AN: Hi everyone! Happy Memorial Day! Sorry to keep you all waiting. School just tossed a lot of semester projects at me and I have graduation coming up. So I procrastinated and wrote this instead. I hope everyone likes it, even though its a short chapter! Don't foregt to leave a review or favorite/subscribe if you have not done so.
Before I forget, I want to thank my newest reader/reviewer Toasty2006(). Love you Toasty! Speaking of which, where are my regulars! You guys didn't leave me a message last chapter! I miss you.
Disclaimer: I do not own Resident Evil or its characters. Delfredi is the brainchild of my collaborator JediSpartan217. Stevie, Kate, and Mattie own themselves. Oh, and extra kudos for JediSpartan217 for story ideas!
The cadets sat in the helicopter quietly, staring out of the transport as the sun began to set over the many small villages and dense forests of Eastern Europe, only half-listening to the briefing their captain was giving them. Stevie and Kate remained silent, thoughts focused on finding Mattie and then getting back to the BSAA headquarters without blowing their cover or the mission. All contact with Ada was severed until the mission was over, leaving them to count on Jill to lead the mission. After many hours of flight, the helicopter landed in a clear space near the edge of the woods and allowed the search team to jump off before retreating back into the sky.
"Alright," Jill explained, "We're going to have to walk from here so Delfredi doesn't notice our approach. We should be able to get there under cover of darkness. Understood?" The two cadets nodded, and the group crossed the threshold into the forest.
"Hey Jill?" The older agent turned to her new team members. "Thank you for bringing us along on this mission, Jill," Stevie said, "It really means a lot."
"For you two, no problem," she replied. "Two willing cadets are better than going in without backup. And besides," the female agent continued, "You have your friend to look for. As do I."
"Sorry if we caused any trouble. We'll do our best," Kate promised, "I just hope there's something we can do. We only just arrived, after all."
Jill glanced back at the two girls. "Don't apologize. I have no doubt Mattie would be doing the same if either of you were in trouble," she replied.
Stevie stepped around a splintering tree trunk, only to run into a patch of stinging nettles. "Sheesh! Who build a facility in the middle of the woods?" she complained under her breath as she moved her foot to a safer spot. Thankfully the BSAA issued boots and fatigues were sturdy enough to defend the wearer from hazardous flora.
"No idea," Kate replied under her breath as she untangled her ponytail from a low-hanging branch, "but I suppose its better than a mansion."
Jill hacked thorny tendrils out of the path ahead with her knife, holding a tree branch to hold her balance. "Can one of you get HQ on the radio? My hands are a little full," she called, "And don't forget to use your call signs!"
Kate nodded and turned on her radio, which sat at the side of her belt. "This is Aspen, checking in with HQ. We're on the ground about a mile away from the location," she reported.
Static buzzed from the radios. "This is Jackass! Is ever'thing okay down there?" Quint's voice entered through the communication headsets.
Jill stopped hacking plants back long enough to activate her earpiece. "We're getting close to the facility," she reported, "Once we get in, we're going to need complete radio silence unless we call for back-up. We don't know what kind of technology Delfredi has in his hideout."
"You got it ladies," Quint promised, "See you on the other side! Jackass out."
The radio went silent. Jill looked back at her new partners. "We're almost there. Be ready for anything," the female agent warned before resuming her battle with the thorn bush.
The two cadets nodded affirmative. "Don't worry about us, Jill," Stevie replied, "We're older, stronger, and smarter than we used to be. As long as everything goes well, we'll be out of here lickety-split."
"Here's hoping," the older agent replied as she hacked the last of the thorns out of the way and moved forward. As the sky grew darker, the foliage became denser and more difficult to navigate as the spaces between the trees became filled with thick shrubbery. The search party straggled through the woods for half a mile before the group came upon a small grove illuminated by moonlight, offering a break from the heavy foliage. The soil became softer underneath the BSAA agents' boots, and pieces of twigs and tree bark replaced the thorny scrubs the agents had been forced to wade through. Several scratches cover the trees, and snapped branches clung to the trees by their fleshy sinews.
"Looks like something's been crashing through this area," Kate observed, looking closer at slash marks that decorated many of the trees, "It looks similar to an angry bear scratch, but bears aren't native to this area, and the horizontal direction seems to suggest that it wasn't a wildcat either."
"Then it's probably a BOW's claw marks; we're in the right place," Jill confirmed. She crouched to the ground, examining something in the soil. "Strange. There are some faint tracks here, but they turn back in the direction of the facility."
"Why the heck would they do that?" Stevie asked, hands on her hips as she watched her teammates investigate.
