Chapter Twelve: Gimme the Prize
The hydraulic door to the West Area slid open with a sharp hiss and a gentle mechanical beep, exposing the darkened corridor to the trio. Behind Tony, Claire drew her flashlight out, clicking it on at the same time Ada flicked her MP5's own light on, illuminating the shadowed path ahead. To none of their surprise, there was blood along the floor, splashes of it leading up to a crumpled body against the left-hand wall.
Drawing the hammer of his Beretta back with a soft *click,* Tony boldly strode up to the body, a quick look-over confirming what he already knew. The limp corpse was identical to the other three he and Claire had come across in the sewers, as well as the one on the first connecting platform to the Umbrella lab's main hub area, wearing all black tactical riot gear plus a gas mask, though the right red-lensed piece was shattered, revealing a glassy brown eye. The white-haired youth's own icy orbs noted the long claw marks across the mask, as well as the odd angle of the dead man's neck, which explained why the body hadn't decided to get up and look for a snack.
As Claire and Ada moved past him, the taller male crouched down next to the body, holstering his Beretta in the same motion. Reaching over, the red coated mercenary pried the dead man's own MP5 from his rigor-locked hands, a twin to the one the federal agent had claimed for herself. Giving the machine gun an appreciative look over, Tony ejected the clip, and noticed it was missing almost a dozen rounds, which caused him to furrow his brow in confusion, since he didn't see any expanded cartridges on the ground like he had the bodies they found in the sewers. Redgrave quickly searched over the body's many pouches, producing three spare magazines for the rifle and a hand grenade. Though he started to rise back up to follow the two women, Tony hesitated, his blue eyes landing on the shattered frame of the small compact camera on the man's upper chest.
After a few seconds of contemplation, the boy quickly kneeled back down, removing the still intact video cassette tape from the broken camera, before following his female companions. The two women hadn't wandered too far ahead of him, both having stopped to examine the edges of the open doorway leading into the next room, their flashlights trailing thin beams down the length of either sides. The red coated swordsman was about to ask what had their attention, when he noticed it himself.
Both sides of the passageway were bent and jagged, the metal seemingly having been forced open with power greater than the solid steel could resist.
Claire looked over the jagged edges of one side, whispering to herself, "Something wanted in pretty badly…"
"No, not 'in,'" Ada corrected, but it was Tony who finished that sentence.
"Out," the merc murmured quietly, moving ahead of the two.
Ada turned away from the section of the damaged doorway to follow after him, leaving Claire to look over the bent metal frame a final time before following as well. The new room the group was standing in was small, not unlike a normal hospital's testing area. A large patient bed was tucked in the further left side of the room, past an open doorway, where Tony spied Claire walking towards, eyeing something further in the back just out of his vision's range.
She quickly came back, speaking as she did. "Power's out. The automatic door won't open."
"Working on it," the agent replied coolly from the upper right corner of the room, the small signal modulator device back in her hands and quickly hooked into an open power panel along the wall.
As she worked the modulator, Redgrave wandered further into the small testing lab, his icy blue eyes taking in the various objects within. Two desks were stationed in the left-hand corner, one with an open case, a small TV and VHS player facing a white wall covered in various documents taped along its surface, and a large closed chest, while the other desk facing the windowpane peering into the testing lab had a computer atop it, the screen dark, but only for a moment. Ada finished syncing the modulator, and no sooner did she pull it away from the power panel did the overhead lights return to life, the computer powering back at the same time, the other rooms brightening as power returned.
Agent Wong briefly glanced at the ceiling as the light powered back on before spying the brightening monitor of the computer the boy had been standing by, the taller gunslinger instead steering away from the monitor towards the RV and cassette player. The silk wearing agent quickly approached the monitor, her right hand grasping the mouse while her left hand's fingers tapped a few keys on the board, quickly bringing the last viewed screen up. When she saw it was an email inbox and the personal user's name was "William Birkin," her brown eyes began poring over the contents of the digital inbox.
Sender: Jane Doyle
Subject: Suspending Research on "G"
The Umbrella Corporation has decided to cease all research on "G," which was ongoing at the NEST underground laboratory. All funding for this project has been cut, and laboratory director William Birkin has been removed from his post.
Sender: B.E.
Subject: (None)
Thank you for your mail, Dr. Birkin. Top brass has expressed an interest in this "evolving bioweapon" you mentioned. Do not worry about costs. Our "company" is the most well-funded in the whole of the United States.
Sender: Richard Kessler
Subject: Congratulations
I heard the good news. "G" is almost ready. Strange you never thought to report to the research lab here at Umbrella HQ... but I suppose I can let that slide. Anyway, send over the data, would you?
And don't worry. You've done good work on "G," but we can take care of the rest.
Sender: Jane Doyle
Subject: Notice of Admonishment
You are under suspicion of breaching your contract with the Umbrella Corporation. It has become clear that you have claimed ownership of the "G" project, and have been in unauthorized contact with the U.S. military.
Please respond to the investigation committee's summons within 24 hours.
The woman had seen the email from "B.E" before - one of the few they had recovered from hacking into Birkin's personal computer from his home residence in Raccoon - but Ada found herself unsurprised by the contents of the other emails. If an outside network had been able to uncover Birkin's plans of selling the G-Virus to the U.S. Military, there was no way it was gonna fly past Umbrella's internal affairs. William may have been a genius when it came to virology, but it was clear he hadn't been smart enough to successfully sneak around the company's back.
Ada checked the date the emails were sent and received, confirming the good doctor Birkin had read them on September 22nd. The male Birkin had gone missing between the 21st and the 23rd, with reports of suspected t-Virus afflicted cases starting shortly after, with the situation in Raccoon City peaking less than a week later. She instantly deduced that whatever had happened between the 21st and the 23rd were the deciding factors that sealed Raccoon City's fate, and she had a very good idea over what exactly had been William's reaction to Umbrella finding out his intentions for the G-Virus, as well as their own intentions to take the virus from him while glossing over the fact he had developed the G-Strain for over a decade, denying him their promised rewards.
Like his mentor before him, the late great James Marcus, William would have realized he was as expendable as any other researcher foolish enough to get in bed with Umbrella. He would have been backed into the proverbial corner; desperate. And as mentally unstable as he already was, that was just a disaster waiting to happen...
Claire had wandered back into the same area of the small testing lab, her blue eyes narrowing in aggravation when she saw both Tony and Ada still standing by the desks, neither of them having bothered to follow after her for the now powered-on door that would take them further into the Umbrella lab's West Area, where the vaccine Sherry needed was waiting for them. With an aggrieved huff, she quickly walked back over towards the two, asking impatiently once she was in earshot.
"What's the hold up?" the college biker demanded.
The older agent pulled away from the computer she had been leaning over, offering Claire an apologetic smile, a genuine one at that, before replying. "Sorry, just confirming some prior intel I received before this mission."
Both women then glanced over to Tony, who was fiddling with the VCR controls while turning the connected TV on.
"Tony?" Claire called to her ex-beau.
"One last home video before the party's over," he replied coolly.
Before Redfield could protest - or say anything, really - the TV's blue screen flickered, turning into static snow before correcting itself. Tony stepped back and moved a little ways to the right, letting both Claire and Ada step closer, all their eyes on the TV as they watched the recorded events on the tape begin to play out. All of the younger redhead's earlier aggravation faded away as her eyes settled on the screen.
The first sequence was a bird's eye view of a target reticule focusing on a man in a white coat with blonde shaggy hair, kneeling by a large metal device that resembled a dispenser of some kind, but looked more advanced than any other type Claire had ever seen. The date of the recording was displayed up in the corner, along with the military time it was made, while the name of the recorder was in the lower right corner of the recording. A "J. Martinez."
The man extended shaking arms towards the dispenser, his quivering hands grasping two small vials, and slowly moving them back down, towards the floor, where an open case lay with several more vials already stored inside it. As the man slipped the vials into the case, a voice sounded from Martinez, with an electronic filter resounding through his deep tone.
"Got eyes on the G-Virus."
At the mention of the G-Virus, Ada's demeanor shifted slightly, her arms crossing, her eyes narrowing as the video feed was briefly overshadowed by static, but just under the white noise, a second voice spoke this time..
"We're going in…"
When the video playback resumed, the camera feed shifted as Martinez moved their gaze towards a ventilation grill, an automatic rifle coming into view as they watched a group of at least three men in identical tactical gear quickly rushed into the room below, with Martinez hitting a small detonator that blew off the vent grill, then propelled himself down to join the group, all of them brandishing their machine guns on the man in the white coat, who spun around on his knees as he found himself trained on by the group of armed soldiers.
The soldier standing to Martinez's right spoke first, his voice deeper than Martinez's while also filtered by his gas mask.
"Doctor Birkin, you'll come along with us quietly."
Martinez's camera zoomed in on the coated man as the leader spoke, and Claire recognized him almost instantly. The man's face was pale and sweaty, but his dirty blonde locks and blue eyes were identical to the tortured features on the face of the monster that had attacked them throughout the night, though here he was still human, and fraught with panic and terror, his left eye twitching as his gaze flickered from each of the soldiers holding him at gunpoint. The man, Doctor William Birkin, Sherry's father, slowly rose off of his knees, clutching the case filled with the viral vials protectively to his chest as he glared defiantly back at the armed men.
"You think I didn't know you were coming?" he asked contemptuously. His right hand slipped inside his coat before he suddenly screamed furiously in a sudden outburst, his voice outraged yet somehow pitiable. "This is my life's work! I'm not handing over anything!"
His entire body shook with rage, his grip on the case shaking as his twitching gaze kept shooting from each soldier again and again, his expression flinching with growing mania.
The soldier at the lead responded, his voice calm and steady, but also authoritative and final. "We have our orders, Doctor Birkin."
Martinez's camera zoomed in on Birkin's face as the lead soldier spoke again, his words a warning, their meaning all too clear if the desperate man made the wrong choice.
"I'll ask you one more time…"
What happened next was almost too fast to follow.
Birkin's hand that had been inside his coat whipped out, producing a handgun that he waved about in wild motions, but the gun Birkin was holding never fired. Martinez's recording jerked, his automatic lighting up, the tip of the barrel igniting as multiple rounds slammed into the doctor, the white of his coat and shirt blossoming crimson. Birkin's body wrenched in several spasms before collapsing, one of the soldiers shouting over the rapport of the machine gun.
"STOP! HOLD YOUR FIRE!"
Too little too late.
Birkin's body collapsed on the floor, almost the entirety of his once white coat now stained a deep scarlet, blood gushing down his mouth, his left arm splayed out limply over the metal case filled with vials of viral agents the doctor had spent his life slaving over and creating, his blood staining the case and the floor under it. One of the armed soldiers quickly moved towards Birkin, crouching down and extending his left hand towards the doctor's neck. Almost as quickly, he dropped his hand, his head jerking as he muttered something explicative in frustration.
Martinez suddenly looked away from the crouching soldier as the lead speaker of the squad rounded on the soldier, and Martinez had to tip his gaze back to peer up into the taller man's red lensed eyes, his gas mask expressionless, but the rage emanating from his towering form was palpable, even through the video.
"What the fuck were you thinking?! Our orders were to bring him in alive!"
Martinez didn't respond, seemingly at a loss for words, unable to come up with even the weakest of excuses. The speaker, more than likely the leader of the squad, turned away from Martinez, looking back at the soldier crouched by Birkin's body, Martinez's camera following. The soldier stood back up, and the squad leader was heard talking again, but not to any of his men.
"We're in, sir, but we had a snafu. Target resisted, we had to take him out."
