Disclaimer – I own no legal rights to anything Resident Evil.
A/N – I'd like to say I'm going to try to have this finished by July when Infinite Darkness hits Netflix, but I think we all know at this rate that's not going to happen. Instead, I'll just have to try to stick to my original vision for this and not let the new series influence me, especially regarding the Grahams. Got some sinister vibes off Ashley's dad in the latest trailer, and I was not expecting that.
I meant to get to this sooner but I couldn't pull myself away from Village. Remember when I thought Heisenberg was going to turn out to be an older Carlos? Boy, was I off.
Evolution-500 – Thanks for the reviews!
"What's got you so hot and bothered now?" Jasmine asked.
Daniel stroked the thin stubble on his long chin.
"Who is Oliveira talking to?"
"Pardon me?"
Daniel began tapping various monitors.
"Mademoiselle Valentine is still in the main hotel, along with her new friends she barely saved from becoming fish food," he said. "Mademoiselle Graham is crawling around down in the vents."
"With her simp," Jasmine said.
"What is this word 'simp'?" Daniel asked. "Is that another Cockney thing?"
"Not quite," Jasmine said.
Daniel pointed to Carlos on the monitor again.
"So who is he talking to here, just out of view of the camera?"
"Himself, obviously."
Daniel shook his head.
"Not unless we've broken him worse than I thought. That's a very long conversation."
"Have you tried reversing the footage?"
"Yes. On several of the cameras. Still no sign of anyone approaching that gate. It's as if they knew where all of the cameras' blind spot are. Which means . . ."
"Which means you think there's a traitor in our midst."
Daniel removed his pointer finger from the monitor to shake it one time at Jasmine.
"Exactly. You may be smarter than you look after all."
Jasmine crossed her arms.
"Are you implying . . .?"
They both fell silent when they were approached by three men from the paramilitary outfit in tight formation, decked in body armor with the Umbrella logo, assault rifles at the ready.
"He wants to talk to you."
"Sounds like it's time for you to fulfill your wifely duties again," Daniel muttered.
"Not her," the man in body armor said. "You."
Daniel seemed to not have a retort for once. He rose from his seat, picking up his beret and pulling it down tightly over his head.
"Keep watching," he told Jasmine, indicating the monitor again. "Tell me what I miss."
He let the men with guns lead him into the director's office.
The old man was in his wheelchair, back to Daniel, so all the Frenchman could see was the liver spots on the back of his bald head and hand.
Major Meloni stood nearby. He still insisted on wearing the uniform from the military he had been dishonorably discharged from, even having gone so far as to somehow reacquire the insignia that had been stripped from him.
Meloni spat a wad of tobacco at Daniel's feet.
"You should have let me take the injection," Meloni said. "I could handle it. I'd be a better weapon than that private pilot."
"It doesn't work that way," the old man said. "That thing, whatever we're calling it, isn't controlled by the pilot. It's driven purely by the virus now."
"We're calling it Minos," Daniel said. "Mrs. George came up with the name. Well, actually the ancient Greeks did. But she thought it would be appropriate. The judge of the damned."
"I could handle it," Meloni said again.
"I don't care how well you think you've trained your body," Daniel said. "The virus would still kill your brain and then take over its signals. As much as I'd love to watch one of these great bugs implanted in you so I could drive you around with my little remote control."
Meloni tried to stand up taller, as if that would intimidate Daniel. As if the old man would let anything happen to him here.
"You'd be no good to me as a military technician if I was to let you become whatever you'd call that thing," Dr. Andrew George said. "Fabron, why are these interlopers all still alive? I thought you were supposed to be a fixer. Why haven't you fixed this yet?"
"It doesn't help that your young bride continually interrupts me while I'm trying to work."
George scoffed.
"You should thank me for providing you a beautiful woman to keep you company."
"If you don't like babysitting the boss' wife, I'd trade places with you in a heartbeat," Meloni said. "That pretty little thing can sit in my lap any time she'd like."
