Tie the Noose Chapter 34

The five STARS swept out in a V-formation, spacing out on instinct as the tunnel opened in front of them. The hallway was cloyingly hot despite the blizzard raging beyond all that concrete, and the air carried a wet, sour taste that sat on the tongue even through their filters. Moisture beaded on the hard glass of their masks and refused to evaporate, turning every breath into something foggy and wrong. The tunnel widened until it could've taken a vehicle with room to spare, and it stayed pitch black past the reach of their lights. When their beams pushed forward, the darkness seemed to consume them. There was a greasy, floating film in the air that swallowed brightness and left the far end of the cones dim and thin.

They moved forward slowly, widening the V to cover more of the tunnel without losing their sightlines. Their boots found the concrete wet, and slid a fraction with each step, the soles dragging through a slick layer that made soft, ugly noises as it shifted. It felt alive, squirming almost, under their feet, and it left them feeling less surefooted with every step. Their lights climbed the walls and ceiling in quick sweeps, catching burned-out fixtures, dripping pipes, and loose-hanging cables distended and detached from their mountings. Some of the cable runs had sagged so far they looked ready to brush their heads, and each time a beam caught one it glistened with condensation. The steady drip above never landed in the same place twice, and the sound made it hard to judge distances.

They could all hear the shuffling now. It wasn't the frantic scrabble of an animal or the fast slap of someone running. It was slow, steady, heavy, uneven, and still strangely uniform in how that unevenness repeated. Clomp, scrape, scrape, clomp, scrape, scrape. The cadence echoed in the darkness and came back warped, ringing off the walls and melding with the background noise. With every step forward, each of them felt something tighten low in their guts. Something was wrong and it set their teeth on edge.

Someone was moving. Whoever it was sounded drunk, stumbling in the dark with no urgency, no attempt to hide, no attempt to get away, seeming almost listless in how detached it was. Barry grit his teeth, breath harsh in his mask, and tightened his grip until his knuckles ached under his gloves. Wesker glided up beside him, ice cold in his posture, carrying that same unshakable steadiness Barry had come to rely on from the Alpha Captain. That calm should've helped. Instead it made Barry more aware of how loud his own breathing was.

Jill crouched lower, weapon steady, shoulder tucked as she tried to make herself smaller without losing her line of fire. Every part of her wanted to pull her mask off and suck in clean air, even though she knew better. The gas mask sat foreign and heavy, and the itch under the seals had spread into a constant irritation that demanded her attention at the worst possible time. Sweat had started along her hairline and she could feel it trapped against the rubber, slicking down toward her jaw. Her instincts weren't offering her any advice. They were screaming that something was wrong in the air itself, that there was something present they couldn't see, and the feeling rode on her nerves until her teeth ached.

Rebecca brought up the rear, her body a mass of nervous energy. Adrenaline was pounding through her veins and she was wired, had been since they got there, slowly building it all up in her mind as she took each and every step. She knew she needed to calm down, to focus up, but every second sent blood sloshing through her ears as her heartrate jumped. She was twitchy, scared, feeling like she was suffocating under the mask and wide open all at the same time. Her thoughts kept going to Danny, to all the terrible things that might have happened to him, how this could be him, wandering in the dark, dazed, wounded, barely alive. It made her want to rush forward, charge in, go hunting for the man, even as she tried to reign it all in.

Chris was the loudest of the lot, his heavier boots clomping across the ground as he took point. He'd tried to soften his steps, but the wet concrete and his weight made it impossible to be quiet for long. Curse of being who he was, he knew, but their work wasn't supposed to be subtle. He hated that, hated that he was announcing them to the world as it echoed off the walls and ceiling. Jill teased him about being an oaf, but here, now, it felt like a cutting condemnation. He was the one who found... it... first.

When the beam hit the figure, they didn't seem to notice. That should've been the first warning. They were injured, that much was clear even at a glance. One arm hung limply like it had been dislocated, the shoulder sitting wrong under the uniform. The other hand was missing fingers, jagged ends dark and dripping, broken into splintered claws. One foot was bent at an angle that made Jill's stomach turn, the source of the scraping sound, the bone clearly broken, and yet the man still put weight on it without hesitation. The motion should've forced a scream, or at least a grunt. It didn't. It was just that same uneven, steady cadence.

He wore tactical armor over a blue uniform, straps and plates set tight to the body. The patch on it read Umbrella Security, the red and white symbol catching and reflecting in the flashlight with a glossy sheen. A helmet obscured his head, but thick strands of dark fluid tracked down from the mouth or nose area, stringing across the front like spit mixed with blood. The smell didn't carry through the filters, but the sight alone made the air feel dirtier.

"What the hell?" Chris whispered in shock. "How is he even moving?"

"It could be shock, delirium," Rebecca whispered, moving up as if she were in a trance, detached and struggling to keep her words above an echo. "Adrenaline can do all kinds of things. Keep someone going long after they should have stopped. But I've never heard of anything like this," she said as she began to move towards the figure, only to be stopped by Chris's hand.

She almost didn't feel it when his hand stopped her cold, pushing her back as. She blinked, focusing on Chris with a question on her lips, but he wasn't paying attention to her.

"Wait," Chris said, before glancing back. "Captain?"

Wesker slid on up behind them, his steps measured and quiet, his rifle up cautiously as he moved beside the two. His head turned back, and he hissed, "Jill, Barry, watch the flanks," as both he and Chris moved to circle the figure.

"Hey. Hey!" Chris called out, his voice sharp, loud, commanding. "Hands where we can see them, no sudden movements. We're the police. We're here to help. Just stay calm..." He said as he moved forward, flashing the light on the chest of the slouching figure, and it was only then that he got a look at the man's face. He froze, shocked, a look of disbelieving horror crawling across his once-steady features.

"Jesus Christ," he whispered hoarsely as the man's head rose. Cloudy gray eyes stared back at him, unfocused but locked in place. Its face ripped wide at the mandible, the lower jaw split in two as if they'd been wrenched apart, and hanging from that gaping hole in its face, a long, barbed, yellow tongue, twitching and writhing under the rifle's light. The mutilated bone and muscle around it looked raw and torn-open, and the sound that wheezed out wasn't a breath. It was wet friction and a faint, hungry click.

