A Night in the Darkness

VII. Conspiracy of One
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Albert Wesker closed the door behind him, observing his surroundings before dropping his guard. He was in a normal bedroom. Well, normal for the Spencer Mansion, anyway. Bloody handprints streaked the wallpaper, and their was a rotting hand upon the desk. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before. In the moment, he hardly cared anyway.

Wesker’s hands were trembling with rage. Sarton’s plant was destroyed. The Neptune experiment was dead, and his trap with Enrico as bait had failed. Jill and the Bravo girl were still alive. There was a chance that the Black Tiger B.O.W. had finally gotten rid of Chris, but somehow, Wesker doubted it. There was only the Yawn left now.

And, of course, there was the Tyrant.

Really, it was all in his favor. The more the S.T.A.R.S. fought against the B.O.W., the more the mansion’s computer collected battle data, the more Wesker was paid. Not by Umbrella. He had had enough of them and their petty crimes. What he gathered from the mansion would find the hands of a much more subtle organization, a far more lucrative organization. The longer S.T.A.R.S. survived, the better.

Wesker didn’t care. He didn’t care what paid more, or what Umbrella or the Agency wanted. He wanted them dead. All of them. He hated things not going according to plan, and he had planned on Jill and Chris’ dismembered body parts long before now.

There was still the chance that Burton would come through for him, but Wesker didn’t count on it. It was time to pay a visit to the labs.

…

Jill and Rebecca were back in the main house of the mansion, their boots still squelching with water as they walked. Rebecca was in the lead, apparently quite sure of where she was going. Jill didn’t quite know where she was leading them, but she trusted the girl to take them wherever it was that they needed to be.

They neared another door and sidled up to it, backs against the wall, both with a door handle in grasp and their pistols in the other hand. The locked eyes for a moment, grinning at each other. It was merely procedure; after all that had happened, this was officially an emergency situation.

The grins faded as they heard and felt a thump on the other side of the door. Their gazes dropped from one another, both of them now focused on whatever might be on the other side of the doorway. Rebecca couldn’t even begin to imagine, after everything she had seen within the last couple of days. She felt as if she should be more inclined to all of it at this point. After the train, and what she had seen in this infernal mansion.

But that wasn’t how it worked, it seemed. She could suddenly sympathize with all those seemingly ditzy, helpless heroines in the horror movies. Horror wasn’t like an action movie. There were no special effects of martial arts to save them, nothing to prepare them for the next monster in the next scene. They would either get lucky, and survive; or death would take them, suddenly, painfully, and remorselessly.

She remembered all the times Jill had saved her while they’d been together. All the times Billy had saved her before that. Even Chris had saved her skin, in the five minutes he had been around. Rebecca steeled herself. No more damsel in distress. She would make it through this hellhole, and she would help Jill and any others do the same.

“Rebecca!” a hissing whisper broke her train of thought, and she looked back to Jill. Her blue eyes were wide and urgent. “Are you ready?” she mouthed.

Rebecca nodded, and Jill nodded back, forming the countdown on her lips.

One, two, three…

Rebecca made to twist the handle, but it did so under her fingers. The door was thrust open against them, knocking the two women to the ground. They trained their guns on the figures standing in the doorway, waiting for them to advance.

The moment of confusion passed, and Rebecca realized who she was training her gun on. Another pistol was trained right on her, held by a tall, muscular figure. It was Chris. Beside him, holding his arm straight out, gun trained on Jill, was another S.T.A.R.S. member, Barry. The two men lowered their weapons, realizing what had happened.

“Barry!” Jill cried. She jumped to her feet and rushed towards him, embracing him in a hug. She had always harbored a strong fondness for the older man, and was glad to see him alive. “I’m so glad you’re okay…”

Chris, meanwhile, held out his hand to Rebecca, helping her up. “Well, that was close,” he said as he pulled her up. “Are you guys alright?”

Rebecca nodded, coming up to her feet and dusting herself off. “Yeah, a few close calls, but we’re fine. How about you two?” Rebecca looked up, awaiting a reply, and saw that Chris was no longer paying any attention. Jill stood before him, inspecting a large, deep wound all the way down his arm. Her fingers traced it gently, the two of them speaking in hushed tones, their eyes locked.

Rebecca and Barry watched the two of them, both of them smiling, Barry approvingly, Rebecca’s more wistful. She remembered how her initial attraction to Chris had spurred a more competitive attitude between her and Jill, the last time they had all met. Seeing their intimacy now, however, made her realize how much they cared for one another, how Rebecca wouldn’t have been able to come between them, had she still wanted to. All Rebecca desired was to feel how Jill must’ve felt there with Chris. A feeling Rebecca had known all too briefly.

