Episode Four Point Three: Just Shut Your Pretty Eyes
"Oh my."
Due to his considerably lengthy association with one Albert Wesker, Doctor Adrian Lovette had grown used to all manner of shocking sights. Indeed, this was not the first time that he had ever seen a victim of the larger man's uncharacteristic loss of control. Regardless, he was still appalled by the atrocities that the supposed-gentleman perpetrated without the merest hint of remorse or regret. His outburst came as he surveyed the scene before him, stepping into the confines of the cell that held the current object of his colleague's obsession. Beyond the vaulted metal door lay a white chamber streaked with dried blood, some stains fresher than others, while on the floor was sprawled the body of a young woman curled into a vaguely foetal ball, a thick, red pool of rapidly cooling blood forming a tranquil puddle on the linoleum before her. Her hair was matted with the viscous life fluid and the shirt that she was wearing also appeared to be drenched quite heavily with the same liquid. Placing his artificial hand to his mouth in a gesture of succinct horror, he crossed himself with his other appendage; though not a religious man, the motion in and amongst itself was comforting in the way that it reminded him of his childhood and simpler times.
Approaching the prone female without hesitation, he stooped beside her and rolled her backwards gently, supporting her head so as not to do any further damage if she were still alive. He made to check her pulse at her throat, but paused when he realised that she no longer had one to speak of, seeing just a mess of torn flesh and an overwhelming quantity of blood. He went to her right wrist, and was dismayed to find the trend continued here, wasting no time in moving his fingers to clasp her left arm and thankfully finding that this particular appendage was still intact. The transferred heartbeat within her veins was irregular and weak, but there nonetheless, and a sigh of relief flooded forth from the older male's lips, sweat beading on his forehead as the agitation he had been feeling prior to confirming her life signs gave way. Unfortunately, she was still bleeding heavily, and though the wound in her neck appeared to his trained eyes to be superficial despite its depth, she would undoubtedly bleed to death in but a few minutes were she not treated immediately. Wesker was as qualified a physician as he was an interrogator, many of his more stubborn subjects remaining in his custody for months, their bodies sustained with the same talent that also mutilated them beyond recognition, and as such he kept a fully-equipped medical laboratory for situations just such as this, a place that the Doctor had knowledge of through his many visits to these chambers. Even in his youth he had never been a particularly fit man, however, and the flame-haired girl's considerable girth would have been too great for him to manoeuvre alone in the past, let alone the present.
He frowned, before resignedly ejecting a slender, needle from the tip of his augmented index digit. "Forgive my actions, young lady, but I am afraid I require your cooperation in this matter," he muttered, before inserting the sharp tip into the rear of her skull. Her eyes snapped open almost immediately and her left arm seized him roughly by the tie that was hanging around his neck, moments before she flung him head over heels and he landed in a crumpled him on the floor. It was beyond him to comprehend her speed as she snatched the gilt fountain pen from the pocket of his starched white lab coat and reared up over him, the item clutched in the fingers of her left hand and poised to stab him in an area of his body he suspected would be immensely painful, her right arm still held tightly to her abdomen. There was a hunted look in her eyes that was so profound it gave him a similar feeling of primal fear in the back of his own mind, the dried scarlet caking her upper body giving her a wretched appearance. She grunted hoarsely through a mouthful of blood, the fluid trickling from the corners of her lips as she seemed to hesitate.
"Please, calm yourself, my dear, it was not my intention to do you any harm," he pleaded, lifting his hands upwards, palms out towards her in a pacifying gesture. She glanced at the galvanised metal that covered his right hand, regarding it suspiciously, even more so upon discovering the needle that still tipped his primary finger on that appendage. She remained hesitant, though still disinclined to move from her position over him. "You are hurt," he informed her, his vision of her causing him to realise how obvious this statement was, "I merely wished you to awaken and accompany me to a room where I might be able to help you."
Whether because she believed him or because of the blood loss she had suffered, she slumped backwards onto her posterior, her arm falling limply at her side. She looked disoriented and dismayed, trauma both mental and physical rampaging through a mind that had been stressed and pushed to breaking point by the constant battles with her captor. There was a kinship between them, Adrian felt, a bond that could only come from having your life touched, altered, ruined by the pseudo-aristocratic sociopath. He clambered to his feet, slightly sore from his collision with the ground, and walked over to her in as reassuring a manner as possible. Once he was standing over her, he extended his human hand out to her in a gesture of sympathy and kindness. She looked up at him, blurry green eyes forcing themselves to focus upon his face, before she tucked the writing implement she had taken from him clumsily into the pocket of her trousers and reached up to take his hand lightly. He supported her as best he could as she clambered up, her blood smearing the length of his jacket and staining the front of the shirt that we was wearing underneath, though he could have cared less for the state of his dress when faced with such suffering. In the manner of a kindly parent leading a child indoors to put a temporary covering on a scraped knee, he led his latest patient to a section of wall that he casually moved aside with a touch that only the estate's owner could have been capable of duplicating.
