White, hot pain tunneled through his skin and every muscle of his body like roots through fertile soil. He could feel them growing and seeking out every cell in his blood. His head felt foggy and sluggish, like he was just infected with another common fever. His vision was dangerously dark as he realized he had hit the cold metal floor, what used to be his right arm screaming in protest. Piers bit back the pain in a grunt as he struggled to get to his feet, this new, deformed arm too big and clunky to assist him in the process. It still was occurring to him that his arm was no longer there. The thing that was melted into the flesh and bone of his shoulder was a mutated appendage, bearing no semblance of humanity nor shape of familiarity.
"Piers!" Chris was calling to him, running to his side. Piers felt him trying to turn him over, and he could see the urgency in his expression as he tried to evaluate how he could help. "Damnit!"
"Just go…" Piers ground out through the pain, feeling it dig through the skin of his neck and chest. They'd both seen what the C-Virus did to its hosts. Piers had become a liability; a death sentence to Chris in a situation that demanded speed and vigilance. Piers had neither at the moment.
"No," Chris was defiant, already grabbing Piers' good arm and hoisting him to his feet, "you're gonna be okay. We're almost there!"
Piers complied; he didn't have the strength to try and retaliate. Not yet at least. The electric energy surging through his new arm was unstable, as he could feel it sparking and threatening to tear into the rest of his body. He should've started to melt and turn into one of those cocoons by now with how much damage had been done to his body, but the process hadn't started yet, which worried him. He wondered how much time he had as the ticking time bomb he was before a monster stole his body. Chris was dragging him along as Piers did his best to keep up, stumbling. His arm was what hurt him, so why were his legs so damn weak?!
Piers felt something spill up in his throat, making him gag and cough, and he fought to breathe properly for a moment. Chris gave him worried glances.
"What the hell were you thinking, Piers?!" Chris' tone was only a mild scold, the brunt of it being heartache; like watching a loved one willingly dive head first into an addiction.
"Not much of a choice." Piers managed to reply, swallowing whatever bile had tried to escape his mouth. "...I was gonna die anyway."
"Well you're not gonna die now, hear me?" Chris held the young man tighter. "Soon as we get out of here, we're gonna get you some help! We'll get you back home to a normal life before you know it."
Piers only shook his head, thinking of the 'normal life' waiting for him back home. It made him almost want to chuckle in spite of himself. Nothing waited for him there. Not anymore.
The huge doors barring their way opened with a hiss, revealing another chunk of their path forward. The two soldiers found themselves staring down a long hall, lined with giant metal spheres, water gushing in through bursting pipes and weak points in the ceiling.
"Escape pods." Chris was relieved at the sight, Piers taking his word for it as it was getting difficult to keep his head up. He probably had lost a lot of blood in the moments before he injected himself, after his arm had been crushed, stabbed through by metal, then ripped off. The thought of it still made him sick, the pain spiking back to his senses as he remembered the sound of it in his ear; like the threads of a ragdoll being torn as a child ripped its arm off. He shivered, both from the thought and the cold of the water he was soaked in. He'd definitely lost way too much blood; the adrenaline must have kept him going until now. Now he felt groggy and feverish, and each step felt sluggish and delayed.
Chris dragged Piers off to the side where a bench sat near one of the pods, Piers grunting as he had to move his arm out of the way to sit down. He sank onto the cold metal seat, temporarily relieved by the rest, but the pain still pulsed from his shoulder and into the rest of his body. Chris ducked a little so Piers could see him easier.
"See that?" Chris glanced up at the pod, a hopeful look in his features as he looked back to him, "We'll be out of here in no time!"
Piers nodded, as it was just about all he could do. He watched as Chris turned his attention to the controls, Chris' face twisting in frustration as he struggled to figure out how they worked. The man never was the greatest with technology, making a flicker of a smile come to Piers' lips. His smile evaporated as his right arm sizzled, making him hiss. Piers watched the alien thing as it pulsed and popped, seeming to always be in some form of movement without his consent. It baffled him that his mind was somehow still his own. The J'avo had barely been contained with their overall orders keeping them in check, tipping somewhere between madness and a consciousness of mind. The others which hadn't remained humanoid in form, had just simply been morphed into monsters; mindless killers. How long before Piers' mind slipped away, and all that was left of him was some killer wearing his face, or what was left of his body?
