AN: Hey people! I'm posting from the coast today since I'm on vacation. Writing while watching the waves is nice. :) I just realized how quick my two-week deadline was coming up and decided to post. Chapters of this story might need deadline extensions; psychological horror is tricky. Reviews are awesome and motivate me to work. Constructive criticism is appreciated, but PLEASE be courteous.
For the record, near-death sequences are hard to write, especially since I haven't been in one myself, so I'm doing the best I can here with limited resources. I've tried looking up narrative accounts; I couldn't find anything helpful, so I've been relying on mood music a lot. If you want to troll me for getting it wrong, do it this chapter instead of waiting at the end.
Maybe psychological horror is not my forte after all.
Disclaimer: I do not own Resident Evil, its characters, or any recognizable references. Non-canon characters own themselves, except for Delfredi. He belongs to JediSpartan217.
For what felt like the hundredth time, Stevie sensed her eyes glaze over. She caught her eyelids sliding downwards and snapped awake, giving a vigorous shake of her head in an effort to maintain focus. Squinting up at the overhead lights certainly wasn't helping much. She had been lying on her back, staring at the slides for what, an hour? And the images printed on the slides were not getting any clearer. If anything, they looked blurrier than when they started! The only progress that had been made was the agreement that multiple slides were probably needed to complete the puzzle, and wrong answers released a monster from its chilly prison. But those revelations were made ages ago, which only caused their headaches to pump even harder!
A sigh and the shuffling of fabric prompted the dark-haired cadet 's head upright. Despite occasional bouts of movement, Kate had not spoken a word since they had discovered the Tyrant. That meant either she was extremely focused, or totally zoned out. "Hey Kate," Stevie spoke. Her friend gave a short hum of acknowledgement; apparently she had been in her right mind the whole time. "This really, really, blows. Have I mentioned that?"
"Not really," Kate responded from her position on the floor. Her voice was solemn, as if she was drifting off to sleep. "I'm surprised one of us didn't say it earlier."
"Well, I'm saying it now," Stevie added, tilting her head to make eye contact with her friend. "You wanna take a break? You sound down."
Kate started to respond, pausing to give a large yawn before speaking. ". . . I'm all right. My brain is just overheated." Both agents laid down the slides they were holding and sat upright, stretching out stiff joints and sore limbs. Gloved hands dived into pockets and drew out bottles of water they had been given before the mission began. "Want a protein bar with that?" the quiet brunette asked, diving into her pockets a second time. It had been a while since both of them had eaten anything. Up until now, the two survivors had been running on adrenaline and nervous energy.
Stevie replied affirmative, and Kate tossed one of the protein bars to her friend before unwrapping a second one for herself. "Thank you, buddy," the younger cadet said before taking a bite of her food. The BSAA issued protein bars weren't too tasty, but they made for a quick, portable meal that granted enough energy to last a while. The problem was mostly that the compressed nutrients were too dense to consume in the middle of combat, which left soldiers to gnaw on the brick-like bars until they could bite a section off. Why the manufacturers had not yet decided to make them in flavors despite multiple requests was anybody's guess.
"Ya know something," Stevie spoke between bites of protein bar, "This puzzle is taking WAY too much time to figure out, even if a weirdo like Delfredi made it. It's way too complicated."
Kate considered her partner's words carefully, holding one end of the protein bar with her teeth. "Good point," she agreed, "The answer has probably been in front of us this whole time and we've been thinking too much to see it. That or something is missing."
Stevie nodded and took a swig of water before glancing back at the security camera. "Think it would kill him to give us a hint?" she suggested, "He's gotta be getting bored of watching us puzzle our brains out." The dark-haired cadet looked upward and began to speak to the camera. "Am I right?" she added, as if anticipating a reply from the madman. The only response was silence. Stevie gave a short shrug and turned back. "Well, it was worth a shot," she explained with a sigh, "Now what?"
"We can rest some more," Kate replied, "Then we look for clues. Let's rule out a missing hint before restarting from square one."
