Chapter 18:
From the Shadows
(ANNETTE)
There were people in William's lab. People she didn't know, wondering through his workspace, upsetting experiments, rooting through his files, and generally making themselves a nuisance. Worse still, she'd lost sight of William. The last time she'd seen him, he'd been on his way toward the surface. She suspected he'd made his way up to the police precinct, where he'd be sure to make life hell for those officers still trapped inside, but at the moment, that wasn't Annette's concern.
Green was still inside, and with her, an opportunity to revenge herself on at least one of the people who'd killed her husband, as well as rid herself of the irritating interlopers..
A small smile crept across Annette Birkin's face. She knew just how to do it, too.
(ALYSSA)
She wasn't sure why she'd expected things to be different, but Alyssa was finding it got colder the farther down she went. Ridiculously so, in fact.
She'd run as fast as she could to get away from the giant monster tree thing, but that still left her in a frozen over lab. Worse, there were infected stuck to several of the walls. They couldn't get off, being frozen solid, but if they were to thaw, she'd be fucked.
Keeping a white knuckled grip on the handgun, Alyssa did her best not to think about it. Instead, she decided to concentrate on the task at hand. Unfortunately, that didn't do her much good, since she had no idea where she needed to go.
The lab's corridors seemed to be built at all kinds of sharp, awkward angles. Alyssa couldn't figure out why, and it gave her the creeps. Damn near anything could be waiting around the corner, ready to pounce…
"Stop it" she muttered, shaking her head, as she made her way down the slippery corridor, her boots clicking loudly on the ice.
At random, Alyssa turned to the right and headed down a narrow hallway. At the end was a door, adorned only with the same black and yellow CAUTION sticker she'd seen everywhere else in the building. Reaching out, she grabbed the handle with her left hand and yanked…only to have the door refuse to budge.
"Son of a bitch" she muttered, grunting, as she continued to strain at the door. Finally she shoved the handgun into her waistband, then grabbed the door with both hands and yanked down as hard as she could. With a metallic groan, it swung open.
The first thing that hit Alyssa was the smell, like mildew, washing over her like a wave. Then there was the sensation of moistness, like she'd just stepped into a sauna. It took her a few seconds to realize she wasn't cold in here, like it was everywhere else.
The room was some sort of mini lab, with two large tanks on the right wall and a small computer terminal in an alcove on the far left side. Covering the wall directly in front of her, though, were dozens of the most disgusting creatures Alyssa had ever seen.
They looked like maggots, round and pasty and squirming disgustingly, except they were as long as Alyssa's forearm and couldn't possibly have come into being through normal means. Alyssa had a hard time not gagging at the thought of those things touching her, so much so that she didn't hear the rasping sound of approaching wings.
She did notice the fat rustling sound as the giant moth wiggled its way through an air duct, carrying something in its legs.
"Fuck!" Alyssa exclaimed, taking a step back and raising the handgun, only to have the moth drop its load before turning and squeezing itself back out the way it came.
The object in question groaned and rolled over, and Alyssa realized it was Kevin.
"What the hell?" he moaned, sitting up and rubbing tenderly at his back. Then he saw the wall of maggots (or larva, Alyssa realized), and let out a somewhat girlish cry of disgust. "What the hell!" he shouted, scrambling away and bumping Alyssa in the process.
"Oh, uh, hi" he managed, somewhat embarrassed by his display.
"Real nice" Alyssa responded, snorting.
"Weren't you with one of the scientists? What was his name, uh-?"
"York," Alyssa replied, "and he's dead. Some of those…things are loose upstairs." She shook her head. "And I don't even know where I'm supposed to go."
"I can help with that" said the disembodied voice of a woman, from somewhere above them.
Kevin and Alyssa's heads both snapped up, searching for the source of the noise.
"Who's there?" Kevin shouted, drawing his .45.
"That's not important" the voice replied. "What is important is I can help you people get out of here. All you have to do is listen to me."
Kevin looked over at Alyssa. She shrugged.
"Why not?" Kevin asked. "What have we got to lose?"
(MARK)
They hadn't quite made it to the camera room when the temperature suddenly and unexpectedly began to rise. Mark and Leary stopped, back to back, crouching down, their weapons aimed up as they scanned the corridor.
"What's that?" Mark asked the guard.
"I dunno" he replied. "It sounds like somebody restarted the environmental systems. That's what Hughes was supposed to be doing, wasn't it?"
"I don't know" Mark replied, irritably. "Let's just go. We gotta find Kevin before that moth thing eats him."
"Right. Follow me."
