Episode Five Point Two: I'll Be Seeing You In Hell
The sun had descended low on the horizon, bathing everything in a fiery, golden glow, and a gentle breeze had picked up, soft fingers caressing the surroundings lightly. They stripped the charred flesh from his body, casting it away in a blizzard of blackened flakes that drifted in his wake as he followed the path of his beloved. Before long, his skin had transformed from malformed, ugly ebony to its usual pale white, his features reasserting themselves on the front of his burned skull, the lids covering his eyes opening to reveal his mutated orbs as though they had not just been licked out of his head by a tongue of ferocious flame. He shuddered as he reached the rock face that led upwards towards the summit of the tiered settlement, the remaining baked pieces of epidermis thrown from his body by his intensely rapid movement. He glared up at the lip of the plateau on which the cathedral was placed, knowing that this was where she was leading him, and leapt upwards, the motion carrying him over the edge and setting him down in a crouch before the barricaded front entrance of the holy building. He stood, striding forward impatiently and placing his hands to the sturdy, brass fittings attached to the double doors, before he wrenched the entire fixture from its hinges, along with the flagpole that had been wedged through its handles, the frame around it shattering into grey, concrete chunks. Hurling the brutalised oak panels aside, he stepped forward into the main chamber of the grandiose church, his eyes surveying the surroundings for any sign of his beloved. Once again, she was in plain sight, her form easily identifiable, standing atop the large stone plinth that made up the building's altar, feet spread and arms folded across her chest. She was waiting for him.
"End of the line, bitch," she informed him, glaring at him across the length of the expansive room they were both currently occupying. He cast a cursory glance to each side, before turning his gaze back to her questioningly.
"I trust you have devised a suitably futile scheme to render me incapacitated, in much the same manner as your previous attempts, my dear," he commented with a sneer, his facial expression matched by that of the young woman currently staring him down from the opposing end of their battleground.
"Nope," she stated flatly, "no more tricks and no more traps. We're gonna do this now, no more games, just you and me. One of us has to die; it can't be any other way."
"You still wish to seek retribution against me for my supposed crimes?" he queried, raising a threatening eyebrow, his slit-like pupils flaring with angry, red light even as he spoke, giving the redhead the distinct impression that she was indeed facing off with the devil himself.
"No," she announced solemnly, her answer taking her black-clad tormentor aback, though he did not show externally, "it's not about justice anymore. With you it's personal; I have to get you back for what you did to me and everyone I've ever loved. If justice really existed then someone would have taken care of you long ago, you'd never have been given the chance to hurt anyone. I'm sick of justice; I just want to kill you."
"I welcome your best effort," he told her. Her hands snapped to her sides, gripping the two pistols holstered on either side of her waist, before pulling them free of their confinements and lifting them, dragging back the firing mechanism on both before levelling them at him. He smirked, aware that even with the best aim in the world she would be unable to harm him with those weapons. And so he stepped forward.
The weapons barked, two metal studs ripping into his chest moments later, the impact rocking him slightly on his feet, moments before he was gripped by an intense, overwhelming agony that tore through his upper body in much the same way as the Tyrant's claw that had killed him for the first time. Though he remained stoically silent, the pain was proving difficult to suppress. It did not take him long to realise why it was that he seemed incapable of overcoming this usually minor injury, however, as he reminded himself of the damage that she had already dealt him during this battle thus far. She had crushed him beneath tons of stone, deafened him, drenched him, amputated his arm and then proceeded to set him ablaze. Each time his virally-enhanced capacity for regeneration had allowed him to continue unhindered by his injuries, but now it seemed that even his inhuman endurance was reaching its limits. She had stressed his system to a point where it was beginning to admit defeat, where he was even beginning to feel the fatigue and exertion of minor actions. He had almost forgotten what it had felt like to be weak.
