on to keep herself going and drop her dead or good enough in time.
But that was still a damn lot tougher than any normal woman, ex-Delta Force or not.
"You look lost in your thoughts."
"Sorry, just thinking."
"About what-oh… that ," Joanna said, letting her submachine gun full to her side on its strap as she looked at her hand again and went to check her pulse. Slapping her fingers against her side as she tried to speed up the circulation and get some feeling back into them. "Almost forgot for a moment myself."
"No, not that."
Joanna looked back at her wide eyed and bewildered, almost like the T-Abyss had already gotten around to replacing her head with a mollusk or an eel or whatever horrid abomination it was going to cobble together from her genetics if given enough time.
"What else could you possibly be thinking about?"
"How lucky we are."
"Lucky… lucky?" Now she sounded angry, though her cheeks were already flushed so it was hard to tell how much those words had bothered her by expressions. Though when Joanna walked up, pulse measuring forgotten and almost jabbed her finger into Anita's chest it became clear she'd stepped on a landmine as it were. "We came out here on what should have been a basic BOW hunt. Only to stumble onto some massive conspiracy that involves our bosses laundering funds and equipment to bioterrorists!"
"Yes, but now we know about it and can report it when-"
"When we what Anita? We're infected! With the T-fucking-Abyss! Not the T-Virus, hell not T-Virus-?, or ?, or the ? strain or… the T-Abyss barely has any research to speak of. Tricell buried it as deep as they could after Terragrigia and damn near succeeded. Chrystus, I've only seen pictures of it but it's not good." Joanna shook her head, wiping her running nose and brushing her hair back. "It's derived from deep sea vertebrates… but it goes well beyond that. It's practically a primordial reset on evolution, using their unchanging DNA and slow evolution to drive us back to being like the first things to crawl onto land… and then force the infected violently back to the present day. It doesn't even make zombies really, nearly everything is a Tier-II BOW or above."
She rubbed her hand through her hair, massaging her brow as she did.
"The lucky one is Valentine. How the hell she can even walk or talk and still looks like a woman in places and not… some kind of-"
"Joanna…"
"What?"
"Do not… do not panic but-"
"What?!"
"Your hair," Anita said, slowly pointing at Joanna's hand. Where clumps of brunette hair were stuck to her hand, having fallen out in a small patch as she'd rubbed it across her head. Her cheeks, once flushed from the cold, went deathly pale, the light freckles she still had showing as she shook her head back and forth as she reached up again. Lightly tugging on a clump of hair. And wincing as it came out, no pain or blood. Just a reddish mark on her head where it had once grown all her life.
"No no no-this can't be… need to oh god, I need to take this off, lower body temperature to stop the virus and-and…"
Anita watched her partner and senior team member descend into utter panic, stripping off her jacket instead of just leaving it unzipped as she had before. She was midway to yanking her shirt off before she stopped. Someone had growled…
And it wasn't them.
They turned to see a man, dressed in a subzero suit and holding a heavy machinery wrench pointing at them as he let out a warbled cry. Animalistic, barely human and barely a language. She recognized a tiny bit of Norwegian in it, but only just. Though the red eyes made it clear what they were dealing with.
"Plagas?! But… what are they doing here?"
"Gówno! Where is- Pierdol-where is my gun!" Joanna struggled to find where she'd dropped her weapon in her panic to expose more skin to the subzero temperatures and choose freezing over mutation, as if her body would allow her such small mercies now. Leaving Anita to handle the approaching Plagas zombie as they marched forward, both hands on their weapon and beginning to run.
"That's the bad thing with these. They're smart… almost too smart." It was why that mutant girl, the American President's daughter, had made a deal about using new drugs to try and cure instead of kill. But even then there were limits after which they'd get a brain dead invalid at best.
This was definitely past that point.
She knelt down to one knee as she aimed, the burst ripping through his chest and causing him to slow his run, but not stop. The second hit the head, the rounds cratering flesh and skull, bits of necrotized brain matter spilling out.