Martinez's recording snapped towards his squad leader at those words, and Claire saw the taller soldier glaring back at his subordinate. The college girl was confused over the words, before realizing the leader was more than likely speaking to an inner radio or earpiece inside of his mask. From the sound of it, the soldier was relaying status updates to the commanding officer overseeing the mission. Martinez turned his gaze away from his squad leader, looking back at Birkin's body, the camera focusing in on the still and bloody corpse of the doctor when the commandant spoke again.
"That's correct, sir... Roger that. Just the samples then."
The lead soldier shared a look with the one standing over Birkin's body, who raised his hand in acknowledgment before bending down onto his knees, his left hand grasping the handle of the bloodstained metal case, pulling it away from the doctor's still form. The leader turned away from his subordinate, shooting Martinez another glare before issuing a final order.
"Let's move!"
The squad leader moved out of the camera's recording, the soldier carrying the case walking backwards, his automatic trained on Birkin's inert body. Martinez looked back at William's corpse, walking backwards as well, before his free hand moved upwards, and the video feed ended, cutting to black.
The three stood silent, standing over the TV monitor as it flashed back to blue, the cassette player beginning to automatically rewind it before ejecting the small tape.
It was Claire who broke the silence with a quiet whisper. "They... They killed him."
That got a dry scoff from Tony. "Considering the fact that he's walkin' around with a brand new head and a few extra sets of eyeballs, I'd say they didn't do that good of a job."
Ada suddenly moved back over to the computer monitor, quickly hitting a key on the board to turn the monitor back on, looking over the dates and time slots of the emails in Birkin's inbox, then looked back at Tony while asking him a question.
"What's the timestamp on the video?"
The pale-haired merc looked from the Asian-American woman back to the VHS, pushing the tape back in, and quickly pressing the play button. Tony's icy eyes quickly found the playback's timestamp at the top of the playback before replying.
"September 22nd, at approximately twenty-three hundred hours and forty-five minutes. Translated from military time, that's-"
"Fifteen minutes 'til midnight, a little over a week ago," Claire finished for him.
Ada glanced back at the computer monitor, murmuring, "The 22nd... That's the same day Umbrella ordered all further research on the G-Virus suspended, along with removing Doctor Birkin from his position as head researcher here at NEST."
Tony looked back at the TV screen, watching the video play out again for a moment, before pressing the pause button on the VHS player, stopping the playback on the image of Birkin scrambling back up as Umbrella's armed servicemen stormed in. Tony studied the doctor's pale sweaty features for a moment before frowning. The red-coated swordsman ejected the tape, placing it to the side before patting his torn coat's various pockets; the ones still intact, that is.
Claire was about to ask her ex what he was looking for when he produced the first cassette tape they had found in the sewers, plundered from one of the dead soldiers they had come across. Tony murmured something about 'Nestwrecker' under his breath before quickly slipping the tape in, and hitting the play button. The all-too familiar playback began again, but as soon as the video finished loading, Tony quickly the hit pause button, his icy eyes looking over the screen before settling on the upper left corner.
"One eighteen," he murmured.
The dark-haired woman looked back at the taller youth, asking, "What's that?"
Tony hit the play button again, letting the video play once more. The biker girl looked away, unwilling to watch the mutated Birkin wreak his vengeance, even if it seemed justified. Drawn to the sounds of gunfire and the broken pleading of the wounded soldier Kirkpatrick, Wong wandered back over, watching the last few seconds of the video play out before Tony finally answered her question.
"The Revenge of Doctor Birkin," he quipped. As the video started to end, Tony hit the rewind button, then the pause, pointing towards the first video's timestamp in the upper left corner. "This was recorded on the 23rd at one AM. Barely over an hour after they gunned the doc down."
That made Claire blink, doing a quick double-take from Tony to the TV screen, back to Tony before stating, "But how can that be possible? We saw those soldiers kill him!"
The mercenary in red rubbed his chin, staring at the blurry outline of Doctor William Birkin, the G-Carrier he had fought twice this night, remembering the monster the doctor had become had incredibly powerful regenerative abilities, its ability to heal its wounds even faster and more effective than his own. But Claire had a fair point. They had watched the man who would become one of the monsters stalking them from the shadows die in the video. None of the vials containing the viruses Birkin had created for Umbrella had been damaged until AFTER his transformation, so that ruled out him becoming infected during the shootout…
So how did Birkin get infected?
Before he could continue that train of thought, Ada suddenly slipped past Claire, reaching out and ejecting the video from the cassette player, deftly snatching both of the small tapes, and slipping them into her side pack, making Tony blink and snap in indignation.
"Hey, those're mine! I found 'em first!"
Ada turned and started through the open doorway into the next section of the lab, calling back over her shoulder as she did. "They're evidence. Now c'mon, we can compare notes and trade theories later. We need to get back to the mission at hand."
Tony glared back at the woman in the red silk dress, but before he could retort, the redheaded girl quickly followed after the older agent, leaving the taller youth alone for a moment. With a scoff and eyeroll, Redgrave strode after the two women, taking long strides to quickly catch up with them. Going through another open doorway, passing a large pile of garbage overflowing from a full container, the three arrived in front of another automatic door that opened with a mechanical hiss.
The new room the trio found themselves in was a rather mundane locker room, rows of metal storage units lined on both sides of the wall, though the ones lined on the right side of the room were blocked off by a rolling rack of yellow hazmat suits hanging off dozens of hangers, while a small sink was situated in the upper right-hand corner. Tony approached the left row of lockers, hand outstretched to open the closest one near him when Ada spoke up again, prompting him to pause.
"Don't bother. What are the odds a bunch of doctors would store weapons or ammo in their lockers?"
The white-haired warrior looked back, mouth opening to retort when he stopped, mulling over her words before resuming his stride behind the two women, Redgrave murmuring to himself begrudgingly, "Damn good point..."
The next automatic door slid open with a hiss and a beep, opening the way into another hallway, this one made of sleek reflective metal in the first section of the hallway, while several powerful LED lights glowed a bright blue in the middle, four lined up diagonally and stacked atop each other. The last third of the hallway had simpler-looking white walls, though with several dark holes dotted along their surface, and even from the opposite end of the hall, the youth could see the holes were quite large, almost the size of an average adult's head.
He didn't have long to ponder their purpose when all three found themselves suddenly drenched as a downpour of water rained upon them, soaking them all to the bone in seconds. Sputtering, shaking his arms uselessly to dislodge the water droplets, Tony snapped his gaze upwards, scowling in annoyance when he saw several shower nozzles built into the ceiling above them.
Looking down at his drenched coat, Redgrave snarled, "Son of a-! This coat's dry clean only, you corporate assholes!"
Ahead of him, both women were likewise soaked to the bone, with Ada's silk dress and Claire's black top and shorts now clinging to their skin. While Wong rolled her eyes at the sound of Tony's indignant whining, Claire merely sighed and replied, "Tony, that coat's full of holes, soaked in blood, and covered in sewage. A little water's an improvement at this point."
The man in question raised his hand up, ready to fire a snark of his own back at her, when his anger died down as he paused and looked down at himself. Like Claire said, he could see lines of filth, red with blood - a good portion his own, the rest the various monsters he had slain throughout the night - and a murky brown of the sewage he had waded through hours ago, sloughing off of him. All that muck and the water that carried it away, washed down into one of several drains on the floor.
His icy eyes quickly rose back up, pausing long enough to appreciate how tightly the two women's clothes were clinging to their shapely bottoms before following them to the center of the hallway, which had the high-powered LED heat lamps lined on either side, glowing with a dim but powerfully hot blue light. As the trio passed through them, wisps of steam rose from their clothes, the various fabrics drying out almost instantaneously. As the agent and two youths stepped into the final third of the hallway, the walls on both sides lined with numerous black holes almost the size of an adult person's head, strong gusts of air whooshed out of the holes, quickly drying what little wetness had managed to cling to their clothes and skin in short order.
While Ada and Claire only absently gave themselves a quick look over before stepping through the next automatic door as it opened, Tony paused to observe his quick dried outfit, and noted with a begrudged expression that, while still a little damp, most of the blood, grime, and other muck that he had accumulated over the night had been washed away.
"Huh. Now I know what a car feels like going through the wash..." he mused to himself before following after the two women.
The group found themselves in a large open room, walking across a long platform bridge overlooking a lower area below, where several large containers were variously scattered about, while over a dozen of what appeared to be computer servers were situated, lined up by rows of two on either side of the lower section of the room. Claire peered over the right-hand side guardrail, furrowing her brow as she looked from the numerous items scattered below. Ada had taken the lead, her brown eyes surveying the upper platform the three stood on, but there were no signs of any infected Umbrella staff, or loosed bioweapons.
There was a lack of blood, and the stench of death was absent as well. The Asian-American agent found that rather ironic, considering this was the very place the virus rampaging through Raccoon's populace had been manufactured, yet it seemed this was the one section of Umbrella's laboratory that had escaped infection. That didn't make it any less dangerous, though. If anything, it almost made her uneasy.
Claire had wandered away from the guardrail to follow behind the other girl by a few feet. All she had seen when she had peered below the walkway earlier was a heavily shadowed lower floor, with large metal objects like oversized oxygen or gas tanks, along with what appeared to be several racks of computer servers lined up sequentially, like library book stacks. She briefly mused that the servers held all the data on Umbrella's viral research, or perhaps other experiments, but decided she didn't care one way or the other.
All that mattered was finding the G-Virus vaccine, and getting back to Sherry. She had put down plenty of Umbrella's monsters so far, and if anything else decided to rear its ugly head, she'd do the same to them. That little girl had endured more horror than all of them, and if anyone deserved to survive, the younger Redfield knew it was Sherry.
Tony, meanwhile, followed the two at a slower pace, his icy eyes no longer admiring his female companions, but flickered from one corner to another, his cold orbs watching the shadows for any sign of movement. Like Ada, he had noted the lack of bloodstains and the absence of the rotting scent of death, but it did little to alleviate the sudden surge of unease he felt, creeping up his spine like an icy set of fingers. He wanted to chalk it up to nerves, but Redgrave was hard pressed to ever remember a time he had ever found himself actually feeling nervous.
Staring down a hundred goons armed to the teeth with automatics did little more than make him yawn, but something about this particular section of Umbrella's messed up funhouse was giving him the 'heebie-jeebies,' as Grue would put it. Thinking of his older chain-smoking partner actually helped the youth's worry ease up a bit. Just picturing that cantankerous old fart made the corners of his mouth twitch into a grin. The grin died before it was fully born however, once he saw Ada and Claire slow to a stop in front of another automatic door, with a familiar purple glowing L.E.D. panel on it with the numeral 'III.'
Both women looked back at Tony, stepping aside slightly to easily let him swagger forward, the wristband with the matching purple Senior Staff clearance chip out in a blink, spinning around the tip of the tall male's index finger.
"Open sesame," the merc said aloud, flicking the wristband so it struck the glowing panel then bounced back to get caught by Tony's finger again in the same moment the screen flickered, the lock icon next to the numerals switching to an unlocked image, and the automatic door opened with a hiss.
With a pleased smirk, Tony flicked his finger a second time, the wristband soaring up and over his head. Behind him, Claire blinked, her free hand instinctively flinching out to catch the sudden impromptu projectile. No sooner did she catch it did he raise the MP5 he had taken from the dead man hanging by his side back up before saying, "You hold onto that, partner."
Claire gave the back of her ex a perplexed look, but simply slipped the wristband onto her right wrist, never noticing the annoyed glance Ada shot both of them before following after Tony, who had taken the lead, the automatic leveled out and at the ready. The agent followed suit, raising her own MP5 and scanning the new room's darkened entrance with her own shadowed eyes. Claire brought up the rear, keeping her Blackhawk raised and ready at her side, both hands on the grip as she took in the final section of the West Area.