He led her through the pristine corridors beneath the expansive mansion that the Chief Executive took as his dwelling, holding her hand in a grasp that may have been the most, perhaps the only, sincere expression of compassion that she had encountered during her captivity. Once within the sterile walls of the dungeon's infirmary, Adrian guided her into a surgical recliner, permitting her to rest and ignoring the unsightly metal cuffs that could be fastened about her arms, legs and head. As she was doing this voluntarily for her own sake, he doubted he would need to restrain her. She was feeble from blood loss, which prompted him to hang several bags of assorted fluids from stands located beside the chair and permit them to drain into her body through expertly placed IV tubes. Fortunately, Wesker maintained an impeccably neat collection of medical records pertaining to the young woman, which he had somehow managed to compile or obtain during her stay, and these helped the good Doctor immensely, permitting him to avoid any potentially fatal blunders. With that matter taken care of, he proceeded to use his knowledge and honed skills with the device that composed his right hand to repair the damaged tissue in her throat. The perforation of her windpipe had been slight, the merest fraction of an opening that had nonetheless caused her to bleed heavily into her trachea, something which he rectified immediately for her, rebuilding the cartilage around that wounded area. Once that had been completed he proceeded to fuse closed the bloody fissure using a technique reminiscent of the one used upon her face, though with a degree more sophistication than the crude procedure performed by the poorly-equipped surgeons of S.T.A.R.S. The effect was the same regardless, as she was left with a second track of hideously malformed scarring marring her rounded face and thick neck.
No longer in danger of bleeding to death or drowning in her own life fluid, Shakahnna reclined and permitted the elderly male to begin the more arduous task of painstakingly repairing the ruined tendons in her right wrist. She looked down at him as he worked, his attention focused entirely on the task at hand, frowning at the top of his head. There were so many questions in her head that were yet unanswered, and though she was still fatigued from the physical and emotional strain she had been placed under, she was eager to ask them. As soon as she felt able, she opened her mouth to speak, only to be choked by the feel of something rising in her throat. She lifted a bowl that was placed in her left hand and spat a mass of congealed blood out into it, turning it away as it drifted in a shallow pool of clouded saliva and bile lest it make her feel even more nauseous. When she looked back at Adrian she found that he was now looking up at her. "There is still a considerable amount of blood lining your throat from when you were lying prone," he told her, surveying her with softly sympathetic eyes, "most will wash away with your saliva as your ordinary functions resume, though some will clot and prove less amicable."
She nodded to show that she understood what he was telling her, before he turned his focus back to the intricate work he was performing on her lacerated appendage. The chemicals feeding into her body were numbing the majority of the pain that she was feeling, though she could feel the needles on his fingers probing the nerves and frayed muscles at the end of her forearm. "How did you get in?" she croaked eventually, her throat still sore from the trauma it had suffered. It was a matter of some importance to her, as she believed that only her host was capable of entering the chambers where she dwelt and that matter was currently serving as a barrier that prevented her from trusting him completely. How had he entered her cell if the other man had not let him in?
"While it is true that Albert is a considerate man in regards to the security of that which he deems precious, and that he employs an incredibly sophisticated system to that effect, his thoroughness in that respect is perhaps his greatest flaw," he recounted, prodding an area of her tissue that caused her index finger to twitch and made her wince in response, "simply put, young lady, though he may use an access code of several hundred digits and input that code with a speed the human eye cannot register which he changes on a daily basis with his own hand, that password will not remain secret for long when it is recorded by surveillance equipment which can be slowed to a fraction of its original pace. Though it took me a good hour after my arrival to do so, I was able to decipher his latest variation and allow myself access. I ... could hardly allow this to continue as an objective witness, and so I took it upon myself to intervene."
"I should be dead by now," she groaned hoarsely, setting the tray down and massaging her throat.
