I do not own Resident Evil or any of the characters.
Final Obstacle
Agent narrowed his eyes as he limped through the door out of the stairwell. They were on the very last floor before the elevator down to the control room, but here, he stopped, as did Sheva when she stepped out beside him. The floor was one enormous storage chamber, and the only thing being stored in it were containment tanks. Hundreds of them, or more, and each one filled with some kind of enhanced infected from one of the major viral outbreaks. As Agent's eyes swept around the room, he could see Lickers, Lepoticas, Tyrants, El Gigante, at least one Ogroman, a creature with only one arm but with it bigger than its entire body that had been labeled Bandersnatch, a huge bat insect thing that Agent recognized from the Uroboros outbreak report in Africa, a vaguely humanoid creature that had grey leeches extending from is body that Agent believed was called Queen Leech and which predated the Racoon City or Spencer Mansion incidents, Uroboros failures, Crimson Heads, Revenants, Glasps that were identified only by their tapping on their glass and their buzzing wings, G-Creatures created by the G-Virus, a massive spider-like creature from Africa known as U-8, a second U-3, a massive camouflaged serpent called Iluzija, Verdugos, a man who looked to have turned into a centipede between his bottom ribs and hip bones and extended about ten feet in the process, even William Birkin. Agent felt his entire body go numb as he stared around at the sheer number of the most deadly infected to have ever resulted from a virus outbreak, disregarding all of those in higher facilities. Beside him, Sheva was actually trembling.
"If any of these get out..." Sheva breathed, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Agreed," Agent nodded, also finding it impossible to speak above a whisper.
All through the massive chamber, the infected were sedated and sleeping inside of their storage tanks, with a few exceptions, and were unlikely to wake, but Agent and Sheva both knew the chances of their survival if they did. Finally, they both started forward silently, avoiding any tanks with a conscious infected or one that they couldn't see, like the Glasps. The tanks filled nearly all available space, so winding through them was like walking through a maze. Finally, however, they reached the halfway mark, only to stop as they found a large open area with a guard. Osmund Saddler. Agent glanced down at his pistol, then up at Saddler. They didn't have a big enough weapon for him.
"Oh shit," Sheva breathed. "We can't..."
"We don't have a choice," Agent said, raising his pistol. "We have to kill him to continue."
Sheva nodded, raising Stone's Bushmaster. Then, together, they opened fire and began to run to avoid Saddler's counter attacks with his Las Plagas' blades.
Chris slashed at Wesker with his knife, and Wesker avoided the slash with ease, kicking Chris away. Jill fired several shots at the same time as Sherry, but Wesker avoided the bullets, closing in on them quickly, only for Jake to slam a fist into his jaw. He staggered to the side, then began to block Jake's strikes for a few seconds before catching an arm and twisting it behind his back, then continued to pull it, wrenching it nearly out of socket as he used it to flip Jake sideways into the air, then kicked him into Jill and Sherry. A second later, he was avoiding Leon and Chris's bullets. Just as he drew a Walther PPQ he had with him, however, one of Ada's arrows stabbed into the ground at his feet. He glanced down just as the flashbang tied to the grenade went off, and Wesker staggered backward. Jake, Chris, and Jill reached him instantly, all three pummeling him with punches and kicks, bouncing Wesker between them all, dazed and confused. Then, finally, Wesker caught Jill's arm and spun, slamming her into Chris and hurling both, only for Jake to catch Wesker in a rear choke, the arm around Wesker's neck holding his opposite shoulder and the other arm behind Wesker's neck. Wesker dropped instantly, slamming Jake's back into the ground, only for Jake to hold tight, wrapping his legs around Wesker to maintain his own leverage while also keeping Wesker from having freedom of movement. Wesker grabbed his pistol, only for Sherry to shoot it out of his hand.
Just as Jake began to tighten his grip, however, Wesker's tentacles burst from his back, lifting him to his feet at the same time as hurling Jake into Sherry. All of the others began to fire, Ada using a Ruger MP9, but once again hit nothing. Wesker's tentacles grabbed a nearby motorcycle and hurled it into Leon, sending him bouncing away. Then, Wesker's tentacles exploded outward, more than two dozen of them, wrapping around everyone else and lifting them into the air.
"Enough of this!" Wesker snarled. "It's time for you to die!"
Just then, a block of C4 bounced off the road ahead of Wesker, then exploded. It blasted all of Wesker's tentacles, freeing everyone at the same time as hurling the opposing sides away from each other.
"Who the hell was that!?" Chris asked between bouts of coughing as his airway was freed of the pressure Wesker's tentacles had been placing on it.