Piers looked down to that mutated appendage he loosely thought of as his arm. It pulsated with its own heartbeat, barely confiding to his will, and eager to release the constant electricity building within it. As the thought of what it was sank deeper and deeper by the minute, it was harder to believe or imagine himself living outside this place with it still around. What life waited for him with this thing attached? Could it even be removed? Physical trauma only made the C-Virus rebuild what was lost in a twisted, grotesque shadow of what it had been. Before it took his body however, it'd take his mind. If it didn't have his mind by now, it'd sooner or later collect it and crush it, throwing who he was out the door. Piers swallowed back the bile that wanted to come up in his throat again, his nose filled with the stench that came with J'avo. In avoiding one death, Piers had only inserted himself into another.
"I'm sorry…." Piers tried to sound strong, but the pain was all too clear in his voice. "I know what I did was stupid."
Chris sighed, his efforts pausing for barely a second. "It was brave, Piers. One hell of a sacrifice. You don't need to be sorry for that."
"After everything we'd gone through," Piers shook his head, thinking back to the brothers they'd lost, "it just didn't feel right to let it end down here. Not if I could've done something."
"I know the feeling." Chris told him grimly, his eyes sparking as he was finding the right sequence to press. "I'm glad you did; we still have a chance because of it."
Piers grew quiet, his head feeling heavy and stuffed with nothing that aided his headache. "As long as you-"
"I don't wanna hear it, Piers!" Chris now looked at him, brown eyes sparking in fury as well as old, familiar pain. The doors of the pod opened with a hiss, Chris' gaze remaining settled on Piers as he came to him. Piers felt the man hold his head, a steely kind of look in his eyes.
"We're both getting out of here, alright?" Despite his ordering kind of tone, there was a desperate plea in Chris' eyes. This was all a scene he'd watched play over and over again; Piers had seen how much it'd been breaking the man from the inside out. He didn't want to add to that mountain of grief and guilt in Chris' mind, but how else was this going to play out?! He found a hand being offered to him, Chris' gaze determined.
"Here we go," Chris told him, a small smile of encouragement etched into his face, despite the grave feeling he was desperately trying to overcome in his eyes, "this is it, Brother."
In a burst of strength, Piers took his hand and pulled himself to his feet, Chris holding him up as he stumbled towards the pod's doors. It felt wrong. It felt horribly wrong. Piers knew he wasn't safe to be around, simply for the fact that this virus was still spreading, no matter how slow. Who knew how fast they'd get the cure to him, and he was just one person. There were thousands more who needed it. People with families, kids or loved ones. People who had someone waiting on them at home. Who was he to demand a special trip out in the middle of nowhere to be saved? Not to mention, out of the two of them, he knew Chris was the better leader. The future might last longer in Piers' hands, but it was secure with Chris. Piers would only be sentencing Chris to death if he stepped inside that pod, or giving him a cruel decision to make later on when Piers turned. Maybe Piers could spare him from that pain.
The light of the pod welcomed him, but Piers pulled away, wrenching his arm and hand free from Chris. His captain stumbled, looking back to Piers in confusion. A flicker sparked in his eyes just as he began to realize what Piers was planning, and before he could react, Piers shoved him into the pod with more strength than he thought he could possess. Chris stumbled back, tripping over the threshold of the pod, but he was getting back up in an instant. By some miracle, or fate just taking Piers' side, the pod doors closed, locking in an instant.
"Piers!" Chris' voice was barely audible from within the pod, breaking as he pushed against the door. "No! Don't do this! Open the door!"
Piers felt something coiling in him as he realized there was no opening back up that pod door. No chance of him changing his mind. No possibility of making a different choice. Now, this only ended one way. He heard more pipes bursting around them, the gush of water and spray reminding him of just what kind of death he'd given himself up to. In a single motion, he'd sealed his fate. He stood frozen for a moment as that reality hit him.
"God damnit!" Chris was pushing at the door, looking for some way to open it. "Listen to me!"