"It is possible that Albert was simply too preoccupied by your refusal to cooperate that he was unable to make a clean killing stroke, though admittedly that would be rather unlike him," the Doctor stated, sounding doubtful, "otherwise I would conjecture that perhaps he wished you die a lingering and painful death."
"Because that doesn't sound like him at all," she muttered sardonically, "but thank you. I would have be'd bleeding to death without you." He paused for a moment, and then shot her an apologetic glance.
"I confess that I am appalled at Albert's behaviour in this matter, but it is not for your sake that I am taking these actions, my dear," he stated, turning his eyes away from her as though he were feeling guilty for rescuing her when her well-being had not been his primary intention, "he is such a confused man, you see. His association with you is destructive; it brings him nothing but misery and he is losing his authority in the upper echelons of Umbrella. Though I am certain our benevolent chairperson, Lady Spencer, would have no harm come to him, it is only a matter of time before the Board of Directors lose all faith in him and seek to have him removed. I wanted to help him come to his senses."
There was a moment of silence between them as the young female stared at him wordlessly. She couldn't help but wonder if he wasn't as completely mental as his "friend"; at the very least he was benevolent, and she was glad for that fact. He had saved her, was giving her a second lease of life despite how much it would obviously engender the fury of the shared blight on their lives, and though she hated to take that effort and that risk for granted, she was going to use that second opportunity to have one last chance at doing what she had set out to do some months ago. She was going to put a stop to Albert Wesker once and for all.
"May I make a suggestion?" he queried, almost as though he were sensing what it was that she was intending, "I would recommend that you leave this place and run as far away as possible, perhaps leave the country when the opportunity presents itself, and make a life for yourself elsewhere."
"Can't do that," she told him, looking at him with an expression that conveyed the strength of her convictions, "he'd follow me anywhere I went, even if not to bring me back, then to kill me. Can't let him get away with what he's done either; can't run away from that. Be's justice."
The physician sighed despondently, tracing the line of a tendon that caused her whole hand to flex and tense. "I suppose it cannot be helped," he muttered, continuing the treatment as he did so, "then I feel it is only right to apologise for my own transgressions. My part in the suffering of yourself and your young friend is no less a sin that I must be absolved of."
The flame-haired Amazon glowered darkly at that comment, remembering the torture and the harrowing realisation that she had unwittingly betrayed her family that had followed it, as well as the marks upon the severed skull of Amy that had evidently been the reason why she had given away the locations of the remaining S.T.A.R.S members. For a frightening moment, she wasn't even sure if she could forgive him. "Why would you let yourself be used like that?" she asked, reasoning that she should at least hear the reasons behind his actions before she decided to condemn him.
"It is such a sad state of affairs, but there have been so many victims of Umbrella's various tragedies," he told her, though she was certain she already knew that much, "those who know too much are imprisoned, lest they reveal the corporation's true purpose to the public at large. They are held for years in horrific conditions, awaiting execution or worse. When Albert granted me control of a facility to test the capacity of my apparatus, I took to requesting those individuals who had been incarcerated to be transferred to my institute rather than allow them to be used as test subjects for the various malformations of the T-virus, or simply killed and buried. They have relative freedom of movement and kind treatment that they would not receive under the care of any of the organisation's other researchers. For those who are traumatised too profoundly, I allow them simply to forget and live in blissful ignorance. When I consider the hundreds in my charge, the occasional concession for him is a small forfeiture of my integrity so that others might live in better circumstances, though admittedly it abhors me to my core to perform such acts. Understand that if he were to lose interest in the results of my experiments, however, then he would likely kill me, have my laboratories decommissioned and their staff and patients liquidated. I must obey him for the sake of those who depend upon me."
There was something sad about his tone that made her believe that he regretted the whole situation. It was a precarious position to be in, garnering Wesker's favour in return for the continued safety of those individuals whom he cared for and kept out of the clutches of Umbrella's more unscrupulous employees, and at the same time compromising his own morals by subjecting others to horrific fates at the behest of his corrupt benefactor. Causing harm to prevent harm, it was a depressingly ironic juxtaposition. "I understand," she informed him, her eyes softening slightly as she looked down on a man who only seemed to want the best for everyone, "but I can only forgive you for what you did to me."
