Disclaimer – This is strictly fanfic. I have no legal rights to any of these characters or trademarks.
Xaori – I wasn't sure how big of a role I was going to have Jasmine play, but I'm starting to really like the potential of her as someone for Daniel to play off of. As for the description of Leon . . . like Carlos, I really didn't want to like him but, dammitt, he's cool! LOL.
The fallen vending machines behind them, their clothes still damp and clingy but at least no longer dripping, Ashley and Will stepped through the next door. To their side was yet another doorway marked "Stairs." And before them, beyond a mat emblazoned with "Welcome to the Malebolge," was a transparent glass door leading out onto the courtyard. Ashley pushed through the transparent glass door and stepped into the moonlight.
She disappeared around the corner. Will was just about to go after her when he heard the scream.
Ashley reappeared, shaking.
"Nope," she yelled, running back into the hotel and slamming the door behind her.
"What is it?" Will asked.
"Nope," Ashley said again, moving towards the stairs. "Just nope."
It slammed against the glass. Bloody red, exposed muscles like it had been turned inside out and yet somehow still lived. Exposed wrinkly gray brain. Razor sharp claws and teeth. And an unsettling long tongue lolling out of its mouth as it crawled on all fours.
It rose up on its hind legs and began pounding at the glass.
Ashley threw open the door to the stairwell, Will on her heels. The monster crashed through the glass and bounded around the corner. Ashley and Will were already running up the stairs, but the creature managed to gallop through before the door fully closed.
Ashley turned on the stairs, unloading a clip directly at the monster's exposed brain. It jiggled like jelly as the bullets ricocheted off of it, seemingly to no effect.
Ashley turned, grabbing Will by the arm and pulling him through the next door. They both threw their backs against it, trying to slam it and hold it shut, but not before the creature's arm was through it, its claws reaching towards Ashley's legs, its body slamming against the door at their backs, trying to break through.
"Here's my plan," Ashley said, deliberately gesturing with her head towards a nearby hotel room. "On the count of three, we're going to run and hide in there."
"But we don't know what's in there," Will said. "What if it's something even worse?"
Now the tip of the tongue was wriggling through the crack in the door.
"Worse than that?" Ashley said. "I'm prepared to roll those dice."
They looked at each other and nodded.
"One . . . Two . . ."
Ashley fished out the keycard as she counted. They bounded to the door as the creature pushed through, Ashley sticking the card in the slot while it was still arm's length away. The second it took to register seemed way too long. But then they threw the door open, bounded in, and leaned back on it, this time managing to slam it right in the creature's face.
Then they looked up at the zombie they'd managed to hit with the door when they threw it open. It appeared to be stunned.
Without hesitation, Ashley grabbed the zombie and suplexed it.
It's head splattered into pulp on contact with the floor. Will stared, once again, in absolute astonishment.
"It's more about using your opponent's weight than your own," Ashley said with a shrug, peeking through the peephole in the door.
"Leon teach you that?"
"Not really," Ashley said. "It's just something I could always do."
"I have literally written entire books on you and not even scratched the surface."
"I contain multitudes, my friend." She backed away from the door. "Not seeing any threats out there. Not at eye-level, anyway. But I don't want to go out there until we've planned our next move."
She moved around the room, assessing it for any threats, then busied herself in the bathroom. She found a blow dryer in a bag on the counter, unbagged it and plugged it in, turning it on herself to take care of the remaining wetness in her hair and then clothes.
"So, what is our next move?" Will asked.
Ashley turned her gaze to the coffee pot on a nearby counter.
"That," she said. "Would you mind making us each a cup?"
"I suppose it's the least I could do for the woman who just saved me from being drowned by a giant octopus."
"And made you breakfast," Ashley added.
Will actually chuckled at that one.
"One Licker?" Jasmine said, shaking her head as she approached the security desk again. "That's your best move?"
"It did its job," Daniel insisted. "Stopped them from leaving the hotel for now. Buys us some time. At least until the storm gets here."
He opened a cigarette case.
"You can't smoke in here."
"Amidst all the crimes against humanity and nature we are already committing here? Why not?"
He fished a smoke out with his teeth and lit it, taking a deep drag and then exhaling directly into her face.
"This barely qualifies as research," she said. "You're just toying with them."
Daniel tapped his own skull with the fist clutching the cigarette.
"It's psychological warfare," he said. "I am creating the proper mental conditions to see the full effect the weapons can have on them."
