Rain was dead.
And yet, she could still see through her eyes as she stood up, cracked her neck, and faced down Matt Addison for a heartbeat (that she no longer had) before hissing and charging at him, intending to take a bite out of him.
Helpless, she wondered if it was like this with the hundreds of other zombies in the Hive. Was JD locked away inside his own mind as his corpse sank its teeth into her? It was a horrifying thought, and she only hoped that she'd be similarly put out of her misery, the sooner the better.
Matt pushed her back against the wall. Alice bellowed "Open the doors! Now!" And he proceeded to shoot her in the head.
All went black. Thank God.
XXX
"…Alright, team, remember your briefing," One informed them. "We breach in sixty."
Rain shook her head. That… that was a weird-ass daydream. Stay focused, jackass, she told herself as she prepared to rappel out of the helicopter.
JD saw her shake her head around and leaned over. "Hey Ocampo, you need to lay down and take a little nap?" he asked her with a smirk.
"Fuck you, man!" Rain snapped back at him, harsher than she'd meant to come across. That… daydream, or whatever the fuck it was… had affected her more than she'd thought. "Just had an eyelash in my eye, shook it loose."
"Don't want anything bad to happen to those pretty little eyes of yours," JD agreed. Rain inwardly sighed. For the hundredth time, she regretted sleeping with him.
Sanitation breached the Looking Glass House. She tackled (Matt Addison) the stranger as he pulled a gun, while One went over to get a report from (Alice) their primary contact.
Kaplan took the badge and ran the ID against the RCPD database. Rain remembered him not getting a match in her daydream. "I'm not getting a match," he reported.
"Who are you?" she demanded, placing a pistol against Addison's skull. More deja vu. "Let me guess," she said. "You just transferred, they probably don't have you on file yet."
"…Yeah!" Addison answered, sounding a lot less confident than he had in… in that goddamn daydream. Keep it together, Ocampo, she urged herself. Now's not the time to go off the deep end.
"The locals are inefficient, it's possible," Kaplan said.
"Should I secure him here?" Rain asked. Please say yes, please say yes, please don't say we take him with us…
"No," One declared, pulling off his gas mask. "We take him with us."
Shit. Shit shit SHIT.
"You can't do this!" Addison declared.
Rain stamped down the rising panic within her as she ignored his protest. She wrestled him to his feet and marched him into the secret door behind most of the rest of Sanitation.
They reached the train and she pushed Addison away from her, making sure he just stood there placidly against the wall (like he did last time). Shut up SHUT UP, she hissed internally. Kaplan announced that the train's power was out, so she hopped down and reconnected the cables and reset the whatsit onto the rail, ignoring the creepy-ass vent with a torn hole in the grating at the end of the line. She climbed back up, realizing JD hadn't spooked her this time. There IS no 'this time' or 'last time', you crazy fucking bitch, now PUT A LID ON THAT SHIT.
…If there is no 'this time' or 'last time', why does everything seem so familiar? she wondered. She suddenly thought of the sample case, tucked neatly away in a little nook at the rear of the train. She could just… go look. Get up right now, stroll to the rear of the train, and see if there was a black bag with a big metal case inside of it.
She dithered too long, and the train lurched forward.
As the train drew closer to the Hive, Rain attempted to open the back door, like she… no, because it was a good idea. But the damn door was stuck. (Like last time). SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.
She noticed Alice and Addison watching her. She remembered Alice tenderly touching her face, telling her no one else was going to die. She remembered the last thing Alice had said to her: "I could kiss you, you bitch." She remembered thinking, Well then, why don't you? and had been about to vocalize it when that giant goddamn monster had attacked, leaving her to to die quietly in a corner, before standing up and attempting to bring Addison into the ranks of the undead.
"How's that door?" One asked, shaking her from her musing.
"It's sealed shut," Rain said, unwilling (then and now) to admit she wasn't strong enough to bust it open.
"Let me," JD said, walking past her with his typical macho swagger.
He forced the door open and Spence Parks fell forward onto the floor of the train. Rain wanted to raise her rifle and blow him away then and there. Over what, a goddamn DAYDREAM? Ocampo, for the thousandth time, keep it the FUCK together!
The team medic went over to check on Spence, and Rain decided it'd be a good idea to just… dissociate for a while. Her body ran mostly on autopilot, joining her team as the train reached the Hive and they cleared the area, confirming a lack of hostiles. She put on the safety mask and proceeded to use the big cutter to carve a hole in the door for Kaplan to reach into its guts and open it up properly. Then, JD put on his night-vision monocle and entered the darkness, finding the lights and turning them on.
(Just like last time), the mantra in her head kept whispering. (Just like last time, just like last time, just like last time…)
Soon enough, they reached the flooded labs. "Rain, JD, see how bad the flooding is," One ordered. Rain advanced through the spouts of water fountaining through the tiny breaches in the safety glass, trying to ignore the memory of being wreaked with viral fatigue as she tried to heft a fire axe and succeed where the researchers who'd drowned her had failed… only to find that just picking up the axe left her so weak she could barely even stand anymore.
Once her and JD were well away from the others, she risked a question. "Hey, man, do you ever get this… funny feeling?"
JD squinted at her. "Hey, I always used protection, so if you've got that 'burns when it pees' feeling, that ain't from me!"
Rain scowled. "No, jackass, nothing like that!" She sighed. "Like… like you know what's gonna happen before it happens."
JD opened his mouth for another wisecrack but saw the haunted look on Rain's face. "Hey, are you okay?" he asked, stopping her and facing her directly, all Serious Mode all of a sudden.
"Yeah…" Rain said, unsure of how much she should say. "It's just… ever since coming into this place, I'm having these weird sensations of deja vu… are you?" she asked.
