The elevator ascended slowly. Brass railings encircled her, much as her tail was forced to wound about her feet in the relatively cramped quarters. But despite that rush she still felt to finally end this, that the wait was appreciated. The rush and fear, adrenaline tinged victory that tasted of bitter triumph over a peer opponent was still settling down. Despite the dominance she'd shown in the fight itself it had been close, her superior strength not outmatched by much and the speed and experience of Conner enough to bridge the gap in other circumstances. In the end he'd been cocky, despite knowing what she'd done and achieved he'd chosen to make fair and even then overestimate how much of an advantage he'd have had.

Perhaps he and his team had turned to the shadowy world of modern bioweapons to ply their mercenary work, but whatever training or experience they had gained paled in comparison to her. At best they might have learned second hand about the worst of the worst that Umbrella and its descendants had unleashed onto the world. But Jill had fought more than one TYRANT level threat in her career, some at an extreme disadvantage and even having to extract herself in melee before the utterly overwhelming physical power and endurance ended her.

Hell, she'd dealt with Wesker of all people, and that had been before all of this . Compared to that Conner really had nothing to impress her with once she understood what she was dealing with. She'd even beaten him without having to-

…

Use everything she had at her disposal now. Claws were like knives, her strength was greater but had felt like a natural augmentation to who she had been now, even if somehow deep down she knew that was just a comforting lie she told herself. The tail was new, strange, and alien to the woman she'd been and the humanity that she clung to and some probably argued she had no claim on anymore. But…

Her face reflected in the polished metal mirrors around her. The expressions were there, in a fashion. The experiences of the night had showed she could do, could show more than she had. But she'd allowed herself to remain almost as emotionally deadened over the last year as being Wesker's slave had felt with the chemical cocktail holding her mind and body in thrall. When she felt happy or gladdened her muscles relaxed, more of her face showing beneath the armored hood, her fins that poked out from that almost blue-black sheath relaxed as humanoid muscles merged with aquatic combinations and tension left her. And by inherited instinct she wanted to smile .

Which showed teeth.

When she'd been worried or sad, frustrated or annoyed, the tension flowed back, the armor tightened as her muscles prepared for action. Anxiety in her form giving way to preparation for action, worry breaking surface in how not relaxed one could notice in those fishy attributes that had grown out of her and despite how much it had (and did, of course it still did… didn't it?) bothered her, didn't look as haphazardly welded on as she would have thought given how her condition had come about. BOWs rarely looked as clean or well put together as her, even the vat grown clones had often had irregularities or maladaptive growths. Jill was sleek, slim and muscular in a way that strangely didn't look overly stressing her body's size, and lacking anything that took away from her predatory appearance. Which was of course made all the more notable when the natural anxiety or worry she felt about so many things now made lingering memories about how she should look or act give way to phantom sensation to frown, to turn down or press together lips she didn't really have as such and instead the altered motion of her jaw would, once more show her teeth.

The less said about anger or rage the better, strong excitement and all the rest. As night wore on into twilight shrouded day, she'd been bothering less and less to hold all her frustration in. To keep down the desire to direct her wholly justified fury at those that had caused this disaster and then tried to blame her for it in a slapdash effort to cover their own asses. It brought her back to those first few weeks after the mansion, when she'd had hope that the system would work, that a report on Irons desk would be the start of something.

She'd bared her teeth then, pointed and shouting and wanting to punch that fat asshole right in the face. Of course if she'd known what she knew now, about the payoffs, the allegations of sexual crimes and the years he'd spent in bed with Umbrella, using it as a way to funnel victims to them… or in turn take his own payment of flesh, often young women that-

She'd have drawn her custom piece right then the moment he'd looked at her like she was beneath him and asked if she'd seen the psychiatrist they'd helpfully hired to convince her it was all in her head and blown his brains all over those taxidermy projects the creepy fuck liked so much. Of course now she had a new desire to-

Bite. Lunge forward, teeth bared, jaws open and rip his throat out. Latch down, clench as the bone snaps and his body shakes. Those eyes will widen in terror, capture the look as they stare into her jet-black orbs, till she shakes her head and twists, the blood running down her neck, the taste of his filth on her tongue.