A further shot tore through his right shoulder, causing his entire arm to spasm and throb, while another slammed into his gut in a spray of blood. All the while her face was contorted in an expression somewhere between a grimace of determination and a smile of glee. He reached a stone pew that had been dragged into the centre aisle, his pathway towards the shrine where his young lover was positioned, and gripped its right edge with one hand, hurling it to the side with rather more effort than it would normally have taken to move such an item. It tumbled end over end through the air and then shattered against the left wall, exploding one of the extravagant sculptures created by the structure's original builders, exultant worshippers, cowing gargoyles and the world itself crumbling into dust at the impact. He strode onwards, unstoppable, barely flinching as a fifth bullet sliced through the side of his neck and ignoring a sixth as it exploded his right eye in an eruption of life fluid, before a thick tear of dark crimson began to trail down his cheek. His torn lid fell limply over the empty socket and then it flicked open once more, revealing the shining, blood red orb that had formed in place of the ruined previous occupant. Immediately, splotches of white began to appear on its glassy surface, spreading out and connecting, before a black slit appeared at its centre and its gold and scarlet rings spread forth to surround it. He continued to walk, lifting a hand to wipe away the river of vermilion from his face, but undeterred by his body's rapid and extreme regeneration.
The blond reached a second concrete bench, seizing this one by its leftmost armrest and tossing it away in much the same way as he had done with the previous furnishing. It sheered the air and slammed into the second collection of statues that made up the building's décor, turning them into nothing more than broken fragments. Another barrage of hot, metal slugs left a burning crater in his right thigh and another just below his collar bone, both wounds adding only further fuel to the fire of suffering that was gripping him. He had to suppress the urge to grin broadly. Since obtaining immortality it had been difficult to find such extreme sensations; though intensely painful, this could only be described as a pleasure. Two more rounds pitted his torso, moments before he reached a third barricade lying in his path. This one he gripped under the seat and lifted it so that it was on the same level as his shoulders, before turning to the side and throwing it in the same manner as a bulky, stone javelin. The redhead's eyes widened and her heart leapt into her throat at the same time as she herself vaulted head first off the altar, avoiding the flying pew by a hair's breadth as it demolished the table she had previously been standing on. It continued on, sundered in half by its impact with the solid surface of the shrine and twisted in the air by the sudden halt of its front end, slamming into the muscular thighs of the angel of judgement in a spray of rocky splinters and dust. Shakahnna rolled awkwardly on the marble floor, unable to use her hands due to the weapons currently clutched in them, landing hard on her right shoulder as she rolled through the tumble and coming to rest in a crouch several yards away. She winced, rolling her upper arm in a bid to massage away some of the ache there, before there was the subtle sound of cracking stone from somewhere overhead. She glanced up and then hurled herself aside reflexively as the shield-bearing left arm of the angel came crashing to the floor behind her.
Wesker loomed out of the settling dust almost before she was capable of getting her bearings, startling her into bringing her weapons to bear upon him and firing them in rapid succession. He simply vanished, forcing her to adjust her aim and catch him approaching from her left, shooting at him once again before he disappeared for a second time. She cursed, turning on her heel and pulling the triggers of her dual pistols even before she had confirmed his position. He had been exactly where she had expected him to be, though only for a moment, and her bullets struck nothing but empty air once again. Roaring with frustration, she spun around once more and pressed the muzzles of both guns into his abdomen as he appeared directly behind her, her range point-blank, and fired. There was nothing but a hollow snap from both semi-automatics.
"Shit!" she howled, seconds before his right boot slammed into her stomach, the last pieces of her considerable arsenal being wrenched from her grip by the hands of her darkly paramour, who was clutching both prior to the blow that felled her. The young woman staggered back, trying to maintain balance, but quickly surrendering to gravity, which pulled her down onto her rear end with a distinct lack of grace. Looking up at him, she watched as he lifted the matching handguns and promptly crushed them into twisted mockeries of what they had once been, and then discarded them idly. She could not help but pout; she had liked those guns.
"Will you continue to resist me without a weapon with which to defend yourself?" he asked, watching her predatorily as she scrambled up to her feet. On her way back to her feet she snatched up a fallen flagpole that had been stripped of its banner, hefting it like a spear and bringing it around to aim in his direction. She grinned to herself when she realised that the tip thrust towards his face was actually pointed anyway.