The Americans laughed. Daniel felt disgust rising inside him. Compassion for the girl? Impossible. He didn't even know what that word meant anymore. It had to be contempt for the Americans. But one of them happened to be his current meal ticket.
"The longer they're hunted, the better the show for our potential customers," Daniel said.
George scoffed again.
"We are at a crucial moment," he said, gesturing wildly with his liver spotted hand. "This whole operation has been meticulously arranged, like a stack of cards. I will not have it come crashing in on me now. We are on the cusp of a new world order, in which I will reign supreme as its god. I will mold . . ."
"Did you just roll your eyes?" Meloni asked.
George spun around in his wheelchair, staring them down with his beady little eyes.
"What?"
"Frenchie here just rolled his eyes at you," Meloni said. "Hey, try to show some respect for this great man."
"Surely, I did not roll my eyes at you," Daniel said. "I was just . . . thinking about something your wife said earlier."
"Damn fool of a woman," George said.
"Naturellement," Daniel said. "If I may, I would like to take action on that little insurance policy we discussed."
"Out of the question," Meloni said. "It's a waste of our resources, and of my men's time. If this stuck-up foreigner can't get the job done with all of these creatures at his disposal, what good would-?"
"Just humor him," Andrew said, wheeling back around and waving his hand dismissively. "At least he has a contingency plan."
"And, if it would not be too much trouble, perhaps the Major could bring us back something to eat as well," Daniel said. "All the Michelin stars in the world don't do any good when the entire kitchen staff is dead."
"Parasol Punch. Tequila sunshade. Bahama bumbershoot. Really?"
Jill held up a placard avertising Wong's signature cocktails.
"Because of the little cocktail umbrellas," Pierce said, picking up someone's leftover drinks as an example.
The familiar red and white on the decoration actually sent a chill down Jill's spine. This hotel wasn't being as clandestine about its connection to the corporation as she had thought.
She turned the placard over. There was a picture of another restaurant, located on top of the hotel, and a plaster bust, the kind she was looking for, was displayed prominently as part of the décor.
Zombies were rattling the gate on the other side of the pond.
"Why don't we just stay here?" Pierce asked. "Nothing seems to be getting through that gate, and it doesn't seem like there's anything left in here to attack us."
"I don't like it," Rosita said, shaking her head. "I feel like we're being watched."
Jill scanned the room again, then fired her pistol at a security camera until most of it was floating in pieces in the water.
"I still feel like we're being watched," Rosita said.
Jill turned back to the bar, where she'd lined up a wide variety of vodka bottles, and opened them.
There was a loud clicking sound, and they all turned to look as a large painting of goldfish in a pond slowly slid down the wall, revealing a large opening fading into darkness.
"We're not staying," Jill said, fishing a flask of lighter fluid out of her pocket and grabbing a wad of dishwashing rags she found under the bar.
A Hunter jumped out from the gap behind the painting, followed quickly by others.
"Anyone got a light?" Jill asked.
"I like your thinking," Pierce said. "I could go for a last cigarette, too."
Rosita tossed Jill a neon pink disposable lighter. Jill lit the rag she'd stuffed in to the top of one of the vodka bottles and lobbed it at the Hunters. They immediately caught fire, flailing in pain before falling to the floor as charred husks.
"It's the one cocktail I'm good at making," Jill said.
She tossed the next Molotov through the front entrance. The zombies kept assaulting the gate, even as what was left of their flesh burnt up. By the time the sprinklers activated, they were just heaps on the floor. The ear-splitting sound of the fire alarms blared.
Another group of Hunters was emerging from the gap in the wall where the painting had been, and Jill lobbed another Molotov their way before noticing something emerging from the pond.
Big, gelatin-like domes in florescent colors bobbed to the surface. Jill wondered where they'd come from. They hadn't been in that water when she had.
Beneath the domes, surrounded by long, stringy tentacles, were what was left of human bodies in chef uniforms. They flopped on to the restaurant floor and then managed to stand back up on their human legs.
All these sea creatures and aquatic décor was starting to remind Jill of her time on the Queen Zenobia. That had turned out to be nothing she couldn't handle. But she'd had a well-trained partner watching her back then. Now she had two civilians she had to keep an eye on.