Then pull back, the serrated daggers leaving a wound not even Umbrella's experimental trauma care centers could piece back together as he falls forward, dead, crimson pooling a new red over the very same report he'd just tossed back in her face.

That would have satisfied her, that would have been a just and righteous kill.

That would have-

New desires, new instincts that didn't seem as incongruously attached to old primate drives as she would have liked to think. Savagery and its potential had long been part of human genetic history, of their evolution…

There was even a theory about it, she'd skimmed the article while waiting at the airport before the flight to that last damnable mission to track Spencer down and catch Wesker as well. The Progenitor Viruses seemed to unlock something deep inside them. Something that had been there all along, and the odd and almost natural tendency to meld with other branches of the evolutionary tree was part of that. If you were already harkening back to epochs lost in geological scales, why not take a side path down a cousins branch and borrow a bit? Maybe an eye, or a claw. Perhaps a tail or scaly skin?

She'd found herself more partial to the gills than she'd have ever dreamed before.

The elevator ended its slow ascent, three stories up, the door opening with a click and showing a hallway that turned about the room below. She saw it only briefly, the still smoldering body visible through a circular window as she slowly stalked forward. Cautious on the carpet, feeling expensive threads rub beneath the underside of her tail as she moved forward. Slower still between those sections, trying to muffle the slight sounds of her footclaws on the wood and more so on the metal as she pushed forward.

The stairs from below didn't connect up to the elevator like she had hoped, instead seeming to rise up into the more industrial and traditional portions of the oil platform onto which this bizarre construction had been installed. Jill passed a few wooden doors, opening them up and seeing metal and maintenance shafts or more normal hallways past what might have been offices or rooms for monitoring equipment. Surprisingly she hadn't noticed any security systems yet. Not that she could see at least.

She saw the stairs at last, the door already ajar. But no sign of Agent Koprowska.

"Damn. She wouldn't… would she?"

"What would you do Jill, ten years ago? Finding out someone betrayed you, someone infected you. Feeling your humanity slip away, desperate for a cure and hunting for payback even if that fails."

Of course. She'd kept going on her own.

Jill sped up, rushing towards the door at the end of the hall. Pausing for only a moment before she opened it up, wishing desperately that she'd kept that gun. She knew why she'd dropped it, the trigger too sensitive, her fingers- claws yet unwieldy enough that it would be more of a hindrance than an aid to try and use it in a firefight. Still it left her feeling vulnerable to breach into an unknown room with no means of striking from range if needed. Like a nightmare of giving a public speech naked, she simply felt unprepared and embarrassed by the fact.

Though given how much light gray flesh showed through the rips and tears of her outfit now she wasn't far from the later either. Not quite the civilized BSAA outfit and with her wounds regenerating over with nary a scar it now almost looked like she'd been normal, more human-like to start and the savagery of it all had grown out and torn through her identity. But as she took one breath and then battered through the door her nerves were calm and despite it all she felt more like herself than she had in a long time. The mission took precedence, the focus (the hunt) was what mattered. She just had to strike first and strike fast!

Not that there was anything to strike at.

The room was large, but not as large or opulent as she might have expected for the current home of one of the richest men on Earth. Space taken over by medical equipment and monitors sat beside the bed while a motorized wheelchair rested next to it. Oxygen tanks attached to it while others were equipped to the emergency system on the bed itself. Tubes ran into his right arm, while wires threaded under the sheets. His body was bloated, large and heavy set before and whether tumorous or merely some other aspect of his declining health he'd lost rather little weight on the whole. His head had been shaven close, though wisps of hair remained. What might have once been a sharply maintained mustache and beard looked scraggly and wild about his unmoving lips.

He also seemed to be thoroughly dead.

Jill moved towards the bed, looking at the flatline EKGs. While closer she could smell the unhealthy odor of his blood and body, covered up by a strong mix of chemicals which must have been keeping him alive so far. But there was more…

She tasted something else, and looking at the IV bag saw a reddish discolored liquid filling it. A quick check of his arm saw where the veins had started to bulge out, angry red and black.