Rebecca was moving before her mind caught up with her body, the stark, mauled figure sporting Danny's face, for only a moment, as if all her fears had been realized at once, but it wasn't him, it couldn't be him, that didn't make sense, she had to be sure, had to know, even as the others jumped to stop her.

Wesker snapped, "Chambers, stay back!" But it was too late. She put her hand on the figure's shoulder.

The response was immediate. Its bad hand shot up with a sudden jerk, fast enough that Rebecca didn't even flinch before it was on her. Jagged finger bones bit into her tactical vest and hooked into the fabric with a grinding, rending pressure, dragging her closer toward the split jaw. Its grip was strong, like a steel trap snapping shut, and the bones scraped as they dug for purchase.

That was when the writhing, snake-like tentacle growing out of its throat snapped out at, whipping toward her neck. The barbs found the heavy collar of her winter coat and snagged, catching on the cloth instead of her skin, coiling around it with the pressure of a hangman's noose. Rebecca felt the pressure, hot and wet against her throat, compressing the thick material around her, choking her. Her rifle, clutched loosely in her hand, dropped, catching taut on its strap as she let out a hoarse scream.

The creature tried to wrench her head into its mouth, face first. Rebecca braced and shoved, boots skidding on the wet concrete as she fought to keep her face from slamming into that split maw. The tentacle shifted, searching, sawing along the coat collar as the barbs tried to find a gap. She could feel its fetid breath raking across her mask, fogging her visor and blinding her.

There was a crack. Wester fired his rifle, catching the thing right in the back of the head, blasting a divot across the concrete and spraying Rebecca's mask with blood and gristle. The impact rocked it, snapped her head forward, and painted the air with a fine mist that clung to Rebecca's visor. It didn't stop, though. The grip on her vest tightened harder, jerking her forward again, and a second shot rang out.

This time it was Chris, the round slamming into the thing's chest to no avail. It punched through with a wet squelch, leaving a ragged hole that leaked dark fluid that the man didn't seem to even register. Rebecca struggled hard. The jagged bone fingers dug in deeper, yanking, pulling, dragging, her in. And that tongue... she could feel it tightening even more, cutting off her airflow. The pressure made her try to gag, and the inside of her mask filled with the sound of her own panicked wheezing.

"Fuck!" She gasped out as her other hand came up, slamming into the thing's chest, trying to keep it back, but it was too strong. The torn jaw flexed as it drew her in, and the barbed tongue tightened another fraction. Barry jumped in, his massive muscles straining as he tried to push the hissing, screeching thing off her, even as its inhuman strength tried again to pull her down.

“Let her go! Get off of her!” He roared as he forced them another inch apart, the thing’s impossibly strong grip unyielding even as his fist crashed against its head like a sledgehammer.

Inch by inch, heartbeat by heartbeat, it pulled her closer.

And then there was an explosion right next to her head. Jill had ripped the shotgun off Chris's back and shoved it right over her shoulder and pulled the trigger point blank at its throat. The shock of the shot rang through her head, sending her ears ringing through her ear-pro.

The blast hit its neck and lower face, ripping it apart in a bloody detonation. Flesh and bone fragments blew out in a brutal spray, and the tentacle slackened as whatever powered it lost tension. The man dropped immediately, weight collapsing like a puppet that had just had its strings cut, and the sudden release nearly dragged Rebecca down on top of it.

Chris's hand shot forward, grabbing her and yanking her back as they tried to disentangle the fleshy appendage, Rebecca scrambling most of all, unwinding the fleshy tendril that had almost cost her her head.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Rebecca repeated over and over again, gasping in a breath one after the other. The sound stayed trapped inside her mask, wet and high, and her hands kept shaking even after its grip was gone. Her knees wanted to fold, but she fought it with a blind, stubborn stiffness that didn't feel like control. She couldn't stop looking at the dark smear across her visor, couldn't stop feeling the pressure at her throat where the barbed tongue had tightened around it. Her chest hitched hard enough that her ribs hurt, as her heart hammered hard and fast.

"Chambers! Chambers!" Wesker snapped as he grabbed her by the face and forced her to focus on him. "Chambers, look at me. Look at me. Breathe. Breathe." His gloves were cold and unyielding against her cheeks, and his grip on her was the only thing keeping her from falling to her knees and sobbing. His voice cut through the rushing noise in her head, giving her something solid to lock onto, even as her life flashed behind her eyes in a moment of sheer terror.

Jaggedly, roughly, she got her breathing under control. Each inhale scraped in, too fast, too shallow, and each exhale shuddered out through the filter with a harsh rasp. Tears ran anyway, hot tracks she couldn't wipe away, and they pooled under the mask seals until the wetness became another thing she couldn't ignore. She swallowed and tasted the stale, sour air trapped inside her gear.

Chris and Barry moved up at the same time, weapons up, lights snapping to corners and then back again, refusing to trust the tunnel. Chris kept glancing at Rebecca, his jaw tight, eyes wide with and hyperfocused. Barry swept the darkness with a steadier rhythm, but his breathing sounded heavier, exhausted from the herculean effort of keeping that nightmare from eating her face off.

They were all shocked. They were all horrified. Rebecca most of all, as juicy chunks of filth coated her jacket and her mask, spattered across the glass, sunk into seams, and streaked along the fabric where the thing had grabbed hold of her. The clinical part of her mind knew she should stay still, focus on breathing, that she was having a crash, and she should let Captain Wesker talk her through it. The rest of her wanted to rip the mask off, wipe her face raw, get away from the stink and the wet pressure and the feeling that something had almost mutilated her.

It was Jill, though, who summed it up best.

"Holy fucking what-the-fuck was that!?" The words were harsh, almost spit out, "What in the actual fuck was that!?" Her voice came out sharp and hard, and her hands shook just enough to make the muzzle dip before she forced it back up. She stared at the spot where the thing had fallen like she expected it to rise again.