She didn't manage another before the head exploded, a mass of tentacles with new, alien looking eyes at some of the tips extended outward. The throbbing tentacular mass that had consumed the man's spine now exposed. His… its arms dropped down, dragging the heavy tool as it clanked against each step as his pace slowed. While behind more figures appeared, drawn by the sound of gun fire.
She sprayed more bullets into him, the rounds ripping through his ribs, destroying lungs and more. Yet the parasite would not let him die, would not let its cadaverous tool rest. The wrench rose up in the air as the blades whipped down, ripping the jacket from Joanna's hands and revealing her gun.
"There!"
Too late.
Anita grabbed her belt and yanked her back before the BOW could hit her. Just in time as the bone-like blades etched nasty grooves into the helicopter's metallic side, sparks shining in the gloom as it lifted its weapon up and began the approach again.
"Fine, take this you jävlarnas!"
She tossed the grenade she'd pulled from her side past the BOW as she held Joanna close and rolled their bodies around the side of the helicopter. Hopefully the shrapnel didn't hit anything too important.
The explosion was deafening, but more than ringing their ears the BOW tumbled forth, its head tentacles still for a moment before twitching to motion again. She reached down and loaded in another clip. Aiming at the prone figure she rose up, screaming as she did and fired again and again. The full auto barrage made the lump mass of flesh twitch as the rounds tore through it. Till at least it burst apart, foul yellow pus leaking out as the mass went still and the body it had taken felt death at last.
Joanna brought her hands down from her ears, more of her hair stuck to her fingers as she stared at her hands.
"Oh to hell with this." She reached down, slapping the hair from her hands and grabbing her by the scruff of her shirt. Now clearly bloodshot eyes looked up at her own.
"Stop screwing around Agent Koprowska!"
"I'm losing… losing my hair-"
"You're about to lose your head if one of these BOWs gets to you!"
She stood up, looking at where her weapon had fallen and past it where the crowd of likely other Plagas were rising up from where the explosive had stunned them. "But… we're going to be like them soon enough…"
"No we're not because we are going to kill them," Anita said, switching back to burst and stalking forward. Shooting once, twice more before she turned back to Joanna. Kicking her dropped gun across the landing pad. "We're going to live because we're the helvete BSAA! And if we turn into mutant mermaids, we will keep fighting till we can't!"
Joanna picked up the weapon at her feet, turning off the safety as she came to stand next to Anita. Her earlier panic was fading as the purpose of their training rose to meet them. Their weapons discharged death to the already dead, mercy to these shambling abominations. One by one they fell, some too torn apart for the parasite to even salvage their corpses as it had with first, killed by the constant fire of fragmentation rounds through their flesh torsos and un-protected heads.
They almost had them down, but then Anita's weapon ran dry. She cursed under her breath, pulling out the only other grenade she'd had. Seeing the crowd coming up the stairs still she tossed it just over them as she ducked down. Joanna followed, reading to aim as the next Plagas zombie fell. While Anita reached back and grabbed hold of the wrench that had fallen.
As the infected oil worker tumbled forward she shook her head as Joanna took aim, instead lifting the heavy metal club above her and dropping it down. Hard.
And then again. Over and over till she felt a sickening crunch and then once or twice more till the writhing from deeper instead stilled.
Panting, she looked back at the stairs. Most of the infected had been too close to the last explosion, limbs blown off or too mangled to allow them to move. A few had stumbled over the side, the railing failing and the long drop to the ocean below making them the sea's problem and not theirs.
For the moment, at least, they were safe.
She sucked in a deep breath, copper tinged and coughing. Her mouth felt funny. A taste of blood on her tongue. She spat it out.
And stared at one of her teeth in the snow, mixed with blood and saliva.
"Oh god."