Just as they all began to look around, Piers landed in front of them, electricity crackling and snapping along his right arm before he shouted in effort, the electricity flying out and slamming into Wesker, launching him away. Wesker shouted in pain, slamming into a wall and continuing to be held here by the electricity, spasming and contorting under the force of the attack for several seconds before it ended. Wesker fell to his knees, tipped forward, and crashed lifelessly to the ground as everyone stared at Piers.
"Piers," Chris breathed.
"Good to see you again, Captain," Piers nodded to him. "You guys all okay?"
"Here," Ada said, tossing him the same kind of arrow as she'd cured Deborah with. "It's the cure to the C-Virus."
Piers' eyes went wide before he jabbed the syringe on the end into his right arm. He grunted in pain as his arm began to spasm, then shrink, the markings on his face clearing, leaving him whole again. He stared at his arm in awe, flexing opening his hand, twisting his arm. Finally, he smiled, eyes watering.
"I can't...thank you!" he breathed.
Ada smiled and nodded. "The double of me you were chasing caused a lot of problems. I'm just trying to clean up the mess."
Piers nodded. "A double, huh? That would certainly explain-"
There was a blur of movement, a flash of red, and a crash, before a cloud of dust obscured everyone's vision. Jake sensed danger and bent backward as though playing Limbo, and less than a second after he had, Krauser's arm swept over him. It had mutated again, now becoming more blade than arm. Above the elbow, it was a cross between his arm and his Las Plagas parasite, then from the elbow down, it was a mess of infected flesh and short, curved blades along the outside of his arm and one on the inside near the end. It was more defined and deadly than his previous, frame-like version, and in his un-mutated hand he held the same knife he'd had when Leon had been trying to rescue Ashley Graham. Krauser slashed at Jake with the knife, and Jake leapt backward in a flip, narrowly evading the slash before landing on his feet again and narrowing his eyes as the dust began to thin. Krauser stalked toward Jake calmly, his muscles rippling ominously and grotesquely under his skin. On the ground behind Krauser lay Ada, a deep gash starting at the crown of her head and ending in the back of her left calf, her blood dripping from Krauser's mutated arm's blades.
"One down," Krauser grinned wickedly.
"Knife," Jake said, holding his hand out.
Chris tossed his toward Jake, and Krauser lunged, slashing with his mutated arm. Jake stepped forward, jumping and slamming a kick into the inside of Krauser's arm where there were no blades, pushing off of the arm to jump to Chris's knife. As he landed on his feet, he deflected Krauser's knife over himself with Chris's, then flipped the knife to reverse grip, stabbing at Krauser. Krauser's arm swept down from the side and Jake ducked under it, Krauser stepping to the side and receiving no more than a scratch. Jake stood and slashed, splitting Krauser's side open, then hurled the knife to Leon, who was beginning to push himself up. Then, he kicked the inside of Krauser's right wrist, knocking his knife from his hand before twisting and drilling a punch into Krauser's face. Krauser shouted in pain, slashing wildly with his mutated arm, but Jake ducked under it again, slamming two punches into Krauser's face, knocking him back several more steps. Krauser lunged, stabbing with his arm, but Jake leaned out of the way, slamming a palm strike into Krauser's sternum, breaking it, then swept his legs out from under him before pivoting and slamming the sole of his boot into Krauser's ribs, shattering most of them and hurling him backward. Krauser bounced and rolled to a stop beside Leon just in time for Leon to drive Chris's knife down into his face through his eye. He ripped out back out and drive it down into the other side before kicking Krauser's jaw to knock his head to the side before driving it into his temple, this time leaving it there.
"Is it over?" Leon asked. "Was he the last one?"
"Yeah," Chris nodded. "Leon...He..."
Leon nodded, staring at Ada. "I know."
"Leon?" Agent's voice asked from heir communicators suddenly. "Chris? Jake? Anyone?"
"We're here," Leon said. "Where are you?"
"Lisen carefully," Agent said. "There's something I need to ask you."
Agent ducked to the side from Saddler's Las Plagas' blade, firing into the face on the end of one of the parasite's tentacles. With that shot, he was down to two bullets. Just as he realized that, Sheva's gun fired a burst into Saddler, then clicked. Sheva tossed it aside, drawing her own pistol, which she only had one magazine for. She glanced at him, and Agent glanced around desperately, then turned, firing both of his shots into a storage tank. Sheva's eyes went wide as the gas filling the tank began to rush out and surround Saddler, but despite Saddler staggering away, he remained standing. However, putting Saddler to sleep wasn't his plan. The thing inside of the tank was. With a thundering crash of shattering glass, a massive, clawed hand exploded from the glass, the hand bearing three claws in place of fingers and one in place of a thumb, then bulging, black flesh along its swollen arms, grey skin, and an angry expression on its face. The Super Tyrant roared, taking a step toward Agent, only for Saddler's blade to tear across its abdomen, sending it crashing back into its storage tank. A second later, the Tyrant roared again and all but exploded from the tank, crashing into Saddler and slashing, blood flying from Saddler's parasite. One of Saddler's legs slammed into the Tyrant and sent it flying. This time, it exploded into three tanks, shattering them. A Glasp, a Lepotica, and a G-Creature all tumbled to the ground and Agent swallowed hard.