Mark walked backwards, sweeping the M16 right and left, his eyes narrowed as he squinted over the rifle's sights. Then he heard an odd, lopping sound from somewhere behind him. "What the hell?" he muttered, half turning.
"Holy shit!" Leary exclaimed as a giant green thing launched itself out of the darkness, a wickedly sharp claw raised to strike. The guard brought up his handgun, a big Desert Eagle, and fired a single bullet, catching the monster in the chest and canceling its momentum, throwing it back down. The monster landed on its back, thrashing around and screaming loudly. Leary stepped forward and shot it again, the magnum kicking in his trembling hands.
"Jesus" he muttered. "What the fucking hell was that?"
"I don't know," Mark replied, "but we got to go. Something will have heard that."
(MONICA)
Someone did hear the screaming, dying monster, and knew exactly what it was.
"Shit, shit, shit" Monica Green muttered to herself, head down, as she hurried down the corridor as fast as her skirt would allow. There was the tram, just up ahead. All she had to do was make it to the control room, and she'd be home free.
If there were hunters on the loose, then things were thawing out all over the labs, and it wouldn't be any time at all before she was up to her eyeballs in lickers or chimera Bs. Whatever Mrs. Dr. Birkin had done to the environmental systems to slow down Monica's sabotage, someone else was considerately undoing. While in theory the ensuing confusion would make her escape easier, in practice it meant she had to wade through
She wasn't sure what was happening. There was the possibility it was another Umbrella team, or even the one that had left her behind, but Monica doubted it. She'd seen the way things were on the surface. Umbrella had to be running scared, trying to keep the outbreak quiet. There was no time for them to send another team down here to check on things, not with so many highly lethal BOWs roaming the streets.
That meant it was someone else, some other interested party. Possibly a rival corporation, possibly the government itself. Monica didn't care. So long as they stayed out of her way, she intended to stay out of theirs.
There was the tram's control box. Monica felt a grin break out over her face. This was going to be even easier than she'd thought. She had her own ID card, but the system required two. Fortunately for her, she'd made sure Yoko's information never got deleted from the system, and when her former colleague had so helpfully shown up, Monica had realized everything was going to be okay. Now she was just a turn of a knob from-
"What?" she demanded, turning the circuit again and again. Still there was no response. "Great" she muttered. "Now I have to fix this too?"
"Hello Monica."
Monica's eyes widened at the voice. She hunkered down next to the panel, the Beretta Cougar clutched in her right hand as she searched frantically for the source of the voice. "D-doctor Birkin?" she stammered. Now what?
"It really hasn't been all that long, has it?" Annette Birkin's voice asked from thin air. "I don't suppose I need to ask you why you did it. You're holding the reason right now. What I want to know is this: what gives you the right?" Birkin's voice was cold, emotionless, but quivering slightly, as if she was having a hard time keeping it under control. "What gave you the right to destroy everything William and I ever worked for?"
Monica rolled her eyes. "Seriously? Lady, you're insane. Everything you and your husband ever had you took from someone else. Why get mad because someone else did it to you?"
There was a pause over the microphone. Monica imagined Birkin struggling to keep it together, and smiled a little. The voice that came over the intercom froze that smile in place.
"Well, I won't waste my time on this discussion anymore. You'll get to explain it to William yourself soon enough."
"What are you talking about?" William Birkin was dead, wasn't he? She'd seen the video from his lab, seen what the USS soldiers had done to him…
"Goodbye, Monica." There was a click and the intercom, wherever it was, went dead.
Monica's eyes darted around, sweeping for some sign of danger, her breathing coming faster. She paused, forcing herself to calm down. It's okay. We're so close now…
The hunter attack came out of nowhere, the big, green skinned monster suddenly right in front of her, swinging a vicious claw swipe at her throat. Monica screamed and interposed the capsule between herself and the monster. There was a renting sound, somewhat akin to a car crash, as the hunter tore through the side of the case. With a scream of pure adrenaline-fueled survival, Monica swung the capsule as hard as she could at the hunter's face. There was a crack as the metal struck the monster's skull, teeth flying free of its lantern jaw. The hunter stumbled back, letting out a surprised half-shriek, missing most of its fangs. Then it lurched after Monica, who was already running.
There was a back-up route she could take, she knew. The tram was more convenient, routing as it did all the way to the old UMTC building, the line still standing even after the facility had inexplicably blown up over the summer. But the executive elevator would just as surely get her out of the lab, and at this point that was good enough for Monica.
She could hear the hunter loping after her, its angular gait making an odd noise as its awkwardly long limbs whistled through the air.
