Disclaimer: I do not own Resident Evil or any of it's charactersLeon reached an arm up and wiped away the sweat that was accumulating on his forehead. The sticky humidity of the jungle felt oppressing, as if it were trying to smother him; but he had a job to do. To any onlooker, it would probably look as if he were gazing at something within the trees, however this was not the case. He had to find the perfect tree.
Leon knew that there were people coming for him. They were able to see him through the cameras, up until he had smashed the cameras with some well-aimed rocks so that they could not watch him anymore.
The plan was to climb up a tree and hide in the canopy of leaves up above. With any luck, whoever was coming along would just walk by. He would then climb down and proceed in the direction that they had come from, which would most likely also be the same direction in which he could find Claire.
Finding a tree that had branches both strong enough to hold his weight and close enough together to make climbing relatively easy, Leon began his vertical ascent. He couldn't help but wonder what he and Claire were getting themselves into...what Claire was already into. There were cameras, so there had to be a base or something worth watching somewhere nearby. How many would they be up against? There could be five people, or there could be five-hundred. Either way, he was outnumbered. Finding a good perch mostly hidden from the ground, he kept trying to force his mind to dwell on how many times he had been so badly outnumbered and still made it out alive, as opposed to how lucky he had been in the past and whether or not that luck had run out. Okay, so it wasn't all luck, but luck had definitely played a hand in it.
CRUNCHLeon looked towards the direction from which the sound had come. There was the hollow shell of what used to be a man, dressed in tattered scrubs and dirty white sneakers, staring at him and walking towards the tree. Shit. It must have seen him climbing. The undead man continued to walk towards the tree, eyes fixed on Leon, mouth opening and closing as if chewing some invisible morsel, until it obliviously ran into the wide trunk. A moan escaped from between cracked and ashy lips that were set into a face like worn leather, stretched taut over a sunken countenance. The tattered figure grasped the tree with shriveled fingers, as if it would be able to scale the vertical surface.
Just a little ways off, the sounds of multiple people stomping through the brush could be heard. Leon's heart started beating faster; this zombie would give away his position. It completely ignored the sound coming from the jungle, choosing to focus on the meat that it could see. Not that any amount of feeding in the world could satiate it's hunger for the living.
Perched precariously in the tree, Leon drew out his bowie knife and skillfully threw it at the creature at the bottom of the tree. This was no easy feat, considering how many leaves and branches surrounded him. The point of the knife plunged into the thing's spongy forehead, causing it to drop like a ragdoll.
As soon as the twice-dead man hit the ground, men in black combat gear started appearing from the brush. Leon sat stock-still, hoping that they hadn't seen the body drop. Five men total came into view, two of which trained semi-automatic weapons at the figure slouched forward against the tree.
"Mancini, check it out," ordered one of the men, pointing towards the base of the tree. One of them, the one that must have been Mancini, glared at the other man, but walked towards the fallen man anyway. When it didn't move after being prodded with his gun, Mancini grabbed it by the shoulder and pulled it backwards. The zombie fell backwards, revealing the knife in it's forehead. All at once, the five men were darting their heads back and forth, as if expecting Leon to be hiding in the neighboring brush.
Leon let out a breath that he hadn't realized he was holding. None of them were looking up.
The five men ended up splitting up and heading in different directions, not realizing how close the one that they were looking for really was. As soon as their sounds dulled to nothing in the distance, Leon climbed down from his tree. That was the easy part.
The risky part of this plan laid within the fact that there were most likely more cameras on the way that the soldiers had come from, ones that hadn't been rendered inoperational. That left two choices. The first was the safe way, which would take much longer; making his way through the jungle using just trees, and hoping that the cameras weren't placed so high up. Potentially slipping by undetected. Or there was the second way, the risky one that would help him get to Claire the fastest; following the trail left by the troops on the ground level, which would most likely be in plain view of remaining cameras. That would mean more soldiers.
He pulled the knife out of the undead man's face, wiped it on some leaves, and sheathed it. After doing an inventory of his weaponry, he chose his course of action.
Claire was never great at chess. She very rarely played, and when she had it was always on computer programs where she could choose the difficulty level. Her current opponent was basically a virally-enhanced mad scientist, and her future hung in the balance. And even if she won, the outcome wasn't going to be something that she would want. If she won, her brother would survive. And she would have to work for Wesker, who would most likely have her commit monstrous crimes against humanity. Although it would be worth it, knowing that her brother was okay. She wasn't clear on what exactly the stipulations would be if she lost, but she knew she wouldn't like them. Yet here she stood, across from a man responsible for innumerable deaths (some by hand and some by order), with a chess board between them.