"So that was the plan." Obviously if Grady thought he could make more money he wasn't going to let Reynolds keep his miracle cure… and that meant making sure he didn't live long enough to miss it. Making his death look like the side effect of stupidly injecting a virus would fit with the plans Jill had seen them make so far. She let his hand fall back as she thought, "If I had just died like they planned… or it had never leaked out into the ocean they might have set up a more convincing ruse. Even with his connections this would be hard to sell."

Grady was clearly panicking to be-

Suddenly the arm leapt up, clutching at Jill's forearm as she tried to pull away. Reynold's mouth opened, a wet and warbling cough that shook his whole frame. Bloodshot eyes speckled with black spots looked out at her in confusion as he tried to speak.

"You son… bitch… I'll bury… I'll bury… you-"

Jill pulled his surprisingly strong grip off of her as the rictus of death took hold once more. His body shuddered into stillness soon enough. Obviously he'd been too sick for even whatever Grady had injected into him to help if this had happened.

But that didn't tell her where he was or where Koprowska might be.

She turned around checking the room once more. There didn't seem to be an exit, just a desk with a computer sitting on it and several more expensive bits of wall decor that had been installed to further hide the fact that this was hospital room in an impromptu secret biohazard zone and not the million dollar mansion it pretended to be. Still it was open and that alone drew her attention. Jill bent over, and moved the mouse. Groaning (or growling) in irritation as the password screen popped up.

"Any help?"

Of course the dead man said nothing, but it did focus Jill's mind. Arrogant, rich, probably sociopathic.

Not smart, and a terrible judge of character even compared to some people she'd met.

Probably meant that he'd just picked something close, personal, and befitting the massive ego that led him to think that he had the right to sacrifice the lives of his employees and strangers to make himself live just a little bit longer.

She tried Leviathan , but got nothing. But then she thought back to those odd code names. Grady wouldn't have given those out… which left their true employer.

Jormungand.

"God, you probably thought you were clever."

The emails didn't tell her anything, and she'd been right about the security cameras. Most of those were-

Outside, like the one pointed at another helipad on top of this very building. Where Grady was loading things onto it. There was no sound, but she could tell that Koprowska must have said something as she came up behind him. He turned slowly as more mute words were exchanged.

And then she did the sensible thing and shot him.

Only to Jill's surprise he didn't fall, stumbled back but reached for his sidearm. The BSAA agent fell, clutching at her leg as Grady began to walk closer, already shaking off the bullet wounds like they didn't even happen.

The limp.

Or lack of it.

"Grady, you impossibly stupid asshole!" Jill cursed, going back and seeing a control switch of some kind next to the camera monitors in the system. She heard a panel sliding open behind her and ran towards it. Not waiting for the mechanism to finish sliding open she grabbed hold and pulled. Something broke as her muscles strained and she heard a metallic whine from the system as she ran forward. Up ramp and then out into the night and cold again, bursting through the glass storm door before the landing pad as she did so. Grady took a step back, but only just before grabbing hold of Joanna's hair. What of it that remained and placing the gun directly against her temple.

"Stop right there Valentine!"

She did, though she also made no effort to hide the maw of teeth that showed as she stood up and stared back at him. Hands going to her sides, claws twitching with barely restrained fury.

"What are you even going to do Grady? Run off and hope you can pay for a cure to what you did to yourself?"

"What I did-what you freaks forced me to do! All you had to do was die Valentine, but you couldn't even do that right." He was spitting in anger as he yelled back, trying to drag Joanna towards the helicopter. He'd already started the engine before loading, but it was only slowly spinning now, warming up for what he'd hoped to be a long flight to safety and untold riches in the future. "And I'll be fine. They fixed it, finally made one of these things that's useful for doing more than making ugly monsters like you."

"Traitorous gówno-aah!"

"And future freaks like you Koprowska," Grady said as he yanked her back hard, blood running from her brow as some of her hair that was still rooted in was yanked out.

All the while Jill's left hand had pulled out a small cylinder from before, back on the oil tanker. Aiming it towards Grady and waiting for him to focus his attention on her again.

Which didn't take long.

"Now back off-BACK OFF Valentine and you can swim off with this Polish mermaid and find some rock to hide under."

"Or what?" Jill asked, placing her taloned thumb over the button.