"I appreciate that much," he said, reaching to a nearby tray in order to retrieve what seemed to be a peculiarly-shaped piece of synthetic material and pressing it into the hole in her wrist. It fused almost immediately over the wound, almost like replacement flesh for the missing part of her forearm. It was a generic peach that did not match her own skin tone, reminding her of how pale she had become in the months that she had been hidden from the sun. The effect was surprisingly grotesque as he pressed the patch into place with his needled fingers, giving the impression that he were constructing a human rag doll. "I am glad that you recognise my sincerity when I apologise for my misdeeds, and I readily acknowledge that I may only truly be forgiven once I have passed away," he told her, smoothing the artificial flesh into place, "we all have sins, and only by the grace of others may we achieve forgiveness. I would ask that you allow Albert your forgiveness, as he has greater need of it than I. Kindly flex your fingers, please."
She frowned at him as he spoke, following his instruction to move her digits, before he gave her several more tests in order to determine how well he had performed her surgery. Though it was a painful process, he assured her that the ache that ran along her forearm whenever she moved her hand would subside in time. Thanks to the procedure he had performed she had regained full control of her leading hand and in gratitude she made an effort not to make any mention of what she could now do with that hand; in fairness, she should probably wait until after she had killed Wesker to have a wank of victory. "I don't think I can forgive him," she said flatly, clenching a fist, "maybe once he's dead; maybe once he can't hurt anyone ever again. Only then could I be considering it."
"I consider him a friend," the physician said solemnly, maintaining a sense of composure though he was evidently fraught with agitation, "but I suspect you may be right. He will never stop of his own accord; someone should prevent him from doing harm, however one might achieve that goal. Even if it means his death."
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"This path will lead us to the landing pad, a good few hundred metres from the building, while that staircase leads up into the bowels of the mansion," Adrian was explaining as they made their way out of the vaulted chambers that had been her home for so long she almost couldn't remember what it was like to be outside, her short foray into her host's ornamental gardens not withstanding, "I would urge you to come with me, husband your resources carefully, consolidate your position, find a place where no innocent bystanders will be harmed if you wish to force Albert into a final confrontation."
"Does there be any people in the mansion?" Shakahnna asked, eyeing the staircase suspiciously. Once her treatment had been completed and she had been detached from the drips feeding into her system, the benevolent physician had allowed her access to the shower she had used in the months previous so that she could be cleansed of the blood covering her body. Her tailored S.T.A.R.S fatigues had been ruined, now caked in the crimson fluid where it had quickly congealed, and so she had traded that attire for a set of white surgical scrubs in her size. Though they did not possess the Umbrella logo, they were also not particularly to her tastes. Beggars could not be choosers, Adrian had stated wisely, and so she accepted those new garments as her best option, though she kept her stained paramilitary uniform in a bundle under her arm. Her throat was still raw, though she had ingested water from the tap and felt at least somewhat less like a walking corpse. She still had her boots at least.
"Oh no, Albert had left for some unknown business before I arrived, and his janitorial staff are stationed in a separate building; as he has no need for security staff, the main structure should be quite devoid of life," he recounted, before glancing at her with a look of curiosity on his face, "why do you ask?"
"Seems like as good a place as any," she said, a broad, malicious grin splitting her features that took the surgeon aback. She wasn't sure whether it was the connotations of her words or the facial expression combined with her grotesque facial injuries that had alarmed him, but she suspected it was probably a combination of both.
"That would be most ill-advised," he told her, to which she waved a hand dismissively.
"You should be going and getting out of here, that way," she suggested, though the underlying tone of it was that of a command, gesturing in the direction of the passage that would lead him away from the mansion that they were currently situated under. He hesitated, but seeing the resolve in her eyes, and knowing there was nothing more that he could do in this situation, he conceded quickly.
"I wish you luck, young lady," he stated sincerely, before turning from her and beginning the long walk that would take him to the helicopter landing pad some several hundred metres from his current position. The redhead watched him go, non-verbally wishing him the same, as the only true ally she had left walked away. She would rather he go than risk his life in what was to follow.
In truth, Shak didn't really know what she expected to do to fight Wesker. From what she had experienced of him, his capacity for regeneration as well as his fighting prowess was immense. He was superhumanly strong, tough, fast, intelligent and could even grow new limbs as they were needed. About the only thing that he couldn't do was make her burst into flames by looking at her, though there had been occasions where he had worn an expression that made her think that he wished he could. She was unsure how he would react to having his head cut off, though she hoped that would be enough to kill him once and for all. If not she supposed only the kind of damage that could be wrought by a nuclear missile would be sufficient. She wasn't sure what it was that had turned the blond into the monstrosity he was today, but she definitely wanted some for her. Her first instinct was to find a weapon of some kind to equip herself with. Though she was hardly defenceless unarmed, her last few attempts to fight her darkly paramour with her hands and feet alone had not been good for her. The only time she had truly incapacitated him had been during their first meeting, when she had had access to her favoured cat's claws, and now that task would prove even harder due to the fact that she was injured and fatigued from blood loss, even if her system was swimming with painkillers and artificial adrenaline.