"Erm...how about Yahtzee instead?" Claire asked, despite knowing that even the slimmest chance of avoiding the death of both her and her brother would be all the mercy that Wesker would afford. It was shocking enough that he was sparing the time to give her that chance, although the red-head would be naive to assume that she could trust him to follow through on his word. He ignored her obviously rhetorical question as he brought two stools over and set them on either side of the board. They both sat down.
"White goes first," he stated, gesturing to her side of the board. She anxiously hovered her fingers over a knight for a few moments, before tentatively moving a random pawn. He responded by moving a pawn in turn. Claire was clearly very uncomfortable and out of her element; Wesker was relishing watching her squirm, the way the sweat was starting to form on her brow as she tried to carefully consider her next move. "Are you religious?" he suddenly inquired. Claire's eyes darted from the board up at his calm, sunglasses-clad face.
"What are you talking about?" she snapped. It appeared that he was trying to distract her from her next move. "Of course not. With all the shit I've seen, all the shit you've been allowed to cause. How could I be? Why would you even ask? Other than to throw me off of this game that I'm probably already going to lose because you're a human fucking super computer." Wesker nodded, but otherwise said nothing else until Claire eventually made her next move. She moved her bishop 4 rows up.
"I was merely curious," Wesker started as he moved another of his pawns, "about the cross on your phone. I was wondering to myself how somebody could believe in a god like that in a world like this. Claire felt her eats getting hot. Regardless of his insinuation that there was some other type of god that he had in mind, she wanted her family heirloom back. A rush of anger rushing over her, she slammed her first on the counter. The chess pieces jostled slightly.
"Give it to me," Claire seethed through her teeth. Recognizing her temper rising up, she took a deep breath and tried to keep herself reasonable;despite the unreasonable circumstances she kept finding herself in. "Listen...I know I'm not getting the phone back. But please. I need that charm off of it. It's worthless to you, anyway. She moved a pawn. He moved another pawn. With her bishop now in danger of being taken, she moved in backwards. Wesker moved one of his knights forward.
"Sentimental value, then." Wesker stated, nodding to himself. Not that the answer mattered. He didn't think himself capable of caring for this nuisance past whether or not she got in the way of any plans; and yet here he was playing a board game with her and asking her personal questions that weren't just to goad her (although that was an added bonus) If she is capable of throwing me off
of my normal mental state, then I must find out how this is possible. I'll physically dissect her piece by piece if I have to. Satisfied with this reasoning, he allowed himself to sit across from this woman who he could only assume was emanating some kind of pheromone.
Claire wiped the sweat off of her forehead with the back of her arm as she sacrificed a pawn to take out one of the black pawns. She moved her bishop again, and was put into check by Wesker's queen. "Check."
As Claire studied the board, the blonde man slipped a large capsule out of his pocket and cracked it open. Her nostrils were immediately assaulted by an extremely strong chemical smell, and she winced as he brought the capsule up to his face and inhaled the contents of the capsule into both of his nostrils. He tossed the capsule into a nearby bin.
Claire stood up from her stool and took a few steps backwards. "Listen, I don't know if you're just like really into coke, or if you're about to mutate into some shit, but I didn't cheat or anything if that's what you think-" Her panicked, illogical thought process started bubbling out before she could stop herself, as she'd seen plenty of people take some virus and then mutate before her very eyes. She couldn't handle Wesker now, nonetheless if he were to mutate into something bigger and more monstrous...
"Calm down, and sit back down," Wesker interrupted, disrupting her panic attack and dabbing his nostrils with a tissue that partially disintegrated after touching whatever he had snorted. "You smell terrible," was the only explanation he gave.
laire sat back down with trepidation, cheeks red. She found herself to be disappointingly embarrassed that Wesker thought she smelled so bad he had to inhale something like that.
Why does that even matter?! She internally screamed at herself, looking at the board. Despite how disgusted she found thoughts like these to be, thoughts like how she apparently cared about how badly he thought she smelt, she couldn't stop them when they came. She could only replace them with the thoughts and memories of the things that he had done.
Her king was moved one spot to the right, the only option she had was to remove it from check. I can't smell that bad, her thought process continued, much to her chagrin. With his senses the way they are, working on an island filled with the infected and his sweaty jungle soldiers, he would have to be snorting that stuff all the time. Then again, maybe he does for all I know.
Wesker moved another pawn. She was getting the distinct feeling that he was purposely dragging the game out longer than necessary, and within a few more moves her queen was gone. "So when- I mean if," Claire started, and corrected herself, "I lose. Are you going to do the whole 'Kill the Redfield's sister in front of the macho Redfield to show him who'sboss before killing him, too' thing?" She moved another piece. "I was considering it."