"Good idea, my brain is still fried."
The duo rested until they felt their strength return and headaches fade. With renewed spirits, they resumed their inspection of the slides, this time looking at every part of each piece for signs they may have missed before. Finding nothing, the agents organized the unhelpful slides into a pile, so they wouldn't throw themselves off later. The agents continued to work like that until the intercom came to life. "I don't believe it. What is taking them so long?" Delfredi's voice complained, interrupting the agents' thought processes, "This puzzle is not that difficult; even a five-year-old could do it faster! The BSAA must be desperate if they're allowing complete idiots into their ranks." Stevie and Kate turned their eyes upward in annoyance and stared directly into the camera, expecting more taunts to fly out. The dark-haired agent began to reply with a vulgar gesture towards the camera, only to receive a light smack on the head and a silent warning from her partner. Despite Kate's advice, Stevie proceeded to try even more offensive signs, only to be stopped again and again until the silent quarrel resorted into a sissy slap fight; both women were too friendly to inflict damage on each other. "Oh look, they've started hitting each other. Wait, why were they staring up at the camera?" he asked impatiently.
"Dr. Delfredi," a second voice spoke, bringing Stevie and Kate's slap fight to a halt. The two cadets looked back up at the camera. The voice was clearly female, and surprisingly unaltered from the sound of it, yet it belonged to no one they knew. "Your elbow is on the intercom button."
A long pause followed. "So it is," Delfredi stated. Again, silence followed; the duo waited. "Carry on with the test," he ordered before the intercom fell silent.
"Well, guess our guy isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer," Stevie commented as she turned back to her partner, "Where were we?"
"Trying to arrange these without getting killed," Kate reminded as she kneeled before the slides. "Although we may have just learned a few things about our friendly neighborhood mad scientist."
The dark-haired cadet raised an eyebrow. "Go on," she prompted.
"He's not working alone; he's got an assistant," Kate said, rearranging slides as she spoke, "Not to mention a big ego as well. And he's prone to mistakes. I'd say that tells us quite a bit."
Stevie nodded in agreement. "Right-o," she verified, "now let's get back to this puzzle before he taunts us a second time." Kate gave a short giggle at the Monty Python reference as her partner knelt opposite her. "Speaking of which, why didn't you let me insult him?"
"Think about it: Do we really want him to be angry when we're basically at his mercy?"
"So what? It's not like he can release all these monsters at once, can he?" Stevie joked, gesturing at the canisters of monsters around them.
"Well," Kate replied, "Delfredi is going to show us the hard way whether we like it or not. So the question is 'Do really we want to find out?'"
A short staring contest ensued between the two agents, each one daring to challenge the other's argument. Considering that a fifty-fifty chance of death was likely, the duo agreed that testing their luck would be a bad idea. "Okay," Stevie sighed as she picked up a set of slides to examine, "Back to puzzling our brains out. See anything useful?"
"I'm not seeing anything new yet," Kate stated, "What about you?"
"Not yet," Stevie replied. She tossed a pair of slides aside in frustration, ignoring them as they clattered to the floor. The dark-haired cadet began to reach for another group when she caught sight of something odd: An anomaly on some of the slides that had somehow gone unnoticed. "Hold the phone," she said, taking a few slides in her hands as she peered at them more closely, "There's writing on some of these."
Kate's head bobbed up. "What do you mean by 'writing'?" she asked, crawling toward her partner for a better look.
Stevie pointed out the detail as Kate edged closer. "Here, near the bottom. There's a section of letters printed here," she explained. She held the slide up to see against the fluorescent light. "Looks like its meant to be part of a word. Start searching."
The agents began taking second looks at the slides, and sure enough, a select number had pairs of letters printed on them. The duo took the slides and organized them into columns based on where each section of letters was printed. Then there was the matter of arranging the sections of letters into words, and then sentences. It took some time, but the cadets were able to form a phrase by holding the slides over each other.
"Okay, what have we got?" Kate asked, adjusting her glasses to read better. "Let's see, this combo reads, 'From whence they came'. That's vague."