"Good question," Jill replied as she brushed her gloves off and stood upright, "For now, let's find that facility."
The two protégés nodded in agreement, and the party moved forward. The three women took care as they snuck up to the side of the concrete building, wary of the fragile twigs that littered their path.
"This is it. From Parker's report, this is the door he used to get in," Jill glanced down to the bottom of the door, noticing the dusty, undone padlock on the forest floor. "Looks like Mattie's handiwork," she said quietly, remembering how her student had taken to lock picking like a fish to water, "The emergency locks haven't been undone either."
Stevie knelt down and gave a tug on the door. "Looks like its shut tight," she declared, looking over to her teammates, "We're not getting in unless we get technical." The dark-haired girl glanced around, stopping on a control panel at the far side of the door. A blinking red light signaled that the panel was still operable. "Looks like this place still has power. Kate, you wanna do some magic on that panel?"
The quiet agent's eyes found the panel. "I'll see what I can do," she said as se cleared the dust away from the touchpad, revealing numbers. "It's pass code protected," she reported to her comrades, "No matter." The glasses-wearing agent unzipped the back satchel on her belt, and after a few seconds of digging, produced a code-breaking kit (courtesy of Quint,) and a screwdriver. The kit consisted of a small, black box with a screen on it, and various wires.
The screwdriver came first. Sticking the other two items in an empty pocket of the cadet's uniform, Kate began work on unscrewing the front plate on the panel. Once the metal sheet fell away, the quiet girl replaced the screwdriver with the wires, twisting one of the copper strings in the machine to its counterpart. The free wire was connected to the box. The box's screen lit up, and a series of numbers began running down the screen, stopping when a correct number hit its place in the code. After five digits, Kate punched the code into the security panel, and the blinking crimson light switched to solid green, followed by a heavy 'clunk'.
"We're in," she confirmed, spotting the two hanging chains near her teammates heads, "Try pulling on these chains. We ought to be able to open this now." Stevie and Jill nodded and each took a section of chain.
"Ready, one two- pull!" Jill ordered. She and Stevie yanked down on the chains, and sure enough, the door began to creep upwards, opening a path for the agents. As the door opened, moonlight illuminated the hall, revealing glassy-eyed, reptilian corpses of the Hunter BOWs Parker had told them about. As if the sight of the bodies wasn't frightening enough, the pungent smell of decay and rot wafting out of the corridor was worse, smelling as though everything but the corpses had been soaked in formaldehyde.
"Ugh!" Stevie complained as she protected her nose from the stench, "This is just nasty!"
Kate's response was more controlled. "That's . . . that's really macabre," she commented as her vision danced over the corpses. Despite the cadets' resistance, Jill pulled a flashlight from her back harness and entered the facility. The younger agents were stunned by the older woman's bravery before realizing they were supposed to follow her. "Jill! Hold up!"
The blue-clad agent halted in her path, stopping near a pile of Hunter corpses as the duo caught up to her. "Looks like a massacre happened here. The bullet casings on the floor match same ones we use," Jill observed before turning to her partners. "What do you two think?"
"Someone forgot to call a cleaning lady?" Stevie replied, laying sarcasm on every syllable as she took careful steps to avoid stepping on a corpse, "This place is a dump, and not just because of the stiffs. The ceiling's got cobwebs."
Kate held her nose shut with one hand as her gaze met the glazed-over eyes of the lifeless Hunters, willing herself not to retch. "This is definitely where Mattie and Parker got ambushed," she added, sweeping her flashlight on the tiled floor, "There's a blood trail on the floor as well."
"I'm willing to bet its Parker's," Jill added, scanning further into the hall before finding on a specific landmark. "There it is!" she declared. The two cadets followed the older agent as she strode to the marked case. Two more sets of flashlight beams fell on the Umbrella logo.
"Umbrella again?" Stevie asked as Jill scrutinized the metal case, "I thought they were long gone by now."
"We 'Thought' they were," Kate added, "But who knows how it got here?"
Jill brushed off the top of the case, sending a cloud of dust floating into the air. "Well, based on our briefing information, this used to be an Umbrella facility, that is until all the staff mysteriously disappeared," the older woman explained.
"Let me guess, they got zombified?" Stevie added, flashlight firmly gripped in her hand as she watched both ends of the hall.
"More likely just cut and run before they ran bankrupt," the brunette agent answered, "Help me open this up." Kate covered her partners' backs as Stevie aided Jill in pulling the top of the metal case off, allowing it to fall to the floor as Jill investigated the inside. "Damn it!" the older woman cursed, "It's empty. Nothing but packing product."