Barry, who'd only seen it in clipped flashes, said, "I- I don't know. I don't know. Jesus Christ it was strong..." The words came out fast, clipped by an undertone of panic he was trying to force out of his voice. His eyes kept tracking the floor, the walls, the open stretch of dark behind them, as if another one would come barreling out of the dark.

Meanwhile, Wesker fought to get Rebecca back under control. Get her focused again. It worked, barely, her eyes wide with terror. At first she'd tried to yank her gas mask off, fingers clawing for the straps, but he didn't let her. He caught her wrists, pinned them down, and kept talking, ordering her to keep breathing, to keep focusing on his voice as she recovered. Rebecca hated it, hated him, in that moment as she forgot all of her training in a wash of crashing adrenaline and her composure nearly cracking again because of it.

The body lay motionless on the ground, a pool of black tar pumping out of its severed throat, stinking like rotten eggs and putrid feces. The smell punched through even the filters, thick enough to sit in the back of their throats and turn their stomachs. The tar didn't spread like blood. It crawled and clung, slow and sticky, gathering in a dark sheet that caught the light and made the concrete shine.

"Fall back," Wesker said, finally. "We need to fall back." His voice didn't rise, but the command snapped them into motion.

The retreat was in barely-there order, as they went back to the broken door and out into the atrium again. Nobody wanted to turn their back on the darkness, but they did it anyway, moving in staggered positions, weapons sweeping as they retreated. The atrium itself was little better, still a black morass, but at least it was passingly secure. Barry never let the hole out of his sight through, taking up the overwatch as the others drifted back, trying to regroup.

Jill took over trying to wipe the filth off of Rebecca. She did a little better than smearing it all over, using the edge of her sleeve and the cleanest part of a ragged cloth she'd pulled free, working fast and rough. The glass of the mask cleaned off relatively easily, even if the dark mess had already sunk into the rest of Rebecca's clothing. Rebecca flinched each time Jill touched her, not from pain, but from the way every contact set off a fresh jolt of panic.

All the while, Chris was looking around, restless and furious, hunting for something but not finding it as he tried to regain some semblance of reality, but failing to reconcile that... that thing in there, that had almost eaten Rebecca. Finally, the thoughts that were boiling in his underbelly boiled out, "What the hell what that? You all saw it right? It's fucking jaw was split open and it had a goddamn tentacle that tried to strangle the rook! It was a... It was a..." Chris was lost for words, but Barry summed it up.

"It was a monster. That's what it looked like. I didn't see it grab onto her, but I... saw both you and the captain open up on it. Blew a chunk clean through its head... it should've... would've dropped that man immediately, but he just kept fighting. It was stronger than a roided-out methhead, and it didn't seem to care when I started wailing on it. I've never seen anything like that in all my years."

"All of you, remain calm," Wesker said, trying to get some semblance of order back. "We need to look at this rationally."

Jill's head snapped toward him, fury cutting across her face as she tried to process that. 

"Rationally!?" She snapped. "What the hell is rational about that? The fucking thing's jaw was ripped off. It had a fucking tentacle tongue that was trying to drag Rebecca into its fucking maw like something out of a damn horror movie!"

"Yes. It did," Wesker said. He didn't raise his voice, but it carried a sharp edge, clipped and controlled. "Whatever it was, it clearly had some kind of biological mutation of some sort. I'm not sure calling it a man applies after what it did, but it's apparent that something is very wrong here."

Barry swallowed hard, the sound loud inside his own mask. His eyes kept flicking to Rebecca before looking away.

"I hate to say it," Barry chimed in, "but the Captain's right. If Danny is here, we don't know what happened to him. Whatever that was, however, we can't be sure that he hasn't been afflicted with this same contagion, or fell victim to whatever this is. We need to contact the government. We need to get the rest of the S.T.A.R.S. We need to alert the Chief and the Mayor, and get some backup out here. We're not equipped for this."

Rebecca gave him a betrayed look. It was one Barry couldn't meet, but he knew that was the right call. This had biohazard written all over it, some kind of... god only knew what, causing weird mutations in people. It could be something radioactive, it could be a bioweapon, an engineered plague, a thousand different things that all seemed impossible before five minutes ago, but now were on the table, and none of them were safe to deal with without a full NBC compliment. She he would take that hate, take that betrayal, if it meant keeping his people alive.

"But if Danny is here, and he isn't infected, then he can either take care of himself, or he's already dead, Rebecca. You saw that thing. Hell, it's all over you. At the very least, whatever that thing was, it wasn't human. Or if it was, it was something else, something tainted, and incredibly dangerous." He sighed, before looking at the rest of them, "I'm no coward, and Danny's my friend too, but I do think we need to get someone else involved at this point."

The words landed like a hammerblow. Rebecca's breathing hitched again, the denials on the tip of her tongue, but she forced them back down. She knew what Barry meant. She heard the logic in it. The problem was that logic didn't mean anything to her when her heart was screaming Danny's name.

"Yeah," Chris agreed. He didn't sound confident when he said it. He sounded like he was trying to keep himself from doing the opposite, like if he said anything else it would crack his resolve like an egg. His grip on his rifle was so tight the wood creaked despite it anyway. "Yeah, no, we need to get the FBI, the CIA, the CDC... hell, we need the army out here, with the big guns. There's no telling how many are down here, or God forbid there was some way to help them. I'm sorry, Becca. I am."

"Then it's decided," Wesker said, more than asked. Jill had remained silent, but she nodded, just like the rest of them.

Rebecca looked at them all, helplessly. The mask made her expression harder to read, but her eyes gave everything away. There was fear there, and anger, and a desperate, stubborn refusal to accept what they'd just said. Jill saw it and felt something in her chest tighten, because she'd expected Rebecca to be upset. She hadn't expected that raw betrayal.