"From whence WHO came? Umbrella?" Stevie asked. Kate shrugged in response. "That doesn't help us much. Some hint."
"'From whence they came'," Kate repeated, deep in thought as she searched for a connection. "'They' could be a WHAT, not a WHO,"
"So what could it be? The viruses?" Stevie tried, her voice laced with impatience.
Kate sighed. "Don't know."
"What about another combination?"
Kate glanced at the other sections of letters. "This combo seems to be the only one that works. The rest of the other word combinations are nonsense. This might be our hint."
"'From whence they came'. That's our clue? Is Delfredi frickin' serious!" Stevie objected. She and her partner had wracked their brains out for hours, only to be presented with a clue that made absolutely no sense at all!
Kate gave the two possible answers some thought. Both Umbrella and the viruses originated in Raccoon City and Arklay Mansion, so the queries made sense. But there was still the matter of forming the picture on the slides. "Hold the slides up to the lights," Kate instructed, "We might be able to see something."
The two agents held the slides up to the light, searching for an image. "It's still really blurry. I'm not seeing much," Stevie reported.
Kate leaned over to the set of slides her friend was holding, scanning the image for a detail that could have been missed. "It looks a bit like a map " the quiet agent said, "one of those hand-drawn, old-timey ones. See it?"
"So we're looking for a picture of a place 'From whence they came'," Stevie spoke, "It could still be Umbrella."
''They' refers to a group of something. We just don't know what that 'Something' is," Kate mused as she repeated the phrase in her head. The quiet agent drew her gaze away from the slides and glanced around the room. "What could 'they' be?" Her eyes scanned over the sealed cryogenic chambers, still considering the possibility of the first two answers. "Umbrella, viruses. What do those two have in common? Umbrella obviously created the viruses, and used them to create BOWs. The zombies, Hunters, Lickers, Tyrants-" Kate's thoughts stopped short upon revelation. "Wait!" she thought as she took another glance at each of the monsters. The BOWs in the room were from the first three chronological Resident Evil games, she remembered. Those took place in-!
"Stevie, let me see the slides with the maps and hint," she ordered.
"Okay, why do you want them?" the dark-haired cadet asked, handing the slides to her partner.
Kate took the slides. "I have a hunch. I hope I'm right," she said as she began loading slides into the projector. Once they were all in correctly, Kate switched the projector on. The wall lit up, projecting the clue and image on the screen. Sure enough, the image on the slide was a map of the area surrounding Raccoon City. And just outside the city, nestled in the Arklay forests, was the Umbrella Management
Training facility, with the Arklay Mansion not too far off. And to top it all off, the words 'From whence they came' were printed at the bottom.
The agents bit their tongues in anticipation, holding their handguns at the ready if they needed them. After several seconds of anticipation, the door to the left of the projection clicked open. Both women breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "We got it!" Kate breathed, happy that those nerve-wracking seconds had been for naught.
"What are we waiting for? Let's get out of here!" Stevie cheered as she pulled the door open the rest of the way, "C'mon buddy! One down, who knows how many more to go! Each success brings us closer to finding Jill and the others!"
Kate gave a soft smile. Stevie always knew how to cheer people up. "I wish I could share your enthusiasm," the calm agent said, "but I've had enough excitement for now."
Stevie gave a friendly shrug. "No biggie," she said, peering down the corridor beyond, "Looks like we got a bit of a walk ahead of us anyway. Let's go."
Jill dove behind a pile of crates, reminding herself to breathe light as to not alert the predator in the room. Her pulse was audible in her ears, the pattern constant as her own heartbeat. Even so, she had to focus. The crates proved to be an advantage and disadvantage. Jill had cover, but at the expense of a disrupted line of sight. Delfredi had set up a labyrinth.
The agent removed her cap and wiped away a few persistent beads of sweat that were trickling down her forehead, trying to get a grasp of where the copy of her old comrade in arms, Forest Speyer, was lurking.