"Or what?! Or-or I'll kill her and kill you. I'm a trained agent and I can't die!"

"Let's test that."

She turned it on. The UV light blinded Grady as he was staring directly at her when it went off. The soft flesh of his eyes smoked while the blood from before caught on fire and he screamed out in pain. Joanna fell away and rolled back as Jill took one step after another towards him. Ducking down as they passed under the blades of the helicopter she slashed at his unprotected stomach and the light made the wound burn. He tried to aim at her but she grabbed at his arm and squeezed, twisting as she did till she felt the bones shift and he dropped the gun.

"Wha-but… the report-"

"They only managed to alter the likelihood of a positive outcome, not remove the weaknesses." If anything Jill suspected they might have made them worse. It wouldn't have surprised her given her past experiences.

Joanna had stood up, grabbing her fallen gun and limped over. Though whether from the injury or more changes it was hard to tell. The gunshot in her thigh had stopped bleeding but the area looked swollen now, her pants stretched tight as if the flesh wanted to rip through. While her head had gone almost completely bald, her ears were now shrinking into her skull. To add to that when she spat on Grady blood and a tooth came from her mouth.

A human tooth anyway.

"Fucker! You do all this, infect us… all for money? And then infect your boss too? Traitorous dog, worms would throw you up!"

Jill just shook her head as she took the light off him for a moment. "Did you really think that, what, making it look like he injected himself with the T-Abyss would be enough to hide how messed up all this is?"

"Would have just waited… but I ran out of time," Grady said, collapsing against the side of the helicopter, pained eyes looking around still for some way out of this situation. Though when he found none he just let out a slight coughing laugh and continued, "Besides, I didn't just give him some of the T-Abyss too."

What.

"What did you do Grady?"

"I gave him what he paid for, you stupid fish. I just cut it with a couple other viral samples to hide the origin and-"

A horrible, horrible wet sound of shifting flesh and meat came from behind them. Followed by deep and guttural roar. Heavy thuds pounding on metal came from below and sped up towards them. While a hoarse voice screamed out through the abandoned complex as it drew nearer.

"Gr-aady!"

"You-you impossible stupid-you mixed unknown viral samples?!"

Jill shared Koprowska's shock. This was beyond unpredictable and dangerous.

"I figured I'd be gone by the time it mattered…"

He burst out from where Jill had come, his bulk rolling with him in motion. Eyes swollen, milky white in one while the other was overly grown and pitch black. One arm swelled violently into claw like appendage, while between the pincers a tendril of pink dragged along the ground. The other was still bulging outward, the excess fat expanding into steelhard muscles as his body was wracked with the pained sounds of shifting organs and breaking bones.

Once again Jill was reminded how preposterously lucky she was that her various vaccines and treatments had slowed down whatever Wesker had intended enough that she'd come out of it sane and, easily by comparison, aesthetically pleasing and symmetrical. And not like the maddened creature, already twisted into insanity beyond even that which had driven him to follow the faint hope of immortality from Umbrella's ashes in the first place.

"GRA-AADY!" He bulldozed past Jill as Koprowska leaped to the side and rolled out of the thunderous mass of meat and bone. Grady's last moments were one of terror filled suffocation, the clawed arm pinning him while the other throbbed and grew, long claws extending out like serrated razors from a webbed hand and ripping him open from his throat on down. The metal wrenched behind him, part of the helicopter's door torn off as Reynold's yanked his claws out, spilling the crates that Grady had been loading.

Including one marked with the logo for Tricell which fell to the floor, popped open, and spilled a strange sea-green canister out.

"'O jejku! The vaccine?"

Jill saw it too.

And so did Reynolds.

"M-ine," he growled out, trying to pull out his claw twice, the tentacles already wrapped around part of the helicopter. Before kicking the whole thing, causing it to buckle and shift to the side. The spinning blades hit wires and cables as it did, sending sparks and whips of metal around them. Joanna ducked and crawled away as Reynolds moved closer and closer to the T-Abyss vaccine rolling from side to side on the landing pad. "My-my cure…"

"No it's not yours big guy," Jill shouted, tackling into his side before a cable slammed into her and she went spinning away. Reynolds roared in response and moved towards the vial. Just as Jill managed to grab hold of it.

