For all disclaimers: see earlier Chapters.
Faith
Chapter Seven
/January 4th 2001, northern Afghanistan/
"I might as well be armed with a pair of tweezers..." muttered Xenia, as they advanced back into the main corridor slowly and carefully. The small Swiss army knife in her hand was better than nothing, but only just...
"You can laugh? I feel like I should be playing the drums with these sticks, not fighting armed hostiles with automatic weapons if it comes to that" snapped Anna.
"Is it even worth pointing out that most men I've ever met would pause for a moment before shooting either of you? Just think about why" said Matt, dryly. Both women stopped moving and turned sharply to glare at him, but he noticed a smirk on Xenia's face.
"Thanks for that, I'll be sure to go into the next room naked just in case. In the meantime, can we discuss the reason that the symbol of Umbrella Corporation was on that computer screen?" replied Anna, testily.
"Umbrella may specialise in corporate Espionage, I should know, but lets not be naïve and pretend Racoon City didn't happen back in '98. We've all heard the rumours unless we've been asleep for the past two years and change? About the dead walking the streets, Mutants and monsters eating people, Umbrella trying to Cover everything up by throwing money at the press and Lawyers to spin and deny everything? I've seen the footage that got smuggled out by Terri Morales, haven't you? If that was all faked I'm the Tsar of Russia" said Xenia, even as she led them around the corner, spinning sharply around the corner with weapon held high and ready before nodding to confirm it was clear.
"I've seen it too, but I still don't get how they could have done it, no matter what that Abernathy woman said. You can't just "reactivate" a human mind and body like it's got an on/off switch. That's like saying there's a spinning door between life and death you can open if you want to" replied Matt. He didn't want to believe it, but SOC Analysts had verified the footage again and again to be sure. There was no question, it was the real thing...
"You're missing the point, Matt. These people weren't raised from the dead, whatever the Hell that means, they were dead, that simple. My understanding of what Abernathy said is that Umbrella discovered some kind of Virus which could use the electricity left over in the brain to reactivate the basics in the brain and get a corpse upright under its own power, completely mindless, with nothing but the need to feed existent. Wounds caused by these things to the living passed on the infection and created more. The ultimate biological weapon, that's what I'd call things like that. Wouldn't you?" asked Anna, pointedly.
"Point" replied Matt, after a long moment, having honestly not thought of it that way before. Thinking of it that way made him wonder just what else Umbrella could have been working on that could have gotten loose in the catastrophe that Racoon City had become before the end...
"Everyone shut up" said Xenia abruptly, as she spotted a dark shadow on the inside of the far door, which had clearly opened slightly due to weight pressed against it from the other side. The dark shadow was too dense to have been caused by anything less than a body, more to the point a body that was so still only death could have been the cause. If Umbrella could effectively raise the dead-she knew that they could, but that was another story she had no intention of getting into-they weren't safe even in a facility where it appeared everyone had already been killed, one way or another.
She walked slowly and carefully over to the door with measured strides, got her fingertips between the door and its frame-then stepped away sharply and heaved it open. She had to jump backwards to dodge what fell out even as the door swung open.
Young and male, the man had once been handsome, with dark hair, a well-developed body and the kind of easy good looks genetics and youth granted a lucky few. Now, though, half of his head was gone, his brains spilling out over what was left of his face while blood drenched everything. His left leg was gone from just above the knee on down and looked as though it had been gnawed off, while torn-up bloody-red organs and broken white rib bones laced with tendrils of torn flesh and muscle were exposed inside his chest by deep, razor-edge slashes that looked as though they'd been created by claws.
The dead man had been so completely mutilated and abused in life and death that it was hard to be sure whether or not his body had ever been completely intact, but Xenia's practiced eye and intuition told her that he'd been a perfect physical specimen before...that had happened to him. The question wasn't what had happened to him, though, but what had happened to him. It was a simpler question than it sounded, because no human being was physically capable of doing what had occurred to the man to another, no matter how savage or psychotic for one simple reason: the claw cuts were parallel, all three of them, they'd been caused at the same time...