As they passed through the doorway and into the newly exposed area's front entrance, Claire noticed dull red lights lighting up certain sections of the walls on either side of the trio. A quick glance revealed said 'walls' were somewhat see-through, with strange devices inside them, glowing circles of red light ignited on their fronts, while a similar series of glowing panels lined the metal floor under their feet, only these lights glowed a bright blue, giving them just enough illumination to see where they were walking, but not enough to dispel the shadows that seeped in where the light faded. The young woman wasn't sure what the devices lining the entry walls were for - possibly power sources, or something else entirely - but gave them no more thought as Tony slowed to a stop, his MP5 dropping down to his front as his own icy gaze focused on something just ahead, while Wong moved away from Redgrave and Redfield, her scanning eyes quickly finding a computer terminal set up, her body following her line of vision and she stood in front of it, using her free hand to touch the keypad, the screen flickering back on in response.
Claire lowered her Blackhawk as she slowly followed after Tony, who continued forward, unable to tear his gaze away from whatever he was staring at in front of himself. When she looked away from her ex-beau, her own grey blue eyes slowly widened with a combination of stunned awe... and never-ending horror.
Tony stood directly in front of the wall his icy orbs were locked on, now narrowing in disgust and outrage as he slowly moved to the left, his eyes locked on what was displayed inside the wall. A large container had been built into the wall - three containers, in fact - longer than the man in red's own impressive height, and wider than his entire chest. Each container was filled to the brim with a clear liquid, perhaps, or another kind of chemical fluid, while a series of three lights glowed from fixtures at the bottom of the containers, the lights strong enough to illuminate the contents within easily, continuous stream of air bubbles frothing and popping inside. Claire wished they were off, so she could never have seen what was inside them, but now she couldn't look away, no matter how badly she wanted too.
In each container floated a horrific abomination... Ones they recognized on the features of the doctor who had no doubt created them, before becoming the very culmination of his life's work.
The first container to her and Tony's left held a clump of flesh roughly the size of an average adult's head, connected to a smaller orb by thin strands of red muscle, two swollen red pustules visible on its surface. While disconcerting to look at, it was nothing compared to what floated in the other two containers. Redgrave moved back in front of the center container. Inside floated a much larger slab of diseased, transformed flesh, resembling a grossly swollen arm, a tumor-like growth emerging at the elbow, and where the shoulder would have once connected to the torso was overgrown with purple and red lesions, while the hand of the arm had lengthened considerably.
Disturbing, but what had drawn Claire's horror, and Tony's disgust, was the contents of the last container...
Inside it floated one last mound of red and purple colored flesh, far larger than the first clump and the arm combined, and this particular grisly display contained something all too familiar to both of them...
Growing like hideous, malignant tumors, were two orange and red eyes, as large and round as dinner plates, staring blindly back at the two youths. They were identical to the massive eye growing out of the shoulder of the G-Carrier, the man once known as William Birkin, and the creator of the G-Virus that had given these preserved abominations life and form. Tony continued glaring at these obscenities given flesh, but internally...
He could feel something... off about them. Something... profanely wrong. It was a familiar sensation, but one he had only experienced once before.
When he had encountered Gilver in the sewers. A kind of... pressure. Not in the physical sense, but one that seemed to weigh down on his very soul. But he knew what it was.
Evil, pure and simple.
"Why... Why would they...?" Claire whispered to herself, but Redgrave's attuned ears easily picked up her murmured words of horror and disbelief. A part of him wondered if she could feel it too, and he suspected she might, but her better nature was trying to protect her from the reality of what it was in front of them.
With a scornful scoff, Tony answered, "'Cause when you're proud of something, you put it up on display for everyone else to see... All that's missing is a blue ribbon from the science fair."
Disgusted, the white-haired youth finally looked away from the obscene display, and the redheaded girl forced herself to follow suit, her free hand covering her mouth as she and her ex moved away from the containers.
Ada, meanwhile, found an open set of file documents already up on the computer terminal, her face slightly lit by the faint glow of the screen. Much like Tony, her expression had become one of disgust and revulsion as she read the contents of the files. It was a research diary, and while short, it detailed several of the many experiments the researchers of NEST had committed in their study and efforts to perfect Birkin's G-Virus.
Embryo Growth Observations
(Subject 449)
After the G embryo was implanted in the subject, we made a 50cm incision from the chest to the abdomen and began our observations. With the help of the medical team, the subject's consciousness level was kept between 15 (lucid)~GCS 10. However, the subject's consciousness level deteriorated, and further observation was deemed unnecessary. The subject was then disposed off.
Breeding Rate Observations
(Subject 501)
The G-Virus was administered to subject 501. 501 mutated into G form and was introduced to a group of 30 test subjects. After 2 hours 36 minutes, it was observed that all but one of the test subjects had been implanted with an embryo. All subjects were disposed of.
(One subject broke down during experimentation and took their own life.)
T-Virus Resistance Experimentation
(Subjects 628, 639)
We administered G-Virus to subject 628, who had shown slight resistance to the T-Virus. The virus was then introduced to subject 639, with whom 628 had a close relationship. 628 showed some signs of resistance, but had been implanted with an embryo after 24 minutes. T-Virus resistance does nothing to stop the mental deterioration caused by the G-Virus.
Ada Wong considered herself a stalwart professional. She never grew attached, never failed to complete a mission, and always got a job done no matter how little time was left on the clock. But what Umbrella had done to Raccoon City and its inhabitants...
She wouldn't let herself feel anger or sorrow. Only disgust, and grim satisfaction that the very same horror inflicted upon what was no less than hundreds, perhaps even thousands of victims into the research of the t and G-Viruses, had been unleashed on the very people who had helped perpetrated them. She would allow herself that much, if nothing else.
Tony Redgrave spotted her out of the corner of his eye, and was easily able to see the similar and disturbed expression she now wore. "I take it whatever's on that isn't much better than this?"
He jerked his head back towards the containers displaying the preserved G-Virus experiments behind him. Agent Wong gave them a glance, but the sight of the diseased and mutated flesh simply couldn't provoke the same feelings. Her mind could easily picture both Doctor Birkins standing over a medical examination table, an unlucky subject cut open but still alive, still conscious, perhaps just enough to see the horror they had allowed inside them, observing its growth in rapt fascination before telling one of their assistants to put the terrified and helpless subject out of their misery...
"Arguably worse," Ada finally uttered, reining her imagination back in, and forcing her cool professionalism back to the forefront.
Letting out a wordless sound of disgust, Redgrave power-walked towards the back of the room while saying, "Let's just get what we came for, and get outta here. If I stay any longer, I'm gonna need another power wash."
The two women were in full agreement and followed his lead, moving for the far left side of the lab. They quickly recognized the large metal dispenser from the security video Tony had plundered from the dead soldier, Martinez, all three likewise spotting the large pool of dried blood on the floor from where the fatally shot Doctor Birkin had collapsed. Unsurprisingly, William's body was gone... and a trail of footprints could be seen, walking through the blood, then trailing more of them back towards the exit.
Both Ada and Claire stared at the large pool of dried blood, both women wondering how Birkin had gotten infected with his own virus. Tony, however, was looking over the dispenser in confused frustration. In the video the trio had watched, the dispenser had been open, but now it was closed, and he saw no visible switch or handle with which to open it back up again. The youth's icy eyes scanned over the object, and quickly found an open groove near the base of the dispenser, which was at level with his waist.
Tony glanced down, his fingers tracing the open spot on the dispenser, and even in the somewhat-shadowed lab, he was able to see this section of the dispenser had a different design compared the smooth surface of the rest of the device. The metal was a faded gold, a solid rectangle of it, with a ridged circle that had a reversed triangle inside of it. Two twinning snakes were inside the triangle, their tails meeting at the pointed bottom while their heads emerged from the flat top, facing each other, mouths open and tongues extended in a mirrored hiss, but the center of the triangle had a circular panel that was unaligned, the coiling bodies of the snakes not properly aligned with their tails and heads. Curiously, three words were engraved along the triangle's three sides.
At the top, reincarnation.
On the left, metamorphosis.
And the last word on the right read creation.
Tony was quick to realize that such an elaborate set up meant they had to find ANOTHER special type of key to unlock the dispenser, Umbrella giving them one final asinine fetch quest to go on.
His patience at its limit, Redgrave decided enough was enough. He was going to open it his way. Stepping back, he drew his greatsword from over his shoulder, giving the deadly blade a single quick twirl, the metal ringing through the quiet air in the silent lab.
Both Claire and Ada watched the sudden motion in stunned silence, the agent breaking it by quickly asking, "What the hell are you doing?"
"I dunno about you two," Tony replied, his tone of voice sarcastically agitated, "but I've had it up to here with all these stupid fancy locks, and endless fetch quests! I'm breaking this thing open, so stand back, and-"
But no sooner did he start to raise and draw his sword back did Claire suddenly dash in front of him, standing in front of the dispenser, and blocking him from cutting into it. The swordsman flinched to a halt, sputtering in surprise, "Ba- C-Claire, what're ya doin'?! Get outta the way so I can cut this thing open!"
The girl's left hand came up, waving Tony off as she snapped, "Just hold on a moment! I think..."
She trailed off, her grey-blue eyes squinting in the dark as her other hand reached down, fingers tracing the various patterns engraved in the metal. She had only caught a quick glance at it as Tony had been drawing his sword, but she couldn't shake the sudden feeling of familiarity she got from that quick glance. Studying it up close only made the feeling stronger, and she murmured just loud enough for both Ada and Tony to hear, "I think I've seen this somewhere before..."
When her eyes fell on the two hissing snake faces at the top, it came rushing back to her.
Quickly, she reached into her side pouch, producing the small golden locket Sherry had spurned back on the cable car. Even in the dimly lit shadows of the lab, Claire saw the insignia engraved on its surface was identical to the design at the base of the dispenser.
"Huh... Wouldja look at that..." she whispered to herself in triumph.
The college girl quickly slipped the locket into the open slot on the diagram, fitting inside it perfectly, and with a quick twist, she righted the snakes bodies so they were properly aligned with their heads. With a soft mechanical hum, the locked front of the dispenser slid open, revealing the empty racks where samples of Umbrella's t and G-Viruses had been stored at the bottom of the dispenser... while at the top, two large vials of golden liquids sat quietly.
Claire quickly snatched one of them, and was unable to resist the triumphant grin and cheer of "Hell yeah!" when she saw the word 'DEVIL' written across its front.
She whirled around to face Tony, who had watched the whole thing in silence, his own shit-eating grin back in full force when he saw her smile and her hand clutching their objective at last.
"Got it!" she proclaimed.
Redgrave let out a quick laugh before replying, "Nice! Can't even say I'm bummed that I didn't get to smash it to pieces... Well, maybe a little bit." His grin disappeared into a thoughtful look before he mumbled, "Hang on... Wasn't that Sherry's locket? The one her mom gave to her?"
"Yeah, that's right," Claire responded.
Tony blinked at that observation. "You mean to tell me that Sherry's mom gave her daughter the key to Umbrella's viruses, and had her hold onto it this whole time? Is that why that fat bastard Irons was after her?!" he balked. "That... is the most twisted, sweetest gesture of love I've ever seen." He paused at that, before shaking his head with a wince of disgust. "Y'know what, scratch that. That's just messed up."
