Resident Evil: Fate Can't Escape Destiny
Dusty smiles as he raises the M93R, Bingo... then fires a round into the speaker, destroying it in a rain of sparks and broken metal.
Silently he leads Aya back down the stairs, pushing her toward a metal door that possibly leads lower into the labs under the mansion, "Your Access Code still work?"
She hesitates, Dusty hates hesitations, "I.. It should... Access Request, Authorization, Akechi Echo Seven."
The control panel to the left of the door opens up, a retinal scanner rising up from the hidden crevice, "Retinal Scan Required for Access to Isis Lab."
"Ooohh..." Dusty smiles, giving her a hopeful smile as she leans in to the scanner.
"I doubt I have clearance for the Isis Lab now..." the door beeps and slides open, cold air rushing past them, cold air with the stench of death heavy in its wake.
"Oh god... What did he do?"
The brunette applies a grim expression to his face, "The T-Virus.. We're going to have more of the zombies from the hub we just escaped from..."
Brown eyes watch as steadier hands than earlier pick the weapon from her pocket, pulling the slide back to chamber a new round. Aya has changed, it's so evident, hopefully for the better. She locks gazes with him, her face sharing the same hopeful smile as he steps in first, handgun aimed down, but held up just enough for head-shots, or knee-caps farther down the stairwell. Lighter steps from Aya's sneakers echo his heavier booted steps as the two make their way down into the lab.
He eyes the large gashes in the walls, which Aya promptly explains, "The elevators were loaded over capacity... Too many new people who didn't understand the time-frame between High Tide Evacuation, and the actual flood..."
"High Tide Evacuation?" it's more conversation to ease his own apprehension, but some of it will stick, something he can use.
"This island is settled lower than sea level... When the tide comes in, it literally floods the whole island. They evacuate the facility first, removing all personnel, or so I thought... Then a Sweeper team comes in to clean out the Islands, procuring samples of the BOW as needed. Once that is done, a lock-down commences, sealing all HCF buildings to prevent irrevocable water damage."
"So, how long until the tide rolls in?" he doesn't like where this is going...
The redhead checks her watch, a gasp leaving her lips, "Less than three hours..."
"How long until the Sweeper team comes in?" hopefully this is brighter news...
"They should be here by now... I wonder where they are?"
"Perhaps I can answer that..." Thomas has found them again, no surprise there...
"Enlighten me..." Dusty is bored of hearing that mutated voice already...
"With Isis reaching perfection thanks to the work of Doctor Akechi there... HCF didn't see the need to continue research, so the island is being left to the sea.. Aya there, and several other non-essential personnel are expended, making way for the next batch of great minds... Instead of letting this all go to rot, I talked them into letting me have some fun... We got wind of your mission to the S.T.A.R.S. headquarters, it proved most useful in helping us capture you... From there HCF let me have free reign on how I dispose of you..."
The brunette snorts and shakes his head, "And this is the best you could do? Zombies? Please, there was a greater chance of me dying to the Behemoths in Island Serenity..."
The following words almost cause Dusty to groan from how obvious they are, "Good you see it that way... I brought them down here to play with you..."
11
Aya arches an eyebrow as her partner runs a hand down his face, letting an excruciatingly exasperated sigh leave his lips, "Are you kidding me? Then why should I go down there? I can gain access to your little hideaway from upstairs..."
You had to ask that, didn't you? the redhead sighs herself as the door is slammed shut behind them.
Dusty looks up at Aya as her green eyes pierce into his body, "Sorry, his arrogance annoys me to no end... Good news though."
A sigh like no other fills the stairwell as Aya takes the bait, "And what is that?"
The smile that adorns her friend's face forces the Asian woman into a nervous feeling, "More stuff to kill!"
"Why are you so happy to kill monsters?" this question has been eating at Aya for awhile now, and it demands an answer.
The brunette looks left and right at the end of the stairs and replies, "Because I hate killing people. I have a lot of hidden anger, killing virus-enhanced monsters gives me a little reprieve from the pressure in the back of my head. Granted I know most of the monsters were once people.. When that is the case, I feel it necessary to end their suffering, allow them to move on... If I have to kill someone, I'll do it, but not innocent bystanders..."
"Is that why you didn't kill me?" another nagging question.
Dusty drowns a round into the head of a slowly approaching zombie before replying, "I couldn't stop staring at you. Figured I'd knock you to the floor before you died from my inaction against the choppers."