She tossed another bottle their way. The orbs stretched, elongating and covering the vulnerable human parts. They slowly shuffled towards Jill and her companions.
"Why are the jellyfish-zombie-people fireproof?" Jill said. "Well, why wouldn't they be?"
She tried her best to lay down some suppressing fire, running to the front gate and throwing it up and open.
Pierce and Rosita ran after her. One of the jellyfish men's tentacles suddenly stretched out, barely missing Pierce and hitting the wall, retracting with enough force to leave several needle-sized holes in it. When he dodged the stingers, Pierce stumbled and fell to the floor.
A jellyfish man stood above him, poised to attack. Pierce closed his eyes and tried to cover his face as the stingers extended.
He felt himself being tugged out of the way. Rosita was pulling him to his feet as the stingers retracted from the ground just beside him.
"You saved me!" Pierce gasped in surprise.
"Yeah," Rosita said. "I guess I did."
Once in the hallway, Rosita found the nearest fire alarm panel and deactivated it, so they could hear themselves think again.
Another horde of the undead rounded the corner. Jill swung her weapon, knocking several of the zombies to the floor, then stomping the nearest decaying skull under the heel of her boot. She kicked another in the chest, sending them flailing back in to the horde, bowling several others to the ground. She aimed for their heads, firing off as many shots as she could before her clip was empty. Then she turned around as she reloaded.
Rosita and Pierce were swinging their arms and elbows, knocking back the zombies as far as they could. Jill fired from her new clip, taking out the zombies that were attacking her companions.
When she was sure the immediate threat had been neutralized, she quickly scanned them for any wounds.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Rosita said, nodding.
"Yeah," Pierce said. "Why?"
"Because you are definitely, definitely the kind of asshole who would get bit and not tell us," Jill said to him. "Come on. There's another restaurant I really need to see, and it's all the way on the top floor."
Will looked really confused as he crawled through the narrow vent behind Ashley.
"I don't get it."
"Get what."
"What you just told me," he said. "Their evil plan was to infect you, then mind-control you, so they could use you as a sleeper agent to somehow further their plot for world domination, right? So why did they keep trying to kill you? Shouldn't they have just had you dropped off safe and sound back at the White House? Or at least let you escape."
"I didn't really get it, either," Ashley said. "All I knew was that I could die, and that I really didn't want to. I was young. I was barely in college. And I kept thinking that was going to be my very last spring break. That I'd just wasted my entire life."
"And they didn't send, like, the whole army to save you? The only child of the most powerful man in the world gets abducted, and the response is just to send one guy?"
"But not just any guy," Ashley said. "It's Leon we're talking about. He made James Bond look like Inspector Clouseau."
"Now you're just blaspheming," Will replied.
Ashley suddenly put her hand out to motion him to stop, then a finger to her lips.
A voice came through the nearest grate.
"Stay back!" it yelled. "I'm warning you! Stay away or . . . Ahhhhhhh!"
A decapitated head rolled over the grate, dripping blood in to the vent below. Then the rest of the body collapsed on top of the grate, with a lanyard and ID badge falling from what was left of the neck between the slits in the grate.
Ashley pulled the ID badge out of the pool of blood.
"Is that the one Carlos was looking for?"
"No," Ashley said. "But it's five-star clearance. Hopefully that works, because I don't think we can hang around in these crawl spaces much longer."
"Now, how are we supposed to find Carlos again?"
Before Ashley could answer, long claws extended through the gaps in the grate. Ashley scrambled forward just as the claws pried the grate out of the ground, firing her gun over her shoulder at the deformed hand.
"Come on!"
Will crawled closer to her as quickly as he could. The face of Ashley's pilot, encased in an increasingly mutated mound of deformed flesh, peered down at them. It reached for them with its clawed hand, but they stayed out of reach.
Then the other hand lowered through the gap, the tentacles writhing and then stretching towards them.
Ashley pulled her knife, hacking at the tentacle fingers until they separated from the hand and flopped on the floor of the vent.