Monica took a bad step, the toe of her shoe hitting the floor just right to send her sprawling, the capsule spinning away. She held onto the handgun, reflexively squeezing off a round into the wall. She rolled, bringing the 9mm up even as she knew it would be futile, knew the specifications the MA-121 had been grown to.
But the hunter let out a squeal of surprise and turned around, fleeing back the way it had come.
Monica stared after it in confusion, her head cocked to the side as a shadow fell over her. Her head whipped around, and Monica saw a huge, dark shape looming over her, a hideous monstrosity the likes of which she'd never seen before, but which she instantly recognized nonetheless.
"Oh God-" she began, too scared even to scream, as the monster's fist came down on her head. Then all became black.
(YOKO)
Yoko had tagged along with Cindy, George, Dustin, and Jim as they explored the facility. George seemed to think there might be something of value hidden away down here, and the others hadn't had anything better to do…
Yoko couldn't shake the feeling that she'd been here before. She didn't know where it was coming from, but it nagged at the corner of her brain, like the headache that hadn't really gone away since yesterday. Yoko didn't understand any of this, but it was what it was. Shi gata ga nai, as her mother used to say. It couldn't be helped.
The others were rifling through some of the lockers they'd discovered near the bottom of the facility. Aside from some truly impressive blood splatters on the wall and a ridiculously large plant that really needed no introduction, they hadn't found much of interest as they made their descent. Now they were in a partially frozen laboratory, trying to pry open the lockers lining two of its four walls.
"Man, what do you think are in these things?" Jim asked nobody in particular, taking a break from working on one of the metal lockers with a crowbar he'd taken from upstairs.
"I don't know" Cindy replied. "But it's gotta be something pretty special for them to lock it down, right?"
"Are you kidding?" Dustin asked. "With our luck, it'll probably be some asshole's gym shorts or something."
George looked at him like he wanted to say something, then shook his head, apparently deciding it wasn't worth it.
Yoko, for her part, kept doing what she always did when conflict was brewing. She stayed quiet, and hoped things would pass her by. Up until yesterday, it seemed like that strategy had worked pretty well.
There was a metal plate on the locker in front of Yoko. It seemed oddly familiar. Curious, she reached out and brushed some of the frost from its face. Then she inhaled sharply, feeling her eyes widen as she read the inscription on the metal.
SUZUKI,Y.
It's just a coincidence she told herself, even as another cascade of images flooded through her mind. They were more refined now, a single sequence of events, like fast forwarding a video tape, rather than rapidly changing channels on a TV: first, a small, white mouse was admitted to a small glass box. A little while later, several cockroaches were released into the box. It was immediately evident to Yoko something was wrong with the insects: several were dragging ruined limbs, while the carapaces of others were dented and broken. The mouse huddled in on itself, clearly afraid of the roaches. It was immediately obvious to the Yoko why, as the roaches pounced on the rat, tearing it apart in an angry frenzy. Yoko felt sick as she watched what was happening, feeling bile rise up in her stomach as she realized just what she was helping to create.
The next images were more chaotic: Yoko saw herself standing in front of a flat, scanner-like panel, pressing her palm against it. The panel retracted, revealing a large handgun. Yoko saw herself aiming that weapon at several people in white lab coats: a young man with a goatee, a severe looking blonde woman, and another, older man with thinning hair.
"You don't want to do this" he was saying, a look of concern, rather than fear, on his face. Yoko could see her hand trembling as she squeezed the gun tightly, her knuckles white. Then something slammed down on the back of her head, and Yoko's world went black. Just before she hit the ground, she saw someone standing over her. Strangely, it looked just like the cop who'd saved her yesterday…
Yoko leaned against the wall for a moment, trying to recover. She looked over at the others, but none of them had noticed her episode.
Then something else occurred to her. Yoko had been here before. Take away all the ice, and this was the room she'd just seen in her…what? Flashback? Psychotic episode? What's going on with me?
Yoko decided to test her theory. She made her way toward a likely looking panel on the wall, a tile only slightly less round than the others, but nonetheless well disguised from those who didn't know what to look for. Casually she placed her hand against it. There was a whirring sound, faint but audible, and the panel slowly pulled back into the wall. And just like Yoko had seen in her mind's eye, there was a gun inside, along with two spare magazines.
Gingerly, Yoko reached out and touched the weapon. It was a big handgun with a large barrel and a metal body cold from the frigid air. .50 Action Express was engraved on the side of the weapon, a strange emblem that looked sort of like IMI on the grip.
Yoko's eyes were wide, and she looked around again to make sure no one had seen her, but the others were still focused on one of the lockers.
