They had questions of course. Not that it changed anything. It was the only option left. Two more injections down and Jill tossed the now empty injector onto the deck. Only time would tell if it saved them, but at least it was another roll of the genetic dice, weighted in their favor.

Now the question was how to proceed.

"Do you have explosives?"

"Some… but given that this stuff they're pumping up is probably more than a little flammable we shouldn't need much to get this whole thing going up."

"Good. We have to stop this here before it gets any worse. Anita," Jill said as she turned towards the woman, still rubbing her jaw which now looked like it had stretched out slightly with her lips not quite keeping pace with what was happening inside, "you should head back to the helicopter with Jessica. She's not in any condition to help right now."

"Heh," Jessica said, grimacing in place of a smile this time, "yeah, it does look like my sea legs are taking their time."

While the attempted humor remained, Jill could see how she was fighting back minor aches and pains, her body still pushing towards further mutation, further growth. Part of her almost felt like she deserved it for all the trouble she'd caused before. But then there'd been a startling lack of deaths from that hadn't there?

" A viral smuggler with a conscience?" Pity she hadn't had better sense or a willingness to turn down large paychecks. In any event, that only left two more. Armando's injuries from before hadn't slowed him down too much, but if Jessica's case was any example he might start to have worse issues any moment. Which really left only one option.

"Agent Cascos will help plant the explosives and keep our extraction open. Koproswka and I will follow them in and make sure they don't escape with whatever they have planned."

"C-can't we just leave?" Armando asked, teeth chattering as he rubbed his mutated hand against his other arm. Jill could see how the skin was starting to stick between his fingers, and his pinky ring finger were starting to move as one, the knuckle pulling up and bulking between them as bones started to knot together under his flesh. "We could just report this to the BSAA and let them handle it."

Jill shook her head. "With how much money Grady probably put away and the amount of time he's been planning this he's certainly got buyers lined up and some plan to lay low. If we don't take him in or take him down this Draug bacteria is going to end up on the market as a new bioweapon or a supposed miracle medication… and I don't trust it not to have side effects given what I've seen of their efforts so far."

"Yes. The last records down in the lab only said they had managed to expand the genetics that respond cooperatively to infection, not eliminate its other effects."

"I doubt they cared at this point, just glad that they could run with something that might work." Jill stood up, shaking off a bit of the snow that had fallen on her shoulders from where she'd been seated on the ship deck. Her tail swayed out, fins stretching as the circulation came back. She felt tired, hungry, and more than a little angry. But she knew she had to end this one way or another before Grady ran and became another shadowy contributor to the spread of the bioweapons she'd dedicated her life to curtailing and controlling.

Her hand tightened upon part of the metal railing she'd been seated next to, tips of her claws pressed on her palm as her jaw tightened and teeth showed. All this death, all this misery. Lives lost… and others irrevocably changed.

And for what?

A pittance of money to sell some miracle cure that by the sound of it might not even do everything it was promised.

She'd had enough of it. They'd only wounded Grady before, lucky bastard that he was. But this time she'd do worse.

Jill could still remember the scent of his blood and fear in the air, and she had no intention of letting up on the chase when he was still so close.

"Well, nothing to it then." Joanna stood, coming next to Jill as the two of them took the front of the group moving back onto the oil platform.

The rest followed behind, Jessica managing to haphazardly keep pace until they separated on the main deck. Three moved towards the parked helicopter on the other end as the remaining pair continued on towards the looming structure built in and around the pumping station. Large vats, likely filled with the noxious sludge they'd discovered rose up around them but for the moment the biohazards remained both liquid and contained. Solemn mausoleums of not ancient life, but newfound undeath which threatened to drown the frozen waters in their filth.

Jill would enjoy watching it burn once they finished here.

She came before the entrance, heavy double storm doors. A glance at Joanna showed the other agent was ready, though her face looked paler… or grayer than it had before, the clumps of lust hair no longer leaving red patches of irritation but smooth skin. Jill's eyes, dark and black, showed little of the sympathy she felt as she tried to capture the woman before her in memory. As she was now, frightened of what was before her and what she was becoming but still holding her weapon and at her side. It seemed the least she could do.

"You ready?"

Joanna nodded. "Not getting any younger… or warmer. Not that that's good for me at the moment. Cholerny-let's do it already while I still have fingers to shoot them with."

Jill couldn't quite keep the smile, and the teeth, from showing as she pulled on the handle and the door thankfully opened. The temperature inside was still cold, but far from the below freezing icebox that surrounded them. The storm doors sealed again as they entered, leaving a side maintenance path to their left, a still locked floor plate leading down, and what Jill presumed to be the way forward dead ahead.

Though of all things a set of gaudy, ornately carved wooden panel doors depicting massive serpent, wrapped around the image of the Earth, its jaws latched onto its own tail.

"Jormungand… fitting, if still strange to see it like this."

"Rich assholes and their art obsessions," Jill thought as she grabbed the handle and thankfully felt it rewarded her with a click and swinging open. Grady and his bodyguard had clearly not bothered to lock up behind them. "Different place, different time… same BS."