She opened several of the doors that lined the basement corridor finding various rooms, the purpose of many of them not being readily apparent, until she forced one particular entranceway and found herself standing inside what appeared to be a wine store. The executive was unlikely to be a heavy drinker due to his staunch, almost puritan, beliefs regarding personal health, which he had relayed at some length to her on one particular occasion, but it was all the more doubtful that he would allow a guest of his to go unfulfilled should they desire a wine of a particular vintage or other alcoholic beverage. It was an expansive chamber, lined with bottles on all sides and aisles of casks arranged in rows along its length. She removed one bottle from a low shelf, looking at a particularly potent vodka that had evidently been imported from one of the countries that specialised in it; the language on the label seemed more like symbols than letters. It occurred to her that the liquid inside would most likely render her tipsy enough to forget that her throat had been slit and leave her ready to take on the world, providing she drank enough of it, although she reminded herself that her body's chemistry was fairly chaotic with various drugs at current, and probably wouldn't take too kindly to another. Instead she set the bottle down and removed several others from their place, ensuring that they were all exceptionally high proof from the numbers printed upon the sides. Then with a hint of remorse, she began to tear thick strips from the ruined bundle of clothing she was carrying beneath her arm.
After several short moments of innovation, Shakahnna had successfully created almost a dozen firebombs, ready to be ignited and used. The lighter that Wesker had given her some time ago was still in the trouser pocket of her S.T.A.R.S uniform along with the pen that she had taken from Adrian, the latter of which she tucked into the pocket of her scrubs for later use. She gathered up an armful of the filled bottles, as many as she could comfortably carry, and moved back out into the corridor, setting them down on the hard, white tile outside. She selected one at random, hefted it and used the lighter to ignite the soaked and bloodied rag that she had stuffed into its neck. It combusted immediately, the flame spreading quickly, so she turned on her heel and hurled the impromptu explosive into the room where she had found it, before stepping smartly backwards and slamming the door behind her. Collecting the rest of the containers into her arms again, she hurried back down the corridor towards the staircase that led upwards away from her cell. It was such a small measure of retribution to take against a man who had stolen so much from her, but burning down his house would at least inconvenience him to a degree. She felt that it was the least she owed him and the very least he deserved.
She moved up into the more elegant décor of the mansion above, moving along the carpeted halls and through the extravagantly decorated rooms, sowing the seeds of destruction as she went. At intervals she would light one of the makeshift weapons and drop it behind her, the fire generally catching quickly and filling the air with thick black smoke. Her path had led her through the majority of the wing beneath which she had been imprisoned, and it was likely that the damage would be extensive, particularly considering that she doubted there would be any emergency response. Once she had expended all but one of the items she entered a new chamber that appeared to be a study. This room was functionally-equipped and appeared to be used entirely for the purposes of correspondence and not much else, her assumption supported by the large mahogany desk and rows of filing cabinets against the rear wall. Opposite the entrance was what she had been looking for, a group of large windows that extended from floor to ceiling that emerged onto a grey stone terrace and overlooked the gardens in all their expansive majesty. It was bright and sunny outside, the weather picture perfect just as it had been on that day when she had been allowed a foray through the labyrinth elsewhere on the grounds. She grinned broadly and bounded forward, planning on using the windows as her point of exit. Unfortunately, she was interrupted by the sound of boots slamming heavily on the carpet outside of the room.
It wasn't Wesker, she was certain of that even before the individual came into view; had he wished to apprehend her then he would not have done so in the middle of the burning building, nor would he have approached her in a manner that she could hear. She rounded on the open door behind her and came face to face with the vacant gasmask face of a member of the U.S.F. Adrian had told her that there would be no security and though she reasoned that he could have been lying, she instead suspected that he just hadn't known. She had a momentary pang of worry that innocent people might be burned alive in the blaze she had started, before a rush of memories came to remind her of what it was that had led her to this point in the first place. Of course innocent people wouldn't die; anyone at this house would be Umbrella scum. The newcomer lunged for her with a speed that was markedly slower than that of her captor, but which was still immensely fast for someone of his considerable build. Her left hand flicked the wheel of her lighter and the rag protruding from the bottle in her opposing appendage burst into flames, though before she could even move to throw it at the approaching male he was upon her and had swatted the bomb from her grip with a stinging backhand strike to her damaged wrist. The bottle tumbled out of her hand and shattered on the desk, exploding in a cascade of rapidly spreading fire, blooming across the right hand side of the room and up the wall like a rare and aggressive growth of flower.