Xenia had seen the worst humanity had to offer in every dark corner of the world in over a decade in the Mercenary trade, but even she had trouble keeping her eyes on the mangled mess that had once been a human being. She had to swallow hard to keep an acid taste from crawling up her throat, a feeling of illness she hadn't suffered since completing her training with the Spetsnaz after she'd been made a full KGB Agent threatening to tear through her self-control. She kept herself under control with a considerable effort of will, but it was harder than she would have liked.
Anna's dark skin made it hard to tell anything about her reaction beyond her expression, but she looked capable of mass Murder if the look in her eyes was anything to go by. The problem was, Xenia knew that Anna was capable of that any time, the woman wasn't completely sane at very best. Beyond that, though...all Xenia could tell from what she could see was that Anna was disgusted at what she was seeing.
Matt looked as though he was literally going green for a long second, then he simple went so pale Xenia was almost tempted to check his pulse to make sure his heart hadn't stopped in shock. That, however, was the kind of response she would have expected from most normal people, even professional Special Forces soldiers, at a sight like the one in front of them.
Anna's reaction was almost disturbing, though, especially given what amounted to a lack of it. Only someone truly demented or so soaked in blood, guts and killing that they no longer knew the difference between right and wrong and had burned out any Conscience that they once had would simply fail to react to such a sight. Crazy she might well be, but surely Anna wasn't that out of her mind...?
"Does anyone else think that we might be dealing with one of those Mutants we were just discussing, here?" asked Matt, his voice so quiet both women could barely hear him. Anna just shook her head because, Xenia was sure, she'd realised the truth too.
"Mutation doesn't create something like this, Matt, Genetic Engineering spliced with Mutant DNA does. Have you ever read the CIA Black Dossier concerning what Umbrella had loose in Racoon when everything went to Hell?" asked Xenia. Matt just sighed, putting his hand over his eyes.
"I don't want to know, do I? No, but I'm sure you have" he replied. Anna just smirked.
"They managed to identify only two creatures which could do damage like this. One was called a Licker, twelve-foot tongue inside a head which is half teeth, eighteen inch claws three to each of its four feet, probably your weight Matt, but three, four times as strong. No skin and looks like it's been flayed and then released from Hell. The tongue can punch through an inch of steel, before you ask" said Xenia, before pausing to draw in a deep breath.
"Second one is a seven foot humanoid which can get even taller, with muscle and bone to match, tends towards one hand normal the other claws like the Licker. The most obvious marker is that the Tyrants heart is on the outside. No skin again, but soaks up damage like a tank and the only confirmed report of one being taken out I've ever heard of involved it being shot point-blank with an experimental laser cannon just outside Racoon City. Do I really need to point out now that if either of those is after us Suicide with a smile is our best option?" asked Xenia, her cool tone of voice letting them both know she was deadly serious.
"Hell, no... So what do we do if we see one of these things down here? Run like Hell? Beg for mercy? Pray? Or, my personal favourite, fight to the death?" asked Matt.
"Are you deaf? Death isn't final any more. Anything with the Virus in it wounds you? You get up and start acting like deaths an inconvenience even though your brains so far gone you don't even know you were once human at all? First thing you'll do is kill everyone close to you, then you'll go after everyone who trusts you close to them... Should I draw you a diagram, Matt?" asked Anna, sharply.
"No you should not, because if we go down against one of those things I intend to be in half-eaten pieces on the floor before it finally manages to kill me. If the two of you are planning on anything less you are both out of touch with reality" said Xenia, before Matt could reply.
"Matt, check the other door" said Anna abruptly, as she turned away from Xenia, clearly a dismissal. It didn't bother Xenia, she knew she'd struck a nerve with the actually very private woman, despite her granite exterior and seeming solid rock constitution, both physical and mental. Few people ever guessed at the fact, let alone realised it, but Xenia knew that Anna's shell was built up to the level it was because of something terrible which had happened when she was very young, maybe more than one "something".
