Chapter 21
Bargain
Part 2
Chris Redfield. Ultimatums 102. A sermon delivered on an ice and snow crusted driveway. Six o'clock on an overcast December morning. Claire bundled in her jacket, a knit cap pulled low over the tops of her ears. Chris hunkered down beside a wheel-well. 'Ultimatums are verbal weapons. They're word bullies.'
The sting on her cheek didn't feel verbal. In fact, it felt pretty damn physical. Her jaw was on fire. Fingernails broken and bent, the imbedded wooden slivers throbbed pain into the fleshy parts beneath the tips.
I'm going to puke. Her thoughts spun like a strobe light bouncing off the sides of her skull. It isn't fair. He smells like my brother. Evil should reek of corruption, rotten egg, and vomit. Demented perversion and lamppost lickin' crazy shouldn't smell like trust. Chris is good and decent and...and...
'Ultimatums never work. Know why?'
Claire ran a glove under her runny nose and shoved her hands deep into her jacket sleeves, hugging warmth to her chest. An extra pair of socks would have been nice. If Chris talked less, he'd swap faster.
'Because you can't control the person on the receiving end of the threat.'
It looked like Sandra, Shandra, Shandee, whatever the heck her name, had done a damn fine job controlling her brother. Miss Two Cans of Aqua Net wasn't the one sucking bone-chill wind into her lungs, and working up a clammy sweat changing out a slashed tire.
'You think you've got 'em cornered. You'll do this, if they don't do that. It's a tattle-tale game, and I'll let you in on a secret...'
Wesker had given her nothing concrete to prove his advantage. Nothing, she moved her jaw side to side, except a sore cheek, a swollen lip, and the promise of his unwanted affection.
Said lip curled in disgust. The same promise he'd delivered on a cold-swept corridor floor in Antarctica.
'Despise me. Suffocate me in your anger. Save a serving of equal measure for your brother. He is the instrument that brought you to me. Pushing. Prodding. Never satisfied in his tireless crusade. He has made it his business to interfere in my business. Tell him what I have done. What I will do. Ignite his rage. I flourish in his contempt, refugee in his vengeance. Boo-hoo your own innocence." He'd pressed his forehead onto hers. "I look forward to regaling him with the details. Using you. Discarding you.'
Take away the threat and the ultimatum has no power. Her eyes flashed bright, September sky blue.
Wesker's face was blank as a white oil painter's canvas, impossible to read. Watching. Waiting.
He said he's never lied to me. What was his word worth? Did it hold more value than her brother's? According to Wesker Chris's closet was filled to the brim with a secret slagheap just waiting to topple on Claire's head when she turned the handle and opened the door.
'Be prepared for some nasty, fuckin' fallout. People vindictive enough to think they've got you bent over a barrel, pants around your ankles, are ready to fuck. Grit your teeth. If you won't deal, try not to squeal.'
Chris...He could have warned me. How deep did the lie sinkhole go? Was Wesker talkin' buried pet in the backyard deep, or half way to China steep? All I wanted was a steak. Her stomach growled.
Leon knew. He'd accepted the occupational hazards when he put on his uniform and slipped his gun into his holster. Damn it! Who made it my job to make sure Mr. Super Duper Awesome Agent lives to see daylight?
They'd both been spun, wrung, and hung out to dry. What else does Leon know? Were they all in collusion together? Dumbasses!
She gulped, and relaxed her tense muscles.
A morphine bag, no intravenous line required. She'd chug it like an alcoholic. A rib-bursting rip off a rolled fattie to render her body lettuce numb and her brain imbecile dumb for the next five, God forbid ten, what were sure to be, impossibly long minutes.
'Take away the threat and the ultimatum has no power.'
She fidgeted a leg out from under his weight and slowly coiled it around his waist with a slight upstroke of her knee on the back of his thigh.
Michael Buffer's beefy baritone voice yodeled his infamous 'Let's get readddy to ruummmbbbllllle' in her head.