Jill grabbed her by the shoulder and said, "Rebecca, Rebecca, look at me." The younger woman focused on her, blinking hard, trying to keep her eyes from flooding again. The ex-Delta had seen that look before, always on people too young, too new, to know when they were in over their heads. Who wouldn't quit until the job broke them. Or killed them, and wound up taking more good people with them in the process.

"This is outside of our wheelhouse. I know you wanna get Danny back, but we can't push this. It's too dangerous." The look of betrayal on Rebecca's face cut Jill deep, deeper than she thought it would, because it wasn't anger aimed at Jill. Instead, it was the look of someone hearing that the people she trusted to help her were about to leave Danny behind.

"We can't just leave him here," she finally forced out. The words came out small and rough, like she'd scraped them out of her throat. There was a cold anger under the hoarseness.

"And I'm not saying we do," Barry said. He stepped closer, careful not to crowd her, keeping his voice steady the way he did when he was trying to keep a room from breaking apart. "If we come back with the cavalry, we can clear this place out, piece by piece. It's the only real option we have."

Rebecca's shoulders sagged for a fraction, and then she stiffened again, fighting to hold herself up. Frustration and grief flickered across her eyes in quick, ugly flashes.

"Damn it." The word was quiet as it slipped through her lips. "Damn it all." Her voice cracked.

"All right, people, back the way we came. Let's move it." Wesker's voice cut through the pallor that had fallen on the four.

They turned back to the bulkhead door, only to see it shut tight. The sight stopped them cold, the open gap gone, sealed tight like it'd never been. For a second nobody moved, disbelieving.

"What?" Chris said. "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait." He rushed up.

He hit the door with his light first, sweeping the seam, the hinges, the edges, searching for the release like it might be hidden in plain sight. His gloved hand went to the join and yanked at it out of reflex, then he drove his shoulder into the metal to see if it would give. It didn't even shudder. The impact ran up through his arm and into his collarbone, and he hissed through his mask as the pain flashed hot under the adrenaline. His breath came harsh and loud in the filter as he strained to force the unyielding metal.

Barry stepped in close enough to look over Chris's shoulder. He ran his own hand along the edge, slower and more careful, as if going by feel would find something Chris missed. Jill joined them after a moment, as Albert stood back, watching the three talk over one another trying to figure out how to force the thick, reinforced door, Rebecca at his side. She glanced over at him, and saw he had a... smirk? No, that was just a trick of the light. It had to be, but as she watched him, she just couldn't shake the feeling. A sharp crack of metal on metal pulled her attention away, one of the others trying to jimmy a bar into an unseen crack, and when she looked back, he was the same implacable man as ever.

It was at that point they realized there was no way to force it from this side. The surface was smooth where the mechanism should've been, nothing to grab, nothing to turn, nothing to access without tools they didn't have. They were trapped like rats in this underground hellhole.

"Fuck. Fuck!" Chris said as he slammed his fist against the door. The thick steel rang as his knuckles impacted it, sharp and unforgiving. He hit it again with the heel of his hand, then stopped, shaking out his sore hand. "Could have sworn there was a hatch handle here, and we left it open anyway. But it's sealed tight. What the hell..."

"Some kind of security measure, then? You can't open it from the inside, just the out," Wesker postulated. "This isn't good."

The words sat heavy in the atrium, as the STARS slowly began to realize they were trapped. Chris stared at the blank metal like it had personally betrayed him, and the anger in his posture was only barely hiding the jolt of fear underneath it. He crushed it down ruthlessly, berating himself for the moment of weakness, even if it was only him who knew it. It did little to quell the frustration, though.

"No shit, Captain," Chris said bitterly, only to snap his mouth shut as Wesker shot him a hard look. Chris's shoulders went rigid, and he forced himself to swallow whatever else wanted to come out. "Apologies, Sir." Chris backpedaled, but Wesker waved it off.

"Tensions are high, Redfield. Keep your head in the game." The words cut across the room as Wesker's hidden eyes focussed on each one of them. "It's clear there's no going back from here. We'll need to find another exit... which means we need to go back in there." He pointed at the dark tunnel. "We need everyone focused. We're S.T.A.R.S., damn it. It's time to act like it." He moved up and grabbed Rebecca, pulling her to the side as the others checked their gear and got their game faces on. He leaned in and spoke in a low tone.

"Chambers, I don't know what that was back there, but it stops now. You might be new, but you're just as well trained as the rest of them. More than that, you're our medic. If any of us go down, it's going to be you who's going to be patching us back together. You can't do that if you're bleeding out on the floor after something rips your face off. Be more careful."

Rebecca shrank under Wesker's chastisement, but nodded. She knew what she'd done had been stupid, and it burned something fierce under her skin. She was better than that, needed to be better than that. The team needed her to be better than that. Danny needed her to be better than that. Especially now that they were stuck.

"Won't happen again, sir," she said in a small voice.

Jill moved in after Wesker left her to check his own gear. She clapped her on the shoulder, giving the younger woman a confident smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Don't worry about it, rookie. Mistakes happen. Just learn from it." Rebecca looked at her and slowly nodded, as Jill clapped her shoulder again, before letting out a quiet huff. "It seems we're going to be going after your boyfriend after all. Lucky you, right?" The false cheer in her voice brought a small smile to Rebecca's lips, thin and shaky, but it was enough.

"Right," she said with a little bit more strength.
Barry, meanwhile, took stock of what they had. Fortunately they were well prepared and had the good sense to grab all the essential kit from the Snow-cat. They'd had to leave behind food and a chunk of their ammo, but they had their weapons, grenades, medical gear and the most important thing, the batteries for their lights, so they weren't in any danger of running dry right now. That said, he knew that it was entirely dependent on just how big the facility was, if they could get a message out, and how many of those... things... stood between them and the way out.

"All right. Well, the good news is we've got most of the important stuff on us right now. Between what we're carrying and what we're wearing, we've got enough ammo to fight off an army. That said, don't spray. Remember, short controlled bursts, watch your crossfire and try to take precision shots if you need to." Barry said, squaring up his shoulders, before he looked to the captain. "What are your orders, sir?"