There was an incline in the vent, and she and Will slid down. They could hear the creature stomping around above them. It tore open the next grate behind them, trying to claw at them through it again.
Then it grabbed the edge of the vent and pulled, tearing through the floor and the duct like it was a tin can. It had another face, above the human one, with a long snout filled with sharp teeth, and it stuck that through the gap, gnashing its jaws at them.
As they continued to crawl, they heard it rampaging above them again.
Tentacles drooped down from the next grate. There were way more than five tentacle-fingers now, as though they'd multiplied last time Ashley chopped them off. But she had no choice but to chop at them again.
After she and Will scurried over the detached fingers, the claw reappeared, ripping open this grate as well. This time, Ashley got a good look at the glowing eye blinking at her from the extended arm, and she fired at it. Globs of orange blood splattered from it on to the vent floor and its pained groans filled the air.
"Hey!" a human voice called, and Ashley froze.
Carlos looked at his phone again. It was a miracle that it wasn't dead yet, the battery was so low. But it would take an even bigger miracle to actually make a call with it. No reception whatsoever.
He would have done anything to hear his wife's voice in that moment. To talk to his kids. To make sure they were still safe and well hidden. And that they weren't to freaked out by his insistence that they spend some time at his friend's place. He just wanted to know they were okay.
Jill had been right, as much as he hated to admit it. He should have told Maria everything, a long time ago. He had lied to himself that his past was irrelevant, anyway. That his days of hunting bioweapons were far behind him. But he was barely back from the honeymoon before one of his old contacts had tracked him down to feed him a tantalizing lead, and Carlos hadn't been able to resist taking a bite. He'd been breaking away from the family on "business" trips to keep chasing down similar leads ever since.
Jill. He also wished his phone would work so he could make sure she was okay. She could handle herself well, that was for damn sure. He'd seen what she could do first hand. But she was a friend. At one point, even a lover. And truth be told, if either of them hadn't had the other with them during the Raccoon City incident, they'd probably have spent their last moments shuffling around infected with the T-virus or bleeding out from Nicholai's bullets before having an A-bomb dropped on their heads to add insult to injury.
He could hear groans and growls off in the distance in every direction. He couldn't just stand staring down in to the crawl space, waiting.
He backed up towards the wall, then peered down the hallway in each direction before slowly making his way back to the gift shop. His stomach was growling. He grabbed the nearest salty snack he could find, a bag of popcorn, and tore in to it. Then he made his way to the cooler. He'd gladly kill for a cup of coffee, but right now a tall can of energy drink, lukewarm from the broken cooler, would have to do.
He heard a groan behind him, and didn't even hesitate before turning and shooting the cashier's rotting head off.
Then he heard what he thought for a moment was the echo of the gunshot in the small store. It took a few seconds to realize it wasn't an echo, but gunshots coming from the ventilation system.
He found a grate near the floor and recognized a familiar blonde hairdo on the other side of it.
"Hey!" he called. "Are you okay?"
"No," Ashley said. "Not really."
She pushed a card and lanyard through the grating.
"It's not the card you're looking for," Will said. "But it's still high clearance."
"It will have to do," Carlos said, taking a good look at the ID. "Thank you."
He bent down and started trying to pry away the grate.
Ashley turned and fired at something he couldn't see.
"We've got to go," she said. "Look for us on the ninth floor."
"What's on the ninth floor?" Carlos asked.
"Yeah," Will said. "What's on the ninth floor?"
Ashley fired her gun again.
"No time to explain," Ashley said. "We've got to go!"
Then she and Will vanished, barely a second before a multitude of long tentacles peeked out from the vent.
They disappeared again. And then there was a pounding on the gift shop wall.
The monster smashed through, taking down shelves of items as it entered.
Carlos swore and then ran back to a door on the other side of the shop, quickly inserting his five-star clearance card.
He found himself in a wide open room of the convention center, several sets of stairs on either side of him, crawling with the undead. And any second now, the monster would be joining him.
Carlos swore again.
"This is getting old fast."