Wesker's eyebrow arched, and he said nothing. Her wrists suddenly released from his iron grip constraint.
Claire gritted her teeth. His name poised on the tip of her hesitant tongue, foul as a curse word in a church.
"Albert..." She beamed a wicked grin of her own, unnatural and forced. I'm going to make you gag regret for this, this, and everything else you've ever done. "There's no need for further violence. I promise," she crossed her big toe over its closest counterpart, "to behave."
"Docile is not in the Redfield dictionary."
She traced his arms up and over his biceps.
Mass hatred and revulsion aside, awful implications considered and momentarily suspended, the situation could have been worse. Wesker wasn't Leon, but at least he was clean. Sans halitosis and paunch-gut.
Her hand lingered on the back of his neck, drawing his head closer as she ran her fingers into the surprisingly soft locks of hair.
Soap scrubs everything. Claire pinched her eyes shut when their mouths met. Everything, except my conscious.
There were Leon images. His face boiled beet red, shaking his head. Repulsed by her actions. 'You should have fought him.'
Easy for you to say.
Chris's equally crimson face, his glassy gaze filled with enough shame to reduce her self-respect down to insect size. 'That's some traitorous bullshit. What the fuck were you thinking?'
That the world isn't large enough for the both of you, and what Wesker did to you is nothing in comparison to what I'm going to do.
Wesker. 'How did it feel to sell yourself to a man like me?'
Pretty. Damn. Terrible.
A few movie stars she wouldn't mind sharing a one-night, hell, two-minute tumble in the sheets. Fantasy encounters a damn sight more comforting than the reality of the demanding, stonehearted, son-of-a-bitch unbuttoning her jeans.
Wesker's tongue parted her lips. "Moan for me."
Not for all the sand in the Sahara! This is what happens when you lie. It revolves around to bite you in the ass! And it wasn't Chris's half-naked rump scraping mildewed hardwood. Thank you, very much, Bro! Physical wounds were temporary. Mental scars endured a lifetime.
A grimace here, an involuntary squirm there. Neutralizing his threat did not mean giving him an ounce of pleasure in exchange for a pound of her emotional pain.
The heat of his lips seared soft kisses onto her cheek, trailed down into the hollow of cleavage between her breasts. "You think you are so sly."
Her breath caught in her throat.
His head snapped up, and the mischievous grin returned, folded back into his mouth corners, back where it somehow belonged.
"A seduction suggestion, if I may? At least make an effort to have your facial expressions match your suggestive body language. You look as though you have inhaled noxious gas. It is rather...unattractive. If you intend to whore yourself for my benefit, extend me the common courtesy of an Oscar worthy performance. You are a woman, and women are excellent sexual frauds. I am not a fan of poorly acted, neighborhood, playhouse theatre."
"Wesker-"
Not her face this time, her hair. His hand burrowed in the tangled mass, palming her skull like a ball, and the sound of ripe carrots being ripped from the ground as he hauled her to her knees.
"Albert when you tease. Wesker when you freeze."
Owww, owww, owww...owee...Instantly on her feet, body half-hunched, moving with him step for painful step.
"Let go! Damn it, Wesker, you're pulling it out by the roots. Albert! Do you want to see me bald?"
"Are you finally willing to dicker? It means barter. You give me something I want, and I will give you something you need."
"I need, and want, my hair! You're not bargaining, Wesker. You're taking advantage. There's been no reciprocal give and take."
"A moment ago you seemed quite eager to 'give' in your pathetic attempt to remove yourself from the equation and spare Prince Charming a disconcerting visual. The 'take' is a minor detail I can easily rectify."
"Wesker! This is madness. Stop! You're hurting me. You want the road of least resistance. You want me to listen-"
"I am afraid you will be required to do more than lend me your attentive ear."
"I'll do whatever it takes to-"
"Relieve a compromising position."
"What else did you expect? You claim you know so much. You're some all-knowing swami. You must have known how I'd react. Wesker, you can't punish me for being myself. Acting myself."
"In a word, cooperation."