"We're going to do this by the numbers. Line formation. You see anything moving, it gets one warning. If it doesn't respond, put it down. If it attacks, go weapons free. I'm not going to risk any of those things getting close. That goes for all of you." He said to the four. "No matter what, avoid getting into hand-to-hand with these things. They're resilient and unusually strong. We don't know what caused this, so don't let any of their fluids get into any open wounds, cuts, or whatever. We don't know what pathogens they might be carrying or how dangerous they might be. There's something very clearly, seriously wrong with this facility. First chance we get... We'll radio out. See if we can't get a hold of someone. Now let's move it, people. And remember, we are the best. We are STARS. We are elite, each and every one of us. All of you were chosen for your specializations and experience. There's no-one on this earth better equipped for this situation."

"Now let's move out." Wesker finished. The other four STARS nodded in unison, and with a breath deep, they trudged back into the tunnel. The heat hit them again as soon as the threshold swallowed them, thick and wet, and the tunnel didn't feel empty anymore. It felt aware, almost. Not alive, not in the traditional sense, but it was something deeper, something more primal. The doorway was shut. Literally, in this case. There was no escape, no going back.

It didn't take them long to reach where the body had been. The spot gave itself away by the massive pool of tacky, inky black filth across the concrete. That mess clung to the floor in a slow, tarlike spread, and it shined with the consistency of used oil. That wasn't unexpected. However, the corpse itself was gone.

"Where do you think it went?" Barry asked quietly. "There aren't any drag marks."

"What, do you think he got up and walked away?" Jill snarked back. "I took its head clean off."

"Well, clearly something happened to it," Chris said, sardonically.

"It's odd, but there's nothing to be done about it now. We aren't looking for it." Wesker cut in, grabbing their attention. "What we need to do is get moving. There's no point in dallying over here."

Chris nodded, and once more the five started pushing forward. Their spacing tightened, as the hallway gradually narrowed, their fingers staying close to their triggers, and they kept moving their lights roving in short, disciplined sweeps. As they moved, their breathing grew heavy, and the subtle feeling of moving up began to be noticeable, like they were climbing a gently rolling hill. Rebecca swallowed hard and forced herself to keep pace, the others clearly handling the incline with ease, even as she felt the sweat rolling down her back. Barry kept pace with her, as they moved, subtly keeping an eye on her condition.

"This is weird. Who the hell would take the time to dig something like this? It seems complicated," he said, finally, grabbing her attention. She appreciated the effort to distract her from the oppressive dark.

"Not really, if you think about it," Rebecca said, her voice shaky."If the mountain winters are anything like what we had to go through, it would just make sense to go and skip having to deal with the snow altogether. The tunnel network would be more efficient at that point, and it's clear they knew what they were doing."

"Maybe so," Jill piped in. "Could put some lights in, though. This place is pitch black. You see that shit floating in the air? That's not dust. What do you think it is?"

"No idea, but it's thick, like pollen, or maybe spores. Either way, I know I don't want it going into my lungs." Barry said, as he caught one in his gloved hand, watching it crumble to dust when he touched it, before brushing it off on his pant leg.

"How can you tell?" Jill asked him.

Barry's answer died when the low moan rolled out of the darkness. It wasn't loud, but it was heavy, and it sent a spike of adrenaline through the lot. All conversation died immediately, as Wesker's arm lifted slightly, dropping low, sending them into a crouch as they searched the shadows. Jill shifted her stance to brace, shoulders tight, rifle angled to cover the lowest approach. Chris leaned into his rifle and aimed above her, the two falling into the kind of unison that only came with years of partnership. Barry followed with Albert, the four making a box formation that Rebecca had practiced with her own partner, but had to make due alone.

"Eyes up, people," Wesker said, his voice low and sharp. They swept the hall, looking for something, anything. The lights caught movement low to the ground first, and the shape that crawled into view stole the breath from them. A detached torso skittered into view on bloody, bony legs made out of the skinned remains of the body's limbs. Its head hanging loosely backwards as if its neck had been snapped, and they could see something sharp, long and writing nestled in its mouth. In an instant, it vanished from their light cones, and the five scrambled to reacquire it. When they did, they found it perched on a body that had been tucked half-under a crate, a long scything proboscis forced down the corpse's mouth, and a sick slurping sound emanating from it. It was one of a dozen that lay scattered and ruined, and the thing pumped with wet, urgent pulls that made the corpse jerk.

They froze at the sight, their lights illuminating the mutated thing that was doing... something to the body. The corpse began to twitch erratically like it was having a seizure, and the spider thing jerked its proboscis free with a slurp that sounded wet and squelching. It skittered off into the dark, finding another corpse before anyone could react. Barry took one step forward, trying to track it, when the body it had been... injecting? Suddenly folded up like something was yanking strings from inside. The head hung at an awful angle, the neck clearly broken, and the torso split down the middle with a tearing motion that exposed jagged ribs that snapped like a maw. A glowing orange eye opened in the exposed cavity and locked right on him.

"What in the f..." was all Barry had time to say as it lunged at him. He jerked his rifle up and started firing. The first burst hammered into its gut and tore several  wet chunks free, but the thing kept moving, shifting and shambling erratically. Chris joined him immediately, the two of them emptying almost half a magazine into the thing's torso. Impacts punched through with ugly pops, and bits of flesh and fluid spattered the floor, but the eye stayed fixed and bright as it picked up speed. A round finally clipped the fleshy eye, and the creature froze, then crumpled in a twitching heap.

Movement surged behind it. Two more bodies lurched out of the dark, then a third, each one warped and wrong, their arms outstretched as their ribs split wide, hissing with a whistling hunger as their guts spilled out. The torso spider found another corpse and stabbed in again, and the new body started to jerk in the same frantic rhythm. Jill snapped her rifle up and tracked the closest body, her gun joining the staccato roar, and with her, Chris fired too.

Wesker pivoted, barking, "Engage! Engage! Engage!" As more and more of the bodies emerged from the black.


