Mar 28, 2012 11:00
how many cases of assault in one post?,
this has badass potential,
sadism: fun when you're behind the glass,
wesker,
this will cause scarring,
she totally did not say that,
respect his authoriteh,
in the name of science...yeeaah. science,
so much better than s.d. perry,
we eat cliches for breakfast,
explosions are imminent,
welcome to hell,
bang bang shoot shoot,
the mark of true dedication,
a feeling of doom,
you and the cap'n can make it happen,
jill,
actionnnn,
chris,
creepers gonna creep,
cue mission impossible music,
tp can has more re people,
there is no escape,
teal deerz keep stompin' on mah threads,
not a pairing k,
closed log,
'canon' is more like 'guideline',
au
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...anything, at this point. She tried her radio again, but still received nothing but silence.
For a falsely comforting few seconds, everything was quiet except for the hum of machines -- and then voices out in the hall, and the sound of adjacent doors being forced open.
She was low on time. She moved along the edges of the room, and only just now noticed the familiar, liquid-filled tubes lining one wall. They were empty, at least, which luckily meant there was no chance of something breaking loose and jumping her on top of her pursuers. In the backmost corner was a gathering of tables armed with leather holding straps, and considering how used she was to the screwed up sights these types of labs contained, she almost didn't look over -- but as she passed one, she spared the briefest of glances at the body tied down--
Only to stop dead in her tracks, her rapidly pounding heart stalling and her breath catching.
No.
No, no, nononono--
Shit, no--
Is this what...
Very few times in her life had Jill been startled into silence, let alone paralyzed. Now, she was both as she stared at the startlingly familiar -- too familiar face of the only other person in the room.
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It wasn’t uncommon. They came to cut away at him, to drain him, to ask him idiotic questions and ply him with even more moronic platitudes. He never acknowledged them. The buzz of speech like flies to be swatted. This was not his world. His vision. These sterile walls. This stiff slab. The heavy impotence of his limbs and his thoughts. When the fog pressed in too thickly he’d dream of that place. Blood, darkness. Perfect order.
And then he would wake to pain that would burn all those things away. And he would forget. He would scream and tear and rage for the loss of it, for the memories of perfection that he couldn’t reach like picking up sand slipping through his fingers and he would kill them all for it he would make them pay with their shitty little lives...
There was no counting days. The fog came in regular waves, numbing the pain and the anger. Time was intervals, regular and untouchable. Sometimes, though. Sometimes between the fog and the pain there was clarity like thin ice under his fingertips. Brittle. Crystalline. And he would think.
Cyrllic. On the walls.
Thick leather and metal neck, biceps, wrists, thighs, ankles.
Cultures for tests.
The chill in the air was damp. Underground.
A pinch at the back of his hand, his elbow, tubes for nutrients. Sedatives. Blood. In and out.
Mostly it was just the fog.
The footsteps meant fog.
When he opened his eyes he thought he was dreaming. Maybe he was. Her hair was wrong, the expression on her face. He’d taught her better. Culled it out of her or, controlled it. Fixed her. The memories of her were docile and cold, deliberate... most of them. But there were others that slipped through. Naive and young, warm, and so ready to fix the world in an image that would never sustain. The thread of arm to arm and him before everything would shift, tumble down, over and over. Insects in bread, maggots in a wound, an infection. Him.
His arm tried to raise but a finger twitched instead, the muscles of his shoulder spasmed, screamed. Not a dream.
Albert Wesker smiled.
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His apparent end off the coast of Africa -- it hadn't been convincing, for one. Not entirely. Not for her. Jill didn't like to make assumptions when it came to danger, and considering Wesker had been one of the greatest dangers the world had ever known, something about his disappearance never sat well with her. It had been too convenient, too open-ended; only the sight of his corpse would have really, fully put her fears to rest.
It hadn't been convincing, but more than that, even, was that kind of end -- it hadn't... it hadn't been him. However she chose to describe it, however she chose to look at it, the fact of the matter was that Jill knew Wesker. She knew him personally, physically, as both an ally and an enemy; she knew him better than anyone still alive, possibly better than anyone who had ever lived, period. Wesker was a man who lived, breathed, and killed for his ideals, for himself, and nothing he ever did was without purpose or emphasis on what he tried so hard to be: above everyone and everything else, better, a superior breed and definition of life, always prepared to prove it -- or not, depending on whether he deemed it worthwhile.