She grunted at the impact before she was struck again, this time in the mouth with a force that shook her skull and caused her to stumble backwards, before she corrected herself and punched him back, a straight right fist that connected solidly with the space where his nose should have been. There was a satisfying crack as she cracked the plastic filter over the lower part of his face and possibly the ridge of cartilage at the centre of his features also. She was shocked when that injury did not deter him, and was forced to defend quickly as he swung a further punch at her head, before he spun on the spot and slammed his left elbow into her own left ear. Rocked to the side, she used the blow to her advantage and went with the impact, dipping to her right and sweeping her leg around under his, connecting stiffly with the backs of his knees and knocking him onto his back with a dull thud. Asserting herself on top of him, she went to punch him again, only for his hands to encircle her wrists and hold her up away from him. Their legs fumbled against one another as they fought to control the situation, the Special Forces member acquiring the upper hand and wedging his feet against the redhead's stomach. There was a moment of pressure on her abdomen and then the young woman flew backwards with a speed that was almost too quick for her to register until the moment she smashed back-first through the windows behind her and collapsed on the terrace outside. Shards of glass sliced into her back as she landed on them, her contact with them only lasting a moment as she flipped up onto her feet immediately, surprised to find the male bearing down on her yet again. They engaged, fingers clasping around each other as their palms pressed together, Shakahnna surprised to find that her strength was equalled, the strain of their muscles causing her biceps to bulge and flex beneath the short sleeves of her scrubs. This whole situation was feeling too familiar.
She slammed her right foot into his crotch, sacrificing sure footing for a move that should have incapacitated him completely. Instead, he forced her backwards off-balance and toppled her over the concrete rail of the patio they had been fighting on, where she landed roughly on the grass beneath and rolled down a bank into a flower bed. Almost as though her attack had passed right through him, he stood atop the boundary and then hopped down into the garden to join her. She rolled up to one knee on a grassy bank and shot her adversary an appraising look. His clothing was no different from that of an ordinary U.S.F member and they had never proven that difficult to defeat. Except for that one woman, on the same night she had met Wesker for the first time.
The label on the front of his tactical vest read, simply: "Black".
"Intruder located," the soldier announced from behind his mask, "neutralising."
"I remember that voice and that stance," she said conversationally, holding her side where she had landed awkwardly, "didn't you used to be female?"
He surged forward yet again, but she was prepared, dodging the boot he thrust into the place where her head had been moments before and rising behind him to bring her arms around his bullish neck with an intent to break it quickly and easily so that she would not be drawn into a lengthy and costly fight like the one against her other almost zombified opponent had almost been. Unsurprisingly, he resisted, lifting his shoulders to protect the sides of his throat, before gripping fistfuls of her hair with his hands and wrenching her over his head. Though she was numb to her pain, she seemed incapable of exerting the force she needed to kill him with that manoeuvre and she was thrown through the air, landing heavily on her back. As soon as she struck, she kicked up and slammed the point of her right boot into his head with such power that it dented his skull, knocking him backwards into the dirt. They scrambled up at the exact same moment, lunging for one another in tandem and each delivering a solid knee to the torso of the other which drove the wind out of both of them. Their hands locked around the shoulders of their enemy, they pushed back and forth, trampling flowers and kicking up sprays of well-maintained soil as they did so. The former S.T.A.R.S member shoved forwards as hard as she could, and then pulled back, moving with the response of the man so that she rolled backwards onto her reverse, burying her foot into his stomach and flipped him over her head so that he slammed onto the ground.