000


Cold water hit Daniel in the face, jerking him back to consciousness. His head snapped up, then dropped back by the pull of his own weight as the chains above him creaked. Metal bit into his wrists where he hung from the ceiling, the cuffs cutting deeper with every twitch. He was still alive, his addled mind told him, the thought arriving slow and hazy. Sore, exhausted, aching, he tried to swallow and found his throat raw, his tongue dry.

His eyes fought to focus, a condition that had just been getting worse from those first hazy hours strapped to a medical table, all those days ago. Everything had been blurry, a buzzing haze of shock and pain that came in flashes and then vanished as his thoughts fell away. A man with a rictus grin full of disgusting yellow teeth had leaned over him, close enough that Daniel could see the dark film along his gumline. The bastard had pushed a thick syringe into his neck, long and sharp, digging what felt like miles into his body, carving a trench through him. Then another, and another, and another, until the table dripped with his blood. Daniel remembered the pressure, the cold sting, the agony of fire in his chest. He remembered the way the man’s lips moved as if he were speaking but not to him. The words never reached Daniel through the fog.

His entire body had hurt then, the wounds all fresh and barely closed, his very bones creaking and grinding under his skin from the dozen breaks, and the agonized burning in his shoulder from where he had been skewered all stood out prominently. They barely cared enough to bandage him, instead hooking him to an IV filled with a slurry of greed and red fragments suspended in a thick, viscous gel. Then they hooked it into him, and it felt like acid in his veins.
 
He watched as his wounds healed over like a sped up timelapse, the holes sealing, closing, scabbing over, and vanishing in hours, the burning, grinding snaps of his bones as they fused, the dark bruises all yellowing and then fading away. It was then that the others came in. Scientists, researchers, medical personnel, taking blood, taking everything, samples upon samples. They didn't talk to him, not that it mattered. Early on someone had clamped a metal gag over his mouth that kept it distended. But he did pick up bits and pieces.

They didn't understand how he could take so much of the red/green mix, how he could process it without his organs literally cooking his organs into stew. How he could handle enough of it to kill ten men. Enough to boil an elephant alive from the inside out. Thirty, forty times the lethal dosage, and yet he'd shown no signs and no side effects, except for the healing that refused to stop. They ceased, once all the wounds had closed, but that only gave him a moment's respite.

Because once he was healed, they came for him.

They'd dragged him off the hospital gurney across the cold stone floor, his toes scraping against the concrete as his body lurched with every pull. He'd tried to tuck his legs up and couldn't, and the helpless friction burned until it went numb and then burned again. Armed USS goons hauled him into an empty room where a hook hung from the ceiling and a drain sat in the floor. The chain rattled when they threaded it through his cuffs, and his wrists took his full weight in a single ugly drop. They left him hanging there for a day, just so he could feel the metal digging into his hands and the pressure creaking against his bones as his body tore against itself.

Then that fucker came in. Jacob MacKinnon.

Daniel remembered him from Rebecca's Thanksgiving party, the Birkins' security guard with a forgettable smile and an easy gait. MacKinnon didn't smile now, though. He walked into the room like it belonged to him, stopping in front of Daniel and taking his time looking him over. A pair of men followed, quiet and attentive, tools clinking softly as they set them down without looking at Daniel’s face. MacKinnon lifted his chin just enough to meet Daniel’s eyes and held it there, patient and pleased, as if he wanted the moment to last.

"Ye hurt me, ye ken. Ye killed my friends. Ye humiliated me. Ye besmirched the name o' my unit, and ye dishonored me. Oh, aye. I remember ye, Daniel Carter. You and that pretty girlfriend o' yours. Yer idiot friends., and that blonde fucker, Wesker. Oh, aye, I remember ye." Jacob said, as he reached back and picked up a scalpel from the table behind him. "Bet ye didnae know who I was. Though, tae be fair, at the time, I didnae know who ye were either. But ye hurt me. Ye hurt me terribly. Now, I'm no' allowed tae kill ye. That would defeat the purpose. But they dinnae care what happens tae ye, besides that. Only that ye're still alive at the end o' it." The cold edge of the small blade slipped under his skin, drawing barely a papercut of blood from Daniel.

"And I'll make sure that ye are. After all, ye dinnae deserve something as clean as an end. That shit the doctor injected into ye, it's going tae turn ye bit by bit. But we need tae get that blood pumping. We need tae get those cortisol levels higher. We need tae stress ye oot. We need tae make ye hurt. And I tell ye this much, for all the pain that ye enacted upon me, I have nothing but the most ardent desire tae do unto ye a hundredfold." MacKinnon watched Daniel’s reaction like he was a child, watching a butterfly slowly die under a pin. Daniel tried to spit and managed only a thick, useless swallow. The chains creaked again when he pulled, and MacKinnon’s mouth twitched as if the sound pleased him. "That's the spirit, aye."

Then the pain began.

Day in and day out, MacKinnon and his little toadies came in. They cut his skin and burned him, then packed the wounds with salt, leaving him to hang there while it ate into the raw tissue. The next morning the worst of it would be gone, because they kept changing out that fucking IV, kept feeding him the herb mix whether he wanted it or not. The healing didn't erase what they'd done. It erased the damage and left the scars behind, so each new session stacked on top of the last.

There was more after that, so much more. MacKinnon got creative and got mean, and the men with him learned his habits well enough to anticipate what he wanted before he asked. Daniel hung there doing all he could not to lose his mind to it. Pain was something a person could become accustomed to if the body got a chance to settle. They refused to give him that chance. They kept him on the edge, always too hurt to think straight, always too awake to drift.

Shock took him sometimes, right in the gaps between screaming and bleeding. He'd pass out, and they'd inject him with adrenaline to drag him back, forcing his heart to hammer and his eyes to snap open. Other times they dumped frigid, salty water on him, soaking his injuries and making every rend and tear flare up as his skin iced over.

