Events progressed as they normally did, save for Rain finding the sample case and Spence once again being placed in restraints. She and JD were ordered to wait in Dining Hall B with Addison and Spence; once they were out of sight (sending a pang of guilt through Rain — she still hadn't figured out an effective method to save them, after all), she turned to JD. "Hey man, can you keep watch over these clowns for a few? I've gotta hit the head."
"I gotcha," JD assured her. "Just don't forget to wipe!" Rain flipped him the bird as she walked off, darting behind one of the sarcophagi for privacy. She removed the syringe she'd slipped from the sample case, injected herself with the T-virus, then shimmied her pants down and slit her femoral artery. As she was coming to, the lighting above flickered, telling her that One and the others were already dead.
Her body began to move of its own accord, but Rain rushed through her litany of humanity: Alice-Olga-Terri-LJ-JD-One-Carlos-Alice. By the time she was standing upright, she was fully herself again, and her mouth cracked into a smile. "Good luck killing me when I'm already dead, you godforsaken hole in the ground," she muttered. She pulled her pants back up, grimacing a little at the blood getting all over them.
She returned to JD and their prisoners. JD's eyes locked onto her pale face and blue eyes. "Rain, what the hell? Were you sick in there or something?" He then noticed the copious amount of drying blood saturating her pants. "Jesus, what the fuck happened? Are you okay?" He started walking towards her, thinking to help somehow.
"Whoa, what the fuck, man?" Rain snapped, recoiling from his touch. "It's called a period. Women get them all the time, it's nothing to worry about."
"Rain, there's an awful lot of fucking blood on your pants!" JD countered. "I can smell it!"
"Yeah, sometimes women have heavy periods, JD." Rain put her hands on her hips, stern-faced. "You gonna stand there and tell me you know how womens' bodies work better than an actual woman?"
"I grew up with my sister, and Lisa never once menstruated that much," Addison chipped in.
"Nobody fucking asked you!" Rain snapped at him. "And not every woman is an identical goddamn robot! Sometimes I'm a fucking firehose, alright?"
Off in the distance was the sound of that zombie knocking over a compressed air tank. Cool, time to see if this zombie lifestyle was worth it. "I'm on it," she said, advancing in its direction.
"Rain, are you sure —" JD tried to say.
"I said I'm fucking on it!" Rain reiterated. "And for the love of God, keep an eye on Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Ass!"
She walked up to the zombie in scientist garb. The zombie paid no mind to her. "Hey, you in there?" Rain said. The zombie looked at her, with all the focus of an extremely drunk person. It clearly had no interest in attacking and eating her. "Look, if there's still a 'you' in there to hear this… the secret is to focus on your human connections, alright?" She took the zombie's hand. "The kiss of a lover, the comfort of a friend, the love of a child… any of that will hopefully do the trick." The zombie was completely unmoved by Rain's words. "…Shit, you got a pet? A dog, a cat, one of those fucking tarantulas maybe? Come on, anything?"
"Hey Rain, how's it going?" JD called, and that got the zombie's interest.
"No, fucking stop!" Rain said, grabbing the zombie by the hand and pulling it back to her. "Alright, maybe you need a fresh new connection…" She gulped, grabbed the zombie's head, and pressed her lips to its own. A shudder of revulsion suddenly ran through her, and Rain didn't think it was due to the whole necrophila-lite thing, since she was a corpse herself. She took the zombie's arm in her own, rolled up the sleeve, and tried sinking her teeth into its flesh. Again, an instinctual wrongness suddenly radiated throughout her entire being, and she gagged once the arm was out of her mouth. She snarled and snapped its neck out of frustration. If there was someone in there, tough shit, at least you're not a zombie anymore.
She returned to JD. "Everything's fine, man, nothing to worry about." She looked at Addison and Spence. She imagined what it would be like to pin Spence down and tear out his throat… and the sudden intense longing struck her like a freight train, taking every ounce of her will to not go over and make it reality.
JD saw the way she looked at Spence and elbowed her in the ribs. "Hey, Ocampo, keep it in your pants, alright?" he murmured. "Unlike your menses." He smirked at her. Rain's lip curled up in disgust.
Alice and Kaplan showed up fairly soon after that. The look of worry and panic on their faces was only amplified upon seeing Rain. "Jesus, are you okay?" Kaplan said.
"Oh yeah, she's fine," JD said, rolling his eyes. "She's just going through her 'womanly time'," putting air quotes up to show his skepticism. "Hey Alice, do you turn into Niagara Falls when it's that time of the month?"
Alice's eyes went wide at the question. "I… I don't know," she confessed.
"Oh, amnesia, right," JD said, giving Rain a look almost like he was accusing her of orchestrating it. He turned and started talking to Kaplan about their next moves.