Rolling through, she finished the motion straddling his chest and struck him hard in the face, smashing both of his goggles at the same time. His answer to this was to lift his arms under her, unbalancing her from her perch. To lift her with his upper limbs pinned to the ground would have required exertion that only someone with the lack of pain responses her previous opponent had possessed could manage, and she was momentarily awed by this display of strength moments before he lifted his feet under her again and kicked her off him, sending her slamming into the wall of a small outbuilding that she had not noticed previously, almost rendering her unconscious. She slumped onto her rear, sitting against the wall with her head swimming as he stood up over her. His mask was slick with blood from the wound in his head, but he seemed entirely unfazed, reaching to his right side to remove the sidearm holstered on his belt with an obvious intention to finish her off. Before he could withdraw it, however, there was an ear-shattering explosion from somewhere beneath the mansion that sent a large amount of the wing they had previously been occupying up into the air amid a huge ball of fire and thick, black smoke. The large number of casks and bottles in the basement store room had evidently reached the point where they were no longer willing to tolerate the heat of their surroundings. The blast was such that Shakahnna could feel the hot, haze-filled breeze hard on her face and pieces of broken stone began to ping around her. It even distracted the drone Umbrella operative for a moment as his addled mind struggled to make sense of what sounded like a demolition charge going off.
It was all the other U.S.F soldier needed to finish the battle once and for all. The fallen gamine was unsure as to who the second, black-clad male was, or where he had come from, but his appearance cleared the fog from her head immediately. Whoever he was, he was fucking good, deflecting the other man's blows as though they were flying in slow motion, turning aside a right hook with practiced grace before hammering his elbow into the bloodied trooper's sternum with a force that cracked his ribs so audibly even the onlooker could hear it. He hooked his foot into the crook of the first individual's knee and pushed down, dislocating the leg at its midpoint, before clasping one bulky, powerful arm around his throat. There was a moment of solemn silence broken only by the sound of raining debris and crackling flames, and then there was a loud, violent crunch as the interloper snapped the outmatched soldier's neck. His head lolled sickly, the stump of his spine almost splitting through the skin as he flopped forward onto the ground, most certainly dead.
The redhead shrank back as the assailant came towards her and suddenly thrust his right hand, palm up and open, into her face.
"Come on," he snapped, the authoritative growl of his voice making her momentarily consider it before she looked at him with a sardonic sneer.
"No way, you're Umbrella scum," she snorted dismissively.
"I am under orders from the Board of Directors to find you," he announced, the words taking her aback even as he said them, "Albert Wesker is to be eliminated, and you are the only person they consider capable of the task."
"What?!" she spluttered, "how the fuck do they know about me? Why do they want Wesker dead? I mean, don't get me wrong, I totally agree, but isn't he one of theirs? And who the fuck are you anyway?"
"Now is not the time," he informed her, that response proving considerably underwhelming, "but if you want to stand any chance of accomplishing our mutual goal then you must come with me, now. And if you insist on my identification then most refer to me as Hunk."
-
The raging inferno had abated, leaving only the smouldering remains of what had once been a grand and impressive building, a blackened, almost skeletal shell of its former glory. Embers still crackled and loosed clouds of thick smoke into the air, but the majority of the damage had already been done. The entirety of the West wing had been demolished by the explosion, and with it a large amount of the basement area, a large crater marking the area where the wine store had detonated crudely. From his position atop the helicopter landing pad some several hundred metres away from the structure, Doctor Lovette had seen the blaze take hold of and destroy the mansion utterly, even feeling the force of the submerged eruption where he stood. Now he could see small figures running back and forth across the grounds of the estate trying to prevent the spread of the fire to the gardens and the dwelling of the housekeepers. Had he known that the young woman would turn out to be such a vandal then perhaps he might have rethought permitting her to roam the house unsupervised.
"Albert will not be pleased," he muttered to himself, pinching the bridge of his nose with his artificial fingers.
"An astute estimation, Doctor," a brisk and perfectly-enunciated voice responded from somewhere directly behind him. The dismayed physician wheeled around with surprise to find himself confronting the towering form of the gentleman in question. He gaped, almost as though realising for the first time exactly how imposing the other man truly was.
"Ah, Albert..." the older of the two individuals stammered, casting around for something suitable to say, "when did you get back?"
Though he rarely ever looked pleased, in this situation the executive seemed even less pleased than usual. His jaw was tense and his teeth were clenched behind his lips, which were pursed tightly into a frown of the utmost aggravation. "I requested that my pilot set my transport down when I became aware of the emissions issuing from the direction of my estate, as I could arrive sooner on foot," he recounted, almost conversationally, before his tone changed almost imperceptibly to include what sounded almost like amusement, "might I enquire as to why you saw fit to incinerate my residence?"
Adrian snorted in spite of himself. "Oh, don't be foolish," he said, before remembering that he was supposed to be watching his tongue, "I would imagine that it was one of the S.T.A.R.S members you have been keeping in the basement, perhaps the girl you have been so fixated with recently."