"Uh...we should..." Agent began, backing away from the freed infected, toward the elevator to the control room.
"Yeah, we should go," Sheva agreed.
They turned, beginning to run as the various infected began to fight, Saddler killing he Glasp as he struck at the Tyrant again and the G-Creature tackling the Lepotica. More glass broke, more roars echoed, and Sheva and Agent pushed themselves faster.
"I really hope that elevator's air-tight!" Agent said as they ran.
Finally, they reached the elevator and hurled themselves in, Sheva hitting the down button and sealing the door just as a massive cloud of blue gas began to roll pas the last line of storage tanks. The elevator hissed as it pressurized, sealing the Lepotica's C-Virus gas in the storage room, then dropped instantly, and Agent sighed. He leaned back against the wall of the elevator, breathing heavily as his injured leg and his ribs throbbed.
"We made it," Sheva smiled. "We made it to the control room."
Agent smiled as the door hissed and opened. They both walked into the small, square room filled with one massive computer on the back wall and several smaller computers and control boards scattered around the room, and the elevator doors hissed shut behind them.
"So, you know how to work that thing?" Sheva asked.
"I think so," Agent nodded, walking over.
"Shit, it's biometrically locked," Sheva noticed.
"Don't worry about that," Agent said, tugging his glove off and pressing his hand against the handprint scanner.
A second later, the computer unlocked and Sheva leveled her pistol at him. "How?"
Sheva asked.
Agent stared at his hand in silence for a long few minutes, then shook his head. "Because it's my organization. They're behind all of this."
"How do you know?" Sheva asked.
"Started as a hunch when we found that other Agent," Agent said. "Then there were clues every time we accessed a computer. There was the fact that none of you seemed to know anything about the infected the others dealt with, with certain exceptions, but through my organization, I could list every infected in that room we just left by their name or designation, and now this. But mostly..." He stopped talking as he pulled up a list of files naming his organization by name and outlining the plans and method to revive each of the others' formerly deceased enemies. "Looks like they brought them back using the Progenitor Virus. It made them all more powerful, too, but it mostly just reanimated their corpses."
"How did they even get all of the corpses?" Sheva asked. "Albert Wesker especially."
"Him they cloned from his own DNA," Agent said.
"Cloned?" Sheva asked.
Agent nodded. "Derek C. Simmons created the basis of the process using the C-Virus to turn someone into a replica of Ada Wong, but the process was later perfected by my organization, according to a few of these documents. Looks like they use a combination of DNA and the Progenitor Virus to make the cells grow a full body, then altar the person's genes to their liking using a dead, non-infectious, controlled version of the G-Virus to target the gene strands they want to change and transform them into whatever they'd prefer."
"Wow," Sheva said. "I didn't understand any of that."
"They can custom design a clone to be as smart, strong, and charismatic as they want," Agent simplified. "Then it looks like the last step of the process is to download false memories using a neural implant, and the clone's ready to wake up from as early as seventy percent download completion."
"I don't understand most of that, either, but it sounds important," Sheva said.
"It is," Agent nodded, staring at a paragraph detailing the exact storage location of a clone's memories, which were saved as a backup to study after a clone went on a mission to evaluate their performance. He shook his head, then opened the computer's messaging system, only to stop, staring at a group of messages.
"What is..." Sheva stopped, staring. "Those are...the messages that brought us here?"
"I see," Agent nodded. "It was a trap. They brought you here to be killed by those with grudges against you. And to get you out of the way of their plans."
"What plans?" Sheva asked.
Agent brought up a video and hit play. The video was a simulation of a mass release of all of the infected and viruses. According to the simulation, within days of being released, the land-based infections would reach the nearest cities. Inside of a month, North America would be infected. Two months in, it had already claimed South America and Haos was just making landfall in Russia. By the end of the first week, he was expected to have created Lepotica and the C-Virus would begin spreading inward. By the middle of the third month, the entire planet was infected, with one exception. One group remained alive. The Organization. After the infection was complete, the simulation showed the activation of a second phase to the plan and a special kind of antivirus was spread into the atmosphere that would target infected and simply kill them, as opposed to curing them. It cleared the continents of the world within days, and the simulation ended with the Organization spreading their own members and families around the world to replace humanity, claiming the Earth as theirs.