And the claws slammed down near her neck. Missing the first time, but on the second the pink tendril, now more muted gray color as it swelled and grew in proportion to everything else, wrapped around her neck and dragged her towards him. She pinned her right arm between the pincers and began to kick and claw, trying to pull herself out of his grip.

"My cu-uuure-URGH!" His mouth exploded, tongue lashing out as a web of pink tendrils. While the helicopter's blade cut and stuck on the cables. And the motor spun the whole airship around instead.

Back end sweeping Reynolds and Jill off of the landing pad. The abyss welcoming them home.

The water's impact was hard, almost enough to drive her unconscious this time. Like slamming into a wall of concrete at dozens of miles per hour. But that only gave her a moment of reprieve before she felt the tentacle tighten again and had to continue fighting off Reynold's efforts to stab her with his claw or tear her in half. All the while the rolling waves of the Arctic swallowed them up, sinking down into the water. For a moment her feet claws caught on the metal supports of the oil platform, but then they pushed away together, nothing but the depths beneath them.

And nothing but water above.

Her hood slipped over as she felt the probing spikes of what had been the oil baron's tongue try and invade her mouth or tear into the softer flesh of her face. Not that she needed eyes here, there was nothing to see by, no light above and they were sinking fast into the utter dark of the ocean itself. Her body shifted, legs more like fins as the adaptable cartilage armoring made bones move in odd ways, but that barely seemed to help. He was too massive to swim with, still dragging her down and sinking like a rock as he continued his assault, ceaselessly trying to murder her and take a cure that wouldn't do anything to save him now.

Her mouth parted, hidden though it was, and bubbles of air escaped her lungs as the water flowed in. She tried to breathe, but could not. Her gills were locked. The tendril, wrapped in digestive mucus and acid and even now pulsating outward to consume her was smothering her, tightened around the very way she breathed so naturally when underwater. She hadn't even thought it possible to choke to death like this, but now she could feel her body weakening, the pounding of her heart growing louder and louder…

Like a beating drum…

Or a loud gun, the vibrations in her hands moving through her whole body…

Each pulse came louder and harder as the darkness closed in. The vice grip about her neck and gills left no breath from the ocean. Her jaws opened in smothered scream, lungs already filled with water but going the wrong way as she kicked and thrashed. Far above her the surface lay, now lost in trackless depths of water.

All she heard was that pounding, thunderous and loud as she felt herself fading away-

The sound of the gun echoed loudly through the range. Her webbed claws held her custom Samurai Edge tightly in a four fingered grip, pulling the trigger with practiced ease. Down the range she watched the spread of bullets appear. Tight, focused. Center of chest first.

She nodded at her performance, sent the target down to the next increment and reloaded. Again, this time headshots. Further off, smaller target. She took aim and… fired!

Straight and true.

Again and again.

Each shot was dead on, smooth operation from firing through the recoil into the next. When the clip ran dry she'd barely used up her allocated time and hit the button to bring the target up. Jill couldn't help but show the razor smile as she saw another near perfect score come up.

"Pretty good Valentine," Wesker said from behind her as she took the ear muffs off. Wearing them took a bit of work, but as long as she kept her hood back they fit over where her ears were more or less and worked as intended. Wesker had already removed his, though aside from that he was dressed strangely. Leather jacket, sunglasses inside the police station…

"Going out clubbing later Wesker?" Jill asked, though she already knew the answer. Burton liked to joke that Wesker was even 'more of a wet fish than you' when it came to social situations so she doubted it was more than just another odd little eccentricity of her commanding officer here at STARs.

"No just checking on your progress. Excellent form. Muscle control and dexterity not impacted by infection at all-"

Wait this was wrong this was-

This was what he actually said .

"-neurological damage is minimal if any and compensated by total merger to a Progenitor Strain. Aquatic adaptation looks positive, gills seem to have grown in well and," Wesker moved up, deep into her personal space as Jill backed up. Tail hitting the boundary of the shooting range behind her as she suddenly felt unclothed and naked, even though her STAR's uniform was on from foot bracers to the jacket with her back fin poking through. Wesker grabbed at her face, fingers rubbing her snout in a way she did not like and opening her jaw to look inside. "Teeth fully replaced, secondary row ready to grow in when needed and substance for tertiary present as-"

"Get the fuck off me!"

