Chapter Four.
Seras sat at a small table across from Integra beneath a blinking light in a dark metal room that seemed mostly made up of shadows. Despite the comforting semi-darkness, she could feel the churning ocean beneath her feet through the steel.
Staring glumly at the playing cards in her hand, she laid them down on the table. "Fold," she said.
Integra took the pile of matches they had been using to place bets. "Your poker face is awful," Integra said. "Is the ocean still getting at you?"
"A little," Seras said. "I thought the boat would be big enough to not be a bother."
"How long can you stay asleep in that coffin? Alucard once spent a week inside his."
Seras was silent, thinking about Alucard. Strange that she would miss the creature that had shot a hole in her chest and made her a vampire on a whim, but he hadn't been so bad after all. She no longer needed his tutelage, but it still felt as though there was something missing with him gone.
"Sorry," Integra said. "I didn't mean to bring him up."
"No, it's fine," Seras said. "I don't suppose we can afford to mope." Nor could they afford to continue this line of discussion, as it would invariably lead to their other lost comrade, Walter. "I don't dare sleep that long anyhow. It might be what they're waiting for."
Integra smiled and shuffled the cards. "They've had ample opportunities to make their move and they haven't taken them. They'll play things straight with you, at least until we have that they want."
"Me? How do you mean?"
"How you manage to remain so suspicious and naïve at the same time mystifies me," Integra said. "Wesker needs one of Umbrella's science experiments captured. Out of the two of us, you're the one who can pick up and throw a truck. It's you they came calling on, not me. I highly doubt they even expected me to still be alive."
Seras picked up her cards, selected three, and set them down. Integra dealt her three more and slid four matches into the center of the table while the light above them flickered. "Which is why you aught to be worried," Seras said. "They don't need you, they don't care about you. They might even hold you hostage to ensure I cooperate."
Integra laid down all five of her cards and picked up another hand. "If it happens, it happens," Integra said. "Help them anyway. At least until a better option for salvaging humanity presents itself."
Seras huffed, not liking the look of her hand and slid five match sticks into the pile. "How low do you think we'll sink before the end?" Seras asked, looking at Integra. "I'm going to go see about getting their logo tattooed on my bum. Or better yet, my forehead." She slapped her cards down and stood up, sliding her chair back. Leaving the room without looking back, she hoped she'd run into someone in the corridor.
The ship they were on was thinly staffed and it was a lonely walk to her quarters where her coffin was kept. There was a cot next to it where Integra slept, neither wanting to be far from the other while onboard. Seras kicked the cot, knocking it askew and opened the lid on her portable grave.
"Everyone should have one of these," she muttered to herself. "Everyone's basically dead anyway, so why not?"
Lying wide awake, she glared at the inside of her coffin so hard she thought she might have actually nudged it a little. Breathing in a rhythm, she hoped she would either fall asleep or at least calm down soon.
***
Against her better judgment, Integra had gone walking around the ship. If anyone attempted to capture her, the 9mm holstered at her hip would have something to say about it. She wouldn't be taken alive, and whoever made a move on her would likely have a whiney, self-righteous, and angry vampire on their hands.
She knew that was unfair, but it seemed as though Seras still felt there was something to lose by working with Umbrella. Had there been, Integra thought she would certainly feel too scummy to have even heard Wesker out back at the lighthouse, but as it stood holding on to the grudge at this stage in the game was the greater sin.
The thought made Seras's words echo in her mind. How low would they have to sink before the end? Hellsing had already failed its mission to keep England safe from the undead, why should she continue to act as though there were a Hellsing? Did the name really mean anything anymore?
"A rose by any other name," she said, looking at a faded Umbrella logo on a crate as she walked into a storage room filled with pipes. This wasn't her first time about the ship, as the places she could get into were few and limited to the upper decks. No one had given her a tour before setting sail and no one had offered since. The skeleton crew moving about didn't speak to either her or Seras and there were no guards telling them off, just tightly locked doors.
Sitting on a crate out of sight, she leaned against the steel wall and hoped some crew members might come in and spill secrets. Umbrella was holding too many cards for her liking and would be nice if they tipped their hand a little.
While waiting, she came to the conclusion that she still believed in God. Her faith had wavered substantially recently, but the fact that she was still alive had steadied it. She might have to thank Umbrella for that, for while she had been putting up a brave front for Seras, her days laying about around the lighthouse were numbered.
Integra remembered thinking she must have committed some grave sin to have been allowed to survive the apocalypse. Perhaps using vampires to fight vampires had been it, although the previous Hellsing Masters hadn't suffered terribly grave ends.
Blaming one's self for the end of the world was a line of thinking that ended with a gun in the mouth, so she had done her best to stop it. There were plenty of other people to blame anyway, and blame she did whenever she had felt down on herself while Seras had been asleep in the lighthouse.
Now that she was on a boat headed towards America, with the intended goal to find a single woman, a genetic experiment gone AWOL, amongst millions of undead, she felt much, much better. There was a purpose to her life again, even though it was the equivalent of betting her very life, maybe even her soul, on one turn of the roulette wheel. This was it for her, she knew. If she lived to see the end of it, there had to be something beyond living alone with Seras on the run from zombies.
An odd sound strumming through the pipes made her snap her head up and realize that she had been dozing off while ruminating on her life. Concentrating, she thought she heard gunfire.
"What in blazes," she said, standing up on the crate and putting her ear on the pipe. It was most certainly gunfire, along with another muffled sound, one she had grown rather tired of hearing.
She jumped down and began running almost at the same time red lights came on in the corridors. Rounding a corner, she found herself behind a black man in a white jumpsuit, one of the skeleton crew. He turned when he heard her and nearly fell over backward. "Jesus," he said in a London accent. "Scared the hell out of me."
Sweat covered his face and his eyes were wide. He was about to say something when a dull alarm began to bleat a mechanical sound, followed by a monotone female voice. Warning. Biohazard containment breach on sub-deck four. Initiating lockdown procedure.
Integra grabbed the man by the should and drew her gun, keeping it pointed at the floor. "What does that mean?" she asked.
He seemed ready to run, but took a deep breath and thought better of it. "Uh, I think it means we're all going to die. Normally, I'd be heading towards a lifeboat right now, but no one's going to come pick us up, so…"
She shook him. "What's this ship carrying?"
With a broad, manic grin on his face he shook his head slowly. "Lady, I don't know and I don't care. I'm going to go find myself a nice rope to hang myself with and I suggest you get your own."
Shrugging roughly, he shook her off and went running down the corridor. She went after him but turned to the left after a few meters and headed back to her and Seras's room. If it happened to be the airborne T-virus, she wanted to be shot straight away. If it was something else, and she suspected it might be, she had a fighting chance with Seras at her back.
To be continued…