Alice approached her, eyes locked on her neck. "You're not actually on your period, are you?" Alice asked in a low voice. Rain hesitated before shaking her head 'no'. "What happened to you?" Her voice was concerned; her eyes were frightened. She started raising her hand to touch Rain's face. I could kiss you, you bitch.
"You probably shouldn't do that," Rain warned, leaning away from her. She heard the scraping of the axe, and knew that the other zombies were almost upon them. "I'll explain later." She turned to Addison. "Yo, Addison, get your ass over here!" He approached warily, surprised when Rain undid his handcuffs and thrust his pistol back into his hands. "Aim for the head, alright?"
"What are you —" He stopped talking when the first zombie (besides her, haha) came into view. He — all of them — quickly glanced between Rain and the other zombies, drawing conclusions just as fast.
"The fuck are you staring at me for?!" Rain snapped, raising her rifle and opening fire. She controlled her shots, sending quick 2-3 round bursts at their heads. JD and Kaplan just fired wildly into the growing mass, occasionally taking down a zombie with a lucky hit to the spine. Addison managed a few good headshots, at least.
Soon, one of the sarcophagi got hit by some stray rounds and started raring to explode. The survivors all scattered, but Rain made sure to pursue Spence, noticing his hands free of cuffs. The prick had pickpocketed JD again! She suddenly realized she'd missed her chance to try to save JD this time — he and Kaplan would almost certainly make their way back to the elevator, where it would again open and JD would be overwhelmed. Cursing herself, she double-timed it, following Spence as he made his way into the labs.
Spence stopped to take a breath, not something Rain needed to worry about. He turned to her and opened his mouth — most likely to spew more bullshit — but Rain tackled him. "Time to see what you taste like, motherfucker," Rain snarled.
"Oh Jesus, you are one of those things!" he shouted. He scrambled to escape her grasp, but she darted her head down and tore out his throat with a swift yank of her head. And she had never tasted anything so delicious. She moaned with pleasure. It was better than anything. Sex was a distant second in comparison. She reached down and tore a chunk of flesh from his cheek, then pulled out her gun and put a bullet into his brain, extinguishing the last spark of life within him.
She didn't want him to turn. She didn't want the T-virus to taint his flesh. She wanted this feeding frenzy to continue.
She pulled out her knife, carved open his chest cavity, and began wolfing down his innards. Once those were gone, she started in on stripping the flesh from his bones, a task she tackled with unbridled enthusiasm. She ate so fast that by the time Alice discovered her, she'd already devoured much of the meat on his carcass. A small part of her wondered where it was all going — her belly certainly wasn't swelling up with all the stuff she was putting into it — but most of her was locked onto the feeding frenzy.
Rain was alerted to Alice's presence by the click of a gun's safety being disengaged. Rain looked up and saw Alice, horrified and disgusted beyond belief at Rain's gore-soaked face and hands. Tears were running down her face and teeth gritted in resignation, she aimed the gun right at Rain's head. "What did you do to him?" she asked.
"…I killed him," Rain acknowledged. "And I ate him. I thought I would be horrified by this, but I'm not. Maybe being a zombie has changed my perspective for the time being. Or maybe all this shit is just really driving me permanently nuts."
"What do you mean, 'all this shit'?" Alice asked. "And why would you do that to him?!"
Rain angrily gestured to the sample case that Alice had sat down on the ground next to her. "Because of that! He stole the fucking thing, he spread the virus down here, he killed all these goddamn people! If anything, I saved twelve assholes having to sit in a courtroom for two months before they take all of five minutes to vote his mass murdering ass guilty!" She anxiously ran a hand through her hair, before swearing under her breath, realizing she'd just smeared drying blood into it. "And the shit I'm going through… I'm not sure you'll believe me."
Alice pulled the trigger on the gun back a hair. "Try me."
Rain nodded. "Alright." Nothing to lose now, anyway. So she told Alice about the time loops — dying continuously, sometimes coming back, sometimes being turned into a freakshow, always watching her friends and colleagues dying in droves. She told about Alice becoming a science experiment too, about the city above them turning into a nightmarish charnel house that made the Hive look like a drop of raspberry jam on the kitchen floor in comparison.
She didn't tell her about how she was pretty fucking sure she'd fallen head over heels in love with her. She didn't tell her about killing her to save the kid, or the time after when Rain had blown her head off just to confirm that her death also ended a loop.
She didn't tell her about all the suicide attempts.
"Pretty unbelievable, huh?" Rain concluded. "If you wanna shoot me, go ahead. It ultimately means nothing in the grand scheme of things, and you'll forget all this. Or you'll go on, maybe, who the fuck knows. God this shit is confusing."