The hall behind was much warmer, a comparatively balmy 20 Celsuis or so, with light provided by rows of small bulbs placed along the walls to mimic old fashioned brass lantern ornamentation while including the reliability and control of modern electrics. The floor was wet, snow and ice from their quarry melting into the long red wool carpet that laid along the hard wooden floor. They passed more doors down the long hall, some left open and showing the still utilitarian backdrop onto which this bizarre architecture had been built. Pipes and concrete and steel floors only one room away from the emulation of ancient, old world aristocracy.

Till they reached the end, where the mosaic from before was repeated. Though now the serpent replaced the Earth, forming a strange imitation of the caduceus but with one head, biting upon its tail at the end of the staff.

"Who would build all this?"

"Dying men with more money than sense," Jill said. Though considering what she'd learned about the founders of Umbrella over the years, there were unfortunately more of their kind than one would have preferred.

Once again the door opened without resistance, welcoming them into a much larger and still unguarded room. An ornate chandelier hung from the ceiling while the walls were decorated in macabre trophies. A stuffed swordfish there, a huge set of antlers over of all things a fireplace (though it looked to be an imitation running off gas and not burning real wood). In one corner, by a door leading to a set of stairs behind reinforced glass and wooden supports led up. In addition, a small elevator had been built for the purpose of going up the floors of this fake opulence hidden among the industrial drabness of the oil platform. Though the centerpiece of the room was likely the massive polar bear pelt, laid out from a long banquet table, silverware untouched but still in perfect order.

Joanna shook her head in disbelief, strands of brunette hair falling to her shoulders as she walked past Jill towards the elevator. "Locked. Looks like we're walking."

Jill said nothing in response, sniffing the air. The wood and burning gas covered most of the scents, but Grady had been here. She was going to forget that man anytime soon. There was something else, but then this whole place was given her the creeps. Like everytime she ended up in a place like this frankly did.

"Why couldn't I just deal with normal serial killers and maniacs? Why did they all have to be crazy Illuminata wannabes with torture fetishes?"

"Ah! It's not locked," Joanna said, opening the door at the side and pulling it open. She passed through as Jill continued to look around the room at the dancing shadows cast by the firelight. "You coming Valentine?"

"Sorry, just bringing up old memories."

The other BSAA agent made an odd expression but then just shrugged her shoulders. Looking up the stairs, gun leveled and ready for any movement.

While the door suddenly came closed and made a loud and awful clicking sound.

"What-gówno! It's locked?"

Jill reached for the handle to try and pull it open but stopped. She heard a strange tapping sound. Turning around those same dancing shadows twisted in a corner, a humanoid shape becoming visible as the light bent around them and then filled in. Dark black and gray carapace, first two and then four as the extra set revealed the eyes peering at her under short antenna that slid back and close to the skull. Mandibles twitching slightly as he tossed a remote control back and forth between his hands. Before attaching it to the belt at his side and drawing a large knife.

"Well if it isn't Ms. Valentine. Youngest Delta Force graduate on record… you know I honestly thought it was some PC-crap when they let you in back in the day-"

Something clicked, as if a long forgotten memory had at last come to the surface.

"Captain Conners?"

"Ah you do remember me."

"Kind of hard to forget the asshole that always found an excuse not to train me," Jill said, stepping closer and then to the side. Her tail was shifting back and forth as the tension rose.

"Can you blame me? They went and pushed some slip of a girl barely out of basic training onto us. I was sure it was some joke at the time," he said, head tilting up and down as he seemed to take in her appearance. From the bone white tips of her webbed footclaws, the digitigrade legs that shifted part way to fins as she swam, her more human-like thighs and waist. The musculature and body that showed above that, either through her outfit or the numerous rips and tears that it had acquired and left less to imagine about how much Jill had kept… and how much she had lost, of her former appearance and nature as a human woman. "Though given how you ended up, I guess I was wrong. Maybe you were the right stuff all along."

She'd have bristled at it in a very simple and base way, were she not certain that despite the old fashioned, and at this point pathetically antagonistic, sexism she'd dealt with from the man back then his eyes weren't leering at her now but carefully gauging the best way to gut her.

Quite literally like a fish as it were.

"Spare me. The last thing I want is the approval of some traitor that sold out his position for money."

"Traitor… oh no, I'm not the traitor, at least not the one that betrayed us first. It's spineless politicians like Graham and the rest that held us back that were the traitors. I saw things Valentine, I knew things. About what Umbrella and the DOD had ready back in the 80s. When we were still pretending that the Cold War was something we couldn't win, when a nuke was the only thing the Kremlin had to fear."

He stretched out his empty hand and tightened it into a fist. A second set of shorter, spiky limbs extending from his shoulders in place of wings twitched as he did so.

"We could have made Russia bleed a billion dead soldiers and never risked a single American life. But they were too cowardly to let us use it. Instead we sat on the opportunity until it passed and now every dictator SOB can afford their own pet bioweapons project in the basement."

Jill continued side stepping around, though she tensed her legs, ready to leap forward. Only to pause at what she saw glinting from Conner's side. The silver and bone handle of an oversized hand cannon. She didn't even need to turn her head for her inky-black eyes to catch the empty space just above the fireplace, unnoticed till now, where something on display had been removed. ".44… or heavier?"