Knowing that, knowing him, Jill had had more than a little difficulty accepting the idea that someone like him could just fade away like that -- the Wesker she knew would go down fighting, taking anyone and anything with him in a passionate rage in the event that he was bested. A solitary death by sea, by something like chance, with no one around to witness the end of the supposed next step in human evolution?
No.
Wesker wasn't the divine creature he fancied himself to be, but he had more control over his fate than that.
So seeing him now -- it wasn't shock that slammed into Jill's gut as much as it was dread. Dread at being right, at finding her worst fear confirmed; it was the kind of dismay that made her heart skip several beats, her blood run cold, and her nerves promptly forget how to function other than keeping her on her feet.
She wasn't sure how long she stood there in frozen unease, but heavy sounds in the hall outside quickly snapped her out of it and she blinked, pupils dilating back to something near normal as her brain started working again.
She took in Wesker's state and the pieces fell together without even trying to think too hard. He'd survived. Zhizn had found him, managed to abduct him, was holding him here to do God knew what -- and while any pain on his part would certainly earn no tears from Jill, it still managed to prompt a troubling new train of thought even through her nearly mind-numbing surprise.
If they have the power to hold him here like this... what else are they planning?
Looking back to his face, Jill met his red gaze readily, easily, without fear, and held it, for a tight couple seconds not reacting to his expression.
And then it felt like something in her simply snapped.
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The logical, collected side of Jill wanted to shrink back and away and let her emotions take over, forgetting her present danger and giving in to every sense of base, primal instinct that came with being human.
The part of her that remembered those horrible, helpless three years wanted to sneer and ask him how the fuck it felt to be on the other side, wanted to demand if the ends justified the means now and whether all his pain and suffering would be worth it simply because someone stronger than him believed it would make him better--
The part of her that still woke up shaking, sometimes crying in the middle of the night was willing to sacrifice any chance at escape if it meant making sure he died this time -- could he handle a clip full of bullets to the head at point blank range? Coupled with a slit throat and wrists and a battle knife plunged as deep into his heart as possible?
The part of her that still tensed when Chris drew too close, that remembered all the people she'd killed and hurt and tortured and torn from their families, that held so much of her memory secret because no one else deserved to know what all she'd been through, that sometimes couldn't stand to look at her scars or even her own face in the bathroom mirror -- they all wanted to show this self-serving bastard exactly how well he'd taught her, that she agreed wholeheartedly that some people were better off dead once they'd outstripped their usefulness, and that power was at times just a roll of the dice and this time she had come out on top -- where were his Goddamn Darwin theories now--
It was physically dizzying, all the impulses and emotions that raced through her, doubling her pulse and darkening her expression into something just above animalistic. Jill had tensed without realizing it, shifting her weight and readying the muscles in her shoulders, her breathing quickened but quieted, eyes narrowed and observing him in short, darting motions -- taking in the smells (chemicals: primarily antiseptic, a hint of sterilizing reagents), sounds (the men outside and their voices and movements -- she estimated a dozen of them now, not yet at her door -- the humming machinery; Wesker's heartbeat was too low and calm for her to make out at this range, but her own pounded in her ears), sights--
Reflexive reactions, motions she fell into unconsciously because they'd been drilled into her that effectively, that deeply. Even a year and a half later, she couldn't shake that training, as closely bonded to both DNA and unconscious thought as it was.
Jill became aware of her body's programmed response after a couple seconds, but she didn't force herself to relax like she normally would have. She didn't have time.
Sifting through the maelstrom of urges and thoughts and feelings rushing through her, she managed a quick, logical train of thought in response to the most pressing matter -- what she needed to do versus what she wanted -- and a short list of priorities formed itself in her mind.
Focus. Breathe. Think.
Survive.
Easier said than done at the moment, but she managed.
Finding her voice, she said the first, only thing that came to mind, her words flat, low, and taut with barely strangled impulses and suppressed emotions.
"Looks like you should've died when you had the chance."
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"Jill." Her name was tasted. Savored. It was intimate even in the battered rip of his voice pushed through a torn and dry throat. Wesker opened his eyes again and fought to focus on her face; the smile had faded into a concentrated grind of teeth. "Why? Are you here.
