More Than a Memory || closed with realprojectalice
@realprojectalice | {This is set after the events of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.}
Umbrella recovered many things from the helicopter crash outside the newly-sanitized Raccoon City. The most valuable recovery item was, of course, Project Alice. She was a highly desired and extremely expensive lost asset that the Corporation was happy to have recaptured. However, a team was dispatched to spend a few days picking over the wreckage carefully to make certain nothing else of importance was missed. Data, equipment, and some weapons were recovered, along with a slew of biological samples. Although they had recovered Alice, there was still a missing employee, a daughter of one of their top scientists, another civilian, and a BSAA agent who had been unaccounted for, and blood stains were all over the wreckage site. Dr. Isaacs ordered multiple samples taken from every blood stain the technicians could find. The samples were bound to be degraded after the intense heat from the crash and being left out in the elements, so the more biological material they could recover, the better. Most of the samples ended up being too degraded to obtain a usable DNA profile from, but a few were very promising.
Within a week, they had a complete DNA sequence from an AWOL UBCS corporal, one Carlos Oliveira. It was carefully compared to an archived sequence from several years ago that was obtained when he was first hired as an Umbrella employee. It seemed that his genetic makeup had undergone some very interesting changes, and after extensive genomic analysis, it was determined that Oliveira had been infected with the T-virus and successfully been administered the antivirus. All the hallmarks of the T-virus’ usual alterations of someone’s DNA – someone without the potential to be an asymptomatic carrier, that is – were there, and sections of viral DNA were able to amplified from the human DNA recovered from his blood cells. However, no actual viral units were observed within those blood cells under a microscope. This meant that the T-virus had infected the cells and its DNA had been incorporated into Oliveira’s own DNA sequence in some places, but the virus itself was gone. The viral DNA in his sequence was dormant, inactive.
This was all very interesting to Dr. Isaacs from a research standpoint, but there was only so much data Umbrella could get from looking at dead blood cells and DNA from a snapshot in time. To really study what the incorporation of viral DNA into a susceptible human’s own genetic makeup could mean for the resulting fitness of that human once the infection had been cured, one needed to study the actual human. A cloning and long-term evaluation study was immediately authorized.
The study was outsourced from the Hive to other satellite laboratories around the country, most of which were destroyed or lying dormant after years of decay by the time Alice released the antivirus into the air. The majority of the Oliveira clones, kept either in cryo-storage or refrigerated and under sedation in saline fluid, had long since died once power was cut to their respective facilities and their life support systems failed. One facility, however, maintained power, as it was controlled remotely by the Hive. When the Hive exploded… everything powered down. Backup generators worked for a time, but soon even they began to die. The facility went dark.
Carlos awoke freezing cold and unable to breathe. Was he in water? It tasted salty. I can’t see a damn thing! He tried to move and found himself hooked to some wires. Tearing them away, he realized he was hooked up to some kind of breathing device but it was no longer working. Pulling that away too, he knew he didn’t have a lot of time to figure this out before he’d drown. Flailing a bit, his arms hit glass, or at least what felt like glass. He tried to break it with his elbow, but that hurt like a bitch. He then began kicking the glass as hard as he could, already feeling the air hunger spreading through his body, until finally everything exploded into a spray of saline, glass, darkness, and cold air. He spilled out onto an equally cold floor, shivering and gasping for any breath he could get in.
After several minutes of exhaustion and confusion, Carlos pushed himself onto his knees and then his feet, staggering a bit. “Seriously?” he said, holding his arms out and trying to feel for anything in the darkness. “Ugh…” he snorted. The smell was atrocious. Something died in here, definitely. He crashed into a computer desk, his hands immediately touching what he knew to be a keyboard. Feeling for a nearby desktop tower, he felt around for a power button in the front first, and then around the back. “Come on…” he growled in frustration before pushing a button and hearing the computer hum to life on the limited backup battery power it still had stored. He froze, waiting for the monitor to light up with a login screen, and once it did, he was finally able to take in his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was a data notebook lying on the desk. As he turned around, he saw where he’d come from… the shattered, half-filled tube big enough to store a human being… and next to it, a few other tubes. They were leaking a cloudy, brown, putrid liquid, and he could vaguely see in the limited light that there were decaying bodies inside them. “Oh hell…” Carlos said grimly.
His teeth were chattering as he went through the drawers of the desk, taking anything that looked like it might be of value. He found a set of keys, a lighter, and to his utter delight, a flashlight. It… didn’t work, but after cracking the case open, he found that the batteries had leaked a bit, which usually meant they were really old. In fact, the entire place looked like it had just been abandoned. What the hell is going on here? He took out the batteries and dropped them a few times onto the desk, causing the crystallized battery fluid to chip away. Cleaning the ends as best he could and putting them into the flashlight, he was ecstatic to find that it now worked.
As his vision came more into focus with the added light, it only took a few seconds of looking around the laboratory to see that telltale red and white logo on the computer screen, the floor, the nearby lockers, on memo pads… “Great,” he said, assuming he’d been picked up after the helicopter crash somehow. He couldn’t tell who the other people in the tubes were, and he decided that for right now, he didn’t want to know. Where were Alice, Jill, L.J. and Angie? Were they okay? Well whoever were in these tubes were already dead anyway, so there was nothing more he could do for any of them. Better to just keep going.