Ada, meanwhile, quickly slipped in front of the dispenser, her heart beating quicker and quicker as her eyes looked from each empty slot where samples of the G-Virus had once been held... only to land on the very front row, where a single spot was still occupied. Almost unwilling to believe her luck, the woman's fingers deftly but delicately lifted the final vial from its place, and when she saw the dark purple liquid inside it, along with the tell-tale 'G' label, she was unable to resist her own victorious smirk.
Mission accomplished, she thought to herself.
She turned around, moving back towards the two youths, carefully pulling out a small but sturdy carrier for the vial, slipping it inside, and swiftly sealing it shut. The last thing she needed was to slip and take a bad fall and have the only surviving sample break on her. That would see her mission failed... And if the virus were to slip into an open wound, well, she'd become the sample, then, wouldn't she?
Watching Claire quickly stuff the DEVIL Vaccine into one of her pouches, Ada slipping her own objective back into her side satchel, Tony slipped Woozy back over his shoulder, letting the blade rest across his back as he declared, "Well, that was easy."
As if waiting for someone to utter those four magical words, the female computer voice suddenly spoke from the speakers in the ceiling above.
"Attention: Unauthorized removal of a [Level 4] virus detected. Facility lock down initiated. Self-destruct sequence will initiate when lockdown is complete."
As the mechanical voice droned its announcements, alarms could be heard going off outside of the lab.
Both Ada and Claire shot Tony looks that were equal parts incredulous and infuriated.
Sputtering the gunslinger snapped, "Hey, whatever it was, it wasn't me!" The red-clad warrior then directed his ire up at the ceiling, giving an unimpressed glare to the unseen mechanical voice as he said, "Seriously, though, 'self-destruct sequence?' Does Umbrella get all their ideas from the movies, or is that just me?"
"Shut it!" Ada snapped. "We've only got a few minutes until this place gets locked down. We need to find a way out before we're trapped!"
With that order issued, Tony was already power walking back for the door, replying, "Don't need to tell me twice."
Claire quickly followed after him, with Ada keeping stride, both women behind Redgrave as they quickly raced back out into the previous area. Ada had her hands on her MP5 at her side, while Claire had redrawn her revolver. Tony hadn't redrawn any of his weapons yet, but was almost at the door at the other end as he said aloud, "Alright we got the sample, and we got the vaccine. Now all we gotta do is grab Sherry, and proceed to check ourselves outta this five star shitshow-"
And then the doors hissed open, and the white-haired swordsmaster found himself staring down the barrel of a Glock 19, clutched in the slightly shaky hands of a bloody blonde woman in a white shirt, matching lab coat, and jeans likewise stained with splotches of gore. Her blonde hair was limp and dirty, her blue eyes narrowed in a mixture of pain, fury, and determination as she staggered forward, Redgrave taking a slow step back for each one she pressed forward. Both Claire and Ada saw his sudden stop and slow back stepping, and no sooner did they think to ask him what was wrong did they see Annette emerging from the open doorway, handgun aimed directly at Tony's face.
Instantly, Claire had the Blackhawk up and aimed at Annette, while Ada drew a bead on the female scientist, the red laser dot sighting finding a mark on her upper chest. Both the college girl and agent were about to demand the older woman drop her weapon, but it was Annette who spoke first.
"You're not leaving here with my husband's work. Give me the sample. Now," she demanded, her twitching, red-rimmed eyes flickering from Tony, to Claire, then lingering on Ada, before going back to the youth in front of her.
To her hidden surprise, the young man simply stared at the gun leveled for between his eyes with annoyance, and she heard him utter under his breath, "Three times... Three times I've had a gun shoved in my face tonight... This is gettin' old..." Letting out a rough exhale through his nose, the young man looked directly at her, scanning her fully before resting his gaze on her face. "Let's see, white lab coat, bedraggled get up, tight face of somebody lookin' extremely guilty for everything happening around here... Doctor Annette Birkin, I presume?"
The scientist didn't acknowledge his words, only continued to rapidly shift her gaze between the trio, noting the tensing of Ada's shoulders after hearing her single demand. Tense silence passed between the four, the only sound the continued blaring of the alarms. Annette grounded her jaw down hard enough to where she felt like her teeth would crack, but before she could reiterate her demand, a younger voice interrupted.
"Annette, please! There doesn't need to be any more violence!"
The older woman's gaze snapped to her right, where she saw the speaker, the young auburn haired girl she had encountered in the sewers hours ago, holding both her hands up, her large revolver still pointed back at her, her expression pleading, grey-blue eyes filled with trepidation... and hope.
"And if there does, you're outgunned two-to-one. Not really in your favor, is it, doctor?" Ada snarked from her left.
Just hearing the agent's cocksure voice and a quick glance confirmed that arrogant smirk on her lips, and Annette couldn't stop herself from thrusting the gun away from Tony and towards the red-dressed woman, snapping furiously, "Shut up!"
Two gentle *clicks* broke her from her murderous fury, and now it was Birkin who found herself staring down the barrel of a handgun. Two to be exact: a dark Beretta and a bright Colt.
Tony Redgrave had a cocky grin of his own on his face now, as Annette found herself stepping back this time before he spoke again. "Make that four-to-one!"
Ada's smirk widened into almost a full grin as she mockingly told the retreating researcher, "Odds are getting worse by the second, Annette."
Finding herself surrounded on all sides, her earlier advantage lost now that her brief hostage had the draw on her now, Annette's gun snapped towards Ada, who held her ground, while Tony and Claire kept their weapons on the disheveled scientist. As Redfield watched the older woman's face roil with a mixture of desperation and impotent fury, her mind drifted back to the video footage of her husband's murder a week before, recalling the similar expression he had worn up until he had been gunned down in a vain attempt to hold onto his life's work. That very same work now threatened the life of their daughter, and the longer they stood there, the less likely it would be that they could save her from her parents' viral legacy.
Deciding to take a chance, the young woman lifted her left hand off of her revolver, and towards her side pouch, speaking aloud to the frantic and desperate scientist as she did. "Annette, please! Just listen to me!"
At the sound of her name, the older woman snapped her head towards Claire, letting Ada risk a step closer while keeping her MP5 trained on her target, Tony likewise keeping his own handguns on the woman, the slight flicker of anger in his eyes betraying the calm stoic expression he wore as he watched Annette glare at his ex-lover while keeping her gun on Ada. Claire, meanwhile, never let the possibility of the woman turning her handgun on her faze her as she reached into her side pouch, producing the large vial of golden liquid before raising it up slowly for Annette to see, keeping the label with the word 'DEVIL' in her line of sight, speaking again as she did.
"Sherry's here. She's safe, and she's alive, but I don't know for how long. We only came here to get the antiviral agent for the G-Virus. To find a cure for her, and we finally have it!" she declared, the tone of her voice sounding pleading as she implored Sherry's mother one last time. "When I first came this city, I couldn't save the life of someone who saved me, but I can save Sherry's! It's not too late!"
The younger girl's words visibly affected Annette. At the mention of her daughter, and the reminder of her current predicament, the desperate fury cooled into visible grief and anguish, her hands that held her handgun beginning to shake and lower slightly, but not entirely. Tony saw this, and while his own icy stoicism cracked somewhat, his words were not filled with pleading like Claire's. Simply harsh truth.
"In other words, you're the only thing standing in the way of us saving your daughter."
His unrestrained candor made Annette tense up, and for one horrible moment, it seemed like it had been a step too far as the scientist's grip on her handgun straightened, and her pained expression became unreadable...
Then, her shoulders fell limp, and she looked back towards both Claire and Tony, a miserable, defeated expression replacing the fury and desperation in her eyes.
"Fine... Just... Just go..." she whispered, all fire and fight in her extinguished.
Claire let out a shuddery breath of relief, lowering her Blackhawk as she did, but quickly saw both Tony and Ada still had their weapons drawn on Annette... who also had her own gun still leveled at Ada.
"Oh, I'll skip and do cartwheels outta this hellhole as soon as you drop your Glock," Tony demanded, his icy eyes locked on Annette's face.
The older woman's expression still carried obvious conflict, but she never bothered looking back at the taller youth, only continued to glare defiantly at a stoic Ada.
"You two can leave," Annette clarified before her voice lowered to a hiss. "But she is staying right here until she returns the G-Virus sample she stole."
Ada shot the researcher an unimpressed and unafraid glare, while Tony shook his head before replying. "Sorry, but no can do on that one, Doc. Maybe your job security means more to you than your own daughter's life, but the fed lady's coming with us. She's gonna turn that virus over to her bosses in the FBI so that your bosses at Umbrella can finally pay for all the bullshit they've gotten away with since they first started this whacky zombie factory."
Annette finally tore her furious gaze away from dark-haired woman to look incredulously back at the boy, her earlier frustration returning as she scathingly asked, "You really trust this bitch?!"
In response, the young man shrugged and smirked as he shot back, "'Bout as much as I trust any other fed, which is to say not really. But hey, she didn't start up a zombie apocalypse, so she's got that goin' for her."
Even Claire found it hard to argue with that logic, but what Annette said next, tone filled with equal parts anger and disgust, froze the younger girl where she stood.
"She's not FBI, you idiot! She's a mercenary! She's gonna sell it! The G-Virus is gonna go to the highest bidder! And if it falls into the wrong hands...!"
Claire felt her eyes widen and her mouth drop, while Tony's face once more became stoic. Ada's expression never changed at all, even after Annette's accusation, remaining steadfast and focused on the scientist, MP5 still at the ready.
The redhead's mind was scrambling, but she had only just met the so-called federal agent. It was only her word and Tony's she had to go on to support the claim of her status. Redgrave never lowered his handguns, keeping them trained on Annette as his icy eyes moved to their corners, locking on Ada, whose own brown orbs turned to meet his sudden intense gaze. Intense... and dubious.
But not for Annette's claim.
Claire quickly rounded around Tony, moving closer towards Ada, who never budged as she demanded, "Is Annette telling the truth?"
Ada didn't respond, continuing to hold the boy's gaze with her own while the taller male simply mused aloud. "Pretty bold claim... Though it would clear up a few things about you, wouldn't it?... Care to offer a rebuttal, Agent?"
Redgrave recalled his first meeting with Ada, remembering her flashing a gold badge... But anyone could get a fake badge. And the more he thought about it, a lot of things in her story weren't adding up. Why would the FBI insert a lone agent to recover Umbrella's newest viral creation? Why not just kill and retrieve a few of the infected humans, or even just one of the more dangerous mutations?
Also, if the FBI knew Umbrella was dirty, wouldn't a joint operation with the other investigative branches have been warranted? The more he thought about it, the more holes he was finding in the woman's story. His questions continued to grow, but the few answers she had given simply weren't enough.
Ada had helped him and Claire, but only because they were all going the same way. And anything that impeded them from their goal, also impeded her. So it had never been altruism, just logical pragmatism. And as much as Tony wanted to just ignore Annette's words...
He couldn't shake the sinking feeling in his gut that he had been helping the wrong person.
"...Agent?"
Claire's own face was slowly twisting with doubt and anger, her hand moving for her holstered revolver as she demanded again, "Is she telling the truth?!"
Ada never spared the girl a glance, continuing to lock gazes with her ex-beau, and she could see the growing doubt and conflict in his eyes, and sighed sadly, looking disappointed.
The man in red realized he had his guns on the wrong woman, and Claire was dangerously too close to this fake agent.