Are you here to end my misery?" The laugh at the floating thought came unbidden, a low roll like thunder that lasted only a moment before breaking into hacking coughs that would have racked his body were it not so held down to the table. The pain was like razors and with the fog so thin it took time to conquer; he couldn't just crawl into unconsciousness. There were slow, deep breaths through his nose before he could speak again. "Hard, I'm sure. To destroy their science project would mean showing me mercy. And after all I've done for you..."
Wesker trailed off with another cough. He tried to lift his right arm but the bright shock of pain prevented him from flexing any strength he might have left against the bonds. His eyes closed. With his hand in a fist he could feel how close Chris was, must be. The warm sensation of skin splitting under his knuckles as he smashed his fist into the ape's face, not as easy to crush his idiotic hope as it was to crush bone. And his little dark-skinned partner; she was more pathetic than Jill. Human, flawed, nothing redeeming as he grabbed her thin neck and tried to squeeze the unearned life from her...
A thick pounding turned the memories to dust and a bitter taste that sat at the back of his throat. He couldn't lift his head to see where the sound was coming from. He shifted his legs. Remembered straining against the same bonds. Had they given way or had that been a dream? The bright red of fresh blood on white walls was a necessity, a triumph, memories of a life served that was indistinguishable from now. From whatever now shifted to be at any moment. From dreams.
He dreamed of red often.
The stings of tape holding bandages to flesh were less than nothing. An annoyance as he shifted in his bonds, given mere millimeters and nothing to work with. The pounding renewed, the hollow, heavy ring of metal groaning.
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Wesker was miserable. This was, probably, the very lowest he could sink in his eyes -- even in death, at least no one would be holding him like this. Overpowering him.
There was, admittedly, some bitter and petty satisfaction at the sight -- Jill wasn't above it -- but her present situation was ever buzzing at her mind. There were questions she wanted to ask, things she wanted to say, but time was short. Even if Wesker was out of it enough to answer her, it meant nothing if she died a minute later.
She scanned the room again. Nowhere to run, no place to hide -- Wesker might just give her away, anyway -- which meant her only options were to make a last stand that she'd never survive, or surrender. Assuming they didn't shoot her on sight, they certainly would once they realized she was B.S.A.A.
Dead end, dead end, dead end. Even the air ducts in the room were far too small for her to try.
Jill looked at Wesker again, still unmoved -- and then after a second stepped closer, resting her hands on the side of his slab but avoiding contact with him, the straps, or the wires attached to the latter. She leaned over and close enough that her face would be in the center of his field of vision, and so that she didn't have to speak too loudly to be heard.
"Wesker." Her voice was still tight, tense, hating his name in her mouth, but it was even. "I've got a minute tops before these bastards break in here. You want them to pay for this?" A brief pause. It almost hurt to go on.
"Then help me. Tell me--"
A thundering slam against the door, making Jill look back. Another bit of fortune: apparently the hired guns didn't double as scientists, otherwise they'd have the room key.
She returned her attention to Wesker. "Think. Is there any other way out? Anything I can use?"
A long shot, for more reasons than one, but Jill was entirely desperate.
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Look how close she was, voluntarily. His own impotence galled suddenly and violently and Wesker snarled, his arms jerking in bonds that groaned and held as his body stiffened against the current being pushed into it. Muscles on his neck stood out with the strain and then sagged down as the cycle disarmed and he could breath again; his eyes closed. His pulse beat in time to the thunder against the door. The door. Cyrillic.
"Sergei's bastard," he breathed out. He fought to stay here with the pounding instead of slipping back into the waiting arms of his memories. His muscles were still slightly spasmodic in the afterglow of the electricity, twitching. Think.
With effort, Wesker's eyes turned to Jill. Think. She had asked... asked. Asked him. His nostrils flared; could it be the smell of desperation? It was a rope to clutch. He groped for her question, thoughts sliding around in the fog. Help me.
You bastard.
Think.
"Let me out." His eyes held hers through a sheer force of will, cold and-- for this one moment-- alert. "Let me out, Jill."
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Electricity. Zhizn wasn't in the habit of underestimating -- also seen in how thick the door was, which was now working in her favor.