They blasted music to keep him from dozing off, the sound shoved into his skull until it felt like it was vibrating behind his eyes. They kept him hooked up to saline to keep him hydrated enough, and they talked about it like they were doing him a favor. They stripped him down, left no inch of his skin unmutilated, always trying to make him snap, make him give in, make him beg or weep or scream. And what was worse, there was no way to make it end. They did it because they could, just for the fun, for the thrill, and for the sadistic pleasure.

The agony was mind-boggling in its application. Torture in the hands of a skilled professional, someone who knows how to pull the most agony out of every cut, every welt, out of every twitch and spasm of his nerves left him in a constant haze of semi-detachment. Daniel suffered. He suffered worse than he'd ever had before, than he could have ever imagined, and it never, ever seemed to stop. The IV kept him patched together, kept him right on the edge, never able to let go, to just die.

And every time they began anew, his mind would fall deeper and deeper into the dark. His memories, one by one, would play behind his eyes as his body suffered, detached, shattered, and drifting away. He would hear her voice, behind him, but every time he turned, she was gone. He could feel her hands, caressing across his skin, her breath on the back of his neck. Every cut, his skin felt the silk of her skin touching him, every bruise, her soft fingers where it hurt. He could see her silhouette against the light, sitting on his bed, bathed in the sun, her smile the only thing he could focus on. Over and over again, she was there, in the back of his mind, whispering the gentle things that made the world seem a bit less awful, a bit less agonizing.

But then it would end. And he would be back.

He tried time and again to pull his hands loose, to unhook the chain hanging from the ceiling, to break it out. Each attempt started slow, shoulders rolling and wrists twisting, and ended with the cuffs biting deeper as the metal held firm. All he needed to do was get on his feet, then he could fight back. Then he could hurt them. But each time he bent and strained, the ring stayed frustratingly solid, and his own weight became the punishment.

The beatings were the least of it. They'd broken his ribs multiple times, and they didn't even bother to stop when he choked from the crushing pain. They made him spit up blood, vomit his insides out, empty his guts, and then left him hanging there to gag on nothing. They were methodical about it, every agony they inflicted on him. They tried to steal everything that made him human, worming their way into his mind, forcing him to live inside the pain until he couldn't think around it, trying to make him crazy, trying to break him.

They didn't ask any questions. They didn't talk to him, except to mock him, and they did it with the same casual tone they'd use for a bad joke. They came in, did what they wanted, and left again, confident he would be healed and ready for their next session. They just kept digging into him until nothing but pain and hate remained, and then they'd dig deeper anyway.

That was when he lost count. He couldn't tell what day or night was, because there was no rhythm left for his body to latch onto. There were no clocks, no windows, just the fluorescent light above and the winter chill that traveled through the room, through the building, through dazed half-conversations and screaming laughter. He caught fragments when they forgot he was listening, thought he'd broken again, and somewhere inside his mind he latched onto those bits of stolen knowledge.

He'd heard that they were still in the power plant. That MacKinnon was getting frustrated. That apparently his lack of progress was frustrating his masters. Good. Fuck them. But that didn't change his situation, and it didn't loosen the metal around his wrists.

But that made it worse. That made them get... creative. It was a whole new cycle of torment, a whole collection of cruelties taken from the depths of hell, and brought in to make him suffer just a little bit more. He didn't know how long that went on, couldn't think enough to keep track of it, but every day was a new, wicked method of hurting him. And just when he thought there couldn't ever be a new, more horrible torture, they found one. But things had been changing. There was an edge to it, a tension behind the brutal glee and a forced patience behind their smiles.

This day brought something new. MacKinnon had strolled in with one of his lackeys, moving with all the calm confidence of a predator at ease. Another day of torture, another attempt to break him, and Daniel felt it before a word was spoken. There was something different in MacKinnon's eye. Something cruelly amused, like he'd found a better way to get what he wanted.

In his hand was Daniel's hatchet. The blade had been sharpened and polished, clean enough that it caught the light when MacKinnon turned his wrist. It wasn't the first time MacKinnon used his own blades on Daniel's flesh, but there was something off in the casual disregard the USS officer had in his stance. Like he was worried, almost. Tense. Stressed.

The minion moved without any hurry, setting up the drugs, the knives, the canes, the cutting and prying tools in a familiar spread. He checked each item once, then shifted it by an inch like he was arranging a meal. MacKinnon strolled up to Daniel and tilted his head, studying him with a patience that felt obscene. He looked Daniel in the eye, coldly, both men reflecting hate back at one another.

"Ye ken, we've been together for quite some time now... and I've seen ye break, seen ye cry and scream. There's no shame in that. Everyone does. You, me, Pip over here. We've all gone through it, and I'll gie ye that. Every time I stroll back in here, ye're glaring at me like ye wanna rip my throat out and drink my blood." Jacob said, casually, as he circled Daniel, "I can respect that. Seems there was more metal tae ye than just that thick armor ye like tae wear. That's a shame, because, ye see, I have a boss. We all do. But mine is the one who's in charge here... and do ye know what he told me?" MacKinnon stopped, hands shooting up to grab Daniel by his head, forcing him to look at the Scotsman, "He told me that this is taking too long. That ye're too resilient. That we're just... no'... getting... through... tae... ye. Which is a shame. Because honestly, there would be nothing happier in my life than tae keep peeling pieces of ye off. But the decision's been made. We're going to have tae get more creative. Ye understand?"

MacKinnon let the words sit, watching for the flinch, the blink, the crack in Daniel’s composure. He didn't step back when Daniel pulled at the cuffs. He stayed right there, close enough to watch as Daniel began to suspect what was coming. The dilation of his pupils, the snarling of his lips, the raw desire to maim and kill, right there under the surface.

"Ah... there it is. See, I remember ye had that pretty bird living in the city. Heard ye hud something of a falling out, but well, ye and I both ken feelings like that, they dinnae just disappear. I'm gonnae work ye over extra hard the day. Let ye hang there while the bosses go collect her and bring her here." He chuckled, as horror began flooding into Daniel like a torrent. "I liked her. She was cute, nice, innocent. It's going tae be a shame whit we're going tae dae tae her. She's going tae die screaming, though. She's going tae suffer every torture and humiliation that we can think of before she goes." He chuffed a cold laugh. "I'm no one who enjoys that sort of thing, but the boys winnae care. They're going tae rip open every hole she has, and then they're just gonnae start making new ones. And we're gonnae make ye watch. We're gonnae keep doing it until she takes her last breath. And then we'll see where ye are, upstairs," MacKinnon said cruelly, tapping Daniel on his forehead.