If you got past her hide enough to wound her with words, either you were very close to her-like Matt obviously was, no matter what he seemed to believe-or you understood her like few did, like Xenia did. In reality, Xenia was sure Anna would never talk about what had happened to her and how she'd ended up the way she was, but she could live with that. She knew an honest, if terribly damaged, individual when she saw one. She knew that if Anna gave her word, it was set in stone and the promise would be honoured. That simple fact made Anna close to unique amongst every professional soldier Xenia had ever met...
Matt had to muscle the second door open, it turned out that the hinges were stiff even though the door was electronically controlled and the power was evidently off, but when he did it turned out there was a very simple reason: the room was an empty storeroom, lined with dust. Nothing had been in the room for weeks, maybe months from what he could see-nor had anyone, given the total lack of disturbance in the dust.
"It's clear, where next?" he asked, turning back to Xenia. She was staring straight at the empty corridor ahead of her with a strange intensity, her head cocked, as though she'd seen, heard or otherwise somehow sensed something that she couldn't quite identify...
"The next step on the road to Hell, Matt. Where else?" replied Anna.
22.41.10
Y
It had taken them roughly ten minutes to reach the outskirts of the site of the explosion at a jog, but they would have had to stop at the edge of the big crater the blast had clearly created even if they'd been sprinting. It was twenty metres wide and ten deep and, more importantly, the original blast appeared to have vaporised the edge of a small mountain, in the process exposing the remnants of a steel-lined access corridor which was shattered and slagged so much that it was impassable.
The area of mountain around it was now made up of pulverised stone, shattered fragments of rock and what looked like a distinctly unsafe new cavern. It seemed to be issuing spurts of dust and the odd grinding crack of unsteady, settling stone every time he looked at a new section. The whole area was coated in rock dust and the heat of the blast that had created it still radiated outwards from the blast area. Going into it or anywhere near it seemed like a good plan if you were Suicidal or Suicidally desperate, neither of which Walker was.
However, that didn't mean that he was at all keen to let Leon Kennedy, who was there to collect what data he could on anything left of Umbrella's work in the structure, into the remains of the structure or anywhere near it. If he'd been alone it would have been easy enough to arrange an "accident" for Kennedy, even one involving bullets. But with two SOC soldiers standing literally right next to him? Short of getting into a provoked punch-up with the young man and breaking his neck in "self-defence", he would be seconds behind Kennedy's dead body in hitting the ground at best.
Maybe he should just let the already destroyed facility do the job for him? He knew that Umbrella was so paranoid that every Self-Destruct system was built with multiple redundancies just in case the system somehow failed to operate properly first time round. Even though it clearly hadn't finished the job first time around, the system would default and get the job done with enough time to work...
"Alright, our objective is penetration of the enemy complex and analysis of any and all Intel available, but it looks to me like this isn't a team job. So you three stay here and secure my egress. I'll go in by myself and work fast" said Kennedy, then he stepped forwards and half-skidded, half stepped down into the crater before cautiously making his way over to the ruined entrance corridor. He had to stop and kick part of the former corridor wall out of the way so he could step inside, before he somehow managed to activate the manual override for the door, muscle it open due to the lack of power and disappear.
Well, that solved one problem, more than likely, Walker thought. Now he just had to wonder whether or not Matt was alive and, if so, where he was? Of course, he could make doubly sure that Leon was dead with a "nerves" burst of gunfire if the man somehow made it back out of the structure regardless, come to think of it…
20:10:02
Y
The lights in the corridor were very weak, providing just enough illumination to see by, being further fouled by what appeared to be traces of smoke, suggesting another fire nearby. What worried Xenia wasn't the possibility of another fire, though, that they could deal with. What worried her was the odd chemical scent she could just make out on the edge of the stink of smoke. Given the kind of place that she suspected this was...