A moan and shuffles diverted the group’s attention towards the hallway Rebecca and Jill had just come through. A small crowd of zombies shambled forth, blank stares glistening.

“Come on,” Rebecca said. “I know where to go.”

…

Barry’s skin was slicked in a cold sweat as Rebecca led him and the others through the maze of hallways and staircases. She was taking them to the mansion’s library.

“That’s how we get to the labs,” she had said. “I memorized the map in the aqua ring.”

He had feigned a smile, mimicking Chris and Jill’s sincere joy. They were that much closer to getting out of this hellhole. But Barry couldn’t afford to be happy. The three were beginning to figure things out. He wondered how much they knew already. He listened as Jill explained how Marini had been shot, how there was a traitor amongst them.

Soon it would be plain who it was, Barry thought. Already, it could only be Wesker or Aiken. What would happen if they discovered who it was? He would be implied; exposed as a traitor. What would they do to him? What would he have to do to them. It wasn’t something he wanted to think about. These were his friends. But he would do it. He would do whatever he had to in order to ensure his family’s safety.

“So did you ever find Richard?” Jill asked Chris as they rounded another corridor, guns trained down the hallway.

“No,” Chris shook his head solemnly. “I followed his trail into an office with all these documents about what’s happening here. It said there were labs under the mansion, so I figured if I found them, I would find Richard. But all I found was Barry and some huge bugs.”

They turned into another stairwell and began ascending in formation, Rebecca leading, Barry taking the back.

“I hope he’s alright…” Rebecca said quietly. She wondered about the rest of her team. Realistically, she should’ve assumed them all dead, but it wasn’t something she could bring herself to do.

They reached the top of the stairs, opening another wooden double door. Behind it was a large hallway, moonlight flooding the windows. Another set of double doors rest at the far end of the hallway. In the center of the hall, crouched in a mass, were several zombies. They looked up vapidly as the door opened, their eyes glistening, mouth’s gaping and caked with gore.

They stumbled to their feet, approaching the group of survivors. They raised their guns, ready to fire. Chris shot first, catching one right between the eyes. Barry was next, his magnum taking one’s face clean off. Jill and Rebecca fired, Chris and Barry taking their second shots. The zombies were all dead. As horrid as they were, they weren’t to much of a threat.

They continued down the hall, stepping over the rotting bodies. Before the survivors was a corpse that had served as food for the undead. Rebecca took a few more steps before freezing in her tracks, her body shaking as she gazed at the body. She heard a gasp from behind her as the rest of them realized what they were seeing.

It was Forrest Speyer, a Bravo member. Rebecca had sat next to him in the helicopter on the way to the Arklay Mountains. Now he lie face up in a pool of his own organs, his middle absolutely gaping, hollowed of its contents. His throat was ripped wide open, leaving nothing to the imagination.

As they watched, the body began to twitch minutely. It’s blank eyes rolled wildly around in it’s head, it’s gaze stopping directly on the group standing before it. It’s mouth began to open and close in a chomping motion as the reanimated corpse attempted to get to it’s feet.

They all watched in horror, none of them able to speak. None of them able to say what had to happen. The thing wasn’t Forrest anymore. It was a threat. It had to be neutralized.

Rebecca stepped forward, training her gun one the squirming zombie at her feet. It looked up at her. Beneath the milky film of it’s eyes, she felt she could see a tint of green, of the real Forrest.

Rebecca closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger. She felt lukewarm flecks spray her face, mingling with the tears on her cheeks. She turned away before opening her eyes, and then looked only at her feet. She felt the overbearing urge to throw her pistol as hard as she could, restraining herself only with the thought of a how misfire could hit one of them.

Rebecca felt arms around her, strong yet feminine; Jill’s. She embraced back, her tears flowing freely. Chris stepped forward, embracing both of the girls, Rebecca’s sobs growing more twisted and miserable.

Barry watched with a unbelieving stare. Forrest was dead. He had known Forrest, since his first day on the force, when he had been only a couple years older than Rebecca was now. Now he lie on the ground among his own insides, twice dead. This was Wesker’s doing.

And what was Barry doing? Helping Wesker. This was his responsibility as well as superior’s.

What had he done?

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Here it is, after a long break of doing other stuff. Hopefully I can be more consistent with it. Hope it's good. Read, Rate, Review, and Enjoy.