"Weapon or not, I'm not giving in to you, bitch," she informed him, setting her feet apart and tightening her grip around the haft of the relatively slender staff she had recently acquired. He sneered, lunging towards her, only for her to adjust the position of her lance and bring it down, stabbing the end through his right thigh, holding him back and forcing him down to one knee, before quickly withdrawing the bladed point from the meat of his leg. She swung it up, cleaving a line of red across his stomach and left forearm, before following the motion through and bringing the reverse of the weapon around to strike him in the side of the head, the metal rattling his skull as it slammed into his right ear.
With the fluidity of a natural warrior, the flame-haired female reversed the motion of her arms and brought the blade of her spear back around. It passed inches from his throat as he sprang up and out of her reach, blocking and turning aside a further jab with his right forearm as she pressed her advantage. She hurled herself forward in a bid to run him through, and was stunned when she found herself standing immediately in front of him, still clasping the majority of the pole that was now transfixing his sternum. Looking up at him, however, she got the impression that this was not the killing stroke she had hoped it might be. His response was to strike her with a clenched right fist, such a solid impact that it seemingly caused her to make the transition between vertical and horizontal without any movement in between. Her mouth filled with blood and her head throbbed as she tried and failed to sit up. For his part, he gripped the weapon that she had impaled him with and promptly ripped it out of his abdomen, throwing it aside and paying no heed to the trails of blood that were already diminishing even as he tossed away the item that had wrought them.
She rolled to the side, clambering to her feet again, though this time in a manner that was markedly more sluggish. With nothing left but to defend herself with her own hands and feet she lifted her fists in front of her face and spaced her stance preparing to resist him with all she had remaining, hoping that this would be enough. His first punch seemed lazy, almost bored, and she ducked it easily, lunging forwards into a rapid flurry of blows into his abdomen, her knuckles impacted solidly with his stomach, before she reared back and thrust her right hand upwards in an uppercut that struck him in the lower jaw and staggered him. Or at least, that was what she imagined had happened. He casually stepped backwards with the blow and swung his own appendage again in a stinging backhand across the face that shook her whole, stout frame and sent her reeling. Blood drooled out of her mouth as she pitched forwards, preventing herself from falling over with her hands, and then pushing herself back up into a standing position. Trails of red were running from her lips and the area around the lower part of her face was swollen with bruising, though she turned back to face him almost immediately. His forearm caught her full in the left temple before she had even had time to see him approach, the second successful attack causing her eye to swell shut as dark purple bruising spread across the upper portion of her features. She righted herself immediately, thrusting her right boot forwards and kicking into his opposing knee with an intention to shatter the joint there and perhaps even the playing field. It almost seemed that he did not even feel the move, and she was doubled over by a kick that thudded into her stomach and drove the air out of her.
She lashed out wildly with her right fist, feeling his left hand come to encircle her wrist, before his other appendage clamped down over her shoulder. There was a moment of subtle, ever-increasing pressure and then a pop as the limb was once again dislocated, causing her to scream aloud and collapse to her knees, her head lolling back and then falling forwards, her breath coming in long, laboured gasps as she tried to recover from the injury he had dealt her previously. Her remaining arm held to the wounded area of its kin, she rolled almost subconsciously aside as he made to grab her, coming up to her feet again and casting around with her one, viable eye in a desperate bid to find him before he could knock her down again. She couldn't even see which direction his next attack came from when his boot slammed into her chest with a sharp crack that made her gasp and stumble backwards, before she slumped to her knees and then forwards onto her face. Her breathing became all the more heavy, strings of blood issuing from her lips as her pants dislodged them from where the crimson droplets were staining the insides of her mouth. She gasped aloud as he stooped to grip the back of her head by a handful of hair that tugged at the scalp beneath, before he hauled her up to a standing position, placing his second hand around her jaw and turning her gaze upwards to face him. In spite of the fact that her head was swimming and her eyes were blurry and unfocused, she was still perfectly capable of coughing a gobbet of blood into his face.