In either case that was a problem. These SBOWs were simply put faster than her. Naturally, unnaturally, and if she leapt now it would be a quick draw contest with something that could punch a hell of a hole through her. It would have five shots at the least, but would probably only need three at best to cripple or kill her. And Conner had bragged about his CQC and his firearms proficiency enough that Jill knew better than to chance that outcome.

She needed a way to close the distance and-

She had it.

She just needed a bit of time.

"They'd have nuked us till Kansas glowed green Conner."

Thankfully she was used to dealing with too talkative psychopaths that thought highly of themselves.

"Ha. Maybe… maybe. Never know now. Times have changed… and so have we."

His free hand twitched, Jill recognizing by tone of voice alone the danger she was in of him simply drawing and firing now. But he'd taken one more step then he'd needed as he'd walked around the table. And was standing on part of the rug. While she wasn't.

Her back leg pressed into the foot, claws digging through the wood as her other grabbed onto the rug and pulled it towards her. The table shifting off center as Conner stumbled, his hand moving towards the table instead of drawing his gun. Just as Jill pressed lower, using her tail for further balance and slammed both hands into the table edge and shoved it at him. He stumbled back, his own not as long rear limb helping balance his motion while the not-wings at his shoulders flexed. He moved to draw the gun again, but Jill was already moving by then. Not over the table…

But under it.

He fired despite that, her gamble paying off as the bullet whizzed by her side and splintered the floor. She shot up the moment she heard the discharge, knowing that chambering the next round would take longer than aiming with the augmentation that his mutation had given him. As the table broke in two around her, she grabbed the nearest thing at hand, an empty metal serving tray, and sent it spinning towards him.

He reeled back, hissing in anger as the back appendages stabbed out wildly as she drew close. But Jill felt the tension, the contraction, the building action in his body when he made to move them. It seemed to blaze in her mind each and every time his enhanced nervous system made those new limbs move. Too strange, too unusual to control quickly enough or skillfully enough to overcome her own training.

And she'd had plenty since Delta Force fighting strange creatures with more limbs than they should have had.

Her new body, her new senses, her new strength… it had only polished skillset that had already been there.

"Damn it and stand still!" Conner yelled out, recovered from before and trying to gain distance with his knife. Only for Jill to bait an opening and actually manage to catch him, pulling him in and slamming her head against his. He responded by trying to bite her, mandibles wide.

Pathetic.

How many times had she dealt with zombies (or worse) trying to tear her throat out in the years since Raccoon? Sometimes they even had a knife at the same time too. She twisted around, using her longer tail to stay balanced as she threw Conner into the remains of the dining table and then tried to slam her foot into his chest.

Here he was forced to drop the gun, pushing her attack to the side before making his counter. At her leg.

"Stupid."

His subordinate had succeeded from luck and her own surprise, but she'd had time to think about how close that short fight in the radio tower had been. And this time she shifted to the side, the harder and darker back deflecting the incoming blade even as his claws failed to do more than superficial damage. Seeing the problem he abandoned the knife next, grabbing onto her leg and bending back, trying to aim his longer tail to strike at her as well.

Jill was ready for this, moving her own to intercept it. She didn't have a stinger or claw or bladed stick on the end of all that muscle, but she had plenty of it and with it pinned she was able to turn and stamp down. This time striking true, her claws piercing through chitin and flesh and being rewarded with blood and pained sounds from Conner as he scrambled to his feet and tried to claw away.

But he hadn't learned a damn thing, standing on the bearskin rug from before. Jill yanked it back as she leaped forward, his body falling prone as she in turn fell upon him. They rolled towards the fire place, the arrogant old military man turned amoral mercenary now little more than a hissing panicked thing. All those blades and mandibles doing little to injure or keep her off as she continued to press her earlier advantage. Locking legs around his, pulling arms taut as she slammed his head against the side of the fireplace where they began to sink. Her breath was hot from her nostrils, mouth close to his neck.

Bite.

It was a sudden, strange, and so natural instinct. Not her training, not how she wanted it to end. Even against this man, however repugnant he had become. Though as he struggled to break free, her increasing vice-like pressure coming down perhaps it would have been a mercy by comparison.

Especially when she felt the grating before the fireplace give at their weight and they tumbled into it. Jill rolled out, her skin still damp from before, though parts of her wetsuit took flame as she put the fire out as best she could.

Conner was not so lucky, one of his back limbs stabbing into the fake wood and becoming stuck there. Unable to pull out he screamed as he burned.

And screamed on till Jill found the discarded hunting gun, chambered one more round, and put an end to Captain Conner.

Looking back at the locked door, where Joanna was still trying to kick it down, Jill checked at Conner's sides till she found the earlier remote. It looked a bit damaged from their fight but sure it would still work.

A push of a button and the elevator lit up.

"Damn."

"I guess I'll take the stairs and we'll meet up?"

"... be careful, Koprowska," Jill said.

"It's only the traitorous bastard now," she said, a grim expression that lacked the teeth but was perhaps not too far from Jill's own in killing intent. "How much trouble can he be?"