They were faced with three doors ahead of them, making up the entire end of the corridor. The one directly ahead of them was so distorted and damaged it would clearly be impossible to open, so they ignored it. The one to the left was still secured, evidently operating off of a backup generator for some reason, on top of which it had no keypad to open it with, so they ignored it to. That left them with the loose door on the right.
"I'll lead, stay close" said Xenia, weapon raised and ready as she reached forwards and pressed the door shut gently but firmly-before wrenching it open and settling into a close-quarter stance as she faced the opening. When she saw what was inside, though, she'd have sold her right arm with a smile to not have had a good look at what was inside the room.
Bodies, at least a dozen-as far as she could tell. All of the remains, which was the only word which fitted, were scattered around the room, severed legs, arms, heads and even battered torsos lying all over in a literal pool of blood that had splattered everywhere in the room, walls, ceiling and floor. There was so much blood that it almost obscured the details of torn up and mutilated internal organs, shattered bones, shredded bodies and the remains of peoples faces as they lay dead and destroyed on the floor and against the walls.
A severed head had somehow ended up lying on one side facing the door, rent neck evident and still spilling a trickle of blood, the remnants of a severed spinal column sticking out of the base of the neck to secure the head in place on the floor. The pool of blood on the floor was so deep that it was making one eyelid tremble constantly, as though the decapitated head was trying to wink at her. The head of a young woman, who couldn't have been more than twenty-five.
So many body parts, bits and pieces of people, were floating around in the room that she doubted anyone short of a Surgeon could have even possibly matched all of the parts back together effectively and accurately. Given what she was seeing, even George Romero didn't understand just how far people would go to make sure even the possibility of loved ones or associates coming back to kill everyone they knew and loved once supposedly dead couldn't happen.
She knew now, because if what she was seeing wasn't the result of at least two grenades followed by heavy gunfire to make sure everyone in the room was dead, the door having been forced closed to magnify the effect of the blasts inside the room first, then she knew nothing about the effect of explosives on the human body. Whoever had done this had been very, very certain about being sure the people in the room had been truly dead. Just what had happened in this place to cause this sort of atrocity to be committed by what had to have been another human being before the Self-Destruct had been activated?
Matt took one look through the door, even with the poor lighting, turned, made it three running paces and promptly threw up. Xenia was less than impressed, but then he was still young and clearly still hadn't fought in any real wars yet, nor seen just how unpleasant human beings could really get with one another.
It was hard to believe sometimes, even for her, but she'd seen worse than this-and that had supposedly been where atrocity was not common. In Afghanistan the natives and every fool who'd tried to conquer or control them since 1979 had learnt the hard way that there were so many fates far worse than death, if you wanted to try and find out by making the wrong people mad with you. That number, of course, included her-not that what she'd ultimately suffered had been so bad in '89. She'd escaped with her pride intact, at the very least...
"Yuck. Someone was very unhappy" said Anna, sticking her head in through the open door and taking a good, slow look around. Xenia was tempted to grab and shake the woman to see if there was enough humanity left in her to be horrified by anything any more, but she didn't dare. She was starting to wonder, though, whether the US Army was actually aware that they were employing someone who increasingly appeared to be, at best, a borderline Sociopath.
"Hysterical, Anna, I'll start laughing precisely one second after I die down here. Really. In the meantime, this is pointless, there's no way through here and we can't open the electronic door or force the other with something solid wedged like that. We need something else and I still haven't seen any fire extinguishers that would let us go that way. I'm fielding any and all suggestions here?" asked Xenia.
"Maybe if we could find some fire retardant blankets or soak layers of clothes before trying to run out?" suggested Matt. He didn't look like he expected his suggestion to be taken seriously, so his expression was a picture when she nodded her agreement.
"I hate to say it, but that might just be one of our best options" she said, slowly...
19:12:00
"Hold on...did anyone else hear that?" asked Anna, raising her head sharply. Xenia suddenly froze, well aware that the sharp-eared Anna, as the only one who hadn't been speaking, could have picked up on something she and Matt might have missed. Matt was so still when she glanced around that he might as well have stopped breathing.