"Almost got it" Jim grated, leaning hard on the crowbar, with George and Dustin pulling hard at either end of the door, the metal groaning under the strain.
On impulse, Yoko snatched up the handgun and shoved it into her waistband, scooping up the two magazines and slipping them into her bag. Then she took a step back, trying to figure out how to close the door, only to have it solve that problem for her by sliding back into place.
There was a loud crash as the others managed to pry the locker open.
"What have we here?" Jim asked, peering inside.
"Told you" Dustin said triumphantly. "Just some asshole's clothes."
"Hang on" said George, reaching inside and removing a small, handgun-like object from the floor of the locker. "What do you think this is?" he asked, studying the device curiously. "It almost looks like it's designed to shoot something. Not bullets, though. The bore is too big."
"Maybe these?" Cindy asked, holding up a handful of small, plastic cylinders. They looked to be about the right diameter to fit inside the large tube atop the gun-thing George was holding.
"Maybe…" he replied, taking them from her and sliding one into place. There was a hiss of compressed air. "Why, it's some kind of capsule shooter! Maybe a tranq gun or something? In any case, it might come in handy."
Just then, the doors at the far end of the room hissed open. Everyone jumped, Dustin starting to unsling his rifle, but they relaxed when Kevin and Alyssa walked into the room.
"How's it going?" Kevin asked, looking around. "Find anything interesting?"
George held up the capsule shooter. "Just this, Officer."
"What the hell is it? And please, Doc, it's Kevin."
"Okay, um, Kevin. Well, it's some kind of air gun. It shoots these little cartridges, but I have no idea to what point or purpose. Might come in handy, though."
"Maybe" Kevin repeated. He looked over at Yoko, who still hadn't reintegrated herself with the rest of the group. "What about you? Find anything?"
Yoko wasn't sure why, but she shook her head. "No. So sorry."
Kevin shrugged, smiling a little. "Hey, no worries. I think we may've found something pretty awesome ourselves."
"What's that?" George asked.
"A way out" Alyssa replied. She was grinning.
(DAVID)
Returning to the meeting room and finding it deserted, David had started wondering the facility, FAL slung on his back, Python in his hand like he was Dirt Goddamn Harry or something, the look on his face just begging someone to make his day.
"You weren't planning on leaving me behind?" he growled, striding into the railcar terminal, the last place he hadn't checked, to find the rest of his plucky little group of survivors all standing around, looking about ready to do just that.
"Well, you wonder off on your own, don't tell anyone where you're going or how long you'll be gone, and what do you expect?" Ryman asked, meeting his gaze evenly. David stared back for a moment, then let his eyes travel across the rest of the group. This guy was going to be a problem, he decided. He'd have to go.
"Where's Hughes?" Ewing asked, looking irritated.
"Dead" David replied, telling the truth. He found lying had a way of coming back and biting you in the ass. "Some of those things are loose in the lower levels, so unless anyone else has a better idea…"
"What are we gonna do about her?" the black guy, Jim, asked, pointing to something David couldn't quite see.
"What do you mean?" Cindy asked, her eyes a little wide. "She's a person, isn't she? What exactly are we discussing here?"
"We'll take her with us, of course" Ryman said. "Would any of us want to be left behind in a place like this?"
"But where has she been all this time?" Ewing asked. "You ask me, something's funny here. I mean, we've never had a containment breach before. Somebody had to have helped things along. Our security's just too good."
"Fine" Ryman replied. "We take her with us, and when she comes to, we ask her some questions. That sound better?"
"Still doesn't sound good" Ewing insisted.
"Not only your call."
The big black guy, Mark, shifted, and David got a look at what they were talking about: an unconscious woman lying on the ground in front of them, a shattered briefcase next to her.
Ryman pointed to Mark. "Here, help me get her inside. I think it's time we got the hell out of this place. Then I think I'll have some other questions I'd like answered as well" he added, shooting a pointed look at Ewing.
David, for his part, ignored the byplay. Honestly, he was just as glad to get out of this unnatural place. He wasn't exactly scientist material, but he was smart enough to put two and two together, and it was clear to him that something horrible had gone on down here. He snorted, squeezing himself onto a bench next to Yoko and ignoring the frosty look he got from that Alyssa bitch. This was what happened when people decided to play God. Shit always fucked up. David looked down at the Python, still in his hand, two cartridges discharged. Slowly, casually, he reloaded, his mind still turning as he planned his next move.
It was best to stick to the things he could control, and David had always considered himself the master of his own fate. Not even a city full of undead cannibals could change that.