She shoved Wesker back, where he hit the wall. His glasses fell away, red and glowing eyes looking at her as he continued to speak.

"Strength and endurance have also increased, adaptation for deep sea environments complete. Loss of mammalian characteristics went smoothly." Wesker glanced at her chest, the STARs uniform slim enough that the contours of her body weren't masked as they would be if she were wearing heavier combat armor. "Vestigial remnants remain, size is larger than expected. Possible psychological impact? Desire of host to appear attractive to former species winning out over new nature in part?"

She lunged forward, teeth bared and claws out. One grabbed Wesker by the throat and lifted him up while the other sunk into the drywall nearby. Close, but not quite drawing blood yet.

He didn't even seem to notice, other than choking briefly as he spoke.

"Will possibly need further testing… ah-reproductive viability might still extend to non-infected. The Oroborus should compensate from that in survivors-"

"What the hell are you talking about!?"

Wesker looked at her with a strangely sad smile, quite unlike the smug looks of superiority she expected.

"What you forgot."

"I didn't forget anything you bastard," Jill growled back, teeth showing and breath close to his face.

"You forgot that I don't make mistakes."

That hit like a blow to the core. The lights seemed to dim as the whole building shook, her body off balance as she felt faint and came back glaring even fiercer at the phantom in her grip.

"You did this time! You died."

"Yes, regrettable. But we're not talking about me Jill… we're talking about you. Do you really think that with complete access to your genetics and all the time in the world I accidentally turned you into this?"

"If you did it on purpose, then why? It didn't help you… it couldn't have helped-"

"It was to be a gift."

She almost fell that time, dropping Wesker lower and having to support herself against him, her anger clouded now with a confusion and shock so complete it threatened to make her faint. But still she held on, unable and unwilling to loosen her grip on these answers she had so long repressed.

"I told you-"

You've done so well…

"-that I was going to make a world set free of weakness, of the limitations of nation and petty morality-'

To have survived Raccoon and all their efforts… a shame you weren't taken for the Wesker program. Maybe the old man would have found his Superhuman at last.

"-with your added immunity and natural resistance I realized that to leave you out of my plans would be great disservice to all the potential you had shown."

She was speechless for a moment, breathing in and out. Panting as she tried to calm the pounding of her heart and the weakness in her limbs. "But why… why this? This… thing is my body?"

"Excella wanted to be a… ugh, a Queen with me. But I could tell she was just another pretender, another rich and self-obsessed fool like Spencer that had deluded themselves into thinking that mere material wealth could be a substitute for true power and excellence. Not like me. Not like you ."

"So why not make me like you if you wanted a Queen or whatever."

"I didn't. I told you-"

Does that woman really think her charms can work on me?

"-that my only love is myself. My own self-improvement. And my gift to the world was to let them all improve as I had."

"Or die."

"Some would live. You did. And more I knew that if my new world was to be populated it would have to be more… efficiently done. Only being able to live on land? What a sad and sorry limitation."

He shook his head, bits of plaster falling down onto his hair as the roof shook. Jill ignored it, ignored the pain in her chest and slammed him against the wall again.

"That's it. You turned me into a fish because you, what, you just felt like it?"

"It was the greatest gift I could give. Lordship over the oceans, you as its new queen. In time I assumed you would gather people descended from similar stock. I could provide a starter population once matters had settled. Or you could create them. While it holds no appeal to me, I wagered Chris would be open to it and I hadn't planned on him catching up to me after fighting you."

Her claws sunk into his neck, silencing him as the lights went out and only the red glow of his eyes stood out in the shadows.

"Well you screwed up. You died and-"

"Yes, I suppose I did."

The room seemed unreal, shifting beneath her as her feet started to give way.

"If you were half as strong as you were supposed to be you wouldn't be dying now."

"I'm not- I'm fine," Jill lied. Feeling the pain in her chest, the suffocating tightness that surrounded her neck even as her claws tightened on Wesker's.