Then she did hear it. An unsteady screech of metal being torn, a rattle of noise coming from what could only be the throat and mouth of a living being, a slowly, unsteady rasping that probably passed for breathing with whatever...it was. One thing she could tell for certain from the noise, just to begin with, was that nothing human had ever made sounds like that.
"Oh, shit. What the Hell's loose down here?" muttered Matt.
"I think your already looking in the right direction, Matt..." replied Anna, looking around quickly in all directions, her voice as low as possible as she clearly tried to tell where the noise was coming from. She started backing away from the three doors ahead of them even as she did, though, Xenia noticed.
The noise was echoing but was also getting louder fast, as though whatever was coming had caught their scent and was accelerating straight towards them. Xenia realised where it was coming from abruptly and turned to look at the already-damaged door as a shower of sparks from one wall flew up in the air not far enough down the passage beyond to give her much hope. She started to back away from the three doors as well, Matt doing the same but staying ahead of the two women, hairspray and lighter raised and ready.
"Should we run?" asked Anna, gently. Xenia didn't need to look at the other woman to know what she'd see in her eyes.
"Where?" Xenia replied, pointedly. There was nothing else to be said.
The noise suddenly developed into a steady crashing and cracking noise as the thing coming for them broke into a sprint. She caught a moments glimpse of something long, pink and skinless charging them, then a creature twice the size of the largest dog she'd ever see tore the wrecked door right off of it's hinges as it leapt at them with a speed and force which suggested it had been catapulted from the back of a high-speed train...
Y
The maintenance tunnels that led down to the reactor control room as fast as possible from outside the control room were barely tall enough for her to jog along at a fast crouch. Whether or not she was doing this for her own benefit and on Wesker's Orders, she swore someone important was going to die for landing her in this mess. The Plan had been perfect, the execution flawless, with just one problem-yet again, Umbrella had upgraded its security measures and this time? They'd outdone themselves.
A Suicide switch in the Database area which had made it impossible for her and her team to access the computer core after the initial release had wiped out the IT staff. Security staff issued such threats about site security and the control of information they'd fought to the death or committed Suicide to avoid being captured and interrogated, no matter what their position in the hierarchy. A self-destruct device which had activated so quickly that even Umbrella staff who'd started running the moment the countdown started would unlikely have made it out in time unless they were Olympic-class sprinters?
Things had to have gone spectacularly to Hell at Umbrella since the Racoon City disaster of '98, which had nearly destroyed the company and still could, she suspected, for them to have reached the point of effectively building Suicide Switches into their facilities just in case. Sometimes she even found herself wondering if there was ultimately someone in charge of Umbrella any more, decisions which appeared contradictory and even impossible to carry out having come down from on high in recent years that she knew of with her limited-to-say-the-least access.
She almost hoped that Umbrella would self-destruct and get it over with, though, in reality. She'd barely survived Racoon City herself, but she'd been in the city since before the worst had begun as John Howe's "girlfriend", part of her Undercover Op- and she wasn't exaggerating when she said that she'd seen things human eyes weren't meant to see. The very worst that even Umbrella had to offer set loose on the civilians of Racoon City, monsters that even the minds of madmen should never have been allowed to conceive of.
Then there had been the one bright light in the city that had almost made it all worthwhile after she'd lost touch with Giselle. Rookie Cop Leon Kennedy, who in a matter of hours had almost succeeded in cutting through the considerable emotional armour she'd built up around herself and imprinted himself on her heart just by being who he was. It was, again, no exaggeration to state that she'd been falling heavily for the man, but the ice cold terror of her near-death experience after she'd fallen from the high walkway and been forced to make her own way out seriously injured and almost crippled had done wonders to sober her up.