One of the lockers had some extra clothes in them. Cargo pants and a T-shirt, and a little tight-fitting, but it was better than walking around cold, wet, and naked. He yanked the little Umbrella patch off the sleeve of the shirt and tossed it away. His first priority, other than finding food and drinkable water, was to find a way out of the facility, preferably without running into anyone before he was ready for a fight. His energy was returning, but he needed to find weapons. An hour’s worth of searching had provided him with some freeze-dried food and a water jug, but no weapons. That was unfortunate, for in the distance he heard what sounded like an elevator or some other mechanism moving around, maybe a few rooms over. Was someone coming? “Well, I could set their hair on fire at least. See? Things are looking up,” Carlos joked lowly to himself, thinking of the lighter he’d found, forever using humor to get him through a rough situation…
@realprojectalice | {This is set after the events of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.}
Almost nothing had been left of Nemesis after Raccoon City had been “sanitized” by a nuclear device. He’d been unconscious, clocked in the face by the wreckage of the Umbrella helicopter he’d shot down to protect Alice and her friends. When he woke, he couldn’t feel his body. That’s because he no longer had a body to feel. He was little more than a head, his brain miraculously protected by his thickened skull and the metal the helicopter had buried him under. Once he returned to consciousness, his mental distress combined with the trauma to his body and the lack of anything to hold it back caused the T-virus to regenerate at an alarming rate. It grew him a new spine, new organs, new limbs... all within minutes. But it didn’t just regenerate what had already been there, oh no. It was out of control…
Once the virus was satisfied with itself, Nemesis was nearly twice his original size. His body was now better equipped to travel on all-fours rather than walking upright on two legs, and he’d acquired tentacles on his back. They were long, thick, and had a mind of their own. His head remained the same size, but his body was broader and more heavily armored than before. Thick bone encased his oversized heart and lungs, and his hips and shoulders were more flexible in their range of motion. The vertebrae of his spine protruded through his skin, all the way down his back, the sharp bones extending up like spikes. His hands and feet were larger and more animal-like, with his fingers and toes now ending in razor sharp claws. It was as if the virus had been afraid of dying, and had overcompensated by re-growing Nemesis’ body to be larger, stronger, faster, and more durable than it was before… so that it would survive.
And survive he did, for many years after that. He’d never left his old stomping ground – so to speak, anyway, since his actual boots were long gone – around what used to be Raccoon City. For a long time he’d had hope that the infection wouldn’t spread, but that was quickly snuffed. After that, he did what he could to kill whatever undead he came across and help the occasional survivor, although he was always met with bullets, grenades, and anything else they could sling at him. That was okay, really. He understood. He was a monster, after all. That didn’t stop him from trying to help, though. It was the only thing that gave his agonizing life purpose.
Umbrella had tried to recapture him numerous times, but always it had ended poorly for them. After a few years… they stopped trying. There were no more survivors that he could find. The world was gray and dead. The environment he’d fought so hard for years ago was all but lost, along with most life on earth. So what had it all been for, anyway? Nothing. He’d tried so hard. Everyone had. And it all meant... nothing. It was a jagged pill to swallow, but despite it all, Nemesis refused to lay down and die. Not that the virus would have allowed him to do that anyway.
But then... after so many years of being alone... a familiar scent on the wind. Nemesis had been lying down near the entrance to the Hive, eerily enough the place he felt the most comfortable. Maybe it was because it was in some way connected to his past, to the man he used to be. It was something heartbreakingly familiar in a world where nothing would ever be the same again. But the moment he caught her scent, he was up on his feet and on point. Alice...? Nemesis sniffed the wind. He was sure of it, and he could feel her presence, her special brand of infection that he hadn’t encountered since that day in Raccoon City, back when there still was a city here.
He tried to locate her, but got distracted by the Cerberus bioweapons that had been released. For just a moment, in the foggy darkness of ground zero near the Hive’s entrance, he saw her. It really was Alice! She was with others and they were headed for the Hive. Nemesis knew better than to approach. He wouldn’t be well-received, he knew. But... he could make sure nothing followed them inside... He tore apart any and all bioweapons he saw, wondering what Alice wanted with the Hive. Was something going on? What did she know that he didn’t? As he killed the remaining Cerberus bioweapons and began tearing through the horde of undead that had suddenly overrun the place, he couldn’t help but feel so ecstatic to know that Alice had survived. It rekindled so much hope in him that someone could survive that long, and he had no doubt that all this time, Alice had done so much good for the world.
He lost track of time, killing as many undead as he could, until something very strange happened. They all just... fell over. Like a wave, spreading back as far as he could see. Confused, Nemesis backed away, wondering what had happened. He’d never seen undead behave like this before, and what was even strange was that he couldn’t sense any infected near him anymore. After they laid down, they only smelled like the dead, nothing more. He nudged one of them, but it didn’t move. What the hell? But since they all seemed to fall in a pattern, spreading out from a central location, Nemesis tried to find the source of whatever had affected them, tracking back to the front of the horde.