"Perhaps I did make a mistake," Wesker said as he looked away from her for a moment. "The Jill Valentine I chose wouldn't be about to get killed by some sad old man afraid of dying."

She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. Just coughing wetness as the lack of air hit her here. The lack of water through her gills outside.

"Stop being afraid of what you are Jill, of what I made you… you were meant for so much more than being some sad test subject for lesser minds to gawk at. I made you to rule!"

Her jaw gaped wider, extending out slightly as the full size became apparent and she tried to breath, tried to close it, tried to-

Bite

"You were meant to be strong… unstoppable. To claim the waters as your own by claw and tooth-"

BITE

"You just have to-"

Her jaws snapped shut around Wesker's neck, guttural sound of blood flowing through his savaged airway before she tore him open.

And yet he had a smile on his face…

She wrenched her hand down, feeling the claw snap and mutilate some of her fingers as she moved.

She didn't care. Instead she felt her hood pull back, her jaws opening wide in the absolute darkness of the abyss and slamming down around the probing tongue that had been trying to attack her. She tore loose, before biting again, closer to Reynold's face, or what it might have been.

She saw not in colors but in blood, the scent, the flow, the sound. She heard the muted pounding of his heart below the savage fury of her own. She tasted the electric stir of his muscles and his organs and every part of her, every fiber of her being screamed to silence them.

She bit again, teeth gouging against his face as one eye burst and skin was pulled from bone. Her right hand was reforming, changing as her claws sunk into skin that was trying to armor itself up against her even as her assault continued. Not fast enough, as she came loose at last, the tentacle unable to hold her.

And then she really sunk her teeth into him. Her jaw closed around the armored arm, the chitin plates of the forming exoskeleton buckling and breaking. Then the flesh beneath it, soft and spilling blood into the water and into her mouth. And then yet harder as she felt the bone crack and break. He hammered against her, trying to knock her loose and only managed to make a few teeth pop out and sit in the wounds before she readjusted her mouth's grip. And gills free, opening and closing as life giving oxygen flooded her, she pumped her fins and tail and began to spin.

Down.

Further and further.

Faster and faster.

Over a hundred meters and still falling, a trail of crimson staining the water as the passed, cartwheeling to the depths. Her free hand tearing and ripping as she opened up the chest of the BOW he'd become and saw without eyes the organs that had swollen so profusely within. For a moment her jaw loosened, letting the clawed arm go, broken and useless. He tried to bat her off with the other, but she turned and swam at him like a torpedo, jaw open and snapping shut on his neck. Back into the spin, faster now, as she felt his slowing pulse in her mouth and tore open anything she could from within him.

She felt the blood slow.

She felt the regeneration of the bacteria pause.

She felt him die at last.

And then, and only then, did she relax her jaw, open wide, and let him drop. Sinking still and silent into a watery grave.

"Next time try chemo," Jill thought, gills opening and closing as she swam in place. Water above and water below, nothing else before her and nothing to threaten her. Nothing that could threaten her. The vial in her four fingered hand starting to crack from the pressure.

Though the number of digits took her away, pausing as she checked the other and saw that her claws hand narrowed, the webbing extending and potentially what had been her index finger separating out again as she'd broken bones and limbs in her furious assault on her opponent. It was still different than before but… better .

"Damn it… he really did get one last win, didn't he?" Wesker's plans had been sociopathic to the extreme and frankly insane, but when it came to smaller projects… well, he wasn't Umbrella's pet wizkid and labrat in one for nothing. In a way he did make a Queen of a new world, just not the one he wanted and one Jill intended to spend the rest of her life fighting for.

Though what would her world look like, what was the world in general going to be like, going forward? The viruses were still out there, the cures more effective but less perfected than anyone had wanted.

Would there be a place for her on the surface, or would she forever be a creature made for these depths?

Idle thoughts for idle swimming, but she was soon to breach the surface. Rising from the water, the partially broken vial in hand, she would climb into the helicopter with the rest. Half naked, exhausted, but triumphant.

And that was how her mission ended, with the oil platform detonating behind them as they flew back towards the cruise ship while radioing in for support.

"Not bad for the first one since Wesker."