"That all you got, you pussy?" she slurred, her right arm still hanging limply at her side as he held her elevated. He did not seem amused by her actions and elected to adjust his grip upon her head, removing the first hand from the reverse of her cranium and relocating the second to encompass her throat. Then he lifted her off her feet and she began to choke.
Her resistance was feeble and futile, as she struggled to find a purchase somewhere on his body in order to take the full weight of her own mass off her neck, locking her left arm around the one that was strangling her in a weakened effort to suspend herself from something other than her windpipe. She was fatigued and her consciousness was wavering, her choked gasps for air blowing into his face as it glared at her from directly opposite. There position was close and personal, their bodies almost pressed together, but there was nothing she could do to use that fact to her advantage feeling as tired as she did. Her only remaining arm drooped and fell to match the slack limb opposite to it, striking against something solid in the pocket of her trousers. She felt her heart skip a beat, wondering if perhaps she had one weapon left on her person that she had forgotten about, and her mind urged her to discover the truth of the item. Lifting her shaking hand, she dipped it into the recesses of her combats, closing her fingers around her salvation, the fountain pen that she had taken from Adrian's pockets during their encounter beneath Wesker's mansion.
The redhead withdrew it and flipped the cap from the end with a flick of her thumb, before lifting it up and driving it into the male's throat. He convulsed and jerked backwards, releasing her from his grip and dropping her onto the marble floor where she bounced heavily. Ignoring her body's protests and sucking in oxygen for all she was worth, she took one deep, long breath and then thrust her right shoulder forwards into the ground. There was a click and she screamed the air out of her lungs, before forcing back the pain and moving her right arm to push herself up. The young woman stood, shaking from the exertion, and quickly lunged towards the wreckage that had once been the altar, not daring to spare her injured lover even a moment's glance. Her hands sank into the shattered concrete, throwing aside pieces of mortar and stone that had once been quite beautiful décor, before she located what she had been looking for, a shining piece of metal amid the dull, lustreless debris. She picked it up carefully, not wanting to sever a finger on the edge she herself had sharpened to have a razor's acuteness. Rising to her feet, she rounded on the older individual and lifted the keen-edged shrapnel, quickly placing it to her own neck. The blond paused, hand outstretched, as he came to realise what was occurring.
"And what, pray tell, do you intend to do with that item?" he asked, inclining his head and moving his arms to fold across his chest, regarding her with curiosity.
"Shut up!" she snapped, the very act of talking causing her jaw to throb from the heavy bruising covering the lower half of her face, "I'll cut my own fucking head off if you come even one step closer; I mean it, I'm not playing games any more."
"You will not..." he began, taking one confident stride forward, only to hesitate once again when her hands tensed around the makeshift blade held to her throat, the action causing the slightest laceration to appear on her skin and a single drop of dark crimson to roll along the length of her skin to rest within the fabric about her collar bone. It had the effect that she had hoped for, rooting him to the spot several feet away from her. With any luck she would be able to talk to him sensibly before his hubris overtook him and he convinced himself that he would be able to reach her in time to disarm her.
"I know you're not going to do anything to risk me dying, so maybe we can be talking like grown-ups for once," she insisted, watching as a derogatory sneer started to creep onto his features, "and don't you even be thinking about feigning disaffection at me, bitch. We both know what the truth is and it would be nice just to cut the shit, alright?"
His expression returned to its neutral composition, continuing to watch her intently from his position almost, waiting for a moment of inattention on her part, until eventually his own muscles slackened slightly. "Very well," he responded, electing to humour her.
"I know you didn't follow me all the way out here, get shot, blown up, deafened and burned alive just so that you could kill me; you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble by just doing that right away," she informed him, matching his gaze with a glare of her own, stares that would have rendered both of them deceased if looks could kill, "so I'm gonna be giving you one more chance. Forget all about Umbrella and everything, give it all up, and be coming with me now. We'll go find somewhere a long, long way from here. It's the only solution; no one gets hurt and you get what you want."
"I believe that I have made my thoughts clear on such requests," the blond asserted bluntly, his opponent's countenance taking on a glimmer of sadness, having realised ahead of him that this situation was only going to end badly, "however, I feel it would be appropriate to make a proposition of my own. Return with me to be sequestered at my estate once again and I will overlook these ... recent indiscretions of yours."