At his words, Jill slowly stood up straight, holding the stare.
"No," she said flatly, calmly. "I'm trying to survive, Wesker. Adding you to the mix isn't helping." That, and other reasons, but again, time was of the essence.
Anyone else -- anything else, and Jill would have complied in a heartbeat as long as she felt she could trust them, or at least overpower them. Wesker -- even drugged, she knew he could likely take care of the same small battalion that would kill her in seconds, but that wasn't an option. For too many reasons.
No, she couldn't even consider--
Another slam; the door shook on its hinges.
"I need a way out, Wesker," she repeated, hoping to return his unsteady attention to her previous offer. "Tell me and I'll make sure to nail these guys--"
Slam.
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Wait. Patience. He forced his shoulders to relax. His hands. Pictured her in the tube, floating and serene, her pale body almost green through the wash the nutrient-rich fluid around her. Her long hair unbound, whispering, bleaching out day by day as the virus ate away at her nervous system. He enjoyed that particular outcome. It suited her.
The woman who had been in that tube would not even promise him mercy; not by her definition or any other. A way out and she and the B.S.A.A. would swarm and he'd be flushed like an unwanted pregnancy. No. There were options. He had options. She-- unfortunately for her moralistic pride-- was the one running low.
So Wesker waited. Slipping out through the seconds only to have the increasingly loud jars against the door bring him back up to the surface of lucidity. He didn't open his eyes again.
He waited for her. Her demented sense of do-good ran deep; after all, Jill had sacrificed herself for Chris. So determined. But what would her death now give the world? Wesker might still live without her. If nothing else, his genes would. Her death wouldn't even be a sacrifice, just another stain on the floor to be scrubbed away.
"Poor Chris," Wesker murmured at the first audible screeching buckle of the metal door. "To have to live through your death a second time."
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She couldn't. She couldn't. Not after everything they'd gone through to beat him -- she couldn't undo all of that and set him free. Of course, even if she didn't -- even if she died here and now to keep him in place -- there was no telling what Zhizn would do with him. They were keeping him for some purpose, and that could have been for anything. Chances were he'd do more damage to the world before he died, whether directly or otherwise.
The only solution to that was to kill him, and then die herself -- but as stubborn as Wesker was, there was no guarantee he would die. One thing Jill didn't know was the extent of his healing factor, and there were any number of things that his captors could have done to him -- hell, they could've improved his physical resistance for all she knew.
Nothing was certain, except for one simple, aggravating fact: on her own, Jill was screwed, as good as dead. With Wesker, she at least stood a chance, however small and uncertain.
She all but silently snarled at his reply, casting another look over her shoulder before hissing between her teeth and leaning over him again.
"I don't have any reason to believe you won't kill me first," she snapped. "If I'm going to die either way, I might as well make sure you stay down." She was stalling. There was nothing he could say to make her trust him, no promise he could make when his word meant absolutely nothing.
No, that much relied on her own predicament. Even if she was willing to lie down and die personally, she couldn't -- she was the only one who knew about this place, who could get word back to Chris and the others to let them know and stop whatever God forsaken plan was in the making here.
But was it worth this? Was it worth possibly undoing everything they'd done in the last decade?
Tick tock.
The door was coming loose; she could hear their voices more clearly.
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"You kill me and you die-- and Zhizn wins." Terrorism wins. Wesker jerked an arm against his bonds-- and let his eyes rolled back, lidded slightly, as the snap of electric current buzzed through his muscles. It cleared the haze clinging to the edges of his vision. Brought her into sharper focus. "Do you want to be responsible for the destruction they will cause, left unchecked?"
As much as Jill knew him, he knew her. Wesker didn't need to beg for his life, only appeal to her better nature. To her blind moralist sensibilities. If it meant saving lives then Jill would take the gamble against absolute loss. She'd beaten him once, hadn't she?
She'd think that she could do it again. He made no promises in her favor or against the contrary.
Jill...
Jill had always proven more useful to him alive.
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She exhaled sharply, glanced aside. She needed to live -- it might have sounded selfish, but it was the truth -- and all things considered, she didn't find it likely that Wesker would kill her right away. No faster than the men behind her, anyway.
It was true that Jill, physically speaking, was worth something to Wesker. Even so, that was far from comforting, and only raised the familiar question of which was worse: death, or being at his mercy?
