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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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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He was not a quick as he had been. Those men should have been dead before they could pull a trigger. His arm... was still bleeding. Sluggishly, but there was no denying the soft patter of blood on the floor beneath the crook of his elbow. What had they done to him? That they had saved him was inconsequential and Wesker refused to believe that he couldn't have found a way out of the crash himself. That he remembered nothing of it-- that made no difference. The test they'd run, he wanted to know. What they'd taken out, what they'd put in.
First thing was first. The pings of bullets off of metal cabinetry drew attention and begged to be quieted so that he could think. Red handprints were left on cream plastic when Wesker stood. He breathed. "If you try to shoot me in the back after all this," he said as he took a step forward over one of the dead men, "I will be very displeased."
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It's not like you won't do the same, first chance you get. Only he wouldn't be so literal.
"We're sitting targets here," she went on, eyes fixed on the door. "We need to clear this group and move, ASAP." Before they became organized, before more showed up and overwhelmed them with sheer numbers alone. She wasn't telling Wesker anything he didn't already know, she figured, but he obviously wasn't at one hundred percent, which meant this wasn't going to be as simple as if he were.
Memories of the slaughtered personnel at Spencer's estate flashed briefly across her mind, and for an instant Jill wondered if it wasn't better to have him powered down some, circumstances aside.
More footsteps drew closer, louder, and another two men rounded the corner. Jill pulled the trigger half a second before they stepped into view, peppering one in a cloud of crimson that immediately put him down. His partner leapt back, but not before taking a couple shots in the shoulder with a cry.
Ultimately, people were still people in Jill's eyes. Even the lowest, most despicable criminal was still human, a man or woman with a life that could be ended as quickly and easily as any other. Bad decisions made them susceptible to the law, and the law made them susceptible to neutralization when push came to shove: for all the B.O.W.s Jill had destroyed and wiped out, she also had her share of human deaths on her hands -- willing or otherwise -- and one thing she'd quickly learned was that it wasn't wasy, never would be for her, even if reflex had made her lethal trigger finger faster.
The things she'd been made to do in Africa had left more than their share of scars, but in the end that experience hadn't tilted her already solid morals one way or the other. After Chris and Sheva had freed her and Josh had found her, Jill hadn't hesitated in raising a hand against the Majini mobs. It was the basic, simple, founding rule of the jungle: kill or be killed.
Now was no different. An enemy trying to kill her was just that. Necessary evils, as any soldier or person in law enforcement could testify -- but considering who she'd just set loose on the world, it seemed today was all about crossing boundaries.
Jill didn't like taking the lives of these men she didn't know -- but she wouldn't hesitate to do it, either.
Suddenly there was a burst of blind fire from the right side of the doorway and she ducked, bullets chipping at countertops around her and glass behind her. Without pausing, she leaned around the counter's side, staying low, and quickly took aim at the space of plaster between her and the gunman, and fired her own small burst. Bullets tore through the wall like it was paper; the blind fire ceased.
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Fools. None of them with the ability to look past their own small scope. Wesker watched Jill for a moment, watched her react. It was all she and the rest of them were. Reactionaries to a blind cause.
His lips pulled into a sneer. He had given her perfection and she had fought it tooth and nail. He had allowed her access to his new world and she had shed it as soon as she was able. "Listen to you," he murmured to himself, putting a shoulder to a shelving unit as the spray of bullets renewed, "and here I remember the days when you needed a man to save you."
Not that he wasn't doing that right now.
Wesker didn't wait for her response-- he dodged out from behind cover, away from Jill's line of fire... he didn't need to give her any easy excuses, after all. His footing wasn't as precise as it could have been but the adrenaline was clearing his head for the moment; he'd have to know the drugs they'd put in him to know if his raised metabolism would burn them away as well as the symptoms. Considering that he still felt off-balance, he would bet that it was unfortunately not going to be the case.
Coming up behind a man resulted in a dislocated shoulder and a scream that was cut off as Wesker turned his temporary shield into a round of bullets. He threw the man's dead weight into his neighbor and then moved in to crush his throat with a heel as he hit the ground. The man gasped and choked but Wesker was already turning away to the next fight. Jill might have only killed to avoid being killed, but Wesker thought it simply more prudent to end the threat entirely. He left no one breathing in his wake. The soldier that Jill had wounded was taken off guard, his head cracked loudly against a wall.