He spun her around, wedged her between the table and himself and inched her backward, the weight of his chest pressed her down, further down, with each word he spoke. Teeth clenched.
"Consider this Kennedy's final warning. Breathe in a manner I dislike, and he dies. Move in a direction you were not ordered to go, and he dies. Speak in a tone that displeases me-"
"And he dies." Claire's lips quivered.
He gripped her chin, squeezed her lips together, and ran a thumb over the plump contours. "See how easy it is to compromise. Agree is your new best friend. You had better own my generous mercy like your regrettable last name."
Claire was thirteen again. Age innocence wouldn't save her. Her brother wasn't going to materialize out of thin air to throw himself in harm's way. The submission price for this Let's Make A Deal round more valuable than computer access, and worse than the embarrassment of a poinsettia eye sore wrapped around her slender frame.
Instead of a mound of sweater fugliness on the table, there were other things, items she'd failed to notice in the initial panic, escape, rush flushed through her veins.
A flaming, hussy-red pair of stiletto pumps, her shoe size imprinted on the inner heels.
A laptop with a spinning Earth logo overlaid on the top of a flaming skull and crossbones background.
Just out of reach, an arm's length away, there was a wide strip of plastic sheeting fastened over a curved metal rod. The rod anchored to the ceiling timbers with thick iron nails. The tattered folds jutted out a good six feet from the wall.
Her gaze was drawn to the makeshift shower curtain. Her brother had it all wrong. Wesker wasn't all doom and ghoul, and evil wrapped in skin without a soul. Wesker was a showman. The P.T. Barnum of viral manufacture and sales. Proud of his wicked, warped sense of humor and grotesque bio weapon menagerie. What else is Chris wrong about?
I've seen this before. In my dream. Maroon. Sherry. It was Sherry. Floating. And he'd done something unspeakable. Something hideous.
The hairs on her arms prickled and her mouth ran dry as chalk. Afraid. Afraid of what a top hat and redcoat ringmaster Wesker might show her. Terrified of what she might see. Leon. Behind the sheet. She felt it. Felt it like the flood lamp heat on her face, Wesker's warm breath in her ear. As sure as she was hungry Leon was here, right here in the room, and like a train wreck she found it impossible to look away.
The hellish-orange gleam in his eyes flickered fire-ember red. He followed her gaze, lowered his face onto hers, and there they lay, cheek-to-cheek, smooth skin on smooth skin.
"I wish to run an experiment. Your participation is mandatory. Prince Charming is optional. Agree to my terms, and Kennedy goes free."
"There is no way I'm going to let you turn me into one of your lab monkeys, Wesker. I'd jab those spike heels into my jugular before I'd let you Frankenstein me into a freak."
"No needles. No serums. No test tubes. No cages. The experimental scope is personal, not chemical in nature."
"I want to see Agent Kennedy."
"Agent? Agent Kennedy? My, my. Do you think formality will save him? I will miraculously be deceived as to the depth of your feelings and your emotions?"
Wesker's weight shifted, but his steady gaze remained, and she was grateful for the long, loose hair strands that partially obscured her vision.
Her fingers clutched the front of her torn shirt and jacket over her exposed chest. "Wesker, I need to know-"
"All in good time."
"Your time is now."
He hitched a leg over the table edge and sat down on its rough-hewn, plank boards. "On a scale of one to ten on the disagreeable meter I rate your demand a seven. I am beginning to believe you enjoy corporeal punishment."
He tapped the computer keys, and a series of low rumbles shook the ground in subtle vibration. Fine dirt grains rained dust from the ceiling.
A blue-tinged glow seeped out from beneath the jagged sheet hem and there was the gentle lap of water sloshed against the sides of a container. Motors and water.
One by one the portable lights were extinguished. The laptop glare and the muted, blue light aura behind the sheet remained.
"Sit up."
Here we go. Deal? Squeal? Hope for the best? Leon's limbs still attached to the correct, corresponding arm and leg sockets. Expect the worst. A human centipede.