The labs in Africa had been searched, stripped clean, and destroyed. Unless Wesker had planned that far ahead and stashed back-ups of all of his work, his Uroboros plan was shot, which meant he would have to start over.
Including, most likely, isolating the key component that had made the virus so successful in the first place -- the thing that Jill and Jill alone carried, even now: the secret of her DNA, permanently mutated with the genetic coding that would stimulate the production of T-Virus antibodies more or less upon command. Another scar she'd bear until her death.
To that extent, Wesker choosing to spare her was no favor, if it happened, because it only meant that he had another use for her. If that was his intention after the present situation was taken care of -- if he got his hands on her again -- then everything really would be back at square one. Only this time Wesker would be more aware of his shortcomings, would know better than to underestimate both Jill and Chris as much as he had, the ultimate cause of his previous downfall.
It would be worse than Africa.
It was a lot of ifs, buts, and maybes, but the fact still remained that Jill was seconds from death, maybe worse. Wesker, for all his treacherous shortcomings, was still one man, and one man she knew well. The men coming for her blood were many, they were an unknown, and, for the moment, they were the most pressing danger in both the short and long term.
Jill needed to choose, and she needed to do it now.
Certain death -- or take a chance on someone guaranteed to backstab her.
The decision was a logical one, and only her personal bias kept her ambivalent.
Another second, another shuddering impact against the door--
--and then logic won out.
...I'm so sorry, Chris.
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Before it was done, she'd turned back to Wesker, now addressing the steel buckles that bound the leather straps. She started at the lowest one, intent on keeping his arms restrained until last to prevent any surprises. It turned out that the buckles alternated -- one on his left, the next on his right -- and Jill had to free one, lean over him to get the one after it, and then pull back again, and repeat. Another wise design: it would considerably slow the efforts of any idiot -- like her -- trying to free him.
Nimble fingers worked swiftly, having to put some arm strength into it here and there as she pulled and forced the strips free, deep indents in the material saying they'd been in place for quite some time. She'd just started on the one across Wesker's shoulders when there was a ear-piercing screech of grinding metal, a final, thundering slam, and then she heard the door burst off its hinges and crash noisily to the tile floor. Jill immediately ducked, crouching beside Wesker's table; with all the machinery and things crowding the lab, the men would have to make their way through most of it before they saw her.
The band came loose. The only obstacle left was the metal ring clamped down around Wesker's neck, which was -- again, wisely -- fastened with a heavy padlock. Jill whipped her lockpick from her pocket, threaded out the pick, and then slipped the tension wrench up and into the keyhole, working by the familiar touch and feel of the pins and plug.
Footsteps, at least three pairs.
Jill ignored them, focusing, her lockpick feeling out the padlock's invisible workings: one pin -- clack--
One set of footsteps was closer than the others -- much closer--
Second, third, fourth pin, done--
It sounded like only one row of shelves separated Jill from the gunman, and any second now he'd round the corner--
The fifth and final pin snapped into place, only seconds after the first. The lock opened with a subtle, metallic click. She pulled it free, hissed "Done" in a whisper mostly hidden by the remaining buzz of machinery--
--and then Jill hit the floor fast, drawing her gun in one hand even as she silently slipped away from where Wesker, thanks to her, was now free.
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Wesker viewed people in only terms of potential and usefulness. Jill and Chris, the B.S.A.A., even the younger Redfield's attempt to combat bio-terrorism with protests instead of guns, it all made a difference to him only when they decided to mount their white horses and ride to his doorstep. He didn't linger on thoughts of vengeance, didn't waste time as they did contemplating the eventual destruction of enemies. If they'd let him be, Wesker would have been content to forget about them wholly unless they proved to mean more to his New World. He didn't need to see B.S.A.A. destroyed-- they served a unique purpose, just as the S.T.A.R.S. had. Results did not happen in a vacuum.
Which was where Jill fit into his picture. Jill and her antibodies. Jill and the only true, natural, organic synthesis of the T-virus into a human host-- aside from himself, but to a uniquely different end. Jill's body had succeeded where years of his staged attempts had failed, and had succeeded in direct relation to the ongoing counter-measuring that the B.S.A.A. was attempting. If Jill had died in the Arklay Mountains she would have been a piece of data. If she had turned her back on his work she might be just another human living a cheap, meaningless existence. She hadn't done either of those things, however. She had persevered and in persevering, become a perfect, singular specimen of the very something that she was fighting against. A new step on the chain of evolution. And she could thank her morals.