The zombie may have caught sight of her at first, but Jill had speed and cover. As long as she stayed out of the zombie's sensory range, she could hide. Shortly after Jill took to hiding, Delfredi had sealed the only exits of the warehouse, trapping her with the zombie inside. It didn't take long for Jill to figure out that she had no choice but to kill her former coworker.
There had been plenty of chances to do it. But after freezing up at several clear shots, Jill found she didn't have the will to shoot him for the second time in her life. Her fingers just wouldn't pull the trigger. She was able to do it in the mansion, when her life had depended on the short time window she had to react. But now, when Delfredi gave her all the time in the world, she couldn't do it again. "Goddamn him," the agent cursed as she snuck around the crates.
Once the opportunity reared its head, Jill crept up behind the zombie and jumped onto its shoulders. A loud, sickening snap followed a sharp twist of her legs, and she leapt off quickly as the zombie fell forward to the ground. For the second time, Jill found herself off guard. A zombie couldn't be killed unless they were either decapitated or had their brain destroyed, then burned to make sure they wouldn't rise at a later time.
"What's going on?" Jill thought as she stared down at the unmoving corpse. After nudging the body with her foot, the agent knelt at the zombie's side. There was no way the zombie could be a copy of Forest, Jill thought as she examined the body, the corpse would have had to be preserved and pieced together after the Arklay mansion blew up. A task like that would be nothing short of herculean. The female agent started to stand up when something caught her eye: a pattern of ink underneath the zombie's vest collar. Jill moved the fabric aside to find a barcode tattooed into the zombie's decayed skin. "Strange," she thought as she touched the inked pigment on the monster's neck, "What is this doing here?"
A sharp beep from the intercom invaded the agent's thoughts. "Well done Agent Valentine," Delfredi's voice emerged from the intercom, "I never expected you to fight my creature without a weapon, but I must thank you for exposing a rather . . . fatal flaw in my design."
Jill stood to face the shadows that hid the source of the sound. Time to be professional. "I have asked you before and I will ask again: What have you done here?" she demanded.
Delfredi chuckled in response. "That is for me to know and you to find out. Don't forget the truth, either. You already know what I am talking about."
Jill narrowed her eyes. "Even with the truth, I would never resort to methods as extreme as yours," she spat in response. The female agent was in no mood to be toyed with.
"Do as you will," Delfredi replied, "But you will soon find that my methods are the only way to eradicate what you wish to destroy."
Not soon after he spoke, one of the doors leading out of the room unlocked with a click and swung ajar ever so slightly, inviting Jill to enter the next stage of Delfredi's tests. She entered the portal warily, unsure of what was next to come.
The corridor was even darker than the first entryway of the facility. All the lights had been turned off, leaving the two cadets to rely on their flashlights and natural night vision to see anything five meters away. Their path remained unimpeded for about half-an-hour until a wooden crate appeared in the middle of the corridor. The two agents stopped. "Huh, that's strange," Kate stated as she kept her flashlight trained on the box, "Why would this be here?"
Stevie turned off her torch and walked up to the crate. "Beats me," she said, "Any idea what's inside?"
"Only one way to find out," Kate replied. Stevie turned to face her friend, and with a nod of permission, the excitable cadet grinned wildly, brought her steel-protected boot up, and smashed it into the crate.
Despite the distance from the box, Kate shielded her face from the flying debris. Upon hearing the last pieces clatter to the floor, Kate caught a glimpse of the box's contents. "Ammo?" she asked, "Who would leave these out here?"
Stevie picked up one of the smaller boxes of bullets. Upon scrutinizing the package, the dark-haired cadet realized the bullets in the crate were the exact same type as the ammo the BSAA provided. Then she realized WHY the bullets had been placed there. "Oh geez," she warned, "Remember the what happens when RE games give you ammo?" Kate nodded. "It probably means there's something really, really, really bad around the corner."
No sooner than she spoke, a hidden intercom was activated and Delfredi's voice broke into the conversation. "Nice to see you survived the first round of 'Playtime'," he spoke, "But it will only get harder from here on out. Have fun."