He never had a chance to shout a warning as Ada let her MP5 drop back to her side, dashing so quickly in the same moment, she was a red blur. And in the time it would take to blink, she had Claire in an arm lock with both of her hands, sliding behind the younger woman as her right forearm was yanked behind her back, pinning it firmly against the small of her back with her left hand as her right one rapidly snatched and drew the college girl's own Ruger Blackhawk back out, the long barrel pressed hard against its owner's temple, the hammer pulled back with an ominous *click.*
Tony's Colt snapped towards Ada's face, peering back at him from just above Claire's shoulder, only partially obscured by her auburn hair. The taller male's icy eyes were nearly completely white with fury at the woman he had foolishly believed an ally, and at himself for not seeing through her charade sooner. Now Claire was between the two of them, her own weapon holding her hostage, the biker girl's face flushed with panic and terror, her eyes flickering back and forth, from Tony in desperation, to her former weapon now poised to blow her head off with a twitch of Ada's finger.
"Drop the gun. NOW!" Redgrave demanded harshly, his normally low and easy-going tone replaced with outrage and barely restrained fury.
Such a sight was rare from the youth, and though Claire knew it wasn't directed at her, even she found herself flinching from the palpable anger in her ex's words. Ada, however, was not so easily rattled, and her reply was equally nonplussed, almost bored even, but cool and business-like.
"Oh, Tony... Why couldn't you have just shot her?" she asked with something akin to annoyance.
"'Cause as much as I thought about it, and as much as she probably deserves it, I can think of a lot of other people more deserving to put that nail in the coffin. You excluded, of course..." he snarled, an annoyed tick of his brow. "Speakin' of which, you're lookin' pretty damn expendable right now, Agent Turncoat, so I don't really have too many qualms about putting the nail down on yours."
Ada - Tony actually started wondering if that really was her name - let out another sigh, not letting her grip slip on the younger Redfield, even as her brows softened slightly, but even only by mere degrees. "I really hoped it wouldn't end up like this."
"Yeah, why? So you can string your little puppets along a little longer? Maybe get away with your little sample, your faithful pawns none the wiser? Yeah, that'd be a damn shame, wouldn't it?!" he harshly accused.
The spy readjusted her grip on Claire, causing the younger girl to whine in pain as the older woman snapped, "Look, I'm just doing my job. I don't wanna hurt you, or the girl."
"Aww, you poor little thing. Lemme go find the world's smallest violin so I can play 'My Heart Bleeds For You,'" the crimson gunslinger remarked sardonically. "Now I'm gonna tell you one last time, so you'd better frickin' listen! DROP! IT!"
"Sorry, but that's not going to happen. You're in no position to make any demands here. And even if I felt like indulging you," she retorted calmly, her brown eyes briefly flickering upward, towards the still issuing sirens and alarms, before resuming, "there's no time for that. So here's what's going to happen: I'm going to head back to the entrance of the NEST. Claire comes along, just in case, and no one gets hurt. Meanwhile, you're gonna stay right here, and make sure Annette doesn't follow me. Once we're back at the front of the lab, I'll let Claire go so she can give the vaccine to the little girl, while I take the cable car and leave this place before it becomes a burning pile of rubble. I complete my mission, no one gets hurt. Everybody wins."
That got a disgusted scoff from Annette, who spat back in anger, "Conveniently leaving all of us to die here anyway, since the cable car will never get back in time before the detonation sequence initiates! We'll burn with this place, while you sell the G-Virus to whoever it was that sent you in the first place! This isn't 'generosity!' It's just pragmatism because you don't want to waste time trying to kill us all, and risk injuring yourself or delaying your escape!"
Ada remained indifferent to the female Birkin's red hot anger, her face and words ice cold as she replied, "You can paint it any way you like, but the bottom line is this: the clock's ticking, and lives are at stake. If you try to stop me from leaving, you risk Claire's life, and that, in turn, risks your daughter's life. I know you don't care for either of them, Annette, seeing as how preserving your late husband's legacy is all you have left for yourself at this point... But the choice isn't hers, is it, Tony?"
At the mention of the suddenly silent youth, Annette's bloodshot eyes shot towards him, widening slightly when the older woman saw that his rage had left his face, which now bore an equally stoic and cold expression to match Ada's own. It was obvious that he was now seriously mulling over her words. Unable to stop herself, the frantic woman screamed at the silent man, enraged.
"No, you...! Y-you can't! You can't do this! Don't you dare consider it! Do you have any idea what could happen if she escapes with the G-Virus?! The thousands, MILLIONS of lives that are at stake-!"
Redgrave's gaze snapped towards the screeching woman, and her furious cries died in her throat as he shot her a glare that silenced her instantly. The snowy-haired youth's icy gaze held her own, and for the briefest of moments, Annette swore she saw the color of his eyes flicker in a flash of red; from cold light blue to burning deep amber. The moment passed, but the older woman found herself stumbling a step back, a familiar sense of terror reigniting in her heart...
A terror she had felt hours ago, trying to hold the gaze of that bandaged swordsman...
Still glaring spitefully at Annette, uncaring of her sudden obvious terror towards him, Tony hissed, "Only two lives matter right now. And yours ain't one of 'em."
Keeping his Beretta on Annette and his Colt on Ada, the young man looked back at the spy in red, favoring her with a contemptful and distrusting glare as he asked, "You do realize that the second you pull that trigger, you're as good as dead, right?"
"I do. Just as you know that the second you try anything on me, she's as good as dead," the Asian-American spy countered.
The man in red let out a snort. "So how do I know you'll keep your word? For all I know, you'll just wait 'til you think you're far away enough from me to try anything."
Ada returned his mistrusting gaze with a bemused smirk as she replied coolly, "I told you before, didn't I? I don't wanna hurt you. I get nothing by killing your former sweetheart here. And I don't need to give you a reason to try and follow me, now do I?"
To that, Tony returned a baleful smirk of his own, before finally drawing his right arm back, his Colt's barrel now pointing skyward as he replied lowly, "No... I guess you wouldn't want that, would you?"
At the sight of this, both Claire and Annette's eyes widened with panic, the college girl's heart hammering in her chest as she felt Ada press the barrel harder against her temple before hissing, "Move."
And then the two women slowly began to tread towards the door, Wong taking a single step at a time, with Redfield forced to stumble and follow. All the while, Redgrave simply seemed content to watch, not holstering his raised Colt, but keeping his Beretta drawn on the bedraggled scientist, the barrel following the older woman's slightest movement even without looking back at her. The hostage-held college student wanted to scream, cry out, say or do something - anything - to stop this, when Tony spoke again.
"So how much is this job nettin' ya? Six, seven figures? I'd imagine you've got some room for negotiating, what with all the zombies, monsters, and expended ammo. People in our line of work tend to add that stuff to our deductibles."
The sudden completely casual line of tone and questions caught all three women off guard, confused and bewildered expressions appearing on both Annette and Claire's faces. And while Ada's own face never betrayed her, the briefest flicker of confusion flashed through her brown eyes, her next slow step towards the exit a half-a-second hesitated before resuming.
"'Our line of work?'" she parroted, watching Redgrave closely as she eased herself and Claire closer to her escape route.
Tony nodded, grinning as he explained, "Since we're all bein' honest with each other, might as let you know. I'm a merc, too... Well, I like to think of myself more as a handyman who takes on all kinds of jobs... Dirtier the better."
The red-dressed spy resisted a scoff and an eye roll as she mused back, "Is that so?..."
There was a high degree of difference between an infiltration expert like herself, and a hired gun that this young man likely was.
Tony nodded, his entire demeanor switching from infuriated and silent back to jovial and conversational, as if the situation wasn't as tense or life-threatening as defusing a ticking time bomb. No, the white-haired mercenary continued his casual dialogue as if it was nothing more then a friendly chat.
"Can't say I've ever done a job this high-risk before, though most of my jobs are never that risky... For me, anyway. Simple 'in and out' type of stuff. Most I ever lose on a job is whatever gun I've flinched for the day. Nothing I can't replace. That's probably the best part of this business: when you're good enough, you get to pick your own jobs, negotiate your own pay. And there's no shortage of offers. Good pay aside, sometimes you can even challenge yourself on 'em."
Ada said nothing in response, only continued to slowly drag herself and Claire ever closer to the door, now only less than fifteen feet away from it and escape. But the silent spy kept her eyes on Tony, and despite herself, she did find herself agreeing with some of his words. She knew she was a higher class of agent compared to this braggart youth, but he did seem to know what he was talking about for the most part.
Her silence seemed to all the invitation Redgrave needed to chatter on, "A job like this... Man, I couldn't imagine the payout. Probably enough for someone like me to retire on... But for you, I'd imagine it would just be the average joe's equivalent to punchin' the clock, amirite?"
Tony shot her that familiar easy-going grin of his, one that Ada didn't feel inclined to acknowledge or even consider returning with a smirk of her own. She was now less than ten feet from the door, the younger redhead following her movements and hardly struggling. The Asian-American agent decided Redgrave could chatter all he wanted if that meant she could slip through the door in the next few moments.
But Tony's grin slowly faded as he fixed her with a stony, almost unreadable expression, his tone lowering as he spoke on.
"But at the end of the day... A job's a job, no matter how you look at it. Some payouts are better than others, but money's always changing hands in circles like ours. As quick as it comes, it's gone even faster. Even mercs have bills to pay, ammo to replenish, guns to tune up or replace; you know how it is. But that's the life. We finish the job, we get paid, we move on."
Without even realizing it, Ada found her slow advancement towards the door inching down to a snail's pace, and even Claire and Annette were watching Tony with rapt interest, trying to understand where he was going with his rambling. But Ada already knew. What he said next was no surprise to her at all, but it still stopped her in her tracks.
"I bet you've already got your next job lined up after you hand over that little tube to whoever wants it so bad. Maybe you'll take a little break in-between? I could see that. Surviving a night in this little slice of hell on Earth would make anyone eager for a little R&R... But if you're anything like me, once you finish the job, you just move on to the next, and never give the last one a second thought. But lemme ask you something..."
His cold stare held Ada's gaze, and it was his question that had successfully froze her in place.
"What exactly do you think the people who want that so bad are gonna do with it once they get their hands on it? You probably never asked, and why would you? Never had any interest in askin' before, so why start now? Maybe they're just weird collectors of deadly diseases, and like to stare at their collection of viruses in test tubes. Maybe they see some kind of potential cure-all for the average joe's woes? They just need to work around the nasty eye-tumor side-effects... Or, more than likely..."
His Beretta, still trained on Annette, wagged at the silent scientist, making her flinch at the sudden motion before Redgrave continued.
"They're just gonna continue what she and her hubby were doing. Or use their work to start from scratch, and make something even worse. You were topside, too, remember? You've seen what Umbrella's so-called 'research' is really about. A whole city's dead because of them. Hundreds of thousands of lives lost... Guess that's the price of progress."
Tony's gaze softened somewhat as he watched Ada's eyes flicker with something that hadn't been there moments ago.
Conflict.
"So lemme ask you one last question: Is whatever they're paying you for that little vial really worth all the lives that'll be lost if it gets out? 'Cause if it is... If it really is, and you're just in this to finish the job and get paid... then I'm not gonna stop you."
With that said, he lowered his arm holding the Colt, letting it fall back to his side, making Annette's eyes widen in terror, since Tony still kept his Beretta aimed at her. But Claire met his eyes, which were still looking past her, at the woman in red holding her hostage, and the young girl felt her fear and anxiety melt away. While behind her, Ada's own brown eyes had widened a fraction as Redgrave's words truly began to sink in.
She had told herself repeatedly throughout the night. Nothing but finishing the mission mattered. Retrieve the sample, escape the city, turn it over, and get paid. Those had been her only goals tonight. Tonight wasn't her first foray into the slowly-emerging world of biological terror, and she doubted it would be her last... But now a new nagging question rang in her head, along with a terrible realization.
If the t-Virus did this... What would happen if the G-Virus got out?
Slowly and so subtly, even his keen eyes almost missed it, Tony watched as the finger Ada held against the trigger of Claire's Blackhawk relaxed, and the long barrel eased away from its owner's temple.
The red-coated warrior inhaled a heavy breath, ready to let out in relieved sigh-
-when above them, a section of the ceiling suddenly dented as a thunderous crash echoed, large pieces of paneling and plaster bursting open as something large and roaring fell from the darkness above, landing on the platform hard enough to shake it, large chunks of the ruined ceiling falling after it.
The white-haired youth spun around, both arms crossed as he leveled his handguns out at the new intruder. When he saw the familiar red flesh of the massive upper body, the tattered remains of clothes on its lower half, and the massive orange and yellow-tumor like eye emerging from the right shoulder, the gunslinger didn't even try to hide his ever mounting frustration as he recognized this persistent predator.
"Your dumb ass again?!" Redgrave snapped.
Behind him, Annette's own gaze had fallen on the intruding creature, and she recognized it as well. But her lingering rage at Ada vanished, becoming a bitter sadness as she whispered a single name.
"William..."
Tony was moving towards the mutated male Birkin, but the wife of the monster moved past him in a stumbling dash of white, and an indignant shout of "Move!"
Shoving the Glock she had been holding previously into one of her coat's pockets, her other hand drew a small white object from another pocket, and from the shape of it, the red-coated man thought it to be some type of emergency flare launcher as Annette raised the weapon, gripping it with both hands as she took aim at her husband, an agonized, sorrowful look on her face as she uttered three words in regret.
"This ends NOW!"
Then, the launcher fired, making a sound similar to the *fwp* made by the grenade launcher Tony had given Claire back at the police station, a yellow capsule flying through the air to strike the mutated William Birkin square in the chest, only missing the sagging sunken face, the pitiful remnants of the former doctor's humanity, by a few inches. The capsule exploded into a large spray of clear liquid, coating the G-Carrier's entire body in an instant, and the beast howled in agony. Redgrave blinked, at a loss for a second as he failed to understand how such an attack could have possibly hurt the creature, when he saw wisps of steaming smoke rising from all over its body where the liquid had doused it, the monster's squat head and even Birkin's human face both sharing an opened mouth look of intense pain.
Soon, rivets of red began running down the lengths of its torso, arms, and legs, soon followed by the melting articles of what was left of its clothes, the blonde locks of Birkin's human face likewise falling away as the monstrous body of the G-Carrier collapsed to its knees and hands, the acidic compound Annette had coated it in working fast as more blood and melted flesh sloughed off and onto the platform. The once-human monster looked up at Annette, its green eyes wide and its jaw loose, before face planting onto the floor, and going still, body still smoking and steaming, the occasional sizzle and pop emitting from its still melting skin. The entire process had only taken a minute at best, but just like that, the monster that had tormented them through the long night was seemingly, finally, dead.
Tony slowly walked closer towards Annette, his icy eyes observing the melting mess in a kind of stunned stupor at how easily dispatched it had been by its former wife. When he thought of the countless wasted bullets and useless slashes from his sword, the swordsman could only murmur a few words.
"...Well, that was anticlimactic."
Annette didn't respond to his comment, her arms falling limply in front of her, before her left hand released its grip on the capsule launcher's handle, letting her right had that still gripped it swing back limply to her side, her blue eyes staring at the smoking, melting remains of what had once been her husband. Redgrave moved to bend down closer towards the sizzling body, looking for any signs that the beast wasn't as finished as it appeared, but aside from certain spots still running red with blood and oozing flesh, he could see no signs of the G-Carrier breathing, the acidic compound it was coated in also seeming to negate its regenerative abilities, which meant it was probably dead.
Probably.
Of course, cutting off its head couldn't hurt at this point either, he concluded, starting to rise back and reach for Woozy's hilt over his shoulder when he heard Annette mumble quietly next to him.
"It shouldn't have been like this... It's Umbrella's fault- this whole mess."
The taller youth glanced back at female virologist, and upon seeing her bitter expression, couldn't resist a mocking scoff.
"Oh yeah? And who is it you work for, again? You're really gonna try to say you weren't involved in all of this?! You're just as much to blame as them, lady. Your lab-" He waved a hand around the area before pointing to the door at the opposite end of the room before punctuating.
"Your work!"
His hand then fell on the still body of the melted G-Carrier while fixing Annette with a cold glare.
"Your creation."
The woman's face twisted with anger, misery, and the deepest self-loathing as she met Redgrave's accusing stare. Swallowing quietly, steadying her quivering lips, she finally responded.
"Yes... I won't deny any involvement in this... But I swear to you, we never meant for this to happen!"
Tony remained unconvinced, his cold gaze unsympathetic. But it wasn't him who spoke next.
"Then tell us what happened."
Both Tony and Annette looked back, and saw Claire approaching slowly, her left hand gripping her Blackhawk by her side as she approached Annette, her own expression softer compared to Tony's accusing glare, a genuine desire to understand in her grey blue eyes.
"Claire!" he cried, rushing over to her without a second thought. He was eager to embrace her, but refrained form doing so in case the spy had injured something. "Are you okay?! Where's Ada?! Did she-"
She shook her head. "Gone, Tony. She... She just let me go." Claire raised her revolver, holding it to him. "Dropped my gun as she made her escape. Took the access bracelet, too..."
Looking back to the disgraced researcher, the young woman approached her, addressing her once more. "Tell us everything. Right from the beginning. Tell us how this started."
Annette looked conflicted for a moment, her bloodshot eyes looking between the two youths uneasily. Then, her gaze fell on the still body of what had once been her husband, causing her shoulders to sag even further. Closing her eyes and sighing heavily, uncaring of the ticking seconds left, she opened her mouth to explain.
She could feel the numerous stares on her, hear the hushed whispers as she marched for the access panel for the West Area, opening it and slamming her palm against the reader, the scanner only barely having the time it needed to confirm her administrator level access, the band with the glowing magenta chip suddenly too tight on her wrist. As she stomped back down, Annette barked angrily at the gawking spectators, "Back to your stations, all of you! And I mean NOW!"
That got their eyes off of her, their voices ceasing their shared whispers as they quickly scampered off for the East Area or the mess hall. Long before she had become a mother, Annette had easily mastered the art of vocal intimidation to get her staff to fall in line. It didn't earn her any love among them, but she could give hardly give a shit about that, even if internally she wasn't fighting off a borderline panic attack. She had seen the email, sent out system wide to every worker in NEST.
All research into the main focus of the NEST facility, the G-Virus, had been ordered ceased, all funding cut, and her husband, Doctor William Birkin, the G-Virus's discoverer and creator, had been removed from his post as head researcher of the faculty.
Annette had no idea what was going on, having only just gotten back to the lab from her interview with that reporter: the one who had somehow learned about the existence of NEST and the G-Virus. The woman had still been trying to process how such sensitive information could have possibly been leaked before one of the techs had asked her about the email, wanting to know why her husband had been all but fired.
Annette didn't know, but she damn well was about to find out.
The blonde scientist walked through the automatic doors into the West Lab, power dashing down the single hallway before all but charging through the next automatic door to arrive in her and William's secondary workspace.
There stood her husband, leaning over the computer terminal that had a direct view into the lab's operating room, one hand fidgetingly brushing the slight golden stubble along his chin, while his other hand gripped the work station so tightly, the knuckles of his already pale hand were so white they looked almost corpselike, his blue eyes glowing slightly from the reflected light of the terminal monitor he was staring at. Though Annette couldn't see what he was reading, she had a pretty good idea since everyone else in the lab had already seen it at this point.
Unable to hold her ire back any longer, Annette power walked towards William while speaking, demanding really. "William! William, what the hell's going on?!"
The blonde male spared her a glance, his pale, sweaty face locked in a grimace before looking back at the terminal screen, his fingers raking through over his chin as he murmured to himself, "They found out. I don't know how, but they found out... Probably someone they placed on the inside; a spy. Spies everywhere..."
His words were low and uttered quickly, not towards Annette directly but seemingly to himself. William pulled himself up and moved away from the computer monitor, beginning to pace back and forth as he continued talking to himself. All the while rubbing his chin and lower lip feverishly, his pale blue eyes twitching from one corner to the other.
"Not long now. They'll send someone soon, steal it for themselves. All my work, my accomplishments. Reap the fruits of my research, steal it all away, and leave me with nothing. Just like Marcus..."
The name William uttered gave Annette pause, seeing as she could recall it easily enough. James Marcus had been William's mentor in his earliest years at Umbrella. Marcus had been one of Umbrella's three founders, the head of the now-destroyed Training Facility in the Arklay Mountains, and the man responsible for the creation of the Progenitor variant all Umbrella labs used in their research: the Tyrant Virus, although most attributed William as the t-Strain's true creator due to the modifications he had made to the virus during his tenure as head of the Arklay Laboratory under the Spencer Mansion, also now destroyed. It had been there, at Arklay, where William had discovered the mutant strain of Progenitor inside the body of a long lived, or rather long suffering, test subject. A woman that would lay the foundation for the creation of his master work: the G-Virus.
But Marcus was long dead, and both Umbrella sites in Arklay had been destroyed over two months ago due to a leak of the t-Virus, infecting the staff, and failures in various mechanical systems had allowed the many B.O.W.s developed at both labs to be released as well, rendering decontamination and recapture efforts impossible. William's oldest friend within Umbrella - and Annette used that word loosely to describe the loathsome snake that had been Albert Wesker - had died failing his mission to collect combat data from the Spencer Estate in Umbrella's effort to gain something from the loss. And because of Wesker's failure, the executive board of the company had been laying even more pressure down on William, all but demanding he turn over the G-Virus before it was officially completed.
William had refused, but Umbrella wasn't one to take 'no' for an answer. And now, with this system-wide email...
"William, what's going on? Why did Umbrella cut off funding for the project? Why is Jane Doyle saying you've been removed from your position here?" Annette demanded, moving after William, finally standing directly in front of her husband, only scant inches apart. The blonde male finally seemed to acknowledge his wife's presence, his twitching eyes settling on her and regarding her coldly for several tense moments before lowering his hand away from his face.
William turned and glared at the computer terminal again before looking back at Annette, his expression twisted into a scowl, the corner under his left eye twitching noticeably. "That weasel, Kessler... Someone told him. Someone working here - another goddamn spy - leaked G's status to him. They jumped the damn gun, told him it was ready, and he tells me to hand the project over!"
Annette was disappointed to realize she wasn't surprised at all by this. Since the NEST's foundation, spies had been a constant problem, either paid off interns or janitorial staff looking for anything valuable to give back to their backers, or even scientists and technicians bought off by Umbrella higher-ups to steal William's work directly for the very people they all worked for, the Board of Executives. All of them were after the same thing: William's G-Virus. The stress of being on alert for spies that could be anywhere or anyone, added with the ever-mounting pressure of completing his life's work, had taken its toll on William over the last six months, his health visibly declining, his temper shortening by the day. Annette hadn't been immune to the growing stresses either, but she held herself together despite them.
"William, I understand your frustrations, but the project is-"
"It's mine!" he screeched, spittle flying from his lips, twitching blue eyes wide with barely-restrained fury. Before the woman could even blink, the male Birkin resumed pacing furiously, while beginning to rant in rage, each word burning hotter than the last.
"Those rich IDIOTS think I've just come up with another product to sell for them. Their simple minds can't even BEGIN to conceive what I'm so close to achieving! The next step in human evolution! Not some new test tube freak to fail at killing a bunch of glorified beat cops! G is so much more than all the failures the Tyrant Strain ever produced combined! It will make everything, everything, Umbrella has ever created obsolete! It's sheer perfection! And no one will take it away from me!"
His furious tirade ended as quickly as it began, but Annette didn't have a chance to so much as blink before he began again, his words just above a hushed whisper.
"When Kessler told me to turn over all the research we had on G, I knew I had to do something. So I contacted one of the upper brass in the United States military. I told them what we were on the verge of finishing, and they were more than willing to give me the time I still need to finish G in exchange for joining their bio-weapons division."
At that, Annette felt her face flush, her eyes widening with disbelief as she uttered, "You did WHAT?!"
William turned to look at her, seemingly indifferent to her own fury as he explained almost casually, "They offered us money and protection from Umbrella, of course. We'll probably be placed in a witness protection program, as if that matters. All I need do is give them samples of the t bio-weapons, and they'll give me whatever I need to finish G-"
"Do you have any idea what you've done?!" Annette screeched over her husband, making the taller man double-take at her in surprise. The shorter blonde woman stormed up to William, angrily jabbing her index finger into his chest as she tore into her so-called better half. "You put all of our lives in jeopardy! Not just our own, but Sherry's, for God's sake! Our daughter! You, more than anyone else, know what Umbrella does to anyone who breaches confidentiality! Is your damn pride worth our lives?!"
"Dammit, Annette, you've worked on this for as long as I have! What we'll have achieved once G is completed will go beyond conventional science! Progenitor and t were just small steps, but G will usher a new age! A new world!" he snapped back at her, and the blonde woman once more found herself at a loss for words.
A part of her wondered if her husband had completed his descent into full blown megalomania, something she had longed feared. Research of this level, even someone as brilliant as William wasn't immune to the toll it would take on their sanity. And after almost twenty years...
William suddenly stormed past her, arriving back at the computer terminal. After giving it a quick look over, he resumed speaking, voice no longer manic but rushed. "They gave me twenty-four hours to respond to their 'summons.' That was about six hours ago... Not a lot of time, but just enough to finish what needs to be done before we can leave."
The sudden swerve of his tone of voice made Annette blink, her head feeling light, still struggling to process everything she had just learned. Wearily, she turned towards her husband while asking, "'Leave?' What do you mean leave?"
"I mean just that: leave. Leave NEST, leave Umbrella, leave Raccoon City, leave them all behind us. My contact can extract us to safety once we're out of NEST. By the time Umbrella realizes their mistake, it'll be too late, and we'll be long gone..." William explained with a confident smirk, while the corner of his left eye still twitched and spasmed, making his confidence look more like madness.
Perhaps that's what it really was, Annette mused to herself, turning to look at her husband before speaking again.
"We can't just leave. What about Sher-"
"I know. We'll need to erase all the hard drives and servers in the Bioreactors room, not to mention removing all the samples of the G-Virus, as well as the t. That'll take an hour, two at the most. Then there's the matter of deciding the best way to handle the remaining staff in NEST. Perhaps we can leak a sample of the t into the air filtration system, ensure the entire lab becomes saturated. Umbrella will send their little toy soldiers for me, and find nothing but virus carriers shuffling about..." he interrupted as he turned to face her again, once more rubbing his chin as he thought aloud, the corners of his mouth twitching as if he was fighting back a mirthful grin at the thought of sentencing almost a hundred men and women to their deaths to the t-Virus, infection or otherwise, all the while continuing to ignore Annette's attempts to speak of their only daughter.
Annette knew she had to rein her husband back in somehow. She had to put a stop to this before it went any further, although a part of her wondered if it wasn't already well past that point.
"William, you've got to calm down and think about this rationally," she argued, approaching him and reaching out to touch his face with her right hand as she spoke further. "I know how much G means to you, but the project was always Umbrella's. They discovered Progenitor, they built NEST, and provided the funding for our research. Just cooperate with them, hand over the samples, and let them do what they want with it. We may not come out unscathed, but at least we'll be-"
William's right hand that had been at his chin snatched Annette's outstretched wrist in a sudden vice claw grip, making the woman blink in shock as her husband glared down on her, blue eyes dark with rage and madness.
"Hand it over?! HAND IT OVER?! I won't just hand over my life's work to a bunch of rich suits just to watch them ladle it into some test rat, and call it something as asinine as a weapon! I've achieved so much more than worthless biological soldiers! And I won't let them take what's MINE!"
Stunned into silence, Annette barely reacted as William contemptuously let her hand go, the limb falling limp at her side as he began to move for the back of the lab, heading for the automatic door to the locker room, and the Bioreactor and main lab beyond it, speaking as he did, his tone calmer but Annette knew it was a façade at this point.
"Now come on, we need to get started. The longer you force us to dawdle and waste time, the more likely it is Kessler will have dispatched a team of gas-masked hired guns to come and get me. Let's go."
Unable to do much else, Annette followed William through the locker room, the husband and wife duo only pausing briefly in the decontamination area for William to temporarily disable its settings, before arriving in the Bioreactors area. The male Birkin pointed towards the lift to the left side of the expansive connecting platform, quickly ordering his wife as he did.
"Go down and start wiping all the hard drives. We don't have enough time to get rid of everything. There'll be a paper trail, but only so much. Wiping all the hard data and taking all the samples will set them back years, perhaps even a decade." That comment prompted him to pause as Annette reached the lift and began her descent.
Just before she lost sight of her husband, she caught his wry grin and twitching eye as he resumed his walk, murmuring darkly to himself, "Let's see how they like losing ten years of their life..."
Arriving at the bottom of the area, Annette went about her task, moving towards the first set of data hard drives, situated in several rows, absently listening to William's rushed footfalls as he made his way for their private lab, where all the viral samples, t and G, were kept under lock inside a dispenser only they had access to. While he was no doubt getting a duralumin case with which to safely carry the dangerous viruses in, Annette went to work on manually setting the hard drives to begin deleting all the data they carried. It was a simple matter of hitting a few buttons, and Umbrella would lose all the encoded data on the numerous experiments they had carried out and the refinement of the G-Virus that had been stored on these servers, which had been set up to only store the data, and not allow for it to be dispersed throughout Umbrella's Red Queen network.
It had been one of William's demands during the NEST's construction, and one that Lord Spencer himself had approved of. While there were many among Umbrella's North American and European branches who had seen no real use for a bio-weapon that evolved and was limited in how it could spread itself, Spencer had still allowed for William to pursue the project. Annette suspected the old aristocrat of having his own motives for research into G, but she still wasn't sure what those motives could be-
-movement, above, rapid footfalls of multiple people moving quickly across the connecting bridge and platform above. Annette blinked, awakening from her internal rambling-like stupor, her gaze snapping up. She had worked her way over to the left hand side of the room, and even in the dim lighting and poor angle, she was able to see several figures in black quickly hurrying across the bridge, each of them holding a short rifle in their hands.
The female Birkin's eyes widened in horror as she realized William had badly mistimed how long they would have before Umbrella would send their soldiers after him, and Annette absently noted that the company must have easily predicted William's own actions if they had the foresight to send their men so soon before the deadline of his summons. Annette broke into a quick run for the lift on the opposite side of the room, which would take her directly up to the lab. She knew she could do absolutely nothing against an armed squad of trained soldiers, but she wasn't about to abandon her husband to-
A rapport of gunfire sounded, barely muffled by the distance and the thick metal walls built into the complex, and Annette froze in place, her face paling, jaw falling open.
Oh god. William! she thought desperately, throwing herself onto the lift and stabbing at the controls, barely even acknowledging the sounds of the lab door opening and Umbrella's gunmen rushing back out. She saw their backs, but gave them no more thought as she quickly darted through the automatic door. She could smell cordite and iron, taste copper on her tongue, and already she knew them as the smell of gunpowder and the blood of her husband.
But she was barely five steps in when she heard a faint whisper, hushed and filled with pain, but still brimming with growing wrath.
"You don't... get away... that easily..."
Then a weak grunt, quickly followed by a agonized bellow and choked sob. She knew it was William, and as she rounded the corner, stepping into the lab entirely, Annette saw her husband laying against the bottom of the dispenser, while a great pool of blood had formed around him. Too much blood for him to still be conscious, let alone remain alive. The upper chest of his shirt and coat were dyed red with black spots. Bullet wounds, she realized. But as Annette watched him struggle up to his feet, her eyes caught a faint glimmer of metal on the floor.
As they turned to look at the source, her entire body froze with terror...
At the sight of a dropped hypodermic injector... the bloody needle dripping a single drop of purple fluid.
Eyes wide with terrified understanding, mouth slack with horror, Annette looked back at her husband as he rose to his feet, the veins of his neck pronounced and swollen, his bloody hands clenched into tight fists.
"Good god, William..." she gasped, before crying, "What have you done?!"
Her husband ignored her words, looking past her, his bloodshot blue eyes staring where Umbrella's soldiers who had tried and failed to kill him, had been. Face twisting with pain and anguish, William wailed, "G IS MY CREATION!"
Then he began to walk, slow staggering steps, a sickening, twisted, crunch issuing from his body that made him jerk and groan in agony, followed by another as he stalked after his would-be killers. Annette stumbled backwards as he passed her, still twitching and jerking with every step, when again she saw something on the floor, close to the dispenser. A quick glance down, and she saw she was standing above a discarded firearm, a handgun, covered in William's blood as well.
Without even realizing it, Annette quickly bent over and snatched the weapon up, gripping it with both hands that shook fiercely, the shivering barrel trained on her blood soaked better half.
"William!" she called, not really understanding why, or if she even expected him to respond.
She had to pull the trigger now, and kill him before the full effects of the G-Virus's ability to revitalize cellular function took effect. Once that happened, he would... change. And into something no puny handgun had a remote chance of harming. Nothing short of flames reaching 2000 degrees, or molecular acid would be able to stop him once the virus reached fruition in his body. And she wasn't going to have a better chance than this. William was still cognizant; still in control of himself. But that wouldn't last for long.
The virus would eventually take control. And if he were to somehow escape NEST and reach Raccoon City, he would wreak havoc unseen...
And the virus would use him to find Sherry...
All of this flashed through Annette's mind in an instant, and she knew she had to pull the trigger now. To put every round in the gun in her husband's head and heart before the virus' effects became apparent
And yet...
She couldn't bring herself to pull the trigger.
Annette could only watch with growing grief as William staggered out of the lab, her arms falling down, eyes closing as she realized...
She couldn't do it.
All she could do was stand there and listen to her husband stagger away to reap his vengeance on Umbrella's soldiers.
"I should've killed him while I had the chance..." Annette admitted as she finished her story.
Both Claire and Tony had listened in silence as the female scientist explained the events that had led to her husband becoming a monster borne of his own research, all for petty revenge against Umbrella. That simple act had damned himself, Raccoon City, its inhabitants, and ultimately his own child. The young woman looked back at the older scientist, her grey-blue eyes filled with pity, while Tony's expression was more controlled, seemingly indifferent, but even his icy orbs glimmered with understanding, if not condonement.
Annette looked down at the capsule shooter in her right hand, her face an expressionless mask, the woman seemingly out of any further tears or grief for her family's situation. Her voice, tinged with exhaustion, uttered, "I don't know why... I just... couldn't do it..."
She wagged the capsule launcher as she spoke, before letting it fall back to her side, her gaze looking away from Claire and Tony, past the now-still body of what had once been William Birkin.
"He was your husband," Claire said gently.
To that, Annette looked back at the younger girl with a wry and weak smile, shaking her head as she replied. "Honestly... we were more married to our work than each other."
The older scientist had to resist a broken laugh as she finally admitted that truth aloud. Over the last week as she scrambled to ensure no trace of the G-Virus could be found by Umbrella's agents or opportunistic spies, she had come to realize she had only ever loved William's brilliance in their field of science, not the man himself. She had been foolish to ever think people like them were capable of compassion...
"You had a kid together..."
Annette blinked, both her and Claire looking over at Tony as they heard his sudden words. The red-coated swordsman had crossed his arms over his chest, once more favoring Annette with his cold eyes. Cold, but not uncaring.
"It was real at some point."
Annette felt herself shudder, and had to swallow hard to keep down a sudden sob building in her throat. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. Perhaps she still had some grief left, after all...
At the mention of the imperiled little girl, Claire found her pity for Annette fading away, replaced by a familiar ire.
"How could you just leave Sherry all alone? And while Raccoon City burned to hell?!" the college student demanded. She understood Annette's motives better now, but she refused to excuse her callous treatment of her daughter.
Annette swallowed again, sniffling and absently wiping at her eyes before she snapped back, "I couldn't let my daughter grow up in world with the G-Virus in it!"
That made Tony scoff and shake his head in disappointment, letting his arms fall back to his sides, he started to turn for the door while saying, "Yeah, you're mother of the freaking year, lady. C'mon, let's get back to Sherry. Then we can-"
His words died in his throat as the pale-haired mercenary heard a soft sound so low and quiet, he was almost unsure he had even heard it over the sirens. But his sense of hearing was still acute enough to pick up a faint, slick, squelching noise. The red-coated gunslinger was standing directly in front of the mutated Birkin's body...
And out of the corner of his eye, he saw the flesh of the 'corpse's' upper arm open, a massive yellow and orange eye locking onto Annette, before the swollen arm lunged out for her, catching her unawares. The mutant Birkin's massive hand wrapped itself entirely around her torso, the woman scientist crying out and beginning to thrash and struggle in her former husband's monstrous grip, hyperventilating and grunting as the beast's grip slowly tightened. Claire flinched back, eyes going wide as Tony quickly got in between her and the monster husband and his still human wife, his MP5 out and locked on the mutant male Birkin.
As Tony watched for an opening, he took notice that the G-Carrier had changed forms once again. There was nothing remotely human about its new form, save its basic body shape, but its flesh was now entirely splashes of deep red or faint pink, bony protrusions emerging from its thighs. A new orange eye was growing out of its left leg's thigh, with a third arm, thinner than the massive right arm above it, was growing from its abdomen, tipped with sharp, boney talons, the same as its left. More bone-like growths emerged from its chest, which twitched and parted slightly in tune with its heavy breathing. The tumor-like head from its second transformation had grown a longer neck, the hideous face snarling, its glowing yellow eyes glaring down on Annette briefly, before with a fierce snarl, it flung the scientist away from itself with such force, the woman became a blur. One that was stopped as quickly as her flight started by slamming into the far back wall with enough impact to leave a large dent... and stains of blood.
"ANNETTE!" Claire cried, rushing for the collapsed woman while Tony let loose with his machine gun, several five round bursts striking the G-Carrier, and sending splashes of glowing yellow blood on the floor. The monster gave the man no heed, only continuing to growl and snarl with rage. As the biker girl reached Annette, quickly bending down to help the fallen woman, she saw that older woman had already finished reloading her capsule launcher with a shaking hand.
"I got this..." she grunted in between heavy gasps for breath, and Claire was amazed to watch as Birkin forced herself up on shaky feet.
The virologist staggered back towards the center of the connecting bridge, watching Tony continue to unload his rifle into the monster that had been William. When the man's MP5 ran dry, he strafed back towards the two women, quickly ejecting the clip, and reaching into his coat for a fresh magazine. As he did so, the doctor raised her arms out, lining her shot as the G-Carrier uttered a heavy roar, followed by a sickening *snap* and *crunch* of splitting flesh and setting bone, a fourth arm emerging from its back, roughly symmetrical to its overgrown right, but lacked the tumor-like eye of its twin.
"I'm sorry, William..." Annette whispered before firing again.
A soft *fwp,* and a second splash of acid coated the beast, causing it to shriek in pain and fall to its knees... but no further, its hideous, grinning face looking back at Annette, all four of its clawed hands twitching and flexing in anticipation. Stunned to see this, the monster's wife could only gasp and cry out in pain, her body giving way to collapse near the railing. Redfield quickly rushed over to help the woman, while Tony calmly sauntered closer towards the women, the abomination turning its head towards him.
Annette was unable to look away from the beast she had helped create, noting with dread that while the concentrated acid was eating into its skin, her former husband was already rising back onto his feet, no worse for wear.
"He's... He's getting stronger... with every skin he sheds..." she murmured wearily, droplets of blood running down her lips.
"Then it's safe to say you don't 'got this,' Doc," the young gunman snapped as he finished reloading, before turning his gaze towards his left, an idea quickly forming. "...I, on the other hand, do got this."
Claire looked back for her ex beau, and saw he was standing right next to them, in front of a control panel at the end of the walkway. Before the young college student could say anything, he slammed a button on it hard enough with his free closed right hand to break it. But not before it did what it was meant to do.
The effect was immediate, red warning lights flashing throughout the chamber, new alarm horns firing as the center platform and connecting bridges began to lower down, hydraulics hissing from below. Claire watched as it slowly began to descend downwards, Annette following her gaze, her eyes half-lidded and bleary, her words more or less gurgled.
Quickly deducing what the white-haired mercenary was planning to do, she tried to call out to him as he stepped away from the panel. "Tony...!"
"You gotta get outta here, Claire," he interrupted as walked over to her, voice calm and firm so as to allow no further argument. "We don't have much time. If you hurry now, you can still make it to Sherry in time."
"But what about-"
"We don't have time for this, Claire!" Redgrave suddenly snapped, startling her. Before the younger Redfield could react, her ex then bent forward to extend his hand out to her, gripping her left shoulder tenderly with his right hand, his icy blues looking into her grey-blues softly. "You said it yourself. You've got the cure. That means that little girl needs you right now!" Tony then shot a quick glance towards said child's mother. "Both of you."
Claire wanted to protest, but as if to prove his point, Annette suddenly started to cough harshly, small droplets of blood mixed in with her spittle.
"You said you wanted to save her, so go save her!" Tony ordered, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly before stood back up to his feet, standing directly between them and the monster that William Birkin had become, hopping down onto the descending platform to join it. "And in the meantime, I'll deal with Daddy Dearest!"
With their discussion truly finished, the matter settled for the time being, Claire pulled Annette's right arm over her shoulder, letting the older woman lean on her as she led both of them away from the impending confrontation.
"He doesn't know... what he's up against..." the wounded female gasped as Tony calmly sauntered closer towards the G-Carrier, the abomination turning its head towards him.
To both the student and the scientist's surprise, Redgrave called back at them, flashing them his familiar smirk as he replied cockily, "Oh, I think I have a pretty damn good idea!" He pointed to himself with the thumb of his right hand. "Trust me, this kinda thing's right up my alley!"
Tony turned to face the G-Carrier, to face William Birkin, raising his MP5 up while Annette shouted at him over the alarms, "Whatever you do, don't stop until it's finished!"
Letting out an annoyed groan, the mercenary twisted around to wave them off. "I got it, already! Now get the hell outta here!"
Claire watched in silent awe as the monster Birkin threw its arms out and its head back, issuing an inhuman roar of challenge in response, before looking at Tony one last time, whispering, "Whatever happens... come back to me, Anthony."
Then she turned and made for the automatic doors with Annette at her side, leaving her former lover behind to go and save the life of the monster's child.
Tony grinned fiercely at the monstrous William Birkin, his eyes flashing between blue and gold. Inside him, his inner devil howled for blood.
There would be no more interruptions. No more holes to knock down his enemy into, and hope it would be the fall that finally killed it. Just him, and it.
And only one of them was walking away...
"Alright, Billy... Time to put you outta everyone's misery!" he taunted the roaring G-Carrier, letting out a laugh as he opened fire, the beast charging for him.
Everything around her was a blur to ignore. There were no more obstacles between her and her means of escape. She merely had to run the long walk back before it was too late.
Ada Wong dashed through the decontamination room, the lockers, the first lab of the NEST's West Area, and then across the connecting bridge, her brown eyes focused ahead, her MP5 clutched tightly with both hands. She could feel the slight weight of her side pack, where inside the last surviving G-Virus sample lay. Her mission was accomplished, and now she had to leave.
As she dashed across the bridge and then over to the next, she knew Redgrave, his girlfriend - ex-girlfriend, she reminded herself - and Annette were too preoccupied with whatever had burst into the Bioreactors Chamber, so she let any lingering concerns that they would try to stop her go. They had the G-Antiviral Agent they needed to save Annette's daughter. They had want they wanted, and she had what she wanted.
She forced herself to forget Tony's words, pushing down the unease in her stomach away. None of it mattered anymore, anyway. The job was still far from done.
The spy had to get back to the cable car, go back to the sewers, and find a way topside. Once she was back in Raccoon, she needed to get to the Apple Inn, which was going to be a challenge with how far into the city it was. She had better weaponry now, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once there, she had to find her contact, if they were still alive.
If they were dead, things would get-
As she charged into the lobby and dashed for the still open gates of NEST, the lights in the room flickered.
Ada stopped dead in her tracks, the MP5 up and ready, laser sight trained on...
Nothing.
No one was there.
But that wasn't true, she realized.
The lights flickered off, then back on.
Under the droning alarms, a heavy step. Then a second, followed by another. From the shadows, something moved.
Or rather...
Someone.
Cold eyes stared back into her own, while the bandages around their mouth crinkled as his unseen lips curled into a pleased grin.
"Leaving so soon, Agent Wong?"
In their left hand was a sheathed katana.
Ada felt her unease rise back up, morphing into pure dread as she stared at the final obstacle between her and escape.
But she realized there wasn't going to be any escape now.
"...But we've only just arrived at the climax," Gilver declared darkly, his sneer never wavering, his fingers flexing over his sheathed sword in anticipation.
(Checks watch and calendar.)
Well. Nine months. If we don't count my failed foray into KH fanfiction, new record!
Lots of stuff happened in my life between this chapter and the last, mostly good, but unfortunately mixed with burnout and general laziness. But as my buddy the Da-Awesom-One says, this story ends when I say it ends!
Also I'm 90% positive he wouldn't let me not finish this fic since he's co-authoring, which is a good thing!
I've played and beaten Village (Briefly toyed with the idea of having Dante help Ethan out in a potential story before deciding our half-human hero would just breeze through that place) and watched Infinite Darkness (Man was it boring and Claire's screentime was too short and wasted!). You can blame and thank Village for this story's delay because man that game was addictive.
Also you can blame the Ninja Gaiden Master Collection for the delay as well because man I forgot how much I enjoyed/was frustrated by those games.
This chapter was originally gonna be a helluva lot longer, it ends at what was supposed to be the halfway point but I decided to turn the remaining half into a chapter by itself. This extends Made In Heaven by one extra chapter, and while I want to say I'll finish it soon...well my track record mostly sucks at this point, but this fic will get finished!
The next chapter will see Tony and Birkin's third (And final?) fight, Claire and Annette's struggle to reach Sherry, and one last confrontation between Gilver and Ada. I've still got some surprises in store for you readers (If any of you are still here that is) and we're two chapters from the finish line.
Fave and drop a review, those are good incentives to motivate me! And be sure to check out Da-Awesom-One's own author page and stories as well! Without him, I probably would have stopped on this story a while ago! Yes, I'm that lazy.
Thanks for reading folks!
