Without a doubt, Umbrella's Chicago facility was proving to have the tightest security Alice had seen thus far. For the first time, she was spotted before she even managed to get in.
Luckily, she still got past the doors before the heavy-duty security shutter finished closing in front of them.
Unluckily, the very moment that she set foot in the entrance hall, she was met with the sensation of being smacked on the bicep with a hot metal rod.
A bullet had grazed her, and about a dozen armed Umbrella guards were showing up.
With mere seconds to spare, Alice ran. Round after round was fired, damaging the walls behind her as she moved.
She took cover behind a pillar, pulling out a pair of P-14s from her shoulder holsters so that she could return the favor.
BAM! BAM! A guy collapsed.
'Eleven more to go.'
Clearing the rest out was accomplished without further incident, and Alice was soon making her way deeper inside.
She was given approximately thirty seconds to catch her breath before she started to hear somebody near the hall she was approaching.
As she rounded the corner, a flash of silver came at her. She brought her arms up in front of herself and stepped back. A baton not unlike the one hanging from her belt struck her forearms hard enough to leave bruises.
The owner, a guard identified as Christine Baker, swung it a second time.
Alice ducked, then surged forward to seize the end of the weapon before Baker could properly get a third attempt going, wrenching it out of her hand with a single sharp movement while slamming her fist into her jaw.
Now unarmed, Baker rammed into Alice with all of her might to try and topple her. She was unsuccessful and, despite her attempts to cling on and keep pushing, Alice shoved her off.
When Baker collided with a door, Alice realized that the woman had taken something red with her.
Alice touched her face. Her bandana was gone.
Baker's eyes widened in realization. She took out her radio. "Initiate Pro—!"
With the stolen weapon, Alice smacked the item away, sending it sailing before grabbing her by the front of her uniform jacket.
Another guard showed up.
"Marshall!" Baker shouted. "The Project Alice protocol is—"
Alice didn't let her finish her sentence. She ripped the ID badge off her, scanned it on an electronic lock, opened the door to a storage room, reclaimed the bandana, and forced her past the threshold, locking her inside.
With that, Alice turned her attention to Marshall, hurling the baton at him. It whacked him square in the face. He fell, but it was already too late. He had successfully gotten out the call for her special protocol.
Attached to the wall at the end of the corridor, there was a small silver dome. It split open and what appeared to be a simple sentry turret poked out. She could hear another do the same behind her.
Except it wasn't a simple sentry turret. She already knew that.
"Shit," she cursed under her breath.
A white beam shot out from the end of its barrel. She flung herself out of its path.
The laser connected with the second device and, to Alice's immense displeasure, they both began to locomote out of synch on the tracks they were attached to. The movements caused the deadly beam to start shifting in every direction, leaving her to either avoid it or get cut through like butter.
She brandished her pistols again, intending to damage the weapons like she had back in Milwaukee. However, when she pulled the triggers, they didn't fire.
'This has to be the worst time to be out of bullets.'
The entire laser dropped low, coming toward where Alice was standing.
She jumped over it.
It began to head in the opposite direction, one side lifting faster than the other.
Alice moved closer to the higher end and quickly crouched, then jolted back the other way when it suddenly inverted itself. Near the toe of her boot, a small chunk of the rubber sole was sliced off.
She looked to where Mitchell, who had... 'ugh,' now been diced into three separate pieces, was lying closer to the far end of the hall. There was a Glock-17 strapped to his thigh that appeared untouched.
Alice needed to try and get it. Fast.
Dodging and weaving, she started to make her way over.
Mitchell was right there.
Sharply, both devices descended to about hip height and darted to opposing ends of the corridor, causing the laser to move diagonally across it. The only thing Alice could do to avoid it in time was fall backward.
The laser met the tips of her pointer, middle, and ring fingers on her left hand. Even to her, the burning sensation was intense and quite unpleasant. She landed, a muted cry escaping her.
With gritted teeth, she hurriedly crawled the rest of the distance, grabbed ahold of the gun, and got shooting, destroying both domes.
Stillness.
Alice let out a sigh of relief, which was followed by a slightly pained hiss as she grasped her wrist to steady her hand and inspect the damage. Her pointer finger had only been kissed by the white light. It wasn't bad at all, but the other two? The same could not be said. The entirety of her middle fingertip was gone, and about half of her ring fingertip was missing.
Lacerations, bruises, burns, hell, even broken bones would fix themselves before long, but what happened when parts of Alice's body were straight up gone like this? Would they regrow?
Could she reattach the pieces?
'Where are the rest of my fingers? ...I can't believe I just thought that.'
Alice searched. She didn't find them.
She searched some more. Nothing. There was only one conclusion. With a resentful glare, she stared into the deep metal grates that ran along the floors directly beside the walls and thought, 'Lucky today, aren't we?'
On the bright side (if there could be a bright side to getting part of you severed with a laser), the wounds weren't bleeding. The beam was so hot that it cauterized them as it passed through her.
After being sure to take all of Mitchell's ammunition, Alice headed toward the actual research area of the building, dealing with various other security implements along the way.
Every door now had an extra bar lock over it, but as evidenced earlier, it didn't matter much since she had already stolen a badge. That whole system definitely could use some work. Not that she was complaining. She scanned it at a random door and entered, closing it behind her.