Wesker was gauging his strength.
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While Wesker went at it, she didn't fire; she wouldn't have minded hitting him, accidentally or no, but it was a reason to save bullets, for one, and considering how fast he still was, there didn't need to be anymore tension between them than was necessary.
Of course, any and all existing tension was solely on her part.
As the enemy number declined -- all except one -- Jill moved quickly but carefully, following but making sure to stay near potential cover if something went down. Nothing did, of course; any hopes that Zhizn had managed to screw up something permanent in Wesker's biochemistry were swiftly fading. Even if he wasn't the exact blur that he had been in the past, he was still plenty fast enough, well beyond anything Jill could handle by herself, once it came down to it.
Once. Not if.
When she and Wesker seemed to be the only two still breathing in the immediate proximity, she nonetheless put her back to the wall beside the door, scanning the hall before moving into it. Crimson stains and dark corpses now lined the otherwise pristine floors and walls, things she took in with the lightest of frowns. The next glance she sent Wesker was a dark one, but then again, if she ever managed to look at him and not let some emotion show...
...well. She'd either be dead or not herself.
Suddenly, belatedly -- although in an instant of hindsight, it couldn't have been more than five minutes since she first entered the lab -- an alarm sounded, loud and shrill enough to make her wince briefly even as her head immediately twitched towards the source, tension again reflexively rippling through her shoulders and back before she relaxed some.
"I only saw one way out of the labs," she called over the wail, reluctantly taking a few steps closer to make sure she was heard. "I guess you don't--"
Without warning, Jill was suddenly hauled backwards, meeting the solid wall at her back with a nearly blinding collision between it and her skull. She hit the floor long before the sounds or sights registered, and even then she wasn't sure what had happened -- she was, for a crucial couple seconds, effectively stunned, for some reason unable to put thoughts and the immediate present together. Memory had to make up for it, equating the thundering rumble, the flash of red and white, the wave of heat over her skin with an explosion -- from back down the hall, judging from the way she'd been thrown, and the same backup thought that told her that much also abruptly remembered the laboratory: shot to hell and back, maybe something combustible had caught?
She would have cursed, but that would have made her head vibrate, and it already hurt enough as it was -- the alarm was making sure of that. Up ahead, what had been the wall to that one laboratory was -- mostly gone, electric wires hanging loose and sparking from between the ragged, singed plaster. The labs beside it and across from it had taken damage, doors, windows, and parts of their walls blown clean off. Fortunately, Jill didn't see any flames besides those still flickering from the main lab -- no immediate chain reaction, at least.
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It was the question he hadn't asked her earlier, deigning not to answer such an idiotic inquiry at all. Even he, for all his intellect, skill and power, was not psychic.
It seemed that he was never going to get the chance to remind Jill that he was not the absolute monster that she very obviously gave him the credit of being; the world spun out from under his feet and pain flared outward from his shoulder and back, hot and bright enough, that for a moment his consciousness flagged entirely and the world slipped into rocking tones of grey and black. A high-pitched whine trilled in his ears.
Despite his intent to get a pair of pants from one of the downed soldiers, he'd followed Jill into the hallway to make the obvious comment that the alarm meant that the main doors would be locked down. In retrospect he'd think that following her had saved something of his life-- as annoyingly fragile as it seemed to be at the moment-- but of course she deserved no credit for the decision he made. After all, she had been helping to blow the fragile and combustible items in the lab to hell and back.
Wesker blinked into the sliding haze of his vision and found floor under his cheek. His fingers. Smoke gathered in his lungs and was expelled with thick coughs that hurt enough to threaten another blackout. Sparks snapped near his face and the ozone sizzle of the live electricity made him move. His back was a blaze of pain as he climbed the nearest wall to get him to his feet. His back, the back of his thighs. He was snarling without realizing it, teeth locked and bared.
Something seeping down his back. Touching was... unadvised after the first shock of pain under fingertips that came away red. Wesker leaned against the wall. Shouts echoed down the hallway.
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