Alice bit her lip. "I… I believe you." She almost smirked at the look of surprise on Rain's face. "I may have amnesia, but I know that all this…" She waved her free hand around. "…is definitely not normal. When that mirror opened up and revealed a subway station underneath my house, I realized that I'd really… I'd really…"
"…Gone through the looking glass?" Rain finished. She suddenly began to cackle madly. "Alice, through the looking glass!" she managed to squeeze out. It was too damn perfect. How was it that Umbrella hired a woman named Alice to station a place called Looking Glass House? The only thing that would have made the situation perfect was if they'd called the Hive 'Wonderland' instead.
Alice watched Rain's laughter with a bemused look, the literary reference lost on her, alas. Once Rain had calmed down enough, Alice continued with her point. "My point is that I'm very much open to believing a lot of extraordinary ideas. So… if you are telling the truth, maybe try approaching me before you become a bloodthirsty killing machine. Okay?" Rain nodded. "Now, if I don't shoot you, are you going to try to eat me or any of the others?"
Baby, I could eat you up all night long, Rain thought, but thought that perhaps this was not the best time to lay on some heavy flirting. "No, I can go without," Rain said.
Alice nodded, put the safety back on, and lowered the gun. "Alright then," she nodded. "I'm keeping an eye on you, though."
Rain went to wash all the fresh blood from her hands and face before following Alice to join with the others. As she did so, however, she felt the skin on the tips of her fingers begin to split; she watched with a mingling of fascination and horror as bony spikes — claws, really — emerged from within her fingers.
She was reminded of the licker creatures. Was this how they were made? Feed a zombie enough uninfected human flesh? She could feel her muscles expanding beneath her skin, but not to the point where it was being wholly torn off, not just yet. No other changes seemed forthcoming, either, and the fingerclaws had only extended out by maybe half an inch before stopping.
Rain held her hand out to Alice. "Hey, check this out," she said, before explaining her theory that she was on the road to lickerdom. (And she also had to explain what one of those fucking monsters entailed, too).
Alice nodded as she listened and scrutinized Rain's hand. "Well, if you feel like you might lose control and attack one of us, let me know, alright?" Alice said. "I know that being… in this time loop thing… means that you apparently have some kind of resistance to losing yourself when you transition into one of these creatures, but we don't really know anything with certainty here."
Rain nodded, then the two of them tracked down Addison, saved him from his undead sister, and made their way back to the Red Queen's antechamber, where an incredibly distraught Kaplan had made his refuge. "Spence didn't make it?" Kaplan asked.
"No," Rain said, hardly broken up about it. Alice's eyes were cast down to the ground.
"…You killed him, didn't you?" Kaplan asked.
"What the fuck?!" Rain snapped back, more surprised than angry. How did the little dweeb know?
"Don't try to deny it!" Kaplan said. "Y-you're just like those other things! Just because you can talk, you're still a killer! And there's blood in your hair!"
Rain mentally swore. Of course! She'd forgotten to fucking wash her hair out, distracted by the tips of the bone claws coming from her fingers!
Kaplan turned to Alice. "One of us is next!" he declared.
"I-I don't really think Rain wants to kill us!" Alice protested. "Besides, Spence was responsible for the outbreak, so —"
"Whose side are you on?!" Kaplan roared. He turned back to Rain. "…You haven't even asked."
"Asked what, Kap?" Rain asked, surly.
"Asked what happened to JD," he replied.
Oh shit, Rain said, realizing her teammate's death had occurred yet again. "Well, what happened —"
"Shut up!" Kaplan shouted, cutting her off. "You clearly don't care about him, and you… you probably ordered the other zombies to kill him in the first place!"
"Jesus, Kaplan, you've gone off the deep end," Rain realized. "Look, once we're out of here, we can just —"
Kaplan whipped out his pistol and fired.
XXX
"…Alright, team, remember your briefing," One informed them. "We breach in sixty."
Rain turned to Kaplan. "You know, Kap, sometimes you can be a real fucking asshole!"
Kaplan's eyes went wide at the verbal assault. "…Uh, what'd I do?"
Later, as she and JD explored the flooded labs futilely for a route downward, she asked him to roll up his sleeve. "Okay…" he said, doing so. Rain grabbed it, gave him a sultry look to throw him off guard, then bit down on it as hard as she could. "OW! Fuck!" JD pulled his arm back from her.
Rain almost gagged at the taste of his blood. "Thank God," she murmured to herself. She was worried that the taste for human flesh would carry on back into her human self.
JD took out a roll of gauze and wrapped up the injury. "You know, Rain, I'm game if you want to try out biting or other rough stuff, but we're in the middle of a mission, okay?" He smirked, giving her a playful swat on the ass.
"Yeah, yeah," Rain said, rolling her eyes.
XXXXXXXXXX
Originally this chapter had Rain slitting her throat instead of her femoral artery and trying to play it off as if it were nothing to the others, even going so far as to assert it was a normal part of the menstrual cycle. I eventually decided against it; it seemed a bit... silly? Like, if this was Chaos Goblin Alice from the AIR series, she 100% would pull a stunt like that, but it didn't quite fit BKR's tone.