Couldn't stop staring at me? these words echo in her mind as they round another corner, Aya absentmindedly guiding the strange man before her to the main computer room.
Aya finds herself looking at the form walking in front of her, wondering just where he actually came from, what kind of life he lived before he arrived here. This is not the appropriate time to start thinking about things like this, but something about Dusty just nags at her, demanding attention, craving to be thought about. She doesn't even remember raising her own weapon and shooting a zombie, the round digging into the shoulder and sending it to the floor in a spin. What she does remember is the look on Dusty's face as he stomps on the head, his eyes full of sorrow, his mouth turned into a snarl, two conflicting emotions that only increase her want to know this man.
"Dusty?"
11
Her voice is small as it calls his name, Dusty looking at her as he scrapes the brain matter from his boot onto a mat in one of the offices they passed by, "Yup?"
He feels it, her eyes looking at him, the question obvious in her look as she speaks, "Why do this?"
"Because no one else will stand up for the atrocities I saw in Riley. Someone has to make Umbrella and companies like them pay for their sins. I lost fifty-five thousand people that night in Riley... I intend to make the engineers of bio-weapons feel each and every life they destroyed."
"What about me? I helped make Isis a more perfect weapon.. Even though I had no idea what I was working on, I still had a hand in creating another blight on the world."
Dusty sighs and places a hand on her shoulder, "Now isn't exactly the time to be dealing with this... I understand how confusing this is... But trust me, everything will be handled after we escape... If we don't make it out of here, at least we will have avoided the awkward conversation."
A smile crosses his lips as she laughs a little, then a snort fills the air, Aya's face immediately blushing in embarrassment. Dusty turns from her and aims his handgun down the hallway again, swinging the weapon into doors first before looking behind it, only seeing the occasional zombie here or there, most of them killed with silent methods. Finally Aya taps his shoulder and points to a door, but what lies inside is not what he expects.
"What in the name of heaven?" the handgun is lowered, almost dropped to the floor as Dusty slowly walks among the large stasis tubes and buzzing consoles.
Each of them houses a bio-organic weapon in different stages of mutation, some empty, others bursting at the seams with mutated body. One strikes him with such force he almost buckles over at the look of it. Resting against the back wall is a tube about forty feet long, but curves back behind itself two, possibly three times, making whatever was inside roughly one-hundred and twenty feet long at the maximum. Thick glass shards adorn the floor around it, but even that isn't the worst part. Draped over one side of the chamber is a thick snakeskin, almost the exact size of the chamber it once resided in.
The brunette picks a section of the scaled skin up with the barrel of the M93R and holds it over to Aya, "What is it?"
She doesn't look at it, instead her gaze is focused on the computer next to the capsule end, numbers and letters flying over the screen before the redhead finally replies, "Blood Flower. Was created while testing a size-increasing serum derived from Isis. They say there was no negative effect until the last couple of injections, where it grew a large flower made of its own skin on its forehead. Apparently the flower pours blood from it when the snake senses prey nearby."
"Can't trust it," Dusty curses himself for not holding that back.
"What?"
"Nothing," he quickly begins walking away before he feels the hand on the back of his shirt.
"What?" green eyes cut deep into his own brown eyes.
"It bleeds for a while and doesn't die... Can't trust things that bleed for extended periods of time...?" he smiles awkwardly, but it dies as he sees the fire rise up in her face.
She pushes him back against a stasis chamber before spitting back, "Fucking asshole."
11
Thomas drapes a hand lazily over the control panel on the desk he's currently occupying. His mind has tossed back and forth the decision of what to release first. He's already eliminated one option: Just pumping the basement labs with T-Virus, or Isis. No fun in that, so he's back to debating between the re-engineered Lickers, Behemoths, or both. There are pros and cons to each choice and the pros are winning the battle. He acknowledges that they found the room where the Blood Flower was stored, but doesn't care, as a giant snake isn't fun to watch, but a Behemoth tearing his bane apart? Now THAT is entertainment of the highest caliber.
"Oh, fuck it," his fingers enter the codes to release both Lickers and Behemoths.
11
"Come HERE!" Dusty grabs Aya by the only thing he could reach, which sadly is her hair, yanking the woman away from the wall and glass tubes as they explode from the arrival of a larger monster.
Dusty immediately fires a grenade into the monster, using the time it buys them to run through the storage room, pushing Aya around corners and down stairs, running under a large bio-hazard door. The brunette fires a round from his M93R into the control mechanism, smiling as the door drops to the floor with a louder-than-necessary thud.