She shook her head sadly, ignoring the improvised knife poised at her throat as it widened the slice that she had already cut into her neck with her movement. "You know I can't do that," she explained, "even if you didn't need to be punished for what you've done, I can't let you go on hurting people the way you do. I don't want to die, and I could honestly think of worse things than a lifetime to, you know, do all that kind of stuff with someone like you, but at this stage it's not about what I want. It's about what needs to be done. And if I can't kill you then I'll just have to settle for hurting you, and I can do that by taking away the only thing that you've ever really, honestly wanted."
Her hands moved imperceptibly, the sharpened edge opening a larger, shallow gash upon her skin that unleashed a torrent of vermilion along the side of her neck. She was unable to stifle the gasp that followed, the situation making the sensation no less appealing to her personal tastes, though she readied herself for the very real possibility that it would be the last sensation she ever had the pleasure to experience. "You truly believe yourself capable of such an act?" the black-clad male queried, raising an eyebrow as he did so, "even if you have prepared yourself mentally, you are both fatigued and injured; you will be unable to resist if I intercede."
"Erm, exsqueeze me?" the redhead exclaimed petulantly, "who blew who up? Who burned who to a crisp? Because I can't remember being buried under a ton of rock today, so you tell me who's fatigued and injured, you fuck. Besides, I made this thing myself and its fucking sharp. You might be able to get to me, but chances are that by the time you do I'll already be halfway through. Even if you manage to keep me alive, I'm not gonna be much more than a vegetable, and can you honestly say that you want me around if I can't indulge you? What fun is that gonna be for you exactly?"
He was silent, a moment of stillness settling in the air of the cathedral's interior. The fine dust of shattered monuments drifted around them and nothing moved, the stand-off between them motivated by Shakahnna having taken herself hostage coming to an inevitably tense conclusion. Though the inhuman executive did not need to breathe, his lover was likewise refraining from releasing the air in her lungs, the momentary peace likely to implode the moment either of them made the slightest of moves. His muscles locked rigid one by one as he prepared to intervene in her suicide, while those in her arms also strained at the skin around them, the sharpened edges of the shrapnel piece biting into her palms and drawing the slightest droplets of blood. And then the female blinked. There was a noise like a compressed hurricane as Wesker powered forward, followed by the sound of a sharp, wet tearing as a neck was sundered. A severed head bounced upon the marble floor and rolled to a stop several feet away.
Moments later, the corpse of Albert Wesker slumped to the ground.
The metal shard clattered at the young woman's feet, as she lifted her trembling hands before her face, staring at the lacerations marring her palms like shallow stigmata, before moving them to encircle her throat and ensure the integrity of the connection between her own head and torso. She released a slow, shuddering breath and slumped to her knees, momentarily overcome as she observed the cadaver before her numbly. Then she threw her head back and began to laugh, peels of insane, hysterical cackling echoing back and forth from the walls of the stone building. Her eyes screwed shut as tears beaded at their corners before streaming down her cheeks in rivers. It was painful, almost unbearably so, to laugh like that with her face so swollen, but she honestly did not care. She scrambled to her feet and rushed towards the decapitated cranium lying nearby, striking it with her right boot and sending it skidding off under the pews with an ebullient scream of "fuck you!"
She paused, falling silent for a moment and turning her eyes towards the collapsed body nearby, before running back to it and skidding down onto the floor. There was something missing from this triumph, and she was almost certain that she knew what it was and where to find it. Her quivering fingers worked across the front of his fireproofed flak jacket, brushing away the charred outer layer of burned residue from the flamethrower to reveal the unharmed weave that the garments were composed of. Working her way across the pockets with her hands, she finally located something of the correct size and shape, seizing it quickly and tugging it out of the recesses of the tattered flak jacket. It was miraculously still intact in spite of the ravages that had been wrought on both the clothing and the individual wearing them, and she was able to quickly conclude that this was exactly what she had been looking for. For whatever reason, either because it was precious to her or simply because he had grown used to carrying it, he had brought it with him to their battle. Grinning, she held the item in the palm of her right hand, a small, leather-bound pocketbook. The League Table.