The room was relatively small. It contained four computers, various shelves stuffed full of binders, and a weasely man in a lab coat. Perfect.
DESIGNATION: SEAN ARIAS || THREAT ASSESSMENT: LEVEL 2.
Alice pointed her stolen G17 at him as she slowly approached. He went stiff, backing away in turn.
"Hello. Arias, right? I need you to do me a favor. There's a particular file I want to see if you have in your database, so you're going to give me access."
"Uh..." Arias wet his dry lips. "You... Aren't you Project Ali—?"
"Don't call me that," Alice cut in. Her voice was quiet, but her tone was dangerous and he flinched as though it were loud as a gunshot.
"Sorry," he apologized hastily. "But whatever you're looking for, I'm not allowed—"
"That doesn't matter. I'm not asking you." She cornered him against the desk and pressed her weapon's barrel into his cheek. "I'm telling you, you understand?"
"Yes!" And there went the man's resolve. "What do you need?"
Alice gave him just enough space to turn himself around and use a computer. "A person's file. Rain Melendez Ocampo."
He did what she told him to, pulling up quite a bit of info. Perfect.
"Thank you." She pistol-whipped him, rendering him unconscious before taking his place and reading the text on the monitor.
Project Rain's body was recovered from downstream in the Arklay River [image here] on 10/01/02, the morning after Raccoon City was sanitized with a TNW in order to contain an outbreak of the T-virus.
Alice clicked on the attached photograph. It featured Rain stuck some brush hanging over the water's edge. Sans the broken arm that had gotten caught on a branch, she was in a perfect face-down drowning position. While far from the most graphic thing she had laid eyes on, Alice didn't have it in her to look at it for very long.
The helicopter originally sent to pick up the failed Project Nemesis [file here] was found crashed and burnt beside the river's waterfall. Approximately seven feet from the vehicle, Project Alice's body [file here] was recovered. It is believed five others [file index on suspects here] were also involved and survived, as evidenced by fingerprints left in the soot on Project Alice's skin and blood evidence found elsewhere at the site [images here].
Alice checked the file index and, yep, Jill, Carlos, L.J., Angie, and Terri were all there. She was relieved to find that none of them were listed as detained or deceased. It was a shame researchers like Arias didn't have high enough clearance to wipe their information from Umbrella's database altogether, though. Alice already knew that because in past visits to their other facilities, she had tried and the same message about required authorization would always pop up.
...Part of her wondered if, back when she was a high-ranking security officer, she would have been able to do that. Unfortunately, she had yet to remember enough to know.
Project Rain is believed to have not been in the actual crash itself, and instead fallen out of the helicopter around 60-80 feet from the ground and died shortly after landing. 11 separate bone fractures were recorded. We were unable to discern which were preexisting and which were from the fall. 34 separate lacerations and abrasions were recorded. We were unable to discern which were preexisting, from the colliding with trees or rocks during the fall, or from partially dragging along the river bed [see complete injury examination here].
Awful, awful.
As expected from an organism infected with the T-virus, Project Rain did not remain deceased. Upon being hooked up to an EEG, a small amount of brain activity was recorded. Approximately two hours into its transportation to this facility, the heart restarted. A heart rate of 27 BPM was recorded, which gradually increased to 40 BPM by time of arrival.
Project Rain, also involved in the Hive Incident on 09/28/02, is a unique case. From what we can gather from surveillance footage recovered from that night, it was initially infected with the T-virus from a zombie bite on the right hand. It was bitten again on the right forearm not long after by another zombie and was experiencing a slow progression of the infection.
'It...' Alice repeated with distaste. She began to mentally replace the pronoun with "she".
At some point while out of view of the cameras, a third and fourth zombie bite were acquired on the right hand and left side of the neck respectively. The neck injury is a point of interest. Tooth imprints and testing reveal that the creature responsible for it, while not yet mutated, was a carrier of the ε strain. Rather than attack and kill Project's Rain cells like the β II strain was, the ε strain began to assimilate its DNA.
When we next saw Project Rain, it was experiencing muscle weakness, vomiting, and mental fogginess. Some level of brain damage occurred. A late dose of the injectable antivirus helped put a stop to the body breaking down any further. Total assimilation was then allowed to take place, and accelerated healing occurred. This ability is present even now but has slowed down significantly.
There has been a noticeable improvement to Project Rain's senses of hearing and smell. This is typical of most T-virus creations. Touch has massively degraded. Also typical. Sight has improved. Atypical.
The carnal desire for human flesh is present...
For a moment, Alice was hopeful that Umbrella had at least found a way to regulate those urges for Rain, but it quickly became clear that they did not. They weren't trying to, either. That would get in the way of their research. Assholes.
The section regarding further mutations following the consumption of infected flesh or blood was mostly filled with things Alice already knew.
'Fangs, claws... Hm. Wait.' She scrolled further down. 'Decreased range of motion in the right wrist, increased bone density, unnaturally pronounced spinous processes... Which part of the spine is that again?'
None of those sounded too major, at least. The bone density might not've been a bad thing at all.
She clicked around a little more. The most pressing question still had yet to be answered.
...last moved to testing room 09.
There. Rain was here. Alice was already on her way.