"But before that, we've got some quality time tae spend..." Jacob hummed coldly as he fingered the axe.

Before he could make the first cut, though, there was a ringing coming from his pouch. MacKinnon’s head turned as if listening, as a small flicker of annoyance flashed across his lips. He fished the cell phone out, glancing at who it was, and that flicker turned into a full-blown scowl.

"Are ye fuckin' serious? Goddamn it. Here, tak' this." He handed Daniel's hatchet to the other man. "Get started. I have tae go take this call."

MacKinnon stepped away as he spoke, already flipping the phone open. He didn’t look back at Daniel as he moved, seeming to have forgotten him. Pip tested the hatchet with a casual roll of his wrist. He, like all the others, remained silent. He, like all the others, kept their mouths shut. It was always MacKinnon that went on the rants and diatribes. The others didn't even look at him if they could avoid it, but in that moment, he should have.

Daniel's face had frozen into a rictus of hate. It was one thing, it was one thing to torture him, and he’d take that until they finally killed him, if he had to. But MacKinnon’s promise, the gleeful certainty behind it, the vicious delight... it hit somewhere that pain hadn’t reached, and it turned the room into a narrow, hard point of focus. They would not touch Rebecca, was all he could think. They would not touch Rebecca.

He didn't even feel it when Pip cut the first slice into his skin with the blade of the axe. It just felt hot, and wet, a pinprick of warmth consumed by the inferno. He didn't feel it when the pick of the blade tore into his shoulder. It just pulsed like fire, a distant flare that boiled up from inside and was consumed by the molten wrath.

He didn't feel the brass knuckles as they slammed into his stomach. Nor the second punch, nor the third. He didn't feel any of it. All he felt was rage and hate and something else, sharp and clean, cutting through the fog. Pip stared at him oddly, as if he were trying to puzzle out the sudden lack of reaction. He turned, looking over the arranged syringes, no doubt looking for something to make him unable to focus, like they had countless times before, to steal his ability to fight back away. A mistake.

The cuffs wrapped around his wrists creaked and groaned as he twisted them over and over again, bending them, turning them, pulling them tighter and tighter. Bit by bit, despite the pain, the blood pouring down his arms and dripping into his face, he pushed harder. The sharp, repeated grind of metal on metal, searching for the smallest give, the smallest break, as the shifting latch creaked gently.

Daniel's fingers dug into the steel, and he felt his muscles start to twitch, start to contract like steel cables. A tremor ran up his forearms and into his shoulders, then settled into steady pressure as he forced it to hold. The strain built until it felt like the cuffs themselves were part of Daniel’s body, and then the resistance finally started to give. He didn't even feel the snap.

All he knew was that his feet, which had been hanging inches above the ground, now lie flat. He didn't stumble, he didn't fall, didn't lose his footing despite the pain, the agony, the lack of sleep and the raw, bone deep exhaustion he felt. Instead, there was a sense of perfect awareness went through his head, and the room came into focus frame by frame, as his vision slowly turned red.

The minion, Pip, froze in shock. His hands stayed where they were for a beat too long, hatchet hovering, eyes widening as he finally registered Daniel on the ground, his hands free. It was only a moment, but that was all Daniel needed.

His hand shot out like a vice grip. It wrapped around the man's throat, fingers locking down like a vice. Pip was shorter than Daniel, smaller, thinner. He had the face of a computer nerd, an IT tech, but he had proven to be an apt torturer in the past. It made Daniel squeeze harder.

The man tried to hit Daniel with the axe, but his other hand shot out like a viper, and caught the man by his fist. Daniel's grip crushed down and stopped the swing before it started, turning his tormentor’s weapon into dead weight. The struggling mercenary punched at him, kicked at him, but Daniel just lifted him clean off the ground, letting the legs flail without giving him purchase.

There was a pistol on the table, just out of reach, but the wiry USS soldier kept trying to grab it, desperately, hopelessly. His hand clawed toward it in blind panic, the movement getting weaker each time his lungs failed him. Daniel stared, almost detached as the soldier tried, as the flailing grew weaker and weaker.

Daniel squeezed his throat tight, and he watched slowly as the light left the man's eyes, his windpipe crushed. Pip’s mouth opened, but the sound that came out was wet and thin, and then it broke apart into nothing. Blood started to leak out from between his fingers as Daniel squeezed ever more.

Then with a violent wrench, he ripped the man's Adam's apple out. A look of horrified shock ripped across the man's face as Daniel held up the quivering hunk of meat, then faded quickly as he bled out. Pip’s body jerked once, then sagged, boots scraping lightly as life left him.

Daniel dropped the chunk of meat and wrapped his hand around the fallen hatchet. He was on fire, his blood boiling as it washed out everything, washed out his pain, his fear, his tiredness, and his weakness, replacing all of it with nothing but pure, focused wrath. He didn't even notice when he licked the dead man's blood from his hand, as his eyes drifted across the tiny room mechanically. He grabbed the pistol, checking it. A single magazine, but that was all he needed.

Yes.

Yes, that would be just fine.

The door was unlocked to Daniel’s amazement. It was like the arrogant fucks had never even imagined he could possibly get loose. His hand wrapped around the door handle, and it turned easy, the latch coming loose. WIth a push, the heavy metal door slid open. He was finally free.

There was a sense of numb coldness in that, of shock, of incredulous surprise. He was free. He. Was. FREE. And he would never, ever let them take him alive again. He would make them suffer, he would make them bleed, he would make. Them. Hurt. They would pay for what they did to him. They would regret ever letting Rebecca’s name cross their lips. They would never, ever even think to threaten him, or her, ever again. This he promised.

They were all going to die down here.