"That would be pretty human of you, wouldn't it? I mean, the whole vendetta thing."
Wesker's jaw tightened, as he started positioning his pieces to corner her king, despite her efforts. "I'm far more than a human," he snarled. "He's gotten in the way far too many times to be allowed to continue playing on my chess board." And with that, her king was in check. There were no other moves, and she had lost. Claire slowly moved her arm across the board, and laid her king down in defeat. Her eyes were watery, but filled with hate.
"So what now?" She asked.
"You will be taken to the sub basement, where you will wait." Claire didn't bother asking for clarification as to what she was going to be waiting for, as she was certain she would not like the answer. Instead she just watched as Wesker walked over to one of the drawers, removed a blue box that was recognizable as her phone, and pull something off of it. He replaced the phone back into the drawer, carefully shut it, and walked back over to her. He stalked over to the door that led out of his lab with purpose, and she followed him. He faced her then, and held out his palm. On it was her silver cross, the one she was so worried she might die without ever seeing again.
The redhead reached out and touched the cross gently with her fingertips, as if not sure if it was real at first. She looked up at his face to see what kind of trick this was. Albert Wesker was not a man for random acts of kindness. But his face was unreadable. And then...perhaps her fingers had lingered for too long on the piece of jewelry, with her eyes on his face, for he now cupped her hand with both of his gloved hands as he gently pushed the cross into her palm. They stood like this for a moment, his hands over her one, until Wesker shook his head and appeared to jolt out of whatever thoughts had overcome him. He opened the lab door and gently pushed her through into the custody of the soldiers waiting outside, closing the door behind her before she even had the chance to register what had happened. The soldiers assumed formation around Claire, and she began the walk down the hallway with her armed escorts. And it was funny, but she could have sworn she heard smashing coming from behind them.
A chair had been thrown through one of the glass filing cabinets in Wesker's lab. He knew this, because he had thrown it. Just as he knew he was letting his anger get out of hand. He took a breath and ran a hand through his hair, picking up his comms device.
"Take all Second List patients to the main entrance. First List patients are to be taken to the subbasement for protocol 8089. And H.U.N.K. Report to my lab." Several "Affirmatives" started sounding through his comms device as he set it down and straightened out his jacket. He couldn't wrap his head around that Redfield girl. Hedid want to wrap his hands around her throat and choke the life out of her. That would end the complexity of the situation. But...what if it didn't? Regardless, he had another situation to handle at present.
For the next couple of minutes, Wesker finalized his preparations as he waited for the arrival of Doctor Death. He heard the door whoosh open, and gestured for the man in the gasmask to join him at his workstation.
"This virus, it's supposedly indestructible," Wesker explained, pointing to a microscope. H.U.N.K. glanced into the microscope, the gas mask preventing him from being able to get a closer look. "That's something that we supposedly have in common," he continued. "Some of the soldiers, they say that we are both indestructible. We were both there for Raccoon, the first outbreak." H.U.N.K.'s head darted quickly over to where Wesker stood next to the microscope, glaring at him. Or was that just his imagination?
"Yeah, I was part of the ground squad for the first round of attempted containment-"here Wesker interrupted him.
"You were part of the squad in the sewers, were you not?"
"...You've known this the whole time, haven't you? And you still hired me."
"I did. Why do you think that was?" Wesker asked condescendingly.
"I never would have guessed that you could still feel attachment to other people," H.U.N.K. mused. He knew what was going to come, but he wasn't afraid of it. That's what had kept him going for so long. Doctor Death reached for his weapon, but before it was even fully out of it's holster Wesker had knocked it out of his hand, ripped his gasmask off, and forced him to his knees.
"The work that was lost-" Wesker spat, but this time he was the one that was interrupted.
"Don't pretend this is about to happen, years latr, because of potential work that was lost," H.U.N.K. said mockingly.
There was a moment of silence with H.U.N.K. still pinned on his knees, before Wesker said quietly, so faintly that Doctor Death almost didn't hear him. "You killed William." That was the last thing he heard before the needle the tyrant had been holding was jabbed into his retinaand the plunger was pushed,releasing the G virus into the mercenary's blood stream.
"Well, I would love to stay and chat about the vaccine I've manufactured that could save your life right now, but I think I'm going to walk away and allow you to undergo your painful but brief mutation in peace. As it would turn out, only one of us is indestructible."
A/N: I know it's been such a long time. I want to thank any and all of my old readers that are coming back to read the next installments, as well as everybody who took the time to review my story even when I hadn't updated in a really long time...please let me know what you think of the new developments!