"That doesn't bode well," Kate commented under her breath after the intercom shut off.
"Yeah. Better take as many as we can carry," Stevie added. She crouched to the floor and began to scoop up boxes of ammo in a manic fashion, stuffing them into the pockets of her uniform as quickly as possible. Upon witnessing this behavior, Kate shortly followed suit. Within minutes, the two cadets had refilled their spare handgun magazines, with one in the chamber, and their pockets sinking downward with bullets. Once stocked up, the duo moved onward.
"It's real quiet down here," Kate whispered to her friend, taking note of how much louder her everything had sounded earlier. Aside from their footsteps and breathing patterns, there was little other sound. It sent the quiet agent back on hyper-sensory alert. This much stillness was alien to her.
"Yeah," Stevie added, "too quiet." Obvious cliché aside, the dark-haired cadet's instincts agreed. Unless they had somehow gotten underground, it was odd that there would be no background noise in a lab facility as big as this one. And the closeness of the dark corridor wasn't helping the younger agent's nerves either. Nor was the distant rumbling.
"Wait, rumbling?" Stevie thought as she looked to the floor beneath her.
"You feel it too?" Kate's voice broke the younger agent's concentration. Stevie turned to find her partner crouched to the floor, holding her balance while one hand felt the tile in front of her. The shockwaves pulsing through the floor could give her an idea of what was causing the ground to shake under their feet. "Something's moving," she warned, "… A lot of big somethings."
"How big? And where are they?" Stevie asked, backing up nervously. The rumbling was getting stronger. The dark-haired cadet's hand went to her handgun, if only for a feeling of security.
Kate focused her attention back to the ground. She sat still for two seconds before her eyes widened in shock. "They're coming toward us!" she warned, jumping to her feet and pulling her gun. "Get ready!"
The duo jolted to attention, eyes focused and guns aimed down the hallway. The rumbling grew fiercer and fiercer. As sweat began to form on the cadets' palms, the source became clear. As quick as the wind, a mass of Hunters flooded out of the darkness. The trainees' eyes grew wide.
"Shit!" Kate squeaked under her breath.
"Run!" Stevie shouted.
Both girls turned tail and ran as fast as adrenaline would allow. There were far too many Hunters to fight head-on; they would be trampled to death just as the Hunters struck. There was no choice but to flee. Even a door would be no match for the horde.
In spite of fast footfalls and her own pulse, Kate found her thoughts. "Gotta get rid of them!" she thought quickly, "where do we go!" Glancing up ahead, she saw a steel bulkhead beginning to inch downward. As she and Stevie got closer, the bulkhead sped up and slid down faster. It was their only way out.
"C'mon!" Stevie encouraged as she got closer, "Almost there!"
The cadets saved their breath as they got closer to the closing bulkhead. If they were lucky—
"No no no no! Don't-!" Kate thought rapidly, only to have the remaining bulkhead hit the ground, forcing the duo to skid to a halt in front of it. "Dammit!" she cursed. "There's no way I can hack it in time!"
"Then grab your gun and start shooting!" Stevie ordered as she aimed into the oncoming crowd. "These bitches of sons aren't slowin' down!"
The agents-in-training began firing upon the Hunters. Few went down at first, only to be killed underfoot by their brethren. "Aim for their faces! Blind firing isn't helping!" Stevie advised as she loaded a fresh clip into her gun.
The firefight continued. Within seconds, clips were depleted and ejected from their homes, only to be replaced by another. Bullet casings fell to the ground like raindrops, whereas the Hunter bodies became a wall of scaly flesh, piling up as they fell.
" Damn! These guys are endless!" Kate commented, "I'm running low on clips! Any ideas!" When she received no answer, the older cadet turned to her friend. "Stevie?" Her friend didn't respond. The dark-haired cadet's blue eyes stared at the mob of Hunters, unblinking. "Stevie, stay with me! This is a bad time to be catatonic!"