Life was fantastic. Complex. Completely serving of it's own ends-- which was why Wesker had allied with that process. All he was doing was taking the chaos theory of natural evolution and life and speeding it up. Fighting against him was, ultimately, useless.
Proving that fact was that he was here. Alive. With Jill. And with each passing moment she was opening his bonds. She had no power in the equation. She never had.
When the door blew inward, Wesker closed his eyes. Without the hum and prick of electricity it was going to be hard to clear the fog back; Jill's footsteps had been an abberation in the the pattern. The drugs were still in his system. He breathed quietly and felt the loosing pressure of the cuffs; Jill was, after all, commendably intelligent when she wasn't being led around by her internal moral compass-- the locks were pried open but the cuffs themselves left closed, light against his skin. The soldiers-- and they were, he could tell by the commanding beat of their feet-- would have noticed. They were paid to notice danger. Wesker was quiet and still, just another experiment; it was easy enough. He'd started to drift into memories of another facility, always the same shuffle of feet what Bill must have heard as Umbrella came, dark against sterile white halls, for his work...
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The work, no. The work was never done.
One man, close enough that the heat of his body was there, and Wesker's arms rose. The cuffs fell back with the soft clack of leather and metal hinges. The scream of his shoulders-- stiff from lack of movement, stiff from fighting his bonds, stiff from death-- was louder than the sound of those cufffs. But over the hum of machinery the only sound was the sharp snap of the soldier's neck breaking.
It was good that Jill hit the floor. The first man slumped in a puddle next to her, his gun loud on the tiles when it fell from lifeless fingers, as Wesker exploded up and sent the table careening back over her and her dead friend and into shelves that rained fragile glass samples. Two more men, guns forward, rounded a bank of machines and froze with the sudden cacophony of noise and motion. Wesker's body was nothing but a red haze of pain but it made him feel alive in a way he hadn't felt since Africa. Skin that had ripped with the exiting tug of tape and IV needles bled, dripped across the floor, was lost in the deluge. He stumbled as his body failed to respond perfectly to his command and the report of a bullet near his head was deafening but he was already moving on, up, wrapping fingers around the metal warmed by the spark of gunpowder and death denied. The gun was plied against conventional expectations and broke teeth and cartilage as it was smashed into the face of its owner. The second man was turning in response to the spray of blood but he was already too late. Wesker's foot forced his knee backward at an angle that nature never intended. The scream never left his throat as enough force was applied from a hand to completely cave in his larynx. Less than seven seconds. One dead, two more struggling silently toward that blackness at Wesker's feet.
He could hear others, coming.
He turned back to tell Jill to stay-- he would protect his investment, his work, the only sample he had left-- but lost his balance. A nearby piece of equipment saved him from collapsing and Wesker hauled a heavy breath against the sudden vertigo.
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An instant later she was already moving, instinct and habit mixing with the fact that she wasn't content to just cower in a corner and let Wesker do anything for her, or even vaguely in her favor; she rolled onto her side, up into a crouch, and pulled the AK-47 from the dead man's fingers. She preferred small models, preferably SMGs when possible, but she could use an assault rifle all the same. She checked the magazine, slipped the strap over her head to hang the weapon across her body, looked up--
--and the other men were already on the floor, judging by the sounds -- or lack thereof, rather. Jill only sent Wesker a flat glance as he wavered, her hands searching the corpse's belt and pockets; all that turned up were a box of cigarettes, an extra clip, and a radio, the last two of which she took and shoved into her own pockets as she stood.
The good news was that she was -- they were? -- situated in an advantageous position, all things considered: the heavy counters provided decent cover and a clear shot at the door, so she -- they -- could potentially hold the position, at least until the ranks thinned enough to move into the hall.
Setting her elbows on the countertop, the assault rifle primed and ready in her hands and aiming for the entrance, Jill sent Wesker another glance, this one not making it all the way over.
"Give me a heads-up if you start to pass out," she said flatly. Only, of course, so she would know if she needed to shift strategy.
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