The fountain pen that had previously been impaled in her paramour's neck was lying, dripping blood from its nib, several yards away, evidently having been ripped out by the man after she had attacked him with it. She took it up now and thumbed open the book, ignoring the red smears she was leaving on each page with her fingers as she turned to a fresh sheet. Without even bothering to draw out a tally, she scrawled "I WIN!" across the spread and snapped the covers shut, discarding the pen and hugging the notepad to her chest for a moment, having finally reclaimed it from an individual who should never have had possession of it to begin with. And now he was dead, and a great weight felt like it had been lifted from her shoulders. Kneeling down at the ruined altar, beside the headless body of the man who had essentially destroyed her life, she permitted herself a moment to revel in the fact that now, finally, it was over.
-
Crouched atop the arched concrete beams that composed the roof of the spectacularly designed cathedral, Hunk had seen the young woman's victory through the stained glass that covered the ceiling. Admittedly, he cared little for the outcome of the battle and had no love for either of the two individuals who had until recently been fighting for their lives, but this conclusion made the task that he had been instructed to perform that much easier. He stood to his full height and cast a glance around at the nine other men congregated around him on the structure's upper level, all of them wearing the nondescript black uniforms of the Umbrella Special Forces. These men were professionals, hand-picked by the greying soldier especially for this mission, and he had the utmost faith in their ability to complete the tasks that had been assigned to them. Indeed, he had told each of them in turn that failure was not an option. Gripping the cable threaded through the loops on the harness that was secured about his waist, he non-verbally signalled for the other men to prepare their own climbing equipment, four of the anonymous troops checking the integrity of the rig that was carrying a large, steel coffin at a vertical position before ensuring that they themselves were secured. As was usually the case before any undertaking of this nature, the veteran Umbrella operative tilted his head back and took a deep breath, mentally girding himself for what was about to happen.
"Do it," he ordered flatly. There was a moment of silence and then a thunderous crash as the glass along the length of the roof shattered sequentially. The charges fixed to each of the horizontal stained windows detonated, the concussive waves those devices produced causing the brightly decorated windows to burst into shards and fall to the ground below in a twinkling rain of multicolour. The soldier stepped forward from the ledge, catching the wire in his hands and steadying himself as he made a rapid descent into the building's interior, falling alongside the broken pieces before his grip on the rope allowed them to hit the ground first. His team followed him immediately after, each of them executing a perfect jump as they made their way down with the coffin in tow.
Hunk's feet struck marble and he unbuckled his harness in one swift movement, swinging it aside to allow him the ease of movement that he needed. The redhead was on her feet watching the remainder of his unit make their landings as he approached her from behind and struck her in the back of the knee with the side of his boot, forcing her down in as gentle a fashion as he could manage. His hand moved to his belt, quickly removing a pair of thick, metal shackles from it and bringing them around to enclose her wrists. Thumbing the switch to lock them in place, he hooked his arm beneath the mechanical handcuffs that were holding her own in place and placed a hand on her shoulder in a bid to keep her restrained. She struggled to stand as his subordinates lowered the casket onto its back and opened the lid, though her battle with the now-decapitated executive had taken a lot out of her and she was unable to put up the fight she would otherwise have been capable of.
"What the fuck are you doing?" she yelled, wincing as the older man applied pressure to his hold around her limbs in an attempt to prevent her from escaping his grip.
"Stop squirming," he commanded, the fact that she recognised his voice more responsible for subduing her than the tone or words. Three of the soldiers hauled Wesker's corpse from where it was lying, headless, on the ground, and carried it over to the large box that they had brought with them, dropping it unceremoniously inside as the others calibrated instruments and checked gauges along the length of the device.
"So what are you doing?" she repeated, her voice somewhat more level, though not completely. The fact remained that they were Umbrella soldiers, people whom she had not exactly been making friends with over the course of the past couple of years, and even in her current condition she would be damned if they would be allowed to do something bad in her presence without her at least making a racket.