Piers couldn't look away for a moment, hearing the desperate and raw pleading within Chris' voice. Piers knew the pain he was going to be inflicting upon the man, and how it would carve him up afterwards. Pain Piers would have happily bore alongside Chris, was now pain they'd each have to carry alone, and Chris would bear that burden far longer than Piers.
"We can still make it out of here!" Chris pleaded, his expression breaking in his desperation and delusion. "There's still time!"
Piers pushed past the ache in his chest, tearing his eyes away as he moved off to the side. Each step he took was slow and unsteady, his entire body trembling as he went to the pod's control panel.
"What are you doing?!" Chris was crying from inside the pod. "No, Piers don't! You can still make it out!"
It was painful to hear the captain so delusional. Piers knew there was no such outcome for him as he reached for the switch, having a strong feeling it'd override the pod's system to launch.
"God damnit Piers!" Chris was beating at the door of the pod, fury burning in his throat, but the switch was pushed in none the less. The white lights turned red with a loud and brief siren, hurting Piers' ears as he stumbled back towards the pod's circular window.
"No! Piers, open the goddamn door! That's an order!" The threat was empty even in Chris' rage, watching as Piers came to stand before him outside the pod. Piers soaked in the light of the pod, even if it was the cold, fluorescent type he always hated. It was the last bit of light he was really going to see. He forced himself to look at Chris as the pod hissed and made the proper adjustments to set out, knowing he had very little time to give the captain a silent farewell. Chris' rage had fizzled out, the real cause of it now plain on his face. His broken heart bled into his eyes and his voice as he looked at Piers from within the safety of the pod.
"No…." he breathed, shaking his head mournfully. It wasn't a hardened soldier that spoke that word. Piers heard himself in Chris' tone; saw himself in the man's grieving eyes. Chris didn't want to accept it, and in all honesty, neither did Piers. It's what was going to happen though, regardless of what either of them wanted. Chris still had that refusal mixed with his defeat, wondering and hoping there was somehow another way he just wasn't seeing. Piers just looked him in the eye, and shook his head silently, affirming him that there wasn't. Nothing was anyone's fault. It was simply the way things had to turn out. Piers would find some way to make his peace with that, but he just hoped Chris would eventually find the courage to do the same.
Then, all too soon, the pod gasped and pushed itself along the tracks, leaving Piers behind as it sent a gush of air in its departure. Chris' scream faded with it, Piers watching as the last sight of his friend and mentor's face disappeared as the pod was guided upwards to eventually be spit up to the surface. Bits of the ceiling fell and clattered to the floor around him, loud and echoing in the empty space. Then, just like that, Piers was left alone in his grave.
Note to lovely reader* Hello and welcome to this new installment on my, very small, shelf of works! This is going to be a shorter chapter length story, as well as hopefully a story of few chapters. While I'm excited for it, I have no plans in turning this story into a big boi since I don't think I have that much content to shoehorn into it, and I've got bigger fish fryin' over on the grill so I can't get too carried away.
Plan is for this to be a nice alternative ending to Chris' campaign with a max of ten chapters if it somehow gets any longer than five (unless something changes). When I did some research on the internet, I discovered that lots of people really liked Piers, and lots of people wanted him not dead; it wasn't just a 'me' thing and I'm happy to not be alone in my tears. Also turns out this young lad has some history with the series which I personally didn't know about until I did some digging; apparently there's a comic prequel to RE6 called Marhawa Desire, but good luck getting your hands on all the volumes with money left if you pockets T.T Basically I'm aware Piers has actual lore, and I was like "Cool... wish I could read it... thank God RE wiki is a thing.".
ANYWAYS, this note has gone on quite long enough, so I'll say, thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed this prologue and are interested as well as excited for chapter one, which maybe hopefully possibly will be out not too long after this is published. We'll see. I'm very much testing out the waters and flingin' out the bait to see if I get a few nibbles, though ultimately I'll probably post either way cause I'm writing the 'Piers happy ending' that I wanted to read. But anyways, that's the scoop. Thank you again so much for reading, hope you have a wonderful day, and I'll see you in the next chapter! Buh-bye!