Giselle and she lived and worked in the same world, they understood the world as it really was and could find the kind of comfort in one another that only two lonely Souls forever trapped out in the night alone and otherwise forgotten ever could. If she'd given in to temptation and let Leon in under her guard as far as she'd let Giselle in? She'd have destroyed him, inside and out, in less than a year.
Her world was a mass of politics, lies, distortions and possibilities that she was often required to neutralise or "adjust" just to stay alive herself, where failure was not an option and cold-blooded Murder was often a necessity. Who she was, her entire identity, what she was, she'd spun so much distortion and deception around all of it, all around her and every part of her life, that even she sometimes had trouble keeping track-and sometimes wondered if she was.
She hadn't even used her real name since she was twelve and had come home to find her parents slaughtered like cattle in their apartment home. A lifetime of lies, killing and a failure to respect the fact that, just because they were masters of the craft, it didn't mean nobody could touch them, let alone kill them, had caught up with them in the end. She'd disappeared that same day and never been seen by anyone she knew or who knew her at the time since. The only person left alive who knew who she really was was Giselle, who never used that name at Ada's request. Her parents hadn't been old when they died, so there was little question whoever had killed them would still be looking for their child...
Leon was far from either simple or stupid, but he just wasn't built to cope with the kind of life she had, the world she lived in. To be with her, honestly, he'd have to have followed her in because she couldn't just leave hers for his. Not alive, anyway. But she had just too much human decency left to her concerning people she genuinely cared about-for now, anyway-to let that happen. So she'd let him believe her dead, which was for the best as far as they were both concerned.
Racoon City had also taught her something she never would have learnt otherwise, though, a lesson which had served her well ever since and gone a long way to making her more formidable than she ever had been before, despite everything. Intelligence Agents liked to say that they imagined the impossible on a daily basis, planned half a dozen "what if" contingency plans and had seen so much that nothing surprised them any more. For her, that was literally the truth now.
After you saw the dead get up and walk around attacking and eating the living? Saw mutant monsters literally swallow human beings whole before regurgitating the bare bones seconds later? Watched eight-foot humanoid killing machines which looked like something H P Lovecraft would have had nightmares about tear right through brick walls as though they were made of paper while shrugging off half a dozen shotgun blasts at point-blank range? You discovered that the ability to be surprised or shocked had simply ceased to be a part of your consciousness.
That was why, when she finally reached the reactor room and found the containment door open, she didn't miss a stride. It was also why, when she picked out the four Zombies in the room, she just made sure her weapon was loaded and the safety off. She did stop, though, when she got a good look at the Zombies, took in the fact that their flesh was visibly turning almost to liquid and starting to come away from the bone in places, as though the rate of decomposition had somehow been massively accelerated for these Zombies. Huge patches of skin were peeling away, flesh had dried out and was peeling away from the bone, nails were flaking off, already milky eyes were heavily bloodshot to the point the creatures likely actually were blind. Hair was falling out in clumps...
She knew all of the signs, but it had never occurred to her that the result would be the same regardless of whether the body in question was alive or dead. The Zombies were suffering from Radiation Sickness, a massive dose for even dead bodies to be decaying so soon after death. That could only mean one thing.
She got as close to the small door and the thick glass porthole as she dared, to get a good look at the reactor itself, a huge green steel effort wired and piped into systems all over the small room. A crack which really shouldn't have been there was evidently visible in the reactors outer shell...
She didn't know how long she'd have at the kind of exposure levels evident in the room, she wasn't enough of a Scientist to even make an educated guess, but she guessed that seconds rather than minutes was most likely. If, that was, she hadn't already irradiated herself by coming into the underground corridor with the reactor room secure door open?
Didn't matter, she'd made a promise and she kept her promises when made honestly, especially when made to people she cared about as much as she had about her grandfather when he'd been alive. Then there was what she'd been forced to witness at Racoon City, in violation of that very explicit promise.
Never. Again. Not ever again.
Oh, this was really going to hurt. Even if she somehow survived it...
/End of Part Seven. All Reviews welcomed/.