As he did so, he started to feel dizzy first. Then nauseated. Then very weak. His legs and arms trembled underneath him until they gave out and he crumpled to the ground with a pained bellow. It was hard to breathe and he began coughing up black liquid. His tentacles shriveled and fell off, and as he looked at his arms, he could see his flesh appear to ripple and begin falling away. Terrified, all Nemesis could do was make some pitiful noises of agony and fear as he watched his body begin to disintegrate before his eyes. And in that moment, he caught her scent once more, and if he could cry, he would have.
“Ah-lissss....” he bellowed, his voice gurgling with the fluid in his throat. Had she done this? Was that why she’d gone to the Hive? Had she found a way to end the infection for good? He wouldn’t put it past her. As he began to lose consciousness, Nemesis smiled in his own limited way. Well done, Alice... well done...
Her reaction—those borderline biting words that prompted an internalized wince—made him think that this gesture had been the wrong one to make. Despite how well Alice worked in a team setting, Chris knew she was more of the lone wolf type. Chris had his own moments where he needed seclusion or just a couple of minutes to himself in general so he understood. It was easy to forget what contact with another living and breathing person was like. How it could make you flinch or instinctively brace yourself in anticipation of an attack. It was also easy to give into the contact from sheer loneliness, the yearning for any kind of intimacy that someone offered. They weren’t strangers so Chris reckoned this was why he wasn’t cradling his hand with fingers broken right now to show for his efforts. But he did let go, dropping his hand from hers and mentally drawing back into himself again. He was a soldier, ingrained with the conduct of self-discipline and swallowing back any emotion lest it be seen as weakness. Seen as a crack in otherwise fortified armor. “You looked really lost in your head there. Thought you could use a little grounding... Didn’t mean to overstep,” the man said calmly, keeping his tone benign despite her response.
Claire’s hand falls from Alice’s and green eyes flick away, arms crossing over her chest. She shrugs and the small, quick laugh that falls from her lips is genuine. If there’s one person she’s actually always trusted and felt comfortable with, almost from day one, it’s Alice. “ I’m just making sure you’re still with me. I already know my story isn’t that interesting. ” A light joke, she certainly wasn’t telling a story. She wasn’t doing much of anything besides just sitting next to Alice, looking out into the horizon.
“ If I tell you to go get some rest, are you going to go do it? ”
Chris was standing in the back of the room while Chief Irons made some boring speech, it was literally putting him to sleep. He searched the room but didn’t see any sign of Jill or Richard, even Wesker was hard to spot, yawning he moved off the wall to go look for his fellow S.T.A.R.S. members but bumped into a woman, he stood back and fixed his name tag which just read his last name. “Sorry about that, didn’t meant to bump into you”
"Another variation? Ugh, trust Wesker to create something with an entirely unnecessary number of extra tentacles, I’d swear he had a fetish for them or something,” Leon complained as another head exploded like a popped balloon to allow the parasite to defend itself. The dripping appendage was tipped by a curved, scythe-like blade that whipped blindly about it making close combat impossible. A waste of bullets he was already running low on.
“We’re going to need to stock up soon,” he remarked more to himself than to Alice. There would be places that hadn’t been hit in the end of the world, of that he was sure. The question was whether those places were infested or not.
It took three bullets to the stump of the collection of extra appendages to make it explode in a similarly wet mess and the headless body slumped to the ground with a final thud.
Three more parasite-infested former people to put down and they’d have cleared out the nest of sorts.
With the cold weather passing, it seemed as though every mutation under the sun was crawling out of the woodwork as if they’d been hibernating for the winter. Either the parasites weren’t fond of the cold or there simply wasn’t enough prey to warrant unnecessary activity, assuming Las Plagas needed to metabolise something in order to keep the host body functioning. Either way with Spring making its appearance, they were seeing increased numbers of infected.
No T-creatures though. The vaccine was apparently working its magic.
“Looks like there’s a weather front moving in too and I don’t know about you but I’d rather not be out in it. Let’s finish this quick.”
“Then you’re one of the smart ones, and not one of the idiots here that thinks gathering in large groups constantly will ensure their survival.” Sonja chuckled and took another drag on the cigarette, the once toxic chemicals couldn’t hurt her now but was still good for suppressing appetite. She did understand why the human survivors gathered in groups, social instinct and a prayer for survival...but it always drew in hordes of infected.
Where was she going to go? It wasn’t as if there was a patch of land out on earth that was safe. Large cities were too dangerous, the open road provided little cover....but occasionally you could find a brief shelter. The doomsday preppers that had once lived in the midwestern region tended to have pantries full of supplies. Truthfully she wanted to return home but overseas travel wasn’t easy and so she’d remain here for some time yet, longing to return to Hungary somehow.
“Don’t know yet, probably to the midwest again. Maybe up north to Canada, for the colder weather.” Sonja looks at the other woman for a moment then dug out the pack of cigarettes, holding it out to her in silent offering. “What about you? Where are you heading out to next?”