As he turns to make sure Aya is okay, she steps into his face, "You need to tell me something, anything to help me understand this mess... Why is Thomas so intent on killing you?"
Dusty examines the hall they are in, finding no immediate threats, he turns to the Asian woman he is partnered with, "It started in Riley, Umbrella built it as a carbon-copy of their first test-ground, Raccoon City. I was a cop working in the homicide department when the entire town went to shit. I met Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield there, and together we worked out way through the city, killing what we could, escaping what we couldn't. Everyone I ever knew and cared about died that day... Even my boss Charles Steiner wasn't anywhere near the man I remembered... He killed so many people with a promise of escape, pushing them from the roof of the Steel Mill into vats of molten steel.. We got him out, put him through therapy... He got a clean bill of health, went to a home we got for him, and hung himself in the kitchen... Thomas must have been infected by the Nemesis with the G-Virus.. It did something inside of his body, mutating into a different virus, as he had none of the characteristics of a G-Class Mutant. He released an experimental BOW named Twist, a mass of muscle and tentacles... In the refinery, Leon managed to get Thomas tangled up with Twist, and I shot a grenade lodged in Twist's body, knocking them both into the vat of molten steel... I don't know exactly how Thomas managed to survive, and I don't rightly care either.. I'm going to kill him, for good this time. I have to.. This has put the end in sight for my nightmare..."
11
My God... Aya can't even begin to imagine what experiencing something like that can do to someone, but that must be the defining moments for what made Dusty into the man she sees before her.
The sorrow in his eyes betrays the strong stance he has, fingers tight on the grip of the handgun, jaw tight with determination. This must be how all the survivors are, not really fighting to make the world a better place, but fighting to put an end to the nightmares Umbrella created for them. These aren't the heroes you normally expect, they are more modern, reflecting the events that shaped them. The nightmare can't end for them if more people experience that same nightmare. Aya puts a hand on Dusty's shoulder, bringing her face close to his, resting her forehead against his chest and hugging him.
"I'm so sorry you went through all that... I hope your nightmare ends tonight too..."
Nothing is said for a decent amount of time, then, "Thanks, Aya..." as he hugs her back.
11
It felt really good to get all of that off his chest, but it feels even better to have someone hug him, accept his pain. Is this how it happened for Jill and Chris? Leon and Claire? Is this how their attachments to each other started? Sharing a common experience? Dusty knows this isn't the time to be thinking about such things, but it feels right, and right now, Dusty could definitely use something going right for once. But enough time for this, as something pulls his attention toward a door that is slightly ajar, a door he didn't notice earlier.
Aya is released and pushed behind him as the M93R is drawn, slowly sliding the almost empty clip out and replacing it with a fresh one before starting a slow walk toward the door, "Careful."
A light flicks on from behind the door, prompting Dusty to pick up his pace, arriving at the edge of the door and slowly tilting his head into the open gap. Nothing, lights must be on a timer of some kind, so he pushes the door open and walks in, M93R leading the way. Aya moves past him to the computer desk in the back corner of the room as Dusty begins turning the furniture over, looking for more ammunition, another gun, something. He comes up empty and so does Aya, the woman sliding back from the computer with an exasperated sigh.
"What has your panties in a bunch?" a couch cushion is thrown over his head.
"The computers for basic research are all linked... But it seems everything in the BOW labs are separated. I can only get bits and pieces of data... I hate so say this, but you might have to blow the door to his office to get him out..." Aya smirks at him, which causes him to smile and nod.
"Nothing useful in this room at all, wonder why the lights came on..? …..Son of a bitch, GET OUT!" Dusty pulls Aya toward the door, spins her around him, then pushes her out the door, just as a large metal plate slams down over it.
Dusty punches the wall next to the door, damaging the stucco wall, "FUCK!"
"Now now... Such language, and with a lady nearby! Do as I say and she'll be okay, maybe."
The brunette glares at the computer monitor as Thomas's face appears on it, looking exactly how it did all those years ago, "Why should I? Why would I care what happens to her?"
"You don't have a choice in the matter, if she dies, you die, it's all the same to me." Thomas smiles at him behind the camera, which further enrages Dusty.
"What do I need to do?" a hidden door opens up, prompting the man to walk through.
11
"Do as I say and he'll be okay, for now..."
Aya growls and clenches a fist in anger, "What do you want me to do?"
Before her, a large partition appears in the wall, opening up to a long hallway with a single glass tube at the end, "Get in..."
END