"Jesus," Sheva breathed from in front of one of the other control boards. "They're insane."
"Yes, they are," Agent agreed. "But the simulation is accurate for infection rate. If everything here got out, that's exactly what would happen."
"Then they can't get out," Sheva said. "We meant to set the self-destruct anyway."
Just then, a video call appeared, and Agent stiffened before answering, knowing who he'd see. Sure enough, the same officer who'd sent him here, the head of the Organization, appeared on the screen, watching only Agent through a camera directly ahead of Agent.
"Agent, you've done well," he said.
"Thank you, sir," Agent said.
"I trust, by now, you understand what's been going on?" the officer asked.
"I do, sir," Agent said, dropping his gaze.
The officer nodded. "You've outperformed all of our greatest expectations, and you outperformed those thought to be superior to you. Well done. You've earned a place with the Organization in the new world."
"Thank you, sir," Agent said. "What of the others, sir?"
"I'm afraid we can't have them getting in the way," the officer said. "The large red button on the right wall will begin Purge Protocol. Press it, wait ten minutes, then set the self-destruct for one hour. That will give you plenty of time to escape the blast. Once you have, send us your location and we'll send a chopper to bring you back home. That way, your hands will be clean, and here still will be no witnesses."
"Yes, sir," Agent said. "Of course. No witnesses. Understood."
The Officer nodded, then hung up, and Agent turned, sitting down heavily with his back against the computer, tears rolling down his cheeks. Sheva eyed him warily, but he shook his head.
"I won't hurt you," Agent said. "And I'm not starting Purge Protocol." He raised a hand to his communicator. "Leon? Chris? Jake? Anyone?"
"We're here," Leon responded. "Where are you?"
"Lisen carefully," Agent said. "There's something I need to ask you. Is everyone else there with you? Are you all there together?"
"No," Chris said. "We haven't seen Stone. And Sheva, I assume, is with you."
"Sheva's with me," Agent said. "Stone is dead."
"Copy," Chris said.
Agent stood, bringing up a simulation of the self-destruct, watching as each of the facilities and all of the connecting tunnels exploded, resulting in the entire mountain caving in. "How long will it take you all to get back to the top of the complex and escape through there? And to get off the mountain?"
"If we get really lucky on the way out and can avoid any infected, probably thirty minutes," Leon said.
"I'm going to give you forty-five," Agent said, setting the count, but hesitating. "Start running."
He began to countdown and an automated, female voice announced a warning throughout the entire complex.
"You disappoint me, Agent," the officer's voice spoke, Agent sighing. "I had hoped you'd be loyal, even if you are expendable, but you're still a failure, after all."
"I'd apologize, but I'm not sorry to wipe out all of these infected," Agent said.
"Don't worry," the officer said. "You won't. I'm going to remotely disable the self-destruct. But first..."
Several vents in the ceiling opened, and Agent felt himself go cold as a thin, orangish-brown smoke began to curl out of them.
"Enjoy that complex's failsafe," the officer said. "In a few seconds, the entirety of the complex will be flooded with that experimental new virus. I'll be interested to study its effects."
Agent's head whipped around rapidly, his gut clenching. There wasn't time.
"What do we do?" Sheva panicked.
"Put this on!" He said urgently, hurling the gas mask to her.
"What about-"
"I have an emergency spare!" Agent lied.
Sheva nodded, pulling the mask on and looking around worriedly. As she did, however, Agent typed frantically on the computer. Finally, the automated voice spoke again.
"Connection to main facility severed," the voice announced. "Self-destruct sequence will commence in forty minutes. Control Room Emergency Exit unlocked."
Sheva stared at Agent as he panted for breath, sinking down into a seated position against the computer once again, blood running out of his nose, eyes, and ears. He coughed, blood splattering across the ground, and his breath rattled in and out again. Sheva knelt in front of him, tears rolling down her cheeks.
"You lied," Sheva accused. "Why?"
"I couldn't...let you die," Agent panted, the blood from his eyes speeding up as he cried. "Kill me."
"What!?" Sheva gasped. "No! I'm getting you out of here so that they can-"
"Kill me!" Agent pleaded, wheezing and gasping now, his hands clenching and scrabbling against the ground. "I want to...die human."
A sob escaped Sheva, and she hugged him, Agent hugging her back, his entire body beginning to tremble from both sobs and pain. Finally, Sheva pressed her pistol to the side of his head, and Agent took a long, rattling, wheezing breath before she fired.
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