Wesker studied the elderly male before him critically, an act that caused said-individual to become increasingly self-conscious. It seemed to him as though the black-clad sadist was almost capable of reading his mind, and even the thought of that made him break out into a cold sweat. When the blond opened his mouth to speak it gave him ever greater cause for concern. "Then Shakahnna is alive," he mused aloud, removing a metal cylinder from within his jacket pocket, the size and shape of a cigar case, and handing it dismissively to the greying man, "it would seem that I have no further use for this."
Adrian studied the item that he had been handed curiously, turning it in his hands until he came to locate a serial number printed directly onto the steel. Alongside a string of numbers were the letters "TVX". He frowned and looked up at his colleague with an expression of confusion. "Is this...?" he began.
"A sample of the Tyrant-Veronica virus," he revealed offhandedly, "an augmented prototype."
The neural surgeon, clad still in a lab coat and other clothing stiff with the blood of Wesker's coveted redhead, though he seemed to have forgotten this fact and also the fact that his malicious companion knew the scent of his beloved's life fluid better than any other, continued to be puzzled for a moment, before his eyes widened sharply in horror. "You were going to use this on her weren't you, Albert?" he exclaimed, taking a step back from the other man as a wave of revulsion swept through him, "you wanted her to die; you wanted to reanimate her as some kind of monster. You'd lose her will but that didn't matter to you, did it? You were tired of clashing with her personality; you simply wanted her as some kind of object. You were actually willing to sacrifice her humanity for a cheap thrill."
"Perhaps you might enlighten me as to whose blood is currently staining your attire, Doctor," the pseudo-aristocrat snapped, taking an angered step forwards and driving the righteous indignation out of the older male with the revelation that he had been caught red-handed, so to speak, "once we have established the truth of that matter then we might pursue other topics of conversation, such as how this blood came into contact with you, how my prisoner managed to survive an otherwise fatal wound and how she was capable of exiting her otherwise secure holding facility in order to wreak this havoc upon my dwelling? I am certain I would find your explanations most satisfactory; or at least I would hope, for your sake, that I do."
"Ah, well, I may have ... let her out," Adrian confessed, cowed into timidity in a matter of seconds in the face of the towering monstrosity that was Umbrella's Chief Executive. He lifted his hands in a pacifying gesture, palms out and open, as he observed a flash of red behind the darkened lenses of the other man's sunglasses. And then something slammed solidly into his mouth. He staggered back, almost in slow motion, and then toppled onto the tarmac in a cataclysmically laboured descent, which made the impact with the ground that much more painful. There was blood on his tongue and a tooth had worked loose from the front of his mouth, something that he promptly spat out onto the floor beside him. "Good God," he moaned, moving his left hand to his lips to wipe away the crimson fluid that was drooling in viscous strings from them. His lower face was numb and beginning to ache with swelling already. "Please Albert, I did this to help you," he pleaded, through a mouthful of scarlet copper, "I-I didn't want to watch you drive yourself to distraction anymore; I didn't want to see you kill this girl with your unhealthy fixation. Releasing her was the only way I could think of to make this whole situation right."
"You have interfered in my affairs yet again, Doctor; perhaps I was in error when I permitted you to live after your last transgression," the ebony-clad male said, looming over the sprawled physician as he nursed his injury, his voice still level and his expression still one of passive neutrality as he eyed the artificial appendage attached to the severed stump of that individual's wrist, "my previous admonition seems to have taught you nothing; I will not be so tolerant in this instance. There will be a reckoning between us, old friend; I assure you of this."
"It isn't your place to judge," Adrian spat, forcing his words out between ensanguined coughs as the liquid from the laceration in the lining of his mouth continued to bleed profusely, "you have no morals, no righteousness, no belief in justice; you cannot judge the guilt of others as though you were some higher power."
"I have no equal and answer to no one," Wesker stated flatly, as blunt as though there were no question that in the absence of God his authority was absolute, "however, your judgement will be postponed. I have matters that require my immediate attention."
He turned his back on the prone male, striding purposefully across the landing pad as though the man who had earned a considerable portion of his ire, enough to be physically struck for his actions, was no longer important enough to regard. That same person struggled up into a sitting position, still holding his throbbing lower jaw, and watched as the executive reached the precipice of the raised platform. "Albert!" the grey-haired gentleman called after him, "Albert, where on Earth are you going?"
Two shaded, inhuman orbs turned to face him once again, moments before a single word rolled from his tongue in a measured purr.
"Hunting," he responded, and leapt from his perch to the ground below.