Kate took a peek inside. "Judging from the shape of the packing foam, this case was carrying several test tubes of chemicals. Can't figure out which ones, though."
"Wonderful," Stevie commented sarcastically, glancing back at the dead Hunters by accident. The stillness prompted a chill to race up her spine, anticipating one of the dead Hunters to leap up at any second. "Hey, uh, can we get a move one?" the dark-haired cadet asked, with a twinge of nervousness in her voice, "All these dead bodies are giving me the creeps."
Kate and Jill shared a look before backing away from the chemical transport crate and returning to the mission. "C'mon. There's probably more clues further inside. The sooner we find Mattie and Chris the better," Jill encouraged, prompting her team to press deeper into the facility.
The corridor extended several meters, and the search party pushed forward to find that someone had left the overhead lights on, illuminating the area in a sterile, white glow. It was safe to say that the entire group was slightly unnerved by the change as they turned off their flashlights, but remained calm nonetheless.
At the end of the corridor, the hall split to the left and right with rows of doors on either side. The group stopped at the fork. "Looks like we have two ways to go," Jill said.
Stevie shook her head. "Oh no. We are not splitting up if we don't have to! Not in this place!" she objected, "It's creepy enough already."
"There could be valuable evidence in either direction," Kate stated before looking to Jill, "So what do we do?"
Jill stood quiet as she considered a plan. " . . . We'll check the doors in this general area," she ordered, gesturing to the doors lining the hallway, "Stay within visual range. You two take the left side; I'll take the right side. We'll cover more ground."
Stevie and Kate shared a glance, finding no reason to argue with Jill's plan. The two cadets trekked down the left fork of the hall, checking behind them to maintain visual range of Jill. Stevie began testing the handles on the doors, finding many of them to be locked. "Damn, they locked this place up tight," she whispered, having no luck with the fifth door she tried.
Meanwhile, Kate had wandered ahead of Stevie, peeking through the windows of each door, hoping to find evidence. "Looks like these are all labs," she reported, taking a closer look at the objects inside, "A lot of the equipment is still here. The scientists must have had to leave their projects behind."
A heavy, metallic noise sounded behind the agents, rolling downward before hitting the floor. The team looked back to where they had split up, finding that a steel bulkhead had closed off the hall with the Hunter bodies, preventing any form of escape. The agents were quick to draw their handguns, only to halt in their actions when the intercom activated. "Welcome BSAA," a deep voice greeted. The team turned to the voice's source, a loudspeaker, recognizing the owner from the videotapes immediately. "I've been expecting you for some time. You may call me Dr. Delfredi."
Stevie was the first to react. "You sick son of a bitch!" she shouted at the speaker, "You better not have hurt Chris and Mattie!"
Delfredi gave a small, yet menacing chuckle. "Don't be so quick to judge until you've learned the truth," he warned, sending shivers into the cadets' cores.
Now it was Jill's turn to speak. "What truth?" she asked, knowing that aggression would get them nowhere.
"The truth about human nature," Delfredi replied, "I will show you this truth through a series of tests I've developed, though I prefer to call them my 'Playtime'. However, you cannot have the truth until you discover it yourselves."
After Delfredi spoke, a second bulkhead slammed shut between the search party, separating the two cadets from their leader. "Jill!" Kate cried out, activating the local radio connection rushing to the sealed bulkhead, "Are you alright?"
Jill's voice came through the headset. "I'm all right. What about you two?"
"We're both okay," Stevie reported, "I knew splitting up was a bad idea."
Kate checked the area around the bulkhead. "I don't see a control box!" she added, "I can't hack this door!"
"Then we're going to have to go through the facility and meet up later," Jill ordered. The two cadets didn't speak. How long they would have to go without instructions from a superior? They'd be running around half-blind. The very thought made their muscles tighten. "Be careful, okay?"
"We will," Stevie promised before cutting off the connection with Jill, listening the agent's footsteps fade away before looking to her partner. Kate clung to the bulkhead, as if hoping to pass through the material and disappear. Stevie clapped one hand on her companion's shoulder. "C'mon. We better get a move on and finish this Delfredi guy's 'Playtime' as quick as possible," the short-haired cadet advised, "Then we can find everyone else, and hopefully kick Delfredi's face in before we leave."
Kate turned to meet Stevie's gaze. Despite the worried look behind her thick glasses, the older cadet sighed and nodded in agreement. With their guns at the ready, the two undercover agents stepped away from the bulkhead and began to venture deeper into the facility, awaiting whatever challenges Delfredi held in store for them.