She ran her tongue over and around as Joanna turned to face her and motioned for her to open her mouth. She felt something strange, more than just that tooth was loose but-
"Your gums are receding and changing… fast.
"I can feel something," Anita said, before opening her mouth wider. Wincing as it felt like her skin pulled taut and then gave a little. More than it should.
More than it could .
"There's… there's new teeth growing in." Joanna poked the space in her gums, cautiously looking at what was coming out. "They're not… they're like…"
"Like what Joanna? I can't look inside my own mouth."
She swallowed before speaking.
"They look like shark teeth."
"Ah… so it's like that." Anita nodded, opening up the door to the helicopter. "Well we don't have much time then."
She pulled her jacket off and tossed it in the back as she grabbed another clip for her weapon. The last, as apparently Grady had, as expected, doubled up with twice as much as the rest of them without even asking.
"Bastard even had to hog the ammo."
"How are you so calm about this?"
She turned back to look at Joanna, who was staring at her and clearly wanted an answer. Anita just shook her head, a grim smile spreading across her lips as she felt a slight pain in her jaw as teeth she had fought against teeth she would have soon enough. "I told you already… we're lucky."
"How can you possibly say that?"
"Because Jill Valentine, a Raccoon survivor, a BSAA legend is going to get us out of this. Maybe I'll need dentures or won't be able to smile anymore without scaring old ladies," Anita said, swallowing blood and spit as she spoke. "Maybe you'll need a wig, but we'll live, we'll take Grady down and make them pay for all of this."
"You really believe all that?"
"If you don't believe we can make a difference why'd you even bother joining up? You could have just waited in Warsaw, hoping that the next world war doesn't involve legions of BOW supersoldiers marching at the frontlines. We- I do this because I know I'm making the world safer, that I'll take the risk so others won't have to!"
Something finally clicked in her teammate and Joanna had a spark in her eyes again. A confidence that had been all but snuffed out as the red gas of the T-Abyss had filled their lungs and potentially damned them to inhumanity, to monstrosity. To life beyond death worse than death itself.
"Okay. We'll keep going till we can't."
"And if we have to swim the rest of the way, we will do that too."
"Don't joke about that Anita. I'm a terrible swimmer."
"Might not be for much longer," she said, smiling till the pain in her jaw made her stop. Instead she looked at the corpse and gave it a kick as she walked towards the stairs. "Why do you think they had Plagas on the oil platform?"
"Smarter, less prone to mutations if not dominant. Easily controlled by a dominant strain, and you saw what those other SBOWs looked like?"
"Sort of like Graham?"
"There's a theory going around, the main reason the BSAA is so hesitant…"
"What is it?" Anita asked. "I haven't looked too much into mutagenic virology. Just how to kill them."
"Well, since Graham's mutation matured and stabilized the idea is that the Plagas might see her as a Dominant or some kind of Queen-Plagas if nearby. And that could carry over to other infected that end up reacting similarly to attempts to neutralize the Plagas in their bodies."
"Meaning they could then naturally control the Plagas infected or Plagas-slaved BOWs they've been making out East?"
"Precisely. The new types of viral inhibitors can save lives, but what's always stopped there from being more smarter, human level intelligence BOWs was the speed at which the infection progressed and how it damaged the nervous system before the body could adapt. Take that away and…"
Anita nodded, though internally she turned away and looked at the corpses piled along the walkway. And then down at her own hand. Looking for more signs of changes and so far, thankfully seeing none. "Take that away and they'd still be people… not weapons."
But what Umbrella had wanted was weapons, what the terrorists that had used their tools had wanted was victims, what Tricell had wanted was a world undone… this was different .
Wasn't it?
"But why were they infected? It's almost like they're just killing everyone involved in this now."
"It looks like it. But that's just more blood in their ledger," Anita said as she loaded her fresh clip in and racked it back to slide the first round in. A fresh, Anti-BOW fragmentation round loaded and another 44 behind it.
"And we're going to make sure they pay."