"I think we should unleash Minos."
"Minos? That's what you're going with?"
"What did you want to name it? Camus? Sartre?"
"I thought he looked more like a Mike . . . maybe a Hank or a Ralph?"
Jasmine snatched the cigarette from his fingers, looked like she was about to extinguish it on the desk,
then reconsidered and took a drag off it herself.
"He detests when I taste like cigarettes," she said, "and I wouldn't mind that deterrent."
She watched the monitor as Ashley Graham and her companion raced away from the Licker and took refuge in a nearby room.
"I used to think she was so pretty. How'd she get so old?"
Daniel pulled his dark glasses down to the tip of his nose to stare at her.
"Thirty can't be that far around the corner for you," he said. "I have seen, and done, several very disturbing things. But nothing disturbs me nearly as much as you."
"Why do you take issue with me," she asked, "a researcher who seized an opportunity, rather than the centenarian cruising Oxford to pick up a scientific prodigy for a trophy wife?"
Daniel pulled the cigarette from the corner of her lips and reinserted it into his own mouth.
"Don't ask me for an opinion on morality," he said. "It bores me."
"I'm eager to see Minos in action."
"This is not your honeymoon," Daniel said. "There is no need to just hurry up and get it over with. We can take our time and savor this."
Jasmine crossed her arms and stared daggers at him.
"Has the mutation even progressed in any meaningful way yet?" Daniel asked.
"The injection is showing almost immediate results, yes."
"T-virus. G-virus," Daniel said with a sigh. "What are we on now? X, Y, Z-virus?"
Jasmine's smart watch beeped. She sighed and dismissed the notification.
"Time to give my spouse his daily sponge bath," she said. "If you'd like, I suppose I can take a look at Minos' progress and update you as I pass it on my way back to my office."
"So we find whatever goes on that shelf," Carlos said. "See where that leads us. And maybe, maybe round up any survivors as we search each floor for . . ."
He stopped as soon as Jill held a finger to her lips. She had just cracked the door at the top of the stairs, and apparently had not liked what she'd seen when she peeked through it.
She slowly stepped out into the hallway, holding the door open for Carlos and then slowly closing it behind him to not make a sound. She drew her finger from her lips and used it to point towards the ceiling, even as a huge bead of saliva dripped from the ceiling to the floor behind her.
Carlos followed her finger to where the Licker was clinging to the ceiling. They both held their breath and slowly, painstakingly made their way down the hallway.
They came to a door propped wide open by a utility cart covered in tools.
In the room they found what was left of the corpse of a maintenance man, gray haired and balding. There was no sing of anyone else in the room. Whatever had chomped on the maintenance man had already moved on.
Jill carefully removed the keyring from the man's belt loop, careful not to let the keys jingle as she examined it. Several small brass keys and an electronic key card with the word "Master" scrawled on it in permanent marker.
She mouthed "Bingo" to Carlos, who pulled out his copy of the blueprints again and indicated something.
They backed out of the room, carefully examining the hallway and the ceiling above them for any signs that the Licker was still hunting them.
Jill used the maintenance worker's master key to open the door to room 313, holding it carefully to slowly close it behind Carlos as they entered rather than risking it slamming shut.
A figure was slumped over a desk. Jill approached carefully, handgun drawn. She lifted his head off the desk. Foam was dripping off his chin. An empty cyanide bottle sat next to the dead man's hand.
Carlos stood over the bathroom sink, trying to make something out of the burnt embers of destroyed documents.
Jill began to back away from the desk, but something caught her eye. She grabbed the body by the wrist, noting the numbers scrawled in marker in the palm of the hand.
She scanned the room, then pulled open the closet door. Pushing the hanging clothes to the side, she found a small safe. Carlos stepped out of the bathroom, watching as Jill dropped to her knees to enter the scrawled numbers on to the safe's keypad.
A few musical beeps, and then the lock clicked open. Jill carefully pulled back the lid, then removed the plaster bust of a man with a very prominent nose and chin, crowned in a wreath of laurel. "Dante Alighieri" was etched into the base.
Jill studied the bottom, mentally comparing the base's circumference to the ring of dust on the shelf in the general manager's office.
"I think I just found a fourth of that key we're looking for."
"Nice work, partner," Carlos said.
"Not your partner," Jill said, rising to her feet and sticking the bust into her hip pouch. "I'm just a victim of your emotional blackmail. Come on. We still have quite a few floors above us."