Stevie remained unresponsive for several seconds before speaking. "Hey Kate," the dark-haired cadet uttered, "Since we're probably going to die here, I got a confession to make."
"Make it fast!" Kate replied as she fed her gun a new clip, "I doubt we have much longer to say anything!"
"Remember that session where Ada made us stay up for nighttime surveillance training?" Stevie shouted over the gunfire.
"Yeah, the morning after was terrible!"
"After we did that I went to the kitchens and ate the leftover sandwich you bought back from our last day in town! Sorry!"
Kate thought about what her partner said, and her eyes widened once she realized what those words meant. "Wait a minute, you're the one who ate my extra Philly Cheesesteak? I was saving that for after training!"
"How was I supposed to remember that sandwich was yours? I was sleep-deprived!" Stevie argued as a Hunter fell at her feet in death, "And I'm sorry!"
"Apology accepted!" Kate replied as her hand reached for a new clip, but felt nothing. "I'm out of clips!" she announced, "No time to make more!"
Stevie's free hand flew to her pants pocket, searching for the familiarity of cold metal. "Me too!"
Right after Stevie spoke, a sinister revelation dawned upon them. This was it. The end. They were going to die here and there was nothing more to do. The biggest of the Hunters drew closer. The two agents closed their eyes and braced for the worst.
But it never came.
A light, high-pitched whistle broke the tension. The Hunters stopped in their tracks, totally transfixed on the sound of the whistle. A second whistle tone sounded, lower in pitch than the first. The remains of the swarm turned tail and charged away from the two agents, leaving them to stare in confusion as the Hunters thundered into the shadows. After a short period of stunned silence, the agents were able to speak.
"Wha- what was that!" Stevie shouted, "They just left us alive? How could-? That's not exactly—"
"In their nature?" Kate tried to finish.
" . . . I was gonna say 'weird', but that works as well," Stevie said as she checked her gun's empty magazine and slammed it shut, reminding herself to fill the empty clips ASAP. "Let's keep moving."
"Yeah," the glasses-wearing cadet agreed. "Never thought I'd be glad to have extrasensory reactions. My poor nerves feel like live wires right now."
Stevie nodded. "But you'll be okay later, right?" she asked. Kate nodded affirmative. "Good. Now that the bad stuff is over, we can both relax."
The two cadets resumed their journey down the corridor, climbing over dead Hunters as they moved forward. After five minutes, the ceiling grew higher, revealing windows that looked down into the corridor. The lights were on in the rooms on the other side, casting a tinted blue light into the corridor, as if the agents were underwater. "Peaceful," Kate thought as she walked alongside her comrade, staring up at the windows as the blue light washed over their faces. Each of the windows and their contents was uniform, save for one.
A dark blue figure stood in the second-to-last window. Kate watched the shadow closely. Judging from the figure's hourglass shape, the figure had to be female and looked to be wearing a lab coat. "Probably a dummy," the brunette agent thought as she glanced up the hallway. Finding the path ahead clear, the quiet girl turned her eyes upward again, only to have them widen in shock two seconds later. The 'dummy' had moved.
Kate froze. "Stop. Someone's watching from the window," she hissed a quick warning. Stevie halted in her tracks.
"Is it someone we know?" the younger cadet inquired. Kate shook her head. "Are they still there?" The quiet brunette checked the window and shook her head again. The 'dummy' had run out of sight. "Never mind. It doesn't matter now." Despite those words, the thought that someone was able to sneak up on them chilled the pair to the bone. Sensing the presence of others was one of the lessons that Ada had drilled into them from the start. Whoever had been watching had an advantage. "Let's just keep moving, alright?" With reassurance, the two agents resumed their trek down the shadowy hall.
"Oh, by the way, if both of us somehow manage get out of here alive, you owe me a Philly Cheesesteak," Kate added. Trivial as it was, the thought of a warm steak sandwich was a welcome distraction from their almost-death experience.
Stevie gave a short chuckle as her partner fell into step beside her. "Fine by me. I'd rather have a nice juicy burger if we manage to get out of this little nightmare."