"Finishing him," the male informed her, "once and for all."
"But he's already dead," she pointed out, her eyes following one of the masked individuals as he moved out between the pews and scooped the blond's severed cranium from where it had been lying, carrying it back to its body and the group of men gathered around it.
"The G-virus ensures that he'll never truly die," the only known operative stated, watching as the crew began to make their final preparations around the open-topped casket, "even now he's regenerating; in hours, maybe even minutes, he'll be alive again. We can't be sure, but we think our only hope to stop him is to prevent him from doing that. If we cryogenically freeze him then he won't be able to complete his reconstitution and will never be allowed to reawaken. With any luck this will be the end of him."
Shakahnna did not reply, simply watching as the group surrounding Wesker's current resting place latched shut the lid of their device and continued to operate the various instruments lining its surface. A fine mist began to roll forth from the interior, drifting across the marble floor as the casket began to freeze on the inside. Before long the entire retinue accompanying the black-clad soldier had backed away from the metal box and watched as condensation crystallised along its length. There was silence among the assembled company as they watched with bated breath, all of them hoping that this was indeed the final solution that they thought it might be. Even the redhead realised that she too was holding in the inhalation she had taken, to the point where her lungs were straining for release and her blood was pounding in her ears, and she could feel the muscles of the man behind her become rigid as he did the same. After an excruciatingly long moment, there had still been no sudden and fatal repercussions for their actions and there was a united, very much relieved, exhalation.
The group gathered about the coffin once again and one of the men began to talk into a radio, ordering someone, most likely their method of transport, to report to the cathedral. In the aftermath of the successful completion of their objective, Hunk tapped at the number pad built into the smooth metal surface of the handcuffs encircling her wrists and removed them briskly. She sat down on her rear and began to caress the sore area where the bonds had clasped tightly to her skin, turning to face the male with a combination of gratitude and annoyance. "Thanks," she said, reasoning that she should register her joy at being free of restraints, though unwilling to forgive the fact that it was his fault she had been wearing them to begin with.
"As I told you, my orders did not concern you," he informed her, to which she tilted her head to the side. He had indeed told her that much, and though she had been sceptical at first, the behaviour of both himself and his team had essentially proven his words.
"We aren't friends, you know?" the female told him bluntly, glaring at the goggles that took up the place where his eyes would have been, "you're still Umbrella scum, and I don't see any reason why I should trust you, even if you did maybe help me out a little bit here."
"Your distrust is warranted," the stocky man responded, before straightening and unbuckling the straps at the back of his gasmask, removing the item and attaching it to his belt, before sitting down on the floor beside her. His face was craggy and well-defined, a line of scar tissue running the length of his right cheek and nestling amongst his unkempt facial hair. He was rough-cut and evidently unconcerned with his appearance, almost everything that Wesker had not been, aesthetically at least. "Now that the mission is over I have been ordered to inform you of the current situation," he continued, reaching into one of the pouches attached to his vest and removing a small, cardboard packet, "perhaps we can broker some measure of understanding, at least."
Popping the flap on the item in his hand, he withdrew a thin white stick from within between his lips, revealing it to be a carton of cigarettes. Without a moment's hesitation, he offered it to the woman sitting next to him and allowed her to take one for herself. She examined it suspiciously and once she was fairly certain that she was not being poisoned she placed it in her mouth. By this point he had already lit his own and was tugging gently on the filter, before turning to offer her the flame. Shaking her head, she appropriated the metal lighter from him and used it herself. Having someone else lighting her cigarettes reminded her too much of the blond now lying several yards away entombed in ice and steel.
"Okies, so what were you supposed to tell me?" she asked, passing him back the small, brass piece of paraphernalia and puffing away happily. He rolled his neck, before fixing her with eyes that were a striking blue, honest human pupils regarding her for the first time since she could remember, a welcome change from the other male's inhuman orbs and those fucking goggles the U.S.F troops were always wearing.
"Where to start," he murmured, wisps of grey floating from his mouth as he did so.