JD shook his head. "Was this before or after we breached? Took off our masks?"
"Before," Rain confirmed. "So it's definitely not an errant whiff of nerve gas."
JD relaxed slightly. "Alright…" he said, deep in thought. "Do you wanna talk to the medic about it? Want me to take point over you for now?"
"I can still do my damn job!" Rain snapped. "And no, I don't want to talk to her, she'll just say I'm going fucking crazy or something." She took a deep breath, held it in, then let it out. "Look, the whole level ahead of us is flooded, right?"
JD glanced at the only way forward, a flooded passageway, and nodded. "Right."
Rain nervously rubbed the back of her neck. "Kaplan's gonna direct us through a place called Dining Hall B," Rain said. "I… JD, I hope I am going crazy. I hope that Dining Hall B really is a dining hall."
"And if it's not?" JD asked.
"If it's not…" Rain bit her lip, considering all that came after. "…Make sure you save one bullet for yourself." JD looked shaken at the advice, but didn't pester Rain for any more information.
They returned to the group and reported the flooding.
"Alright, we're behind schedule," One declared. "So let's move it!"
JD and Rain took up the rear, and stopped a moment to look at the poor dead woman floating behind the safety glass. Rain remembered her taking a bite out of Spence. What would happen if she reached out and tapped the glass, like it was an aquarium? Would she spring to life and futilely claw at the glass?
She quickly followed JD, not wanting to see that. She heard a dull, muted thump behind her, as if someone wanted to tap on the glass wall anyway, and a chill ran down her spine.
They reached Dining Hall B… and discovered several dozen metallic sarcophagi, tubes and wires running into each one. JD stared at her wide-eyed, but didn't say anything to the others.
"JD, you and Rain keep the prisoner here and secure the exit," One ordered. Rain wanted to scream, because her 'daydream' was looking more and more like some kind of fucked-up premonition, and if it kept holding true, then (apart from Kaplan) One and the rest of her squad going on ahead were all going to be dead very shortly.
She kept her mouth shut. What could she do, tell them that she was seeing the future now?
Her, JD, and Addison waited in the room where Umbrella produced nightmares. After a while, the lights flickered off, and Rain was pretty sure that that meant that the laser slaughter had already happened.
"What's going on?" JD whispered to her.
"What the fuck do you mean?" Rain snapped, also in a whisper.
"You had, what, a psychic vision or something of what was down here," JD pointed out. "You told me yourself. What happens next?"
Rain bit her tongue before it could lash out at him again. Then she bit her tongue again before it could inform him that they were all going to die down here. "We're… going to be attacked. Just follow my lead."
From a distant part of the room they could hear clanging, a metal-on-metal sound that, as far as Rain concerned, may as well have been the grim reaper's scythe.
"Come on," Rain muttered, readying her SMG. JD followed, and Addison, bored, tagged along. She found the tank of compressed gas where the dead bitch had knocked it from its place, then saw the dead bitch herself, leaning against a pillar for support. Rain clenched her jaw, raised her gun, and fired a short burst, turning the top of the zombie's head into a fine mist. She turned to tell JD what was up, when —
The next thing she knew, she was coming to, a throbbing lump of pain on her skull, her hands behind her in handcuffs. "…the FUCK?" she snarled, flipping around onto her back. JD had his gun aimed straight at her, and Kaplan, Alice, and Spence had shown up by now.
"What was all the shooting?" Kaplan asked.
"Rain's gone nuts," JD said. "She killed a survivor."
"The fuck do you mean I've gone nuts, you fucking asshole?" Rain yelled. "Dining Hall B, what did I fucking tell you? You asked me what happens next, well, a goddamn walking corpse bites me, that's what happens next! I get infected with a horrible fucking virus, that's what happens next!"
The others were unsure of what to make of this, but it didn't matter. Rain could see the rest of the zombies making their way to them from where they'd been locked away. "Let me go!" she demanded. "LET ME GO! LET ME GO!"
It was too late. They finally noticed the horde enclosing in on them, and between JD, Kaplan, and Alice, they didn't have enough firepower to repel them. Several of the zombies fell onto Rain and began biting into her, tearing at her flesh, and she couldn't help but scream in agony at the repeated mortal injuries she was being subject to.
JD approached, shooting the zombies feasting on her with his pistol. He must have run out of ammo for his rifle, or simply lost it in the carnage. Judging by the wound on his neck, he'd already lost quite a lot of blood.
"I… I'm sorry, Rain," he uttered, falling to his knees, before withdrawing a grenade from its pouch, pulling the pin, and letting it blow the both of them to kingdom come.
XXX
"…Alright, team, remember your briefing," One informed them. "We breach in sixty."
Rain began screaming, and didn't stop until the medic had sedated her.
XXXXXXXXXXX
Aragorn: Gentlemen, we do not stop 'til nightfall.
Pippin: What about Alice/Rain fanfiction?
Aragorn: You've already had it.
Pippin: We've had one, yes. What about second Alice/Rain fanfiction?
That's right, folks, you have once again entered the wacky world of survival romance! A few weeks ago, my brain (an utter bastard), said to me, "Hey, what if Rain was caught in a time loop? Wouldn't that be funny?" And I said, "No, you fuck! I'm already doing another epic Alice/Rain romance!" And my brain was like, "So, is that a no?" And I was like, "…You know it's a yes, you fucker."
You'll notice right off that this leans a lot more into the angst right off the bat, as opposed to AIR, hahaha.
The update schedule for this one isn't gonna be as tight as the one I keep up for the AIR series (I've only got five chapters of this finished, whereas I've finished off all the movies for AIR). I'm thinking… once a week, for now. (Unless I just go hogwild and write